Going into Biology

[marianomanto]

Hello everyone!

I am becoming very interested in Biology, specially in the subject of evolution. I wanted to study some but I dont want to get into a university to do it (yet) because I already studied engineering and I couldn't stand more lecturing. I was wondering if you could please recommend a good book to begin with, because I know Biology can be very complicated and I am afraid I might buy something too advanced for me.
I was thinking something like: Why evolution is true (Jerry A. Coyne) or Your inner fish (Neil Shubin). What do you think? Any advices?
Thanks for your help

[FatAndFaithless]

If you want something less like a tome and more of a reference, try http://www.talkorigins.org/ , tons and tons of excellent information there with citations and sources and other reference material.

[marianomanto]

If you want something less like a tome and more of a reference, try http://www.talkorigins.org/ , tons and tons of excellent information there with citations and sources and other reference material.

thanks!

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Hello everyone!

I am becoming very interested in Biology, specially in the subject of evolution. I wanted to study some but I dont want to get into a university to do it (yet) because I already studied engineering and I couldn't stand more lecturing. I was wondering if you could please recommend a good book to begin with, because I know Biology can be very complicated and I am afraid I might buy something too advanced for me.
I was thinking something like: Why evolution is true (Jerry A. Coyne) or Your inner fish (Neil Shubin). What do you think? Any advices?
Thanks for your help

Hi Maria. I'm a former biologist, and we have a couple of others on here who have studied biology here, so you came to the right place.

And yet, I find there's little to offer you. You've already hit the nail on the head with those two choices, and the TalkOrigins library is an extremely useful resource.

If you find their tone a bit dry, you might consider some of Richard Dawkins' books; I particularly recommend The Greatest Show on Earth,  which is less technically dense but has a lot of great examples and is written in an entertaining way. (Also by him are the excellent The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution,  The Blind Watchmaker,  and Climbing Mount Improbable.)

You might enjoy a classic standard, The Panda's Thumb, by Stephen Jay Gould.

It depends a lot of what exactly you want to know about biology and/or evolution. It's a big field! I'm personally fascinated by human evolution and genetics, and for this I recommend the (updated editions of) Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley. For a more cultural take on it, there's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.

Also, we're always here if you get "stuck" or have questions. Enjoy! Evolution may be the single most fascinating subject out there, at least in my opinion. You can spend the rest of your life studying it, and still be fascinated by what you're learning every year thereafter.

[Cato]

I'm always amazed by the number of people that don't start at the beginning for various reasons. I highly recommend starting with Darwin's On the Origin of Species. His style varies and on occasion I found myself slogging through an argument; however, it's highly readable overall.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I'm always amazed by the number of people that don't start at the beginning for various reasons. I highly recommend starting with Darwin's On the Origin of Species. His style varies and on occasion I found myself slogging through an argument; however, it's highly readable overall.

I started to recommend Origin, but I read it when I was in college, and it was as tedious to me as many of the other too-thick volumes I had to swallow whole and try to digest, back then. He is surprisingly readable, given the density of information he presents and the Victorian writing style (I hate Jane Eyre and most everything else the Bronte sisters wrote, for the same reason), and he has quite a way with words.

I consider his section on "contemplating the tangled bank" to be poetry of the highest order. And yet the quote itself has an interesting history:

The last paragraph to the sixth, and final, edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" summarizes his views as follows:

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

Interestingly, this same concluding "tangled bank" paragraph did not include the phrase "by the Creator" in the first edition of November, 1859.  This phrase having been inserted, due to popular pressures for mention of divine actions, into the second edition of January, 1860 and subsequently retained.[/quote]

[Alex K]

I'm always amazed by the number of people that don't start at the beginning for various reasons. I highly recommend starting with Darwin's On the Origin of Species. His style varies and on occasion I found myself slogging through an argument; however, it's highly readable overall.

I would definitely recommend reading Origin because I have enjoyed it a lot myself, but I still would not recommend it as the first contact with Evolution. Darwin in hindsight had a very diffuse idea and misconceptions about inheritance that are needlessly confusing, and I therefore think one should first get a rough idea about the modern perspective before reading him.

[Mermaid]

Microcosm: E. Coli and The New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer. It's short and easy to read rather than a giant tome.

A book that will give some foundation. The wonderful thing about biology is that you can connect almost everything you learn about one topic to others, even though it seems daunting when you look at it as a whole. Congrats on choosing the best career there is. I may or may not be slightly biased.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I would definitely recommend reading Origin because I have enjoyed it a lot myself, but I still would not recommend it as the first contact with Evolution. Darwin in hindsight had a very diffuse idea and misconceptions about inheritance that are needlessly confusing, and I therefore think one should first get a rough idea about the modern perspective before reading him.

An excellent point. Not a good starter-manual. Great for its day, and got a shocking amount of stuff right, given what he didn't know (Mendelian genetics, for instance), but some of the guesses are off and some of the explanations are needlessly convoluted because of this factor. Great for 1859, not so great for 2015. No matter how much I enjoy Newton's book about physics, I'm not going to use it as a guide to understanding quantum mechanics.

Still, both are worth reading, after you've got the basics down.

[marianomanto]

I shall begin then with the two I mentioned and Dawkin's show on earth. I am not sure about reading the origin of species though.
I will post questions that inevitably will come out on the way , thanks for your advice!