Without Miracles

In this sweeping account, Gary Cziko integrate various scientific disciplines within a universal selection theory that attempts to account for all cases of fit involving living organisms, including those that might appear miraculous. Cziko's bold assertion is that all novel forms of adapted complexity - whether single-celled organisms or scientific theories - emerge from an evolutionary process involving cumulative blind variation and selection. Without Miracles describes many remarkable examples of the fit of various structures, behaviors, and products of living organisms to their environments in a broad synthesis of humankind's attempt to understand the emergence of complex, adapted entities. These explanations range from the providential accounts of the early "natural theologians," through instructionists theories of the type proposed by Lamarck, to an ongoing "second Darwinian revolution" in which natural and aritifical selection are being applied to many fields of science. -- from back cover.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Philosophy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.