摘要：A book on the history of evolutionary thought has long been overdue. H. F. Osborn's From Greek to Darwin is now thirty years old, it does not cover the period from Darwin on, and its evaluations of many of the older ideas may well be altered in the light of the more recent advances. Dr. Fothergill's book attempts to fill this gap. It gives a brief account of the ancient period, when evolutionary ideas were adumbrated in Greece and in the Middle East. The eighteenth century and the pre-Darwinian period of the nineteenth are adequately covered. The account of Darwin's work is brief relative to the space given to the early critics of Darwinism, which is understandable since the author feels that these criticisms must still be taken seriously. The description of the post-Darwinian but pre-MNIendelian period is brief but adequate. The second half of the book is devoted to an account of "the modern causal theories." Here considerable space is given to various attempts to revive the Lamarckiani views with which the author is in evident sympathy. Strangely enough, he does not even mention the most vociferous partisans of such views, namely Lysenko and his followers. The modern genetic theory of evolution is treated with some scepticism but not dismissed outright. On the whole, the book suffers from that degree of "open-mindedness" which inevitably makes one willing only to record the ideas put forward by anyone, but not to act on any of them. An up-to-date account of the history of evolution theories is still needed.
