It makes for a tidy narrative when the history of a theory parallels the theory itself. In Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution, Rebecca Stott takes full advantage of this parallel. Readers of her 2,000-year history of the development of the theories of evolution and natural selection will notice that these theories developed through adaptation, false starts, movements backwards and forwards, meanderings, and finally – as Stott points out in her epilogue – by “convergent evolution,” when several scientists independently developed similar theories of natural selection.
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