Books

When God Plays on Darwins Team

Human Evolution: Genes, Genealogies
and Phylogenies. Graeme Finlay.
Cambridge University Press, 2013. 372
pp., illus. $75.00 (ISBN 9781107040120
cloth).

It is reasonable to ask what the book

is about. The short answer is that it is
about comparative genomics. Before I
set out the longer answer, one should
perhaps consider why Finlay has
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org

The book extensively details many

such examples from across genomics.
There are chapters on retroviruses,
transposable elements, pseudogenes,
and new genes. Finlay is right to point
out that the extraordinary consistency
of patterns of genomic diversity and
phylogenetic history are unassailable
evidence for the occurrence of evolution. Any creationists or intelligent
design supporters reading this book
should close it quietly and depart to
contemplate their folly. Anyone already
persuaded of the reality of evolution
will probably close it with a feeling of
exhaustion. Finlay piles example on
example to drive home his main point.
Whereas Dawkins uses a rapier to
take apart the creationist, Finlay uses a
sledgehammer.
Finlay is far from the first to notice
that that there are just too many errors
in biological systems to accommodate
much of a divine hand, and he is wrong
to think that it is only with genomics
that this has become apparent. He
also almost certainly underestimates
the noise in the system, increasingly
revealed by larger and larger genomic
sequences. However, he does very
clearlyand often elegantlydescribe
the wonderful things that have been
revealed by the genomic revolution. In
fact, the best bits of this book are not
about evolution. Most of the evolution
is a relatively simple exposition of the
way in which genomics has either confirmed the classic picture of primate
phylogeny, established since the 1960s,
or, in the case of mammalian phylogeny, revolutionized it (e.g., the recognition of the Cetartiodactyla), with
little recognition that the path was
often paved by more than 100 years
of systematic biology. No, the best bits
of the book are those in which Finlay
lays out with great clarity the mechanisms of genomics and how these
are played out in cell biology. There
is, for example, an excellent chapter
on pseudogenes and how these come
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here are many books that include

the words human evolution in their
titles. They take many forms and can
be the history of the human species as
evidenced by fossils; the light thrown
on human nature by the behavior of
our closest living relative, the chimpanzee; the pattern of emergence of
human behavior derived from the
archaeological record; or the genetic
evidence for the African origin of the
human lineage. They may be highly
technical or popular renditions, partial
expressions of prejudice, controversial
hypotheses, or a neutral telling of an
important story. What they all tend to
have in common is that they are about
human evolution, and one can learn
from them about the nature of the
human species, how it came about, and
possibly even why. Graeme Finlays
Human Evolution departs from this
convention. This is not to say that it is
not a good book, but it is not a place
to go to learn much about human
evolution.

written this book and what is his aim.

Graeme Finlay is a cancer biologist
based at the University of Auckland,
New Zealand, and an expert in cell
biology. There is another side to his
public profile; he is a committed and
active Christian with a strong interest
in the engagement of science and religion. He is a fierce critic of creationism, intelligent design, and all forms
of antievolutionism. With that being
said, he is an equally fierce critic of
Richard Dawkins and the other evolution-based critics of religion. As far as
I can gather, his position is that there
is ample evidence for evolution but
that genes and genetics cannot explain
humans in the round. For Finlay, the
complete story requires both the rest
of the sciences and social sciences
essentially, the nurture to go with the
nature of geneticsand something
else, something spiritual, mysterious,
andpresumablyultimately divine.
It is from this background that the
book is written. To provide the longer
answer, Finlays aim is very simple: to
demonstrate that evolution must have
happened. Not for him the diversity
of evidence, from fossils to psychology to archaeology to genetics, which
have been used frequently in similar
arguments. His evidence is entirely
genomic and is shaped to make one
irrefutable point: that the genome
records history and that history points
indisputably to successive levels of
shared ancestry. He uses the wellknown principle that mutations will
be carried down the generations (or
descendent cells in the case of cancer
lines, which he discusses extensively),
and so shared (or missing) mutations
will reflect a common origin. So, in
one example he provides, the number of endogenous retroviruses shared
among humans, other apes, and monkeys reflects the recentness of divergencethe greater the number, the
more recent the divergence. Therein
lies the proof of evolution.

Books

illiam Hoffman and Leo Furchts

The Biologists Imagination is a
history of the ancient developmental
work in biology and its way forward
over the years, which has culminated
in recent contentious issues involving
the US Supreme Court verdict on the
patenting of human genes. The book
is not just a history of the biological
innovations in the United States; it
encompasses a worldwide view, with
particular emphasis in China and
India as the presumed sources of nextgeneration innovations in biology. The
authors provide a historical definition of innovation and then succinctly
explain the content of the bookas
phrased in their own words, We
cover subjects as seemingly disparate
as the history of technology, economics, molecular biology and genetics,
neuroscience, geography, evolution,
education, globalization, clinical trials,
technology transfer, the digital revolution, patent law, and public policy.

ROBERT FOLEY

Robert Foley (r.foley@human-evol.

cam.ac.uk) is the Leverhulme Professor
of Human Evolution at the University of
Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

doi:10.1093/biosci/biu182

A HISTORY OF NEW IDEAS IN

THE BIOSCIENCES
The Biologists Imagination: Inno
vation in the Biosciences. William
Hoffman and Leo Furcht. Oxford
University Press, 2014. 284 pp., illus.
$34.95 (ISBN 9780199974597 cloth).
102 BioScience January 2015 / Vol. 65 No. 1

Can all these items be covered in

a single book that defines its goals
as recounting innovation in biosciences for the last couple of centuries? Indeed, the authors follow the
trail from premolecular biology and
immunology to the current advances
in -omics technology, such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.
The authors emphatically point out
how the costs of research and development in biology have gone down
during the last 25 years, citing the
example of human genome sequencing
and the declining cost of computing
power over the last few decades. In one
chapter, the authors emphasize how

the pharmaceutical industry has taken

advantage of innovations in highthroughput screening of thousands of
compounds as potential drug candidates, defining hits and then taking
them through clinical trials only for
those patients who will likely benefit
the most because of their genetic profile and susceptibility to particular diseases, such as cancer. The issues of race
and ethnicity in regard to drug efficacy
and genomic profile in countries such
as Japan, China, and Singapore have
been cited as examples of the reach of
modern bioscience.
Elsewhere, the authors emphasize how entrepreneurship, scientific
research, and scholarship and funding
opportunities, all from government,
industry, and private sources have
contributed to region-specific centers
of excellence in bioscience. They cite
the example of Silicon Valley as the
earliest catalyst in modern molecular
biology research advances, including
recombinant DNA technology and the
emergence of Genentech (and Cetus)
as startup companies relying on such
technologies. This trend in the United
States subsequently led to regional bioinnovation in the rest of the world,
including industrial biotechnology
clusters and science parks such as
Edinburghs BioQuarter, Singapores
Biopolis, Skolkovo Innovation Center
near Moscow, Hsinchu Science Park
in Taiwan, and Tsukuba Science City
in Japan. The emergence of megacenters and megacities around the
world has broken down the barriers
of trade secrecy and localized research
and innovation activities, promoting,
instead, a culture of international scientific exchange, joint ventures, crossborder talent search, recruitment,
intercountry investments, and the formation of startup companies.
The book also deals with how
Gregor Mendels studies on the genetics of peas eventually led to a worldwide surge in genetics studies and,
most notably, led to a $200-million
life-science campus developed at
Masaryk University in Brno, Czech
Republic, where Mendel initiated the
work. The open-access movement,
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about, can be modified or recruited

with new functions, and continue to
play a biological role. Those simply
looking for a wealth of understanding
of molecular genetics could do worse
than read the core four chapters of
this book.
The contrast between these core
chapters and the rest of the book
is, in the end, fatally paradoxical.
Finlay rightly stresses the extraordinary achievements of hard science
in revealing the secrets of the cell,
but he does not apply the same standards to some woolly writing about
Darwinism, nature and nurture, and
science and religion. He has a tendency to see genomics as having, for
the first time, provided convincing
evidence for evolution; in taking this
position, he has reduced evolution to
gene trees, around which circle some
vague ideas. It is a shame that he has
missed, in doing so, the rich work on
human evolution, itself, which tackles
a much more complex story than tracing ancestry. This is not a book about
human evolution and missing links
but, rather, a missed opportunity to
more fully explore the subject. Finlay
is at pains to say that we are more
than our genes, but we are also, in an
entirely Darwinian way, more than a
tip on the primate tree.