BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 1013

physical anthropology makes such a n ap- proach extremely disturbing.

What Darwin Began: Modern Darwinian and Non-Darwinian Perspectives on Evo- lution. Laurie Rohde GodfTcy, ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1985. 322 pp. n.p. (paper).

FRANK SPENCER Queens College, C U N Y

When Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859 his evolutionary synthesis was immediately opposed on both religious and scientific grounds. What the religious mind found difficult, ifnot impossible, to accept was the implication in Darwin’s thesis that the natural world was an incidental product of random selection. While many scientists also tussled with this and related philosophical is- sues, by and large much of the scientific criti- cism was directed at either Darwin’s proposi- tion that natural selection was the primary guiding force of evolutionary change or a t his inability to provide a satisfactory explanation of both the source of biological variation and the hereditary mechanism. It was not until the advent of modern genetic studies in the first decades of this century that these issues were adequately addressed, and it was from this new perspective that a modern synthetic the- ory of evolution, sometimes known as neo- Darwinism, emerged in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Recently, however, some of the basic premises of neo-Darwinism have been challenged by a growing number of evolution- ary biologists. Coinciding with this develop- ment has been an intensifying campaign (par- ticularly here in America) on the part of reli- gious fundamentalists as well as others openly hostile to evolutionary thinking to have “sci- entific creationism” taught in public schools as a more suitable alternative to Darwin’s model. To some extent the scientific creation- ists have endeavored to capitalize on the pres- ent division in the scientific community to fur- ther their own aims.

To the nonspecialist the current debate in evolutionary biology is difficult to understand; many of the subtleties of the theoretical argu- ments employed are either lost in attempts to generalize or are confounded with other irrel- evant issues. Thus, the primary goal of this most timely reader is, as the editor Laurie Godfrey states in her preface, “to help stu- dents understand the bases of current profes- sional disagreements without getting lost in the hoopla of media debate” (p. viii).

To this end, the book has been divided into four sections. The first section, entitled “His- torical and Philosophical Perspectives on Dar- winian Explanation,” begins with an overview by Kenneth A. R. Kennedy on the historical precursors of Darwinian evolutionary think- ing. This very useful prologue is a condensed and revised version of the introduction to the well-known history reader coedited by T . D. McCown and Kennedy (Climbing Man’s Farn- i(y Tree, 1972). The remainder of this introduc- tory section includes three articles by Arthur L. Caplan, Laurie R. Godfrey, and Stephen J. Gould, which are devoted to various aspects of the development of Darwinian thought. I t should be noted that Gould’s contribution is a reprint (without modification) of his short piece on Alfred Russel Wallace that originally appeared in Natural History (89( I ) , 1980).

The second section, “Modern Challenges to Neo-Darwinism,” consists of five essays from Motoo Kimura, David M. Raup, Niles Eld- redge, Jeffrey H. Schwartz and Harold B. Rol- lins, and Shelley R. Saunders, all focusing on current issues and critiques of Darwinian ev- olution. With the exception of Raup’s contro- versial article (a revised version of a paper published in AmericanScientist 65:50-57, 1977), all of the articles in this and following sections are originals, and they present the essence of the current challenge to evolutionary ortho- doxy. The central issue is whether the existing gaps in the fossil record are real or merely the result of the recovery of incomplete evidence. Like Darwin, those workers who defend the orthodox position contend i t is the latter. Ac- cording to this viewpoint, evolutionary change is perceived in terms of a gradual and relent- less accumulation of small and successive modifications through time. Modern critics, however, claim that this is a 19th-century con- cept that had served to uphold the natural principles of both continuity and consistency embedded in the old aphorism “natura nonfacit saltum. ” The paleontological evidence indi- cates to these critics that species have per- sisted for thousands of generat ions un- changed, and then suddenly the apparent stasis is punctuated by a “spurt” (saltation) of speciation. Neither the evidence nor the ar- gument, however, is compelling. More evi- dence than presently available is needed to es- tablish the punctualist model, and this be- comes apparent when one looks at the hom- inid fossil record, where, contrary to the suggestions of Gould and Eldredge (1977), change to the Homo condition seems to have been mosaic and graduated over time (see J . E. Cronin et a]., Nature 292:l IS122, 1981).

1014 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [88, 19861

The third section of this text, “Evolution and the Public,” consists of two articles focus- ing on two quite different and ongoing de- bates. The first, by Alice B. Kehoe, is con- cerned with the creationist movement and is a careful and thoughtful critique of the objec- tions to the teaching of evolution in public schools. The second, by Steven D. Schafers- man, deals with the intellectual complexities of a debate that has recently surfaced between taxonomists at the British Museum (Natural History) in London and the American Mu- seum of Natural History in New York over how a museum should present evolution to the public. Although in many respects more com- plex, this debate resembles the clash between Franz Boas and Otis T. Mason at the close of the 19th century (see Science 9:485-486, 587- 589, 1887).

“The Edge of Discovery” is the title of the final section. It consists of four interesting and

well-written essays that bring out the salient features of current debates on the origins of the cosmos and earth (George 0. Abell), biogen- esis (Harold J. Morowitz), the evolution of complex animals (James W. Valentine), and anthropogenesis (Kenneth H. Jacobs).

Although the readings in this text are heav- ily biased to a consideration of non-Darwinian evolution (the case for neo-Darwinism is only briefly reviewed), this does not detract signif- icantly from the book’s utility in the class- room. Indeed, I think Godfrey has accom- plished her goal and is to be commended for her efforts. The book will undoubtedly find its greatest use in graduate seminars, as well as in advanced undergraduate biology and physical anthropology courses. Unfortunately the price of the reader is not known. However, judging from the quality of the book‘s production i t should retail at a price well within the means of the market to which it is directed.

Linguistic Anthropology

Ancient Tales in Modern Japan: An An- thology ofJapanese Folk Tales. Fanny Hagin Mayer, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. 382 pp. $22.50 (cloth).

THOMAS WAYNE JOHNSON Waceda University

With this volume Mayer has again demon- strated why she is widely acknowledged to be the foremost western scholar of the Japanese folktale. Trained in Japan, partially under Yanagita Kunio, the founder of modern Jap- anese folklore studies, she has become one of his foremost disciples. The book clearly at- tains its stated intent ofproviding for English- speaking scholars a well-translated, represent- ative sample of the best of the vast amount of recent Japanese folktale collecting. Folklore is a very popular discipline in Japan, with schol- arly works in the field being advertised on the front pages of national newspapers and prom- inently displayed in local bookstores through- out the nation.

The Japanese discipline of minrokugaku, while usually translated as “folklore studies” is actually a somewhat different field from the modern American discipline. While both have their roots in the search for unwritten history and for national origins, that is still the base for Japanese research. Since the beginning, the emphasis has been on detailed field collec- tion and the reporting of largely unaltered data with relatively little analysis or interpre-

tation. Mayer continues in this tradition. The texts, while carefully selected from the tens of thousands that have been collected and then carefully and accurately translated, have little of the scholarly apparatus that we would ex- pect of an American scholar. There are but minimal notes to indicate the region of Japan in which the particular tale was collected, the name of the informant and collector, and a ref- erence to the original Japanese publication. Nowhere is there any of the analysis or placing of the tale into the larger Japanese context which Mayer is capable of doing better than any other western scholar.

This book does magnificently what Mayer set out to accomplish. Unfortunately, she did not try to do as much as she is capable of. I only hope that her next book will include the analysis so badly needed. Apart from this par- ticular failure, my only quibbles with the book are minor. There are remarkably few typo- graphical errors, but i t seems strange that a book originally typeset in Japan should fail to include the Japanese characters for authors and titles in the bibliography. Flawed as I feel it is, this book is an important contribution to folklore scholarship and should be in every collection that claims to represent Asian folk- lore.

Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs. John Eierhorst. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1985. 574 pp. $48.50 (cloth).