414 BOOK REVIEWS

logical anthropologists. But for those of us who regularly teach graduate courses or seminars in evolutionary theory it repre- sents an excellent compilation of some of the most important and up-to-date papers on the subject, and it thus deserves a strong recommendation.

KENNETH A. BENNETT Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin Madison Wisconsin

EVOLVING HIERARCHICAL SYSTEMS. By S.N. Salthe. New York: Columbia University Press. 1985. x + 343 pp. $30.00 (cloth).

Evolving Hierarchical Systems is both an opening and a summarization of a dialog. Salthe’s book comes at the beginning of what promises to be an expansion in the discussion of hierarchical theory within biology. It also contains an exhaustive summary of this on- going discourse. Even though the topic ap- pears intimidating, this book is very approachable. There are eight chapters; each one builds upon the previous. All chapters begin with a table of subcontents. To clarify the discussion further, there are many sche- matic figures and a glossary. Overall, new- comers should find this book an excellent introduction to both the use of a hierarchy to represent nature and the claim that nature itself is hierarchical.

Traditionally, hierarchical theorists have been accused of being overzealous “holists.” Salthe wishes to maintain the heuristic uses of both holistic formulation ke. , emergent features that arise from a particular config- uration, or organization, of parts) and reduc- tion (treating wholes as the simple additive sum of their known parts) as theoretical tools. The danger of holism or reductionism, as per- spectives, is that after the process of sum- ming up (holistic synthesis) or breaking down (reduction) one never comes back to the orig- inal situation at hand. A hierarchical discus- sion would acknowledge discrete levels of phenomena; the use of levels circumscribes (contextualizes) the discussion. After synthe- sis or reduction of part of the original situa- tion to phenomena at another level (higher or lower), the remainder of the discussion must logically return to the individuals (wholes) a t the original level to avoid infla- tion or conflation.

Part-whole relationships are very impor- tant to Salthe. All individuals are also parts of individuals a t the adjacent higher level. In this way parts are nested within higher level individuals, but parts and wholes exist on

different levels. Levels are not nested within each other (cf. Chinese boxes). Levels are dis- crete and contain only those individuals ca- pable of observable, dynamic interactions.

The minimal analysis of any situation re- quires us to have in mind 1) the parts form- ing an entity, 2) the entity, and 3) the whole of which the entity is part. Together, Salthe calls these three levels “the basic triad.” Salthe asserts that all natural phenomena can be incorporated into two hierarchies, the “ecological” and the “genealogical.” His eco- logical hierarchy consists of the molecule, organism, population, ecosystem, biogeo- graphical region, and surface of the earth levels. The way Salthe treats ecosystems, as well as other nonorganismal individuals, well illustrates the novelty of his epistemology.

For Salthe, the initial division of the mate- rial base of an ecosystem into parts occurs as energy is shunted into new biological path- ways. This occurs via the development of new processes of relationship between these parts (i.e., species and their resources). The results of this process become most apparent to us when we observe an increase in species di- versity. Once the system has saturated its energy resources with the processes of its constituent parts, the next event is the chan- neling of energy to increase the stability of the relationships among the parts of the in- dividual. Thus, in mature ecosystems we see coevolution among species and the emer- gence of guilds. Also, on the adjacent higher level individual ecosystems are parts of bio- geographical regions. Biogeographical re- gions within similar latitudes and geo- graphical configurations will select for simi- lar ecosystems, causing niche (sensu stricto) convergence a t a lower level.

This view of the ecosystem is a far cry from the “superorganism” concepts of Herbert Spencer and Alfred Kroeber. This new bio- logical hierarchy derives from an infusion of thermodynamics into biology, an important new discourse (Wicken, 1986).

Salthe’s ecological hierarchy does not chal- lenge the “New Synthesis”; rather, it adds to

it. The discussion of the genealogical hier- archy is more contentious. Salthe agrees with Hull’s separation of biological individuals into two classes (and thus two hierarchies) (1980): ecological “interactors” and geneal- ogical “replicators.” Salthe’s genealogical hi- erarchy consists of the following levels: the gene, the integrated genotype-phenotype (the organismal vicar in this hierarchy), the deme, the species, the monophyletic lineage, the historical biota, and the level of the total biosphere. The major reason for the addition of this second hierarchy is that reproduction allows the persistence of certain “historical” entities whose duration is long compared with the characteristic relaxation times of events occuring within them . . .” (p. 221). Thus, we see that these historical, or geneal- ogical, entities span generations. Unfortu- nately, these notions of “generation” and “reproduction” are merely metaphoric at lev- els above that of the organism.

For example, Salthe’s treatment of species, as reproductive individuals, illustrates his extrapolation of organismal reproduction (read parturition) within the genealogical hi- erarchy. Salthe seems to discount all theories of sympatric speciation when he states (p. 227) that “. . . terminal groups (species) give

rise to others like themselves, building a lin- eage which can be detected as such in the fossil record. . . . they give rise to others like themselves as a result of cladogenetic events.” This argument justifies the cladistic treatment of all species as terminal (never as nodes) and ignores patristic (anagenetic) re- lationships within monophyletic lineages.

The example discussed above are only a small sampling of the aspects of evolutionary biology that Salthe situates within his natu- ral hierarchy. Because of its wide scope this book should be very useful for physical an- thropologists in the areas of human (or pri- mate) biology, ecology, or evolution. If the last 5 years is any indication, hierarchical epistemology will increasingly influence the- ory in these fields, as well as the rest of the life sciences.

DAVID DEAN Department o f A nthropology City University of New York New York, New York

LITERATURE CITED Hull DL (1980) Individuality and selection. Annu. Rev.

Wicken JS (1986) Entropy and evolution: Ground rules Ecol. Syst. 11:311-322.

for discourse. Syst. Zoo1 3522-36.

BOOK REVIEWS 415

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EVOLUTION FROM MOLECULES TO MEN. Ed- ited by D.S. Bendall. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. 1985. xiii + 594 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Evolution from Molecules to Men is a series of twenty-eight papers, created appropriately by Darwin College, Cambridge. The adver- tising blurbs from other reviews are likewise apt: “interesting, illuminating, well-edited.”

The volume is the result of a 1982 confer- ence in commemoration of the centenary of Darwin’s death. The topics are divided into sections on evolutionary history, molecular and cellular evolution, organisms as a whole, and social behavior. The style of the contri- butions is commendable. They are written with an essay type, explanatory format, and with the nonspecialist in mind. For example, the paper on protein structure (Phillips, Sternberg, and Sutton) provides a review of a subject area with which few physical an- thropologists have expertise. Collections from different fields should provide a cross-polli-

nation of ideas, and the volume is useful for this purpose.

Readers will find their own favorite article. The essay by Dawkins (“Universal Danvin- ism”) is particularly clever, with its meta- phors of 747 and DC-8 saltations (referring to aircraft). The latter portion of the volume contains the papers most directly related to anthropology. Wilson provides a discussion of sociobiology, mind, and culture, conclud- ing that “I believe that the social sciences will eventually be fused with biology,” and “brashly” predicting that by the year 2000, brain studies and social science will com- mence to replace biology in the central role. Isaac (“Aspects of Human Evolution”) re- views hominid paleontology with pictorial representations of theories and models. He emphasizes the brain-culture system as a single adaptive complex. This is the popular explanatory model, but it has some problems with the lack of any supporting evidence among modern populations-in which there are no known causal relationships between