Force of Nature: Understanding Evolution's Deepest Logic-And Putting It to Use

Summary

AN EYE-OPENING EXPLORATION OF NATURAL SELECTION’S POWER AND HOW IT CAN HELP HUMAN SOCIETY FLOURISH.

Most of us learned about natural selection in our school days and remember the basics of how it drives evolution, plus a few of its everyday implications, like the risks of overusing antibiotics. Yet deep misconceptions about evolution and natural selection abound—even, studies reveal, among medical students and high school biology teachers, not to mention the rest of us. In Force of Nature, professor of law and biology Owen D. Jones reveals how these misunderstandings cost us opportunities, undermine our goals, and even imperil lives—and shows how a deeper understanding of natural selection is far more useful and powerful than we think.

Jones argues that natural selection is not merely a historical process that shaped relationships between species in the past, but an underused framework for navigating today’s most pressing challenges. By sharpening our understanding of how natural selection actually operates—its speed, scale, and profound influence on human and animal behavior—we can make better decisions across a wide range of fields. Drawing on examples from medicine, psychology, and artificial intelligence to economics, agriculture, law, and beyond, Force of Nature demonstrates how evolutionary thinking can open new horizons in cancer treatment and space exploration, create faster machines and more agile robots, and even help design more effective and just laws. Along the way, readers tour some of animals’ most remarkable behaviors, such as the archerfish’s prowess at precision-firing missiles of water and geckos’ ability to walk upside-down—on glass.

Enlightening and inspiring, Force of Nature invites us to appreciate natural selection as a dynamic force we can better understand—and harness—to build smarter technologies, wiser policies, and a more resilient future.

“This wonderfully accessible book explores how the sculpting power of natural selection explains everything from an amoeba’s ‘decision-making’ process to … our human intuitions about morality and justice. A rewarding read.”—Robert M. Sapolsky, best-selling author of Determined and Behave