Arrival of the Fittest
Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle
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Narrated by:
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Sean Pratt
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By:
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Andreas Wagner
About this listen
Darwin's theory of natural selection explains how useful adaptations are preserved over time. But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded him. As genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries put it, "natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest." Can random mutations over a mere 3.8 billion years really be responsible for wings, eyeballs, knees, camouflage, lactose digestion, photosynthesis, and the rest of nature’s creative marvels? And if the answer is no, what is the mechanism that explains evolution’s speed and efficiency?
In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over 15 years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin's theory. Using experimental and computational technologies that were heretofore unimagined, he has found that adaptations are not just driven by chance, but by a set of laws that allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take. Consider the Arctic cod, a fish that lives and thrives within six degrees of the North Pole, in waters that regularly fall below zero degrees. At that temperature, the internal fluids of most organisms turn into ice crystals. And yet, the arctic cod survives by producing proteins that lower the freezing temperature of its body fluids, much like antifreeze does for a car's engine coolant. The invention of those proteins is an archetypal example of nature’s enormous powers of creativity.
Meticulously researched, carefully argued, evocatively written, and full of fascinating examples from the animal kingdom, Arrival of the Fittest offers up the final puzzle piece in the mystery of life's rich diversity.
©2014 Andreas Wagner (P)2014 Gildan Media LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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By: Jack Horner, and others
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Biomimicry
- Innovation Inspired by Nature
- By: Janine M. Benyus
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes listeners into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; and many more examples.
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Dated but good
- By stephen taylor on 09-05-21
By: Janine M. Benyus
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
- By: David Christian
- Narrated by: Jamie Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- By 11104 on 09-05-18
By: David Christian
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At the Edge of Uncertainty
- 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The atom, the big bang, DNA, natural selection - all are ideas that have revolutionized science; and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, best-selling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.
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All smoke, no fire
- By Kenton on 07-25-15
By: Michael Brooks
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A Series of Fortunate Events
- Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean B. Carroll
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason, or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
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We are for a short time.
- By Anonymous User on 10-14-20
By: Sean B. Carroll
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
- By MovieExpertise on 09-29-16
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Gene
- An Intimate History
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
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It's a Wonderful Book
- By JKC on 06-02-16
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Life Unfolding
- How the Human Body Creates Itself
- By: Jamie A. Davies
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Where did I come from? Why do I have two arms but just one head? How is my left leg the same size as my right one? Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical? How did my brain learn to learn? Why must I die? Questions like these remain biology's deepest and most ancient challenges. They force us to confront a fundamental biological problem: How can something as large and complex as a human body organize itself from the simplicity of a fertilized egg?
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Fascinating Biology ; Distracting Narration
- By Tim on 03-01-15
By: Jamie A. Davies
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Herding Hemingway's Cats
- Understanding How Our Genes Work
- By: Kat Arney
- Narrated by: Kat Arney
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The language of genes has become common parlance. We know they make your eyes blue, your hair curly or your nose straight. The media tells us that our genes control the risk of cancer, heart disease, alcoholism or Alzheimer's. The cost of DNA sequencing has plummeted from billions of pounds to a few hundred, and gene-based advances in medicine hold huge promise. So we've all heard of genes, but how do they actually work?
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A non-scientists misguided interpretation
- By AraSevera on 05-15-16
By: Kat Arney
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The Lives of a Cell
- Notes of a Biology Watcher
- By: Lewis Thomas
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Lives of a Cell, Dr. Lewis Thomas opens up to the listener a universe of knowledge and perception that is perhaps not wholly unfamiliar to the research scientist; but the world he explores is also one of men and women, of complex interrelationships, old ironies, peculiar powers, and intricate languages that give identity to the alienated and direction to the dependent. This remarkable work offers a subtle, bold vision of humankind and the world around us - a sense of what gives life - from a writer who seems to draw grace and strength from the very substance of his subject.
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So enlightening and enjoyable!
- By Flora on 03-15-18
By: Lewis Thomas
What listeners say about Arrival of the Fittest
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 08-04-15
spectacular
Great overview of contemporary biological evolution in an approachable format. The author also did a good job of making this dry subject interesting.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 05-01-15
NATURE'S LIBRARY
Andreas Wagner suggests molecular life is nature’s library. He believes Darwin’s theory of natural selection is recorded and accessible in the cellular history of life; i.e. a coded library buried, and partly indecipherable, in the molecules of life.
In “Arrival of the Fittest”, Wagner explains the vast distance between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the mechanics of evolution. Darwin’s theory does not explain the cellular mechanics of life because science had not reached that level of observation and measurement. The nearest Darwin comes to explanation is based on natural selection which only infers there is some mechanism, without identifying it. In other words, there is no examination of the mechanics of evolutionary change in Darwin’s theory.
Andreas Wagner reveals the immense complexity of human evolution by associating organic molecules with enough information to fill all libraries of the world. Access to this immense library is being decoded and organized with biological research and computer technology. Wagner’s book makes one wonder–is this research a harbinger of earth’s infinite or finite organic life?
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- Rick
- 06-07-15
Answers questions I did not know to ask
Arrival of the Fittest is a well written description of the evolution of complex life. Dr. Wagner describes how scientists categorize complex organizisms by their metabolism, how an organism's robustness is quantified and how difficult it is to predict how a mutation will effect a protein. He is among the best of the popular science writers and in this book he has hit the mark, assuming the reader is familiar with basic genetics and evolution to give the reader the next level of information.
Sean Pratt does an excellent job of reading the book.
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- Margaret C.
- 09-08-17
Jaw dropping stuff!
I'm so glad I listened to this book, because it was so illuminating. But I certainly could not write a report on it because it was so very challenging intellectually that I kept having to go back to get some concepts into my tiny little mind! If I reread it, I will do so in print, because there are some terms I would like to look up.
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- Rezanate
- 04-19-20
Brings New Wonder to the Miracle of Life
I was pleasantly surprised by how broader spectrum this book covered.
He jumped effortlessly from topic to topic and illuminated so much that I never knew anything about.
For anyone curious to learn about alternate explanations for the evolution of life, this book is a treasure.
I highly recommend this book!
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- Darrell Stimson
- 01-03-15
Fascinating story of analyzing biological net.
This author has tried everything to explain our incredible biological world in terms that life is an inevitable process.
But after reading it through multiple times I am still left with the impression that there is a creator who has invented all these special and minute laws of physics and math.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Jan D. Leslie
- 04-01-19
Wonderful new insights
Book does a marvelous job of illuminating critical area of evolutionary biology. Answers many questions that have persisted for decades
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- Mutant Daddy
- 05-01-15
Great research story, well written
5 stars all around for author's content, importance of subject, and organization.
Audio version have been nicer if narrator had researched how to pronounce people's names beforehand.
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- A Swiss Reader
- 01-27-18
groundbreaking
I loved the new insights and sound thinking. Fascinating how the book explains how innovations in nature happen.
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- Gary
- 11-29-14
Robustness makes for an interesting life and book
Life is robust and its neutral states provide for easier suitability for overall fitness within environments leading to the fittest set of genes. Yes, that sentence is a mouthful but the author will step you through all of the steps necessary for understanding what is meant by it.
The author looks at life from its beginning to today mostly at the genotype and the resulting phenotype level. The going does get tough at times, but the author is very good at stepping the listener through. He states the two key components of life are its universal currency of energy, ATP, and the Universal Genetic Code, DNA and/or RNA.
He never misses sharing a good example while explaining the complex nature of amino acids, proteins, and metabolisms (5000 known). I didn't know dogs can synthesize vitamin C and humans can't. We need 13 vitamins, there are 20 amino acids making up the proteins we need, the body can synthesize 12 of them but needs 8 from our food sources and so on. I did not realize there were so many cool things to know about bacteria until he explained how they exchange genes and reproduce. Interesting stuff.
His professional work is in analyzing the movement necessary for viable genomes giving workable phenotypes through large scale computer modeling. He talks about this hyperspace of almost all potential combinations and how the process of evolution can move towards only viable solutions to biological configurations thus leading to the fittest.
There's definitely enough interesting things in this book to hook the average listener. His discussions on hyperspace and his computer work can get detailed, but he gives plenty of interesting discussions on many related topics making this book an interesting read.
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45 people found this helpful