Book Excerpts

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Errata

Note from the editor: we had trouble tracking down the origin of the
opening quote at the start of chapter 15, which is often attributed to
Darwin ("In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those
who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have
prevailed.")

We now realize that it is a signature phrase that sounds familiar
(along the lines of Kiss me Hardy/Elementary my dear Watson/Dr
Livingstone, I presume, and so on) but, at best, is a corruption of
what was once said by Darwin and, at worst, is a fiction.

John van Wyhe, Director, The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
University of Cambridge (http://darwin-online.org.uk/), points out:
"It is not even Victorian- from its style and particularly the
politically correct Americanism 'humankind' instead of 'mankind'- I
would date this from the mid 20th century or later."

Janet Browne of Harvard University, Darwin biographer, said: "I and a
number of others have been trying to source this quotation for some
time. It is often associated with another non-traceable sentence: "It
is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to
change." Both of these sentences are popular, especially in business
management texts. I believe this is a phantom quotation.

Neither 'collaborate' nor 'improvise' sound particularly Darwinian to
me, although he can always surprise me," she added. "Of course these
could all be slightly different variants of some original. There are
certainly passages somewhat like this in Descent of Man volume 2."

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Page 360 in the Acknowledgement: Jiaqi Huang's name is misspelled. I
apologise to Jaqui for this typographical error.