An individual's personal experience can influence the characteristics of his or her offspring. Some of the ways in which this happens would have seemed heretical in the past. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's stimulating new book successfully challenges some of the old orthodoxies. I recommend it warmly to anybody with a serious interest in developmental and evolutionary biology.
Sir Patrick Bateson, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, author of Design for a Life: How Behavior and Personality Develop
Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb have been challenging orthodoxy and promoting heresy in genetics and evolution for twenty years. Their systematic and comprehensive perspective on genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic inheritance in evolution is backed up with detailed empirical data, illustrated in a wide survey of phenomena, and presented in clear and forthright prose. Engaging illustrations as well as instructive and entertaining philosophical dialogues help make Evolution in Four Dimensions accessible to students and interested general readers. Those intent on following the path of genetic orthodoxy will now have to work harder than ever to ignore evolution's other three dimensions.
James Griesemer, Professor of Philosophy, University of California
With courage and verve, and in a stylr accessible to general readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolution that have been uncovered by contemporary research.
Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines
Another valuable perspective to the discussion... I found it refreshing to read a science book that is a conscious attempt at good literature.
Nature
As this important book by Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb shows, the twentieth-century 'neo-Darwins' told the evolutionary story in their own particular way, and some of the richnes of evolution that their forebear had described fell into neglect.
The New Republic
There have been rumblings for some time to the effect that the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the early twentieth century is incomplete and due for a major revision.... Evolution in Four Dimensions is the most recent addition to this genre, and contributes yet another valuable perspective to the discussion.
Massimo Pigliucci
Nature