82 Sahotra Sarkar
what Leigh found insightful and “light-hearted” (p. xx). Though Leigh admitted
that “we need a system of sorts to make any sense at all of the real world”, his
ultimate conclusion was a ringing endorsement of Haldane over Fisher and Wright:
“systems can blind us both to what has no place in them and to what conflicts
with them” (p. xxiii). For Leigh, Haldane’s major insight was his willingness to
admit multiple levels of selection: the questions that can be asked in such models
“are indeed the appropriate next stage in learning how adaptation can evolve” (pp.
xxiii–xiv). In effect, Leigh underscores the points made in the last paragraph while
also placing Haldane’s work centrally within contemporary evolutionary debates.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThanks are due to James F. Crow, Warren Ewens, Raphael Falk, Steve Frank,
M. J. S. Hodge, Mark Kirkpatrick, Steve Lanier, Richard C. Lewontin, Mohan
Matthen, the late John Maynard Smith, the late Ernst Mayr, Anya Plutynski,
William B. Provine, J. R. G. Turner, and William C. Wimsatt for many illumi-
nating discussions and comments on earlier drafts of this paper which has had a
long gestation. Much of the work on this paper was done while I was a Fellow at
the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin — I thank it for its support.
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