An edition of The beak of the finch (1994)

The beak of the finch

a story of evolution in our time

1st ed.
  • 4.2 (4 ratings) ·
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  • 4.2 (4 ratings) ·
  • 70 Want to read
  • 3 Currently reading
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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 22, 2024 | History
An edition of The beak of the finch (1994)

The beak of the finch

a story of evolution in our time

1st ed.
  • 4.2 (4 ratings) ·
  • 70 Want to read
  • 3 Currently reading
  • 9 Have read

The Beak of the Finch tells the story of two Princeton University scientists - evolutionary biologists - engaged in an extraordinary investigation. They are watching, and recording, evolution as it is occurring - now - among the very species of Galapagos finches that inspired Darwin's early musings on the origin of species. They are studying the evolutionary process not through the cryptic medium of fossils but in real time, in the wild, in the flesh.

The finches that Darwin took from Galapagos at the time of his voyage on the Beagle led to his first veiled hints about his revolutionary theory. But Darwin himself never saw evolution as Peter and Rosemary Grant have been seeing it - in the act of happening. For more than twenty years they have been monitoring generation after generation of finches on the island of Daphne Major - measuring, weighing, observing, tracking, analyzing on computers their struggle for existence.

We see the Grants at work on the island among the thousands of living, nesting, hatching, growing birds whose world and lives are the Grants' primary laboratory.

We explore the special circumstances that make the Galapagos archipelago a paradise for evolutionary research: an isolated population of birds that cannot easily fly away and mate with other populations, islands that are the tips of young volcanoes and thus still rapidly evolving as does the life that they support, a food supply changing radically in response to radical variations of climate - so that in a brief span of time the Grants can see the beak of the finch adapt.

And we watch the Grants' team observe evolution at a level that was totally inaccessible to Darwin: the molecular level, as the DNA in the blood samples taken from the birds reveals evolutionary change. Here, brilliantly and lucidly recounted - with important implications for our own day, when man's alterations of the environment are speeding the rate of evolutionary changes - is a scientific enterprise in the grand manner, an abstraction made concrete, a theory validated in life.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
332

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Beak of the Finch
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
May 30, 1995, Vintage
Paperback in English
Cover of: Beak of the Finch
Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
May 1995, Tandem Library, Turtleback Books
School & Library Binding in English
Cover of: The beak of the finch
The beak of the finch: a story of evolution in our time
1995, Vintage
in English
Cover of: The Beak of the Finch
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
May 1995, Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media
Unknown Binding in English
Cover of: The beak of the finch
The beak of the finch: a story of evolution in our time
1994, Knopf, Distributed by Random House
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: The beak of the finch
The beak of the finch: a story of evolution in our time
1994, Jonathan Cape
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-321) and index.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
598.8/830438
Library of Congress
QL696.P246 W45 1994, HB3505 .K28

The Physical Object

Pagination
x, 332 p. :
Number of pages
332

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1425727M
Internet Archive
beakoffincha00wein
ISBN 10
0679400036
LCCN
93036755, 73084073
OCLC/WorldCat
29029572, 892425, 123252074
Library Thing
58714
Goodreads
989758

First Sentence

"Half past seven on Daphne Major."

Work Description

On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch.

In this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself. The Beak of the Finch is an elegantly written and compelling masterpiece of theory and explication in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould.

With a new preface.

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History

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July 22, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 19, 2023 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 25, 2021 Edited by yogiman2646 Edited without comment.
February 17, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page