Critics' choices for Christmas
Raymo, Chet
Chet Raymo Chet Raymo teaches at Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts, and writes a science column for the Boston Globe. In recent years we have enjoyed a renaissance of writ-ing by...
...Nevertheless, I doubt that many of us will warmly embrace Dawkins's or Gould's deflating arguments...
...For this reason alone, these two engaging books by two of our cleverest evolutionary biologists are welcome antidotes to the possibility of presumption-or at least they should be welcomed by anyone who seriously wants to measure the content of faith against the raw lessons of the world...
...Dawkins sets out to show how blind variation and natural selection can produce a Noah's Ark of plants and animals that look "designed...
...Not since the heyday of Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall in the late-nineteenth century have we had so much accessible prose from the makers and shakers of science...
...The idea of our preordained primacy is deep within us, embedded in our myths and legends, enshrined in our theologies, perhaps even hardwired into our brains...
...Yes, the human eye seems an unlikely artifact of chance, but it turns out to be surprisingly easy to fashion an "eye" on a computer using only random incremental variations and an algorithmic surrogate for natural selection...
...Who are these guys to tip us from our place on the top rung of the ladder...
...He takes on the favorite argument of creationists: Some aspects of nature-the human eye, for instance-are so perfect in their form and function that it is utterly improbable that they might have been produced by the accumulation of chance variations...
...Gould is professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, author of many popular books on evolution, and probably, after Carl Sagan, the most widely known American scientist...
...Most of us will react to this deflating pronouncement with a smirk, smile, or frown...
...Anyone interested in the fluid interface between science and faith will find these books irresistible...
...OK, so we are the tail of a skewed curve rather than the preordained glory of creation...
...We are the tail end of a bell curve of randomly generated variation skewed toward complexity because it can't go the other way (life can't get much simpler than bacteria...
...Dawkins's Climbing Mount Improbable (Norton, $25,340 pp...
...He has made something of a career of poking holes in our presumptions of biological primacy...
...are in-your-face challenges to the notion of human primacy and necessity in cosmic history...
...Gould demonstrates that the so-called trend from .400 hitting results from the spread of excellence among batters, pitchers, and fielders-in other words, a contraction of variation...
...Dawkins showers us with "obviously designed" examples of biological complexity: for example, the wonderfully subtle symbiotic relationship of fig wasps and figs...
...Then, like an indiscreet magician, he shows us how the trick was done, how nature fashions exquisite order using nothing but Darwinian sleight of hand...
...No one will deny that humans are inclined toward self-importance...
...This is what Dawkins calls "climbing Mount Improbable...
...Replay evolution, and the outcome would be entirely different...
...In the real world, variation, not progress, is supreme...
...Both authors are smart, articulate, and certain of the righteousness of their cause...
...Gould doesn't even allow us this consolation...
...he is best known for his ground-breaking book, The Selfish Gene...
...The great fun of Gould's book is the way he illustrates his argument by considering the decline of .400 hitting in baseball...
...Both men have just published books that are joys to read- and which shake up some of our most cherished convictions...
...This is often interpreted as "they don't make 'em like they usta...
...Gould's agenda is even more provocative...
...both seem to delight in their roles as gadflies from Olympus...
...But at least it's our tail...
...In recent years we have enjoyed a renaissance of writ-ing by scientists for a popular audience...
...In Gould's view of things, the bacterium has as much right to claim primacy as we do...
...We are the most complex of creatures, the inevitable consequence of variation and the spread of excellence-we are still the apple of God's eye...
...And what do we learn from Darwinism...
...The mode of the curve (where the greatest numbers lie) is still solidly with microorganisms...
...Perhaps more right, since bacteria have been and will probably always remain the most enduring and populous life form on the planet...
...Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist who occupies the newly endowed Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University...
...Humans are here by the luck of the draw, not the inevitability of life's direction or evolution's mechanism," he says...
...And why are they having so much fun doing it...
...of the world...
...The common error we make, says Gould, is assuming that our presence at the tail of the curve is a result of "progress" rather than a statistical consequence of an expansion of variation...
...What makes Dawkins's argument so convincing is his use of computers to create artificial worlds where chance variations and selection do in fact lead to artifacts that have the compelling look of "design...
...Their message is the same: Darwinian natural selection is the key to understanding our place in the great scheme of things...
...Among the very best of the scientists writing today are Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould...
...The medieval idea of a Great Chain of Being, ascending from the lowliest creatures to humans, has nothing to do with the world described by science, he says...
...We ascend together-bacterium, lowly worm, philosopher-arm-in-arm, so to speak, adapting to our respective environmental niches, spreading excellence across the board...
...Our notion of necessity, like our notion of primacy, is a narcissistic illusion...
...and Gould's Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (Harmony Books, $25, 244 pp...
...That the human species is a contingent and wholly dispensable twig on the tree of life...
Vol. 123 • December 1996 • No. 21
