Not by design : retiring Darwin's watchmaker / John O. Reiss.

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2009], ©2009.

xviii, 422 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Prolegomena -- The problem -- Philosophical background -- How did we get into this mess? : from Socrates and Lucretius to Cuvier and Darwin -- Design versus the Epicurean hypothesis : two thousand years of debate -- Materialism, teleology, and evolution in the Enlightenment -- Cuvier and the principle of the conditions for existence -- Darwin, natural theology, and the principle of natural selection -- Evolution in Mendelian populations : teleology gets mathematical -- Existence and the mathematics of selection : the adaptive landscape versus the fundamental theorem -- Population growth, genetic load, and the limits of selection -- Natural selection and genetic drift : their role in evolutionary change -- The conditions for existence and evolutionary biology -- Adaptedness, natural selection, and the conditions for existence -- How to talk about macroevolution -- The conditions for existence as a unifying concept in evolutionary biology -- Evolutionary biology and intelligent design.

Includes bibliographical references and index.