Force of Nature: Understanding Evolution’s Deepest Logic — and Putting It to Use Owen D. Jones W. W. Norton (2026)
From antimicrobial resistance and vaccines to drugs design and even policymaking, evolution is fundamental to many aspects of our lives. Yet, too often, Darwinian thinking is neglected.
In Force of Nature, biologist and legal scholar Owen Jones argues convincingly that understanding how evolution by natural selection works can inform humans’ interactions with their environment and with each other — and that misunderstanding it can create problems. He cites case studies from a range of fields, including medicine, agriculture and law, to support his position.
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One example he draws on is antimicrobial resistance — one of the most pressing issues in the field of medicine. Humans’ overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobial chemicals is unintentionally creating the circumstances in which resistance to antibiotics can evolve. Yet when people with tuberculosis stop taking their antibiotics before the bacteria have been eradicated from their body, they are unconsciously encouraging antibiotic-resistant microbes. But it is possible to predict and prevent resistance by considering how such behaviours select for the evolution of resistance.
Natural selection also offers fresh ways to understand cancer. Mathematical models can predict how tumour cells will behave when exposed to targeted therapies, which eliminate cells that express specific proteins. But removing those cells can reduce the competitive pressure on others, allowing them to grow unhindered and cause the cancer to resurge.
Many researchers once thought that this process, known as competitive release, would mean that targeted cancer therapy would be unlikely to work in the long run1. But mathematical oncologist Robert Gatenby and his colleagues have shown that it is possible to balance this dynamic. Killing off just enough cells to stop the tumour from growing and leaving the rest intact can prevent the formation of a resistant population and enable people to live with cancer for much longer than they otherwise would2. Similarly, in agriculture, strategies informed by evolution can improve crop yields by avoiding pest- and weed-control measures that select for organisms with resistance.
Evolutionary arms races
But there are cracks in Jones’s argument. Take, for instance, his discussion of fever. He cites evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald’s work describing raised body temperature as a natural response to infection that is important for recovery. Like Ewald, he suggests that people shouldn’t use ibuprofen and other fever reducers and should instead let the body respond in the way that it evolved to, if it is safe to do so.
The problem with this argument is that the story is more complicated, which even Ewald acknowledges. His 1994 book The Evolution of Infectious Disease noted that many germs evolve to grow well in febrile conditions. And viruses and bacteria evolve a lot faster than animal immune systems do, although there is a perpetual arms race between them.
Rather than adopting a blanket rule for when to treat fever, medical researchers would be better off identifying which germs grow well in febrile conditions and which don’t, so physicians can select the best interventions. If genomic markers indicate that a virus or bacterium is likely to grow in the presence of a fever, drugs should be taken to reduce people’s temperatures; otherwise, the fever should be left to run its course.
Consumption of ultra-processed foods has been shown to increase cancer risk.Credit: Sergii Gnatiuk/Getty
I have worked with Ewald to discuss how natural selection affects arms races between hosts and their pathogens3. Sometimes, medical interventions perpetuate these competitive relationships, as is the case for multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis. And sometimes, such as in the use of vaccines, treatment can end the competition between pathogen and host entirely.
It is therefore the relationship between the host and the pathogen that matters, not the characteristics of either. If physicians understand this relationship, they can use targeted interventions appropriately. At the population level, effective interventions can end the arms race. Smallpox is a good example: vaccination helped to eradicate this disease in the wild.
Social competition
Next, Jones discusses how insights from evolutionary theory can be used to understand and improve laws and other human systems. Combining his legal and scientific expertise, he describes the concordance of some legal principles across cultures — such as those that punish murder and theft — and argues that this is evidence that evolution has shaped human history. Brains are products of evolutionary forces and laws are the product of brains. Consequently, the laws that societies tend to agree on have indirect evolutionary roots.
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Understanding how evolution shapes behaviour, Jones says, can inform how governments tailor policies and interventions to prevent deaths. For example, he cites studies showing that stepchildren living with a male parent who is not related to them are much more likely to die than are children living with their biological fathers. The evolutionary reasons for these findings are clear: stepfathers just won’t invest as much in children that are unrelated to them. He suggests, therefore, that institutions perform a cost–benefit analysis between lowering the risks stepchildren face at the population level and preventing the stigmatization of step-parents.
