>--------
>
>Well, it was a summary in highly condensed form. But did you have something
>more substantial to say, or just a comment on the style?
Since It is very difficult for me to discern any meaning from the text, I can't comment on the substance (if any). I don't think it is unreasonable of me to be sceptical about whether there is any substance.
>This wasn't written as a popularized work--obviously.
And the emperor's new clothes weren't meant to be visible to fools either. Fair enough, but us fools have to keep an open mind about whether the emperor actually wearing any clothes.
That said however, I do have some particular reservations. There is this passage in first paragraph of the passage you cited:
>The results of evolution then
>emerge from complex, but eminently knowable, interactions among these
>potent levels, and do not simply flow out and up from a unique casual
>locus of organismal selection.
The author contrasts this conception with something called "Darwinian logic". Which apparently is based on a "single locus of causality".
As near as I can tell, this means that "Darwinian logic", presumably meaning Darwin's conception of natural selection (unless there is an exclusively "Darwinian" system of logic that I am unaware of), held that evolutionary changes in species must be attributable to a single event. (Or "single locus of causality", if you prefer the more pompous expression.)
I agree that the "single locus of causality" is less believable. I need some convincing that it was a fair portrayal of Darwin's conception though.
Either way, it is hardly a profound revelation that evolution is a process involving complex interaction and competition between living species and the environment generally.
If this statement of the bleeding obvious really "summarises the entire thrust of the book", as you say, then you can hardly blame me for finding the style of writing of more interest than its content.
Actually, I thought that was what you were getting at. That you were quoting the passage in order to make fun of the style. I wanted to get in on the fun. Oops, my mistake.
Anyhow, I'm only a fool, don't worry about what I think.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas