Book Review - The Greatest Show On Earth

By BJ Bjornson

Richard Dawkins latest book is to some extent overshadowed by his previous work, The God Delusion. Indeed, in every interview I�ve seen of him promoting his newest tome, he has instead been dragged into a conversation about his last. Dawkins does his best to separate the two works, but while the thrust of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is definitely far different than The God Delusion, they do share a common target in many respects, since it is mainly the fundamentalist faithful whose denial and indeed, active hostility towards evolution, that has made this book and others like it necessary in Dawkins opinion.

The purpose of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Dawkins states, is to hopefully reach some of those who deny evolution as a fact and convince them otherwise, but more importantly (and more likely, IMO) to provide the necessary evidence to deal with such people for the rest of us who don�t happen to be evolutionary biologists or otherwise intimately familiar with the subject matter. I have serious doubts on his making any inroads on the first group, thanks again to his reputation as a �militant atheist� that has been cemented in their minds.

As for providing the evidence for evolution, the book does it very well. For anyone of the scientific mindset, his layering of the various tracks of evidence, from the fossil record and geology, to domesticated animals and experiments with foxes, guppies, and bacteria that show evolution in practice, through to embryology and molecular biology, all coming to the same answer as to how life develops is as persuasive as any argument I could ever think of. After all, people can at times find some argument, usually pretty weak ones, against one track of evidence, but when you have several unrelated tracks all coming to the same conclusion, it is hard for any rational person to come to a contrary conclusion. (Not that we don�t see this sort of thing in other scientific disciplines were people have a vested interest in the science being ignored, such as Climate Change.)

That being said, there were a couple of areas in the book that kind of dragged on for me, though that may be my personal dislike of biology among the sciences rather than the readability of the material itself. I do sympathize with Dawkins problem here; trying to make an interesting and engaging book without skimping on the kind of details that a skeptical mind needs to accept the arguments being made.

Overall, I�d say the book works best for those who have a passing interest in evolution but haven�t done any great deal of thinking on the matter beyond that. It should also be useful as a reference tool to help debunk the creationist arguments you run into.  You can find excerpts from the first and second chapters here.