"Jim Menegay"  wrote in message
>
> Before I started reading this group, I thought I had a pretty good
> layman's understanding of evolutionary theory and terminology.  I
> realize now that my background in the technicalities is inadequate.
>
You probably do have a reasonable understanding of the basic issues.
Evolution is one of the simplest scientific theories to understand, however,
like any science, a large number of people are interested in it and try to
push our understanding as far as it will go. So just reading "The Selfish
Gene" will only start you on the road to being an evolutionary biologist.
>
> Can anyone recommend a good graduate or advanced undergraduate > textbook
on the THEORY of evolution?
>
Matt Ridley, Evolution. (This is quite a big volume, I think there may be a
slim popular work by him of a similar name).
>
> I am not allergic to math.  I would like to see some kind of treatment
> of evolution at different levels; even if the conclusion turns out to
> be that only one level (gene, organism, whatever) is important, I would
> like to see this proved, rather than merely asserted.  I want to see
> treatments of ESS, kin selection, co-evolution of symbiotes, evolution
> of signaling mechanisms, evolution of life histories, etc.
>
If you really want to be au fait with the issues, you need to look a
journals. My favourite journal is Brain and Behavioural Sciences, because
every article is accompanied by critical comments from the peer reviewers.
It often has material on the evolution of behaviour, and often human
behaviour. TREE (Trends in Ecology and Evolution) is maybe a more relevant
journal.
>
> My primary interest is applying natural selection to origin of life, but
> it is not obvious just which ideas may be useful here, so I guess I need
> to know a little about everything.
>
These are two separate issues. Evolution is what happens after replicating
entities have appeared. Now all known organisms use the same amino acids,
the same gentic code (almost), DNA and RNA, celular structure. What this
means is that the most recent common ancestor was itself a fairly
sophisticated organism. Using evolution, it is difficult to push back our
understanding beyond this ancestor, but it cannot have appeared at a stroke.
>
> And, while I have people thinking about textbooks, let me ask for
> recommendations in some other fields:
>
I don't really know much about the biochemical side of things, which is
relevant to the origin of life. I'm just a ball-and-stick biochemist. I
doubt that you can learn enough chemistry to make a contribution to
understanding the origin of life simply by reading textbooks, though that
may be more a reflection of my inabilities as a student rather than the
difficulty of the subject.
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