10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

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What Richard
Dawkins Reads:
Jerry Coyne, Helena
Cronin and More
The evolutionary biologist talks to Josh
Dzieza about books that explain the jaw-
dropping accuracy and reach of Darwin’s
natural selection.

Josh Dzieza

09.27.12 4:45 AM ET

Jasjeet Plaha / Hindustan Times via Getty Images

READ THIS LIST

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More
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evolutionary theory; his

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opponents are “squelched, Bomber Theories
MARLOW STERN
pulverised, annihilated,
rendered into suitably
primordial paste.” But
Dawkins is as adept an
explainer as he is a
combatant. The Magic of
Reality, newly out in
paperback, is a sort of love
letter to the sense of wonder
that nature can inspire. The
world contains no
supernatural magic, and our
minds play tricks on us when
we experience stage magic.
But the science can produce
poetic magic, a respect that
moves us to tears. He goes
about paying tribute to some
of the countless ways that the
natural world instills awe in
us.

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

His first book, The Selfish

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Gene, sparked a renaissance
in science writing and
popularized the gene-
centered view of evolution
(the view that genes use
individuals to replicate and
spread, rather than visa
versa). Humans and all other
living things, Dawkins
argued, are in a way the
machines that genes make to
survive and reproduce,
though that does not make us
slaves to genes—genes
provide the blueprint, but
then largely leaves us alone.
The Selfish Gene also
introduced the term “meme”
to describe cultural
phenomena that, like genes,
use humans to propagate
themselves through a process
of natural selection.

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

One meme Dawkins is

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unhappy to see thriving is
religion. He’s fought against
religion in his 2006 bestseller
The God Delusion, in articles,
in lectures, and in ads on the
sides of buses.

In The Greatest Show on

Earth, Dawkins returns to
evolutionary biology. The
subtitle is The Evidence For
Evolution, and he doesn’t
hesitate to needle theists
when the opportunity
presents itself. He draws
evidence from genetics,
geography, paleontology,
anatomy, and elsewhere.
What does Dawkins read in
his spare time? I spoke with
him about his favorite books
on evolution.

Why Evolution is TrueBy

Jerry Coyne

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

The Origin of Species,

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Dawkins says, should be
taken for granted as the
must-read of evolution.
Coyne, an evolutionary
geneticist at the University of
Chicago, marshals the
evidence in favor of the “fact”
(not “theory”) of evolution.
“His book is extremely clear,
very well written, and lays
out the evidence in a way
that, well, if you read it, only
an idiot could fail to end up
believing in evolution,”
Dawkins says.

The book is similar to The

Greatest Show on Earth, and
even came out the same year.
Each author knew the other
was working on a book about
the evidence for evolution,
but they avoided talking
about it until they were
finished. Was he surprised by
any differences between the
two? “I suppose it’s inevitable
that there’d be similarities—
the best evidence is the best
evidence. But I learned some
things from his book that I
hadn’t put in mine, like the
fascinating fact that the genes
for having a good sense of
smell, which are present in a
dog, are in us as well. It’s just
that they’ve been turned off.
Which is a fascinating vestige

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

of an evolutionary past when

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our ancestors would have had
a much better sense of smell.”

The Ant and the Peacock

By Helena Cronin

Darwin had been working on

his theory of evolution by
natural selection for over a
decade when he got a letter
from Alfred Russell Wallace
outlining almost the identical
idea. “It’s a very nice
gentlemanly story,” Dawkins
says. “They didn’t quarrel
over it, and papers by the two
of them were simultaneously
read in London. But that’s
not what The Ant and the
Peacock is about.” The Ant
and the Peacock is about two
disagreements between
Darwin and Wallace:
altruism and sexual selection.

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

The original theory of natural

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selection had a hard time
making sense of seemingly
selfless cooperation, like the
ones found among female
worker ants, who works for
the hive without the
possibility of producing her
own offspring. Similarly,
seemingly counter-
productive traits like the
peacock’s gaudy tail present a
problem for the theory. Why
would it be advantageous to
have a tail that’s basically a
waving flag for predators?
Darwin thought flamboyant
ornamentation like the
peacock’s tail was the result
of sexual selection—peahens
prefer males with flamboyant
tails—while Wallace thought
sexual selection couldn’t
influence evolution. On the
disagreement, Wallace
thought natural selection
couldn’t explain altruism,
and Darwin thought it could.

Cronin, who is both a

philosopher at the London
School of Economics and a
researcher in the zoology
department at the University
of Oxford, traces the
disagreement to the present
day. “You can find modern
evolutionary theorists whom
you could call Wallacians and

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

modern evolutionary
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theorists whom you could call
Darwinians,” Dawkins says.
“It’s a book on the history of
ideas showing how a
divergence that began in the
19th century persists even to
this day, and it’s a beautifully
written book.”

Why We Get Sick: The

New Science of
Darwinian MedicineBy
Randolph Nesse and George
C. Williams

Williams is an evolutionary
biologist, and Nesse is a
psychiatrist. This book uses
Darwinian evolution to
explain phenomena like the
decrease of appetite during a
fever. Dawkins thinks all
doctors ought to read the
book. “They know a lot about
medicine, know a lot about
anatomy, know a lot about
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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

physiology, but don’t know

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much about Darwinian
natural selection,” Dawkins
says. How does evolution
impacts health and the
human body? “What Nesse
and Williams do is show how
much wisdom doctors can get
if they know about natural
selection. It really would
revolutionize how they
approach their subject.”
Doctors “who think they
know why we get sick”
shouldn’t be put off by the
title, because the book has a
lot to teach them. In England,
the book goes by the title of
Evolution and Healing,
because “sick” in England
refers specifically to nausea,
but it makes it sound like
“new-agey, Prince Charles
kind of rubbish,” which it
isn’t. “The book really should
have been called by its
subtitle.”

Splendid IsolationBy
George Gaylord Simpson

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

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This is a paleontologist’s
account of evolution in South
America. Between the time
when the continent broke
away from Africa to when it
was joined to North America
by the isthmus of Panama,
South America was an island,
its fauna evolving in
isolation. The result, says
Dawkins, was “a kind of
experiment, a parallel world.”
Simpson focused his study on
mammals, and it’s easy to see
why. In addition to ancestors
of present-day armadillos
and anteaters, there were
huge saber-toothed
marsupials and guinea pigs
the size of hippopotamuses.
Then North American
monkeys began to island-hop
their way to the continent
and evolve into new
variations, and when Panama
joined the two landmasses
about three million years ago,
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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

previously isolated species

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began to mix, ancestors of
jaguars coming south and
porcupines going north. The
book “is a particularly
fascinating case study in
evolution,” Dawkins says,
and it “illustrates principles
that are true anywhere in the
world.”

Narrow Roads of Gene

Land By W.D. Hamilton

Hamilton was one of the

most influential evolutionary
theorists in the second half of
the 20th century, and
Narrow Roads to Gene Land
is both a collection of his
scientific papers and his
autobiography. Volume one
deals with what is today his
most famous work, which
includes insights into
altruism, spite (the opposite
of altruism, or when an
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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

organism harms another for

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no apparent benefit), sex, and
aging. Woven in these papers,
Dawkins says, is Hamilton’s
description of “his intensely
lonely life as a graduate
student, when he was
unappreciated, unrecognized,
and way ahead of his time—
this very shy, lonely young
man writing these brilliant
papers which became
recognized as brilliant not
until 10 years later.” The
second volume goes from
1980 to 1991 and focuses on
Hamilton’s research into the
way parasites and diseases
prompted the evolution of
sex. The third and final
volume, published after
Hamilton’s death and written
partly by his colleagues, is
more far-ranging, covering
topics like Gaia theory,
autumn leaves, and his
reasons for wanting his body
to be taken into the Amazon
and devoured by the
Coprophanaeus beetles he’d
studied. “This is a remarkable
book,” says Dawkins. “It’s a
unique form of
autobiography.”

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10/29/2018 What Richard Dawkins Reads: Jerry Coyne, Helena Cronin and More

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