Devitt and Sterelny's "Language and Reality" (along with A. P. Martinich's "Philosophy of Language," 4th ed.) was the required text for a graduate philosophy of language class I recently took. I found the book both challenging and enlightening.

By reading the Table of Contents in Amazon.com's nifty "Look Inside" feature, you can see pretty much everything that is covered in the book. Therefore, I shall just describe a couple of things that might be difficult to detect without having the book in your hands.

First, a word about writing style: Still active in their careers, Devitt and Sterelny (hereafter 'D&S') make no attempt to hide their positions on the issues they address in this book. In my experience, two felicitous things came from this. Regarding the text, on the one hand, such an approach gave a liveliness and immediacy to the prose. In the classroom, on the other hand, D&S's lack of neutrality provided my professor, who does not agree with them on all points, an excellent backdrop against which he detailed competing arguments.

Second, each chapter ends with a concise list of recommended readings. In light of the above point, if you're reading this book without a professor describing counterarguments to D&S's positions, then these recommended readings might prove quite helpful.

Third, the arguments and theories in this book are themselves very well laid out and with considerable detail, especially for an introduction. Moreover, the progession from one argument or theory to the next is quite smooth.

Finally, I should say that if you're very new to analytical philosophy, then this book, because of the amount of detail, might be a bit rough going, in which case I would highly recommend William Lycan's "Philosophy of Language."

Bottom Line: If you want a solid introduction to the philosophy of language and you feel comfortable with moderately dense analytical argumentation, then this book is for you.

Thanks for using this BOOK REVIEW section to enlighten us all on your personal opinion of evolutionary biology. Yet another example of nonscientists trying to sneak their opinions on the masses when it's completely irrelevant. You speak of Dawkins and Gould as resorting to circular reasoning in their arguments, however, this book is not an argument over the reality of evolution, it is a debate about how natural selection works and at what level. Had they been asked to state the evidence for natural selection, both Dawkins and Gould would be able to present compelling data to support it, as would any biologist.

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould are prominent evolutionary biologists. Both are great writers and both are extremely contentious. Moreover, they disagree in public forums with a startling level of invective. Kim Sterelny is a philosopher with a solid background in evolutionary theory, and in this book tells the tale of their disagreements with skill and journalistic polish.

Despite the bitterness of the debate, most of the issues Dawkins and Gould disagree on are either unscientific (e.g., militant atheism vs. tolerance for religion and other non-scientific forms of knowing) or matters of interpretive preference (e.g., the role of chance vs. selection in evolution, the extent to which evolution involves increasing complexity, the importance of population genetics vs. the study of large-scale patterns in the history of life, or the view of evolution as a conflict of genes vs. an organic conflict among species-level and higher biological forms). Other issues that separate them relate to the schools of thought to which they belong---Dawkins' friends being the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists (G. Williams, W. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, et al.) and Gould's being the left-wing critics of sociobiology (R. Lewontin, L. Kamin, et al.). By limiting the debate to Dawkins and Gould alone, the book does not flesh out this larger, and quite interesting intellectual opposition.

Sterelny neither takes sides nor tries to adjudicate the differences between these writers, though he does say that their differences appear to be narrowing over time. Being less unpresuming, I assess the situation as follows. Dawkins' gene-centered view makes for good journalism, but is fatally flawed for one simple reason: the heart of evolution is mutation and selection, not replication, which is simply an uncreative prerequisite for evolution. A mutation can spread only if it is more fit that existing alleles, and fitness is a frequency dependent, highly nonlinear phenomenon, best described by game theory on the level of phenotypes. Gould's mass extinctions and punctuated equilibria make perfect sense from evolutionary game theory, and involve nothing beyond mutation, selection, and replication. On the other hand, Gould's dismissal of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are ideologically based and quite without merit.

Sterelny describes a debate that is more a reflection of the expansive egos of two great popularizers, and their inability to understand, or their reluctance to publicize, the work of younger generations of evolutionary biologists, rather than some real scientific clash of paradigms. But if it gets young people interested in evolutionary biology, I'm all for it, and Sterelny does a good job of dramatizing the debate.

As anyone who has read even one book on evolution will know the names most likely to be mentioned are Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. They are usually referred to not only for their very different views on evolution, but also because in the often contentious and very public debates on these issues, these two gentlemen act as champions for opposing camps. Gould through his books, but also famously in a series of articles and letters in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Dawkins prefers to limit his books to scientific arguments and rebuttals and reserves his critical comments for his public engagements.

With a title DAWKINS vs GOULD the focus is naturally on these two combatants and because both are brilliant thinkers and prolific writers it makes for some stimulating and very interesting reading. The only problem with this book is that by narrowly limiting the discussion to these two men, some readers may remain unaware that they are merely representative of a much larger debate involving most of the scientific community. A debate that covers topics such as human morphology and intelligence, human origins, intelligent design vs creationism. The field of enquiry involved is much wider than evolution and includes genetics, sociobiology, primatology and paleontology to name a few.

As it relates to the two specific positions of DAWKINS vs GOULD though this litte book offers a concise and fairly complete encapsulation of the subject. Dawkins' position is sometimes called reductionist or minimalist in that he sees the gene (a selfish one) as the principal explanatory agent. From it, all we see around us are adaptations. Gould has a more catholic or broader approach and sees exceptions to the rule. Chance and his pet subject of "punctuated equilibrium" are seen as interrupting the smooth progression of linear adaptive evolution. Gould believes that there is a limit to scientific explanations but Dawkins is of the view that testable and provable hypotheses exist as explanations for all seemingly random events. This view is called "Ultra-Darwinism".

Although Gould may have a catholic view in the normative sense of the word with an expansive view, don't for a minute think that this extends in any way to be accomodating towards creationism. Just about the only area where Gould and Dawkins don't knock heads is in their dissmissive view of creationism's equally dismissive view of the reality of evolution.

This is a good book, but at times it's murky. It takes time to grasp some concepts. The xamples help tremendously, the explanations don't. Interesting topics are covered. They take it up to Mayr alot!

'Sex and Death' is a pretty ambitious book, being almost a survey of the specific, hot topics in modern philosophy of biology. Tackling such issues as the nitty-gritty, purely philosophical issues of gene selection vs. selection of the organism, the definition and nature of the concept of 'species', and "Life on Earth: the Big Picture", the authors have done a nice job of using a breathtaking array of references, from Dawkins to Gould, Lewontin to Mayr, Alexander to E.O. Wilson, etc.

Unfortunately, keeping all of this succinct makes for a somewhat dry presentation. I agree with the previous reviewer in that often the authors' presentation of concepts are difficult to grasp for those not already familiar with the topics; when more concrete examples are made, the point is much easier to take. Still, this is a minor complaint given the scope and rigor of the analysis presented.

If you're into the accessibility of a Stephen Jay Gould or Richard Dawkins, this book will be a challenge to read. In fact, it reminds me much more of Elliot Sober, one of the more famous Philosophers of Biology cited in this book. As 'an Introduction to Philosophy of Biology', 'Sex and Death' is more accessible than the work of Sober, and it is a well-organized and presented survey of the philosophy of biology, assuming that the reader has already had a fairly ample exposure to the subject. For the uninitiated, it would be better to bone up on Darwin, Gould, Dawkins, Lewontin, Mayr, and Wilson before trying to tackle this book; *frequent* references to these authors are made,and a close familiarity with their ideas is presupposed.