Michael Ruse is a gifted and prolific explorer of the territory where science and philosophy spar. In The Philosophy of Human Evolution (PHE) he shows us how this conflicted terrain has changed over time. Ruse is advancing his commentaries on evolutionary biology, human evolution, progress, knowledge, morality, sex, sexual orientation, race, eugenics, and medicine. PHE, thus, brings us into relevant encounters with the work of many other philosophers, biologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary theorists. Ruse is concerned with the question of how the study of evolution has changed and how questions and approaches, once apparently of central importance, may now be items relegated to notes of historical interest while other approaches increase in usefulness.

In chapter 1, we are shown that both Darwin and his contemporaries lived in a world in which one kind of proof did not serve to resolve all the scientific questions. The situation persists to this day. There are those areas of experience where reductionistic science provides adequate explanations and those areas where it does not. Darwin sought a scientific theory that could explain the similarities and diversity of the natural world. Physics and chemistry seemed to be well‐described by reductionistic approaches, but changes in species of animals and plants were not convincingly explained by what was known in Darwin's day. After much thought and diligent investigations including his experiences in the Galapagos Islands, Darwin was able to connect the idea of artificial selection in domestic animals with what he saw occurring in the wild species—specifically selection by the multiple, complex interactions of nature itself. Ruse serves us tasty platters of exploration and deliberation regarding natural selection that have provided delectable munching over the intervening century and a half. The historical approach in PHE strikes this reviewer as highly informative and engaging.

However, there are signs that this particular work may have been done in some haste or perhaps in an attempt to be too convivial. Sometimes the text is unclear or may even convey misunderstanding to those unfamiliar with evolutionary studies. As an example, on pages 25 and 26, Ruse presents Sewall Wright's diagram of the “genetic landscape” (as labeled in Figure 1.8). He then engages in a very troublesome description of the diagram: “Aided, I hasten to say, by one of the brilliant metaphors of evolution, the ‘adaptive landscape,’ which shows visually how genes climb up to the tops of adaptive ‘peaks,’ and yet how also they might find themselves in maladaptive ‘valleys.’” Note that there are no scary quotation marks around “climb” or “find,” but genes don't climb or find. This mode of expression is simply misleading. The surrounding text never gets around to the idea that it is organisms that are selected in nature. Wright's diagram is meant to convey the selective relationship between an organism (with its entire genome) and the environment(s) the organism encounters. Some places in the landscape are conducive of evolutionary success of a particular genome, others are neutral, and some are not conducive to survival of that genome.

A strange and unnecessary claim is made in the chapter on “Progress,” p. 104: “We humans are still here, and we are the final product of evolution (or one of the final products).” A more accurate statement would be that many, many creatures obviously continue to exist with us and, thus we are all current survivors, hopefully not end products. The claim is totally unnecessary and stands in direct contrast to a long, beautiful quote from Darwin on the same page that makes our real condition perfectly clear, ending as follows: “… from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Other questionable statements appear in this chapter on “Progress.” Perhaps the most troublesome is on page 127, where Ruse quotes himself (1996): “My own take is … that no failure will quell the feeling that somehow there really is progress up to humankind…. Simpson pointed out, you are showing that you have the ability to ask about whether there is progress. This seems to give us special abilities. Either way, we won—and that is surely what progress is all about.” What is the author trying to convey here, to what does he wish to have us give assent?

A particular indication of haste occurs on page 140, where a long quote from Kant is repeated, exactly, about halfway down the same page. A bit later (p. 148) Ruse agrees with Nietzsche and Plantinga that “Darwinian evolution cares nothing for truth, only for survival and reproductive success. To use a memorable phrase of the philosopher Pat Churchland, Darwinism is the science of the ‘four F's’: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and reproduction. There is nothing here about knowledge and truth and objectivity.” Well, perhaps not in the four F's per se, but knowing or remembering the best pathway to use to flee away from a predator goes pretty far toward very useful knowledge, or so it seems to this reviewer.

A last strange offering to be recounted by this reader, but by far not the last in the book: “… there is surely some truth in this … that sex exists because in that way useful new variations (mutations) can be gathered together quickly in one organism” (p. 186). However, in organisms with meiosis, the development of gametes “re‐sorts” chromosomes and through crossing over of genetic material between chromosomes re‐sorts the genetic material itself. Sexual reproduction breaks up, rather than gathers, genomes. Thus, the quote conveys a serious misunderstanding.

To his immense credit, Ruse does introduce the history of the very powerful idea of consilience and shows how it substantiates the proof and reality of a hypothesis. It is of great interest to see how Darwin's contemporary William Whewell (1840) characterized “a type of explanation, what he called a ‘consilience of inductions,’ [which] was just what was needed when you are trying to explain using a cause that no one sees and that may be unobservable” (p. 9). Whewell's consilience is the approach to proof that is needed for the nonreductionistic decisions or conclusions—think about coming to believe that someone loves you—it is the accumulation of indications which add up to reasonable certainty and trust. The author brings the consilience tool into service at several points in PHE and to very good effect.