Skönhetens evolution is an astonishing scientific exploration of the wonders of nature, written with a burning love for birds and their world.
It was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times and was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize.
"The single most thought-provoking book I've read this year, the kind of book that changes your whole way of looking at the world."
Michael Pollan
"An instructive writing /.../ It's good popular science." BTJ
Skönhetens evolution was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. The book is an astonishing scientific exploration of the wonders of nature, written with a burning love for birds and their world. In mainstream science, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection is considered to explain everything in nature; which species survive, which die out and which characteristics each species develops to survive. But can natural selection really be behind everything we see in nature? The American ornithologist Richard O. Prum does not think so. Deep in tropical jungles around the world, there are birds that display a dizzying variety in appearance and mating rituals. Club-winged manakins that sing with their wings, the greater argus pheasant that dazzles potential mates with feathers covered in three-dimensional golden orbs, and birds that moonwalk. During 30 years of fieldwork among birds, Prum has seen numerous character traits that cannot be explained by natural selection, that is, they have no practical function. To understand this, he resurrects Darwin's forgotten theory of sexual selection, where the choice of a partner based on strictly aesthetic reasons constitutes a decisive engine for evolutionary change: beauty has a value in itself. Furthermore, Prum argues that it is the females that drive this change; it is their sophisticated sense of beauty that shapes the animal kingdom, our world and not least ourselves.
Product information
Author: Richard O. Prum
Translator: Joachim Retzlaff
ISBN: 9789127162761
Language: Swedish
Weight: 766 grams
Released: 2019-10-09
Publisher: Nature Culture General literature
Pages: 402