Owen D. Jones Urges Evolutionary Thinking Across 3 Fields in 2026 Book

2 articles · Updated · Nature.com · Jul 27

Owen D. Jones’s 2026 book "Force of Nature" argues that natural selection should guide decisions in medicine, agriculture and law, warning that neglecting Darwinian logic can worsen real-world problems.
Antimicrobial resistance anchors his case: antibiotic overuse and incomplete tuberculosis treatment select for resistant microbes, while similar evolutionary pressures can undermine pest control and targeted cancer therapies.
The review says evolutionary models can still improve outcomes—such as adaptive cancer treatment that limits resistant tumour cells—but faults Jones for oversimplifying fever treatment and leaning too heavily on evolutionary psychology.
That critique broadens to law and social policy, where the reviewer says evolutionary insights are useful but should be balanced with alternatives such as human behavioural ecology, gene-culture co-evolution and life-history theory.