Arrival of the Fittest Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle

Andreas Wagner, Sean Pratt

eAudio - 2014

"Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. Nature's many innovations—some uncannily perfect—call for natural principles that accelerate life's ability to innovate, its innovability."Darwin's theory of natural selection explains how useful adaptations are preserved over time. But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded him. As genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries put it, "natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest."Can random mutations over a mere 3.8 billion years really be responsible for wings, eyeballs, knees, camouflage, lactose digestion, photosynthesis, and the rest of nature's creative marvels? And if... the answer is no, what is the mechanism that explains evolution's speed and efficiency?In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over fifteen years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin's theory. Using... more