The Pilgrim's Regress

...If the motor gets broken, remaining pieces may still act as a pump...

...Might [the discovery of genuine irreducible complexity in life] suggest genuine design by a superior intelligence, say from an older and more highly evolved civilisation on another planet...

...It's hard to painted a crystal clear picture of how Darwinists view the world...

...the exact position of our Earth in the cosmos is very special-so special that it may be the only world in the universe where thinking life can exist...

...Although lumps of pedantry remain, you know there is no final exam, so they can be skimmed with impunity until the pace quickens once again...

...Contrary to Richard Dawkins, the power to reason is indeed the greatest possible attribute of life...

...These short yarns, published steadily from the early 1950s until Kirk's death in 1994, have now been conveniently collected in Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales...

...I argued that "irreducibly complex" cellular structures-ones that need many distinct parts to work-required deliberate design by an intelligent agent...

...Dawkins knows in the marrow of his bones that evolution has no goal...

...He is no longer either willing or able to wrestle with big ideas...

...Great question...

...While moral bearings may have suited the brilliant intellectual explorations of Kirk's nonfiction, an overabundance of good intentions rendered his forays into supernatural literature largely impotent...

...How would they be able to conceive of history...

...After all, undead apparitions sug gest a life beyond the grave we so fear...

...The paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, who like Dawkins is a Fellow of the Royal Society, argued in Life's Solution that evolutionary convergences (where similar structures pop up in diverse branches of life) point strongly toward teleology in nature...

...rather, it's because reasoning is a prerequisite to understanding...

...A Devil's Chaplain last year collected some disconnected Dawkins essays-book reviews, articles for newspapers-many of which were exercises in spleen venting, making a sustained argument for nothing...

...BOOKS I N R E V I E W The Pilgrim's Regress r 41 0 APPRECIATE THE MAGNITUDE of Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins' latest feat, borrow a teenager's high school biology textbook...

...He elaborated on his gene theme in The Extended Phenotype, contending that genes also affect the larger world around them...

...But the hook sticks Dawkins with a narrative structure that ill suits the story of biology...

...He is no longer either willing or able to wrestle with big ideas...

...Looked at this way, plants and animals are just complex shells that genes build to help them propagate...

...Dawkins also flits around a point I made in 1996 in Darwin's Black Box, that Darwinian processes don't explain all of life...

...In the 14th-century classic, a group of colorful characters travels on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury, and along the way they entertain each other with their stories...

...If elephants could write history, it would be a history of ideas...

...They include such factors as the strength of gravity, the exact charge on an electron, and many others...

...Yet Dawkins clearly means this not just as a joke...

...Dawkins even muses about how space aliens visiting our planet after humans have gone extinct might try to distinguish between designed machines and living systems...

...His first book, The Selfish Gene in 1976, marshaled a (granting Dawkins' assumptions) compelling argument for a controversial idea, that evolution can best be understood from the viewpoint of a gene-the "instructions" that get duplicated each time an organism reproduces...

...Kirk's crafting of character and scene can be quite enjoyable reading, and his ability to interject philosophical ideas about the nature of the afterlife into his stories is delightful food for thought...

...Regrettably, despite dealing with the world's most fascinating topic-life itself-biology texts are pedantic, detailed, dry...

...For example, the contentious topic of whether nature points to a reality beyond itself lifts its head briefly at several spots in TheAncestor's Tale...

...Humans have big brains, says he, and so natural ly think big brains must be the pinnacle of life...

...if elephants could write history they might portray tapirs, elephant shrews, elephant seals and proboscis monkeys as tentative beginners along the main trunk road of evolution, taking the first fumbling steps but each-for some reason-never quite making it: so near yet so far...

...With its wings...

...With their outsized ears...

...bacteria...

...Dawkins betrays no awareness of some recent books that bear on the topic...

...Dawkins' book differs from biology textbooks in other ways, too, but these are less helpful...

...A few years later in Unweaving the Rainbow Dawkins unveiled his sensitive side, like Star Trek's Mr...

...Such anthropomorphic language is well justified by Dawkins...

...If you're like most people, after reading just a page or two your eyes will glaze over...

...Their trunks...

...Nasal rubicon-funny...

...For example, even humanly intelligent dolphins would have a tough time building a fire to smelt metal, let alone, say, manipulating materials to construct a computer...

...Elephant astronomers might wonder whether, on some other world, there exist alien life forms that have crossed the nasal rubicon and taken the final leap to full proboscitude...

...Therefore we can imagine that the car could have been put together in small random steps...

...Even the driest biology textbook these days includes plenty of spectacular photos and illustrations, which often can entice reluctant students into reading the text...

...How would a swift "regard" anything at all...

...In Nature's Destiny Michael Denton extended the anthropic argument from physics down through chemistry and biology...

...mistic expressions about our ability to transcend flesh and blood, then why do they have the power to instill such dread...

...This really is unforgivable, because it works against the whole purpose of Dawkins' book-to evoke wonder at life...

...The only greater talent would be the ability to reason better...

...And in the same vein...

...For example, the genes that push a beaver's body to build a dam in a river are acting to ensure their own survival no less than the genes that build the beaver's tail...

...Because, you see, he worried that KICHARI-7 DAW I N S Reviewed by Michael J. Behe R P`IV.,ni~, in the Oar...

...Yet The Ancestor's Tale grudges only the occasional, tiny, black and white photo or graph to accompany the discussion...

...For example, in "Saviourgate" the great beyond is described as a place where spirits can pass the time until Judgment Day reliving and properly savoring the best moments of their former lives...

...Really puts us humans in our place...

...a kidney...

...An example is the bacterial flagellum, which is literally an outboard motor that some bacteria use to swim...

...So let's think 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 BOOKS I N R E V I E W Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales by Russell Kirk (EERDMANS, 423 PAGES, $25) HEN RECENTLY interviewed by Fangoria magazine about Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation of his novel The Shining, Stephen King recalled an early conversation wherein the late filmmaker had posited that all ghost stories were at their heart opti mistic tales...

...Now he writes a tome which, if it had been done right, would at best have made a great coffee table even puzzle out what's going on in some pictures, such as those of the upside-down catfish (looked at from any angle) or Heron Island (what is that thing...

...One figure legend touting "rustling rivers of green" refers to a black and white photo of leaf cutter ants...

...Many, including myself, find King's criticism that Kubrick's final cut wasn't terrifying enough dead wrong...

...a cell...

...Now, why would a professor of the public "understanding" of anything belittle the ability to reason...

...FOR MY MONEY the biggest idea that Dawkins whistles past is where he explains whywe must at all cost avoid thinking that humans are spe cial...

...Your mind will wander to thoughts of dinner or the evening's television lineup...

...54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 BOOKS I N R E V I E W would imply evolution was working toward a goal-us, which simply would not do...

...2) irreducibly complex systems can't be produced by Darwinian evolution...

...That might not be much of an April 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 57...

...They would wonder much more about the grandness of their mental universe than the size of their trunks...

...Spock shedding tears, to explain why science can inspire emotion just as much as poetry does...

...It is for this spectacularly obvious reason that almost everyone except the most besotted Darwinists regards thinking as unique, as deserving of special study, as qualitatively different from and superior to any other attribute of life, perhaps even as an immaterial ability, perhaps even as pointing to something beyond nature...

...After casting around he finally de cided to model the book on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales...

...What about Reviewed by Shawn Macomber Hell...

...as the acme of evolutionary progress...

...H W IGH LEADS TO THE BIG QUESTION: What in the name of Darwin has happened to Richard Dawkins, that his current work compares unfavorably with a textbook...

...Such is the rigor of Darwinian thought...

...Instead of progressing from the simplest creatures to the more complex, the storyline regresses...

...Dawkins' conceit is to have a pilgrimage from the present to the dawn of life, where humans are joined at various time points along the trek by branches of life with which they share a common ancestor...

...The poor photos make it impossible to share Dawkins' rapture over Venus's girdle or the leafy sea dragon-they're splotches of ink...

...Yet Dawkins hastily waves them all away by invoking the speculations of some physicists that, for April 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 55 BOOKS I N R E V I E W unknown reasons, the laws and constants just had to be the way they are, or that there are actually many universes, and by necessity we live in one that allows for the existence of complex life...

...Well, in The Ancestor's Tale Dawkins translates that tedious textbook into much more readable, often entertaining prose...

...Good thing he's not Professor of the Public Understanding of Logic, else the public might never be told of the concept of "begging the question...

...About a decade passed until Dawkins' next books, River Out of Eden and Climbing Mount Improbable...

...It begins with humans and mammals, moves to reptiles, fish, and simpler vertebrates, and finishes with amoeba and Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is the author of Darwin's Black Box...

...But King's point is well taken: If ghost stories are opti seriously about his humorous, drive-by comment...

...This is the primary problem with Kirk's work: Good always triumphs over evil...

...Nevertheless, I find Michael Dirda's bold declaration last year in the Washington Post that Kirk was "the greatest American author of ghostly tales in the classic style, at least of the post-World War II era," hyperbolic praise of an almost unimaginable degree...

...Alas, he dodges it, too, deferring to biologist Kenneth Miller...

...That's cute...

...If he really wanted to use The Canterbury Tales as a model, why didn't he just have a pilgrimage by the first cell from the start of life to the present, where it could meet up with more complex descendants ending with humans...

...The priority of thought is not due to human pride...

...A few years ago, in Rare Earth, Donald Brownlee and Peter Ward argued that it's not just the general laws of the universe that are peculiar...

...It seems apparent that Dawkins' creative intellect is spent...

...Kirk has undeniable skill as a writer, and his tales showcase trace elements of gothic works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and even, in a stylistic if not thematic sense, H.P...

...The other intriguing possibility-that the laws have been set from outside nature to allow for life to grow on Earth-is peremptorily dismissed as "vanity...

...However, "a historically minded swift, understand ably proud of flight as self-evidently the premier accomplishment of life will regard swiftkind...

...Remarkably, Dawkins writes that "It is perfectly legitimate to propose the argument from irreducible complexity as a possible explanation for the lack of something that doesn't exist," but not for the presence of something that does exist...

...About these it would be fascinating to read the coherent thoughts of an engaged Dawkins in his prime, the Dawkins of the mid-1970s to mid-1980s...

...Let's use those overrated brains of ours for a second to ask, what exactly does Dawkins propose elephants would employ to think about astronomy...

...The second major defect of the book is that, other than a dust-jacket photo of the author, it has no high quality, color photographs...

...Lovecraft...

...If swifts could regard anything, they would necessarily regard their ability to regard as the zenith of life...

...Alarming though (I hope) readers may find these tales, I did not write them to impose meaningless terror upon the innocent," Kirk writes, adding that he prefers to view his fictional works as "experiments in the moral imagination" containing "elements of parable and fable...

...Kirk's essay, "A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale," included in Ancestral Shadows, helps shed light on his motivations for wading into these dark waters and gives one a clue where he may have gotten off track as well...

...King asked, playing Devil's Advocate, to which Kubrick responded icily, "I don't believe in Hell...

...Astoundingly, although Dawkins discusses Morris and his book, he breathes not a word of its controversial, explicitly contraDawkins theme...

...Among many other requirements, Denton contended that only a creature quite similar in size and shape to humans could build a civilization...

...Although Dawkins' prose beats text book writing by a mile, the texts win hands down on illustrations...

...In the first few pages of this very long book Dawkins scoots by the so-called "anthropic coincidences...

...Dawkins' reasons for the backward struc ture are alternately strained and tenden tious...

...4,< Amazing Stories Shawn Macomber is a reporter and staff writer for The American Spectator...

...Far Side cartoons notwithstanding, non-human animals, even if they could think, don't have a physical form that lends itself to building the structures a civilization requires...

...Although whether the film was faithful enough to King's story is entirely open to debate...

...But in order to alarm readers convincingly, it is necessary that there be a distinct and believable possibility that everything might not turn out all right...

...In 1986 The Blind WatchmakerDawkins' classic defense of Darwinian evolution It seems apparent that Dawkins' creative intellect is spent...

...He treats it as a serious conclusion, so serious that it forces abizarre structure onto his book to avoid giving any special emphasis to humans...

...If the tires are flat, the fuel pump can still work...

...Dawkins' reasoning seems to go like this: (1) everything that exists in biology was produced by Darwinian evolution...

...Divine intervention always strikes on time...

...Miller's argument is that because the flagellum is more complex than we thought, that because it can act both as a protein pump as well as an outboard motor, then it is not irreducible...

...He says he want ed a hook on which to hang the history of life (as if "The History of Life" weren't catchy enough...

...He uses colorful verbs ("dazzles," The Ancestor's Tale: "slew"), interesting an A Pilgrimage to the Dawn alogies ("The nucleus of of Evolution a cell is like the ROM of a by Richard Dawkins Mac"), and fun facts (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, 688 PAGES, $28) ("More than 40 percent of all mammal species are rodents...

...Such is the enigma the late Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind (1953) and the man widely regarded as the father of modern conservatism, attempted to explore with a series of gothic-yetmorally-sound horror tales...

...These are the many physical laws and constants of our universe that have to be just-so for life to exist...

...3) therefore nothing in life is irreducible (no matter that it sure looks that way), but in theory things that don't exist in life may be...

...Both pretty much just reprised The Blind Watchmaker...

...book, with pretty pictures to accompany the elegant prose, but which could have been assembled by the staff of National Geographic...

...When the element of surprise is removed, stories become predictable and terrors mundane...

...Then the pace of ideas slowed...

...That's like arguing that because, in addition to wheels and a motor, a car has a fuel pump, then it isn't irreducible either...

...All in all, then, I'd recommend a high school biology textbook over The Ancestor's Tale, because great pictures of life can more than compensate for stodgy prose...

...That is a pity, because there are a number of big ideas that make cameo appearances in The Ancestor's Tale...

...Now, as Oxford University's unfortunate "Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science," he is doomed to the life of a pedestrian science popularizer (he spends pages in The Ancestor's Tale explaining radioactive dating to those who don't know protons from neutrons), although an admittedly entertaining one given to frequent, superficial rants on religion and politics...

...This approach is quite peculiar, like a book about mathematics that proceeds from calculus through algebra and down to addition facts...

...Over the years Dawkins has been both an innovative thinker and truly gifted expositor of complex biological ideas...