From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution

In this learned romp of science writing, Cambridge professor Simon Conway Morris cheerfully challenges six assumptions—what he calls ‘myths’—that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox.

His convivial tour begins with the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no...