REVIEW INTRODUCING DARWIN TO THE UNINITIATED Michael Ruse, Charles Darwin. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Pp. xii+ 307. US$24.95 PB. By Sean Dyde and Charles Wolfe Michael Ruse is a major voice in Darwinian scholarship, and it is a natural choice for him to write an introductory work on that great figure of nineteenth-century biology. Indeed, Ruse’s scope includes much more than this; he includes contemporary debates to which Darwinian ideas are being applied. Given the relatively small size of the work (at roughly the 300-page mark), at the outset it seems as if he may have set himself a daunting task. But obviously, the author of Darwinism Defended, Darwinism and it Discontents, and Can a Darwinian be a Christian?, among many other books, is in a very good position to pull it off. Following a brief biography of Darwin’s life and travels, the book can be divided roughly into two parts. The first documents the evidence used (both by Darwin and by contemporary research- ers) to justify natural selection. This is structured according to the original order presented in the Origin of Species: geology, compara- tive anatomy, embryology, etc. While this is a natural choice to explain evolution, the ordering also provides a clear idea of how these disciplines have expanded since the mid-nineteenth century. Similarly to Darwin, Ruse finishes this section with the application of evolutionary ideas to humanity itself. The notion of progress, as well as what this term may imply, follows. Given that this book appears in a series devoted to great philos- ophers, Ruse then discusses the impact of Darwinism on various philosophical matters, from epistemology to philosophy of mind (including the problem of induction and the brain-in-a-vat), and general discussions in philosophy of science such as reductionism. While this argumentative drift may leave some readers confused, Metascience (2009) 18:325–329 Ó Springer 2009 DOI 10.1007/s11016-009-9285-7