book reviews approaches, I did not find the discussion fully persuasive. But these are minor glitches in what is certainly a stimulating and thought-provok- ing book. Although the hats on the good guys and the bad guys are perhaps both whiter and blacker than in reality, one should definitely consider Cromer’s analysis. There is a lot to be said for systematically teaching science from the part to the whole. Eugenie C. Scott is at the National Center for Science Education, 925 Kearney Street, El Cerrito, California 94530-2810, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Fins, legs, fins Ancient Marine Reptiles edited by Jack M. Callaway and Elizabeth L. Nicholls Academic: 1997. Pp. 501. $64.95, £49.95 Michael W. Caldwell Old companions who learn new tricks This book hails itself as the long overdue Hunting dogs take to the water with their tells how these versatile companions have revision of Samuel Williston’s Water Reptiles Micmac owners in nineteenth-century Canada. coexisted with humans for 12,000 years, of the Past and Present (1914). The claim In A History of Dogs in the Early Americas (Yale whether reared for food, used in hunting, sent to invites comparison. Williston wrote his book University Press, $27.50, £21), Marion Schwartz war or revered as guides to the afterlife. by himself; 28 authors, contributing 17 chapters and 6 introductions, have produced So what is Cromer’s solution? We must, believes ability grouping is especially impor- Ancient Marine Reptiles. Williston’s book he says, agree on what high-school graduates tant if low-achieving students are to meet the was devoted to a taxonomic and biological should know about science and then develop minimal GED-type standards, because these review of marine reptiles, and not one page a coherent curriculum to produce students students need special attention to develop described or named a new taxon; four chap- who have this knowledge. Cromer criticizes even the most basic understanding. ters in Ancient Marine Reptiles are purely the US National Science Education Stan- Cromer enjoys the role of curmudgeon, descriptive, serving only to give names to, or dards for not accomplishing this task and and the forceful way in which he writes can- to revise, a single genus or species. being laden with educational gobbledegook. not help but engage the reader. (Speaking of If there is a critical flaw in this edited vol- A de facto set of ideas and skills already exists, criticisms of intelligence testing, he growls: ume, if there is one feature where it drifts from he says, in the ‘General Educational Devel- “There are few educators who know enough the tradition of Williston’s book, this is it. Sim- opment’ test, or GED, a rigorous seven-hour arithmetic to balance a checkbook, let alone ply put, these four chapters should have been high-school equivalency test of language understand a multivariant logistic regres- published as journal contributions, leaving skills, social studies science and mathematics sion analysis”.) But this leads to the occasion- more space for the remaining 13 synthetic given to adults. A pass in GED or a high- al overstatement that frustrates or annoys. chapters. To my mind, an up-to-date assess- school diploma is required in the United His physics is better than his social science ment of a particular field should focus on the States to attend college or technical school or and history. A chapter explaining why the contrast between observation and theory; to apply for most jobs. A novel idea is to have uncertainty and indeterminacy of quantum innovation is found in the distillation and all ninth-graders take GED before they can mechanics makes the visible world in which synthesis of disparate data points and the go on to the final three years of high school — we live certain and determined is an excellent resulting generation of new questions. It is a or leave school or go into a training pro- antidote to postmodernists’ claims about the pity that there was not more room in this vol- gramme. “It is vitally important that there be lack of objective reality and the supposed ume to address these contrasts in depth. a meaningful intermediate certificate to pro- inability of science to explain it. His discus- Nevertheless, I applaud this volume. vide young people with an honorable way to sion of intelligence is better than his discus- Most chapters are well written and pertinent. leave school after ninth or tenth grade. The sion of race: as a physical anthropologist, I The figures are informative and the refer- drive to push everyone through twelve years was dismayed by his confusion of the con- ences accurate. Highlights include the chap- of academic study has made ‘drop outs’ of cept of equality with that of identicalness ters by McGowan and by Motani, which pro- those who are unable or unwilling to do so.” (the former social and legal construct is inde- vide excellent reviews and interpretations of To ensure all students get at least to the pendent of the latter biological one). He new faunas and data sets; Rieppel’s chapter GED level will require another unfashion- combines the principles of natural selection on Triassic sauropterygians, even though it able idea — ability grouping, in which stu- with observations of animal and human barely reviews his recent mountain of revi- dents are grouped by their ability to perform behaviour to produce a new theory of sionary publications; and Bell’s chapter on certain tasks. Cromer does not intend this to human social organization. Here the yin of mosasaur phylogeny, which unfortunately be ‘tracking’, where students are permanent- hierarchy and loyalty was selected with the only scratches the surface of his PhD thesis, ly assigned to high, medium or low IQ yang of individualism and rebelliousness as with no discussion of the implications of his groups, but a looser, less-permanent group- adaptive traits in early human social envi- character analysis. ing that students can move in and out of as ronments. Although I am generally sympa- The last four chapters, with a lengthy their skills and knowledge improve. He thetic to sociobiological and evolutionary introduction by Massare, reveal the main NATURE | VOL 389 | 18 SEPTEMBER 1997 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1997 249 book reviews palaeobiological issues underlying the study influenced by the axiomatic method. The of ancient marine reptiles. Did fins evolve to original idea of ‘theory reduction’ was that legs and back to fins again? And what was the axioms of one, formalized theory should When the rains more important, homoplasy or homology? be derived logically from those of another, Selection or constraint? Unique morpholo- thus showing that nothing is lost when the come gies or modifications of the old? Marine rep- former is replaced by the latter. This omis- Climates of South Asia tiles are a model system for posing a broad sion is more surprising because the coverage by G. B. Pant and K. Rupa Kumar range of questions about the evolution of of the book is otherwise excellent. Wiley: 1997. Pp. 320. £75, $130 tetrapods in aquatic environments. We often There are two further surprises in Mahn- Julia Slingo consider cetaceans or pinnipeds in this light, er and Bunge’s biophilosophy. First, they yet forget that ichthyosaurs were ‘dolphin- reject ‘population thinking’: evolution is not The climate of South Asia is dominated by like’ about 190 million years before the first about ensembles of individuals but about the monsoon, which returns with remark- proto-dolphin even thought of going for a types of organism. They argue that these able regularity each summer and provides swim. types, which include species, are in some the rainfall needed to sustain more than 60 Michael W. Caldwell is in the Department of sense ‘natural kinds’. They strongly reject the per cent of the world’s population. The vast- Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, consensus view, deriving from David L. Hull ness of the Asian continent and the unique Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E9. and Michael Ghiselin, that taxa are ontologi- configuration of the East African Highlands cally akin to individual objects such as and the Tibetan Plateau mean that the Indian nations rather than to natural kinds such as summer monsoon is the most vigorous and gold. The second surprise is the authors’ rad- influential of all the monsoon circulations. Axioms for biology ical approach to developmental biology: Increasingly, the monsoon is being seen as an Foundations of Biophilosophy development is not guided by a genetic pro- important player in the global climate. by Martin Mahner and Mario Bunge gram. Instead, Mahner and Bunge call for a It is fortuitous that the first book detailing Springer: 1997. Pp. 423. $54, £36.50 synthesis between the ‘structuralist’ the climatology of South Asia should be pub- Paul E. Griffiths approach to development, which seeks lished on the fiftieth anniversary of India’s emergent laws of complex biological sys- independence. Without the influence of the The logical empiricist consensus that existed tems, and the ‘constructionist’ view that the British Raj and scientists such as Blanford, in the philosophy of science until the 1960s control of development cannot be localized who in 1886 recognized “the paramount held that the ideal statement of a scientific in one material cause. importance of knowledge of distribution of theory would be a formal axiom system of the Having adopted this radical perspective, rainfall in space and time”, the comprehen- kind found in mathematics. The biologist J. Mahner and Bunge attack existing struc- sive database that provides the core of this H. Woodger is remembered for his attempts turalists and constructionists in a manner book might not have been realized.