"Evolutionary Faith" might well be the title of the elaborate exhibitions in the nation's famed Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In many beautiful displays, the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants is treated as axiomatic with its histories laid out in impressive diorama and narrative accounts.

An intriguing development in recent evolutionary thought has been the growing repudiation of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy (that is, the idea of slow and gradual evolution, accomplished by the mechanism of small random genetic mutations preserved by natural selection) in favor of the idea of rapid evolution caused by rapid environmental changes.

The book reviewed here first appeared in print
in 1973, in the French language. It is the 1977 English translation
which is reviewed here (Academic Press).