Vanderbilt law and biology professor Owen Jones, in his new book Force of Nature: Understanding Evolution's Deepest Logic―and Putting It to Use, makes a provocative case: humanity routinely overlooks the most powerful R&D engine on Earth—natural selection. The result is costly errors, from medicine to law to everyday choices.
Jones illustrates the point with a stark medical example. A woman in Nevada died after every one of the 26 antibiotics available in the United States failed against her infection. The bacteria that killed her were not exotic, but they had evolved resistance through natural selection—a process the medical system failed to anticipate.
The core argument is that evolution is not just a historical force but an active, present-day principle. By underestimating natural selection, humans miss opportunities to improve outcomes in fields as diverse as drug development, legal reasoning, and decision-making. Jones' research centers on applying evolutionary logic to practical human problems.
This book arrives at a moment when antimicrobial resistance is a growing global health crisis. Jones contends that treating natural selection as an ongoing, forward-looking process—rather than a dusty biological fact—could reshape how we approach everything from antibiotic stewardship to institutional design.
Jones is a professor at Vanderbilt University, where his interdisciplinary work bridges biology, law, and policy. Force of Nature synthesizes this research for a general audience, aiming to make the deep logic of evolution accessible and actionable.