The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself

A physiologist presents a provocative and scientifically rigorous new perspective on Darwinism, design, and why the living world works so well.

When they contemplate nature, they see evidence of design at work. So it is jarring when biologists insist that this perception is all wrong. What most people see as design, they say—purposeful, directed, even intelligent—is only an illusion. But in these days of increasingly assertive challenges to Darwinism, the question becomes acute: is our perce...