You are hereBut Is It Science? updated editionAmherst (NY): Prometheus Books, 2009. 577 pages.  Part of the controversy over the Origin of Species was whether Darwin's theory was properly scientific, and part of the ongoing controversies over creation science and "intelligent design" is whether these views are properly scientific. But Is It Science? thus tackles the philosophical question in the creation/evolution controversy. The editors, NCSE Supporter Michael Ruse and NCSE member Robert T. Pennock, testified on the nature of science in McLean v. Arkansas and Kitzmiller v. Dover, respectively. Evidence and EvolutionCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 412 pages. The publisher writes, "How should the concept of evidence be understood? And how does the concept of evidence apply to the controversy about creationism and also to work in evolutionary biology about natural selection and common ancestry? In this rich and wide-ranging book, Elliott Sober investigates general questions about probability and evidence and shows how the answers he develops to those questions apply to the specifics of evolutionary biology. ... The Sacred Depths of NatureNew York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 220 pages. In prose that has been lauded as elegant and eloquent, Goodenough offers incisive explanations of the scientific facts of what she calls "the Epic of Evolution" and personal philosophical reflections suggesting how one may draw a sense of meaning from these facts. The Epic of Evolution explores the origins of the earth and life on the planet, the way life and organisms work, the mechanisms of evolutionary change, the evolution of biodiversity, awareness, emotions, the role of sexual reproduction in evolution, multicellularity, death, and speciation. Mystery of MysteriesCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. 320 pages. Ruse tells us in his introduction, "This is a book about the nature of science using evolutionary theory as a case study ... intended for a general audience." This highly readable book isn't bogged down by footnotes, but it does have a glossary to make the going easier, an extensive bibliography, and lively profiles of the thinkers whose work it discusses. Evolutionary EthicsAlbany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993. 368 pages. The historical background to evolutionary ethics, and articles for and against sociobiological interpretations of evolutionary ethics. Articles by Richard D. Alexander, Laurie R. Godfrey, Michael Ruse, Robert J. Richards, Elliot Sober, George Williams, and others. Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary BiologyCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. 640 pages. Does evolution really result in "progress"? What do you mean by "progress"? Philosopher and historian of science Michael Ruse traces how the "Enlightenment's philosophy of progress was transferred wholesale into the biology of the time, so that emerging ideas about biological evolution became permeated from the start by a belief in progress." The connection between belief in progress and biological theorizing is, for Ruse, fundamental for understanding the history of evolutionary theory. Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human NatureAlbany: SUNY Press, 1998. 352 pages. In Darwinian Natural Right, Larry Arnhart maintains that evolutionary biology favors the Aristotelian view of ethics as rooted in human nature, defining Darwinian natural right in terms of the fulfillment of natural desires based in human biology that are universal to all human societies. "This is one of the best works of its kind that I have read in many years", writes Michael Ruse in Biology and Philosophy: "It is extremely well-written and reads beautifully." The author is Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University. Biology and the Foundations of EthicsCambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 344 pages. Collected in Biology and the Foundations of Ethics are twelve accomplished essays by distinguished historians and philosophers of science that consider the historical debates over the connection between biology — in particular evolutionary biology — and foundational questions in ethics, from Aristotle through Hume, Darwin, and Nietzsche to E. O. Wilson. The Secret Chain: Evolution and EthicsAlbany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994. 216 pages. Part historical treatise, part philosophical analysis, The Secret Chain carefully presents and critically evaluates virtually every important discussion of the connection between evolutionary biology and ethics from the 18th century to the present day. Good-Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other AnimalsCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. 368 pages. In Good-Natured, the primatologist Frans de Waal takes morality as his topic, arguing that we are not the only animals that are capable of distinctively moral behavior. But Good-Natured is no dry philosophy text; it teems with striking and touching anecdotes (drawn from de Waal's own observation) of sympathy, reciprocity, and peacemaking among the primates, to say nothing of his excursions into fields as diverse as cognitive ethology, neurobiology, visual anthropology, evolutionary biology, and comparative psychology. Pages
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