Comments on Book Review
(_Nature_ v. 431, 21 Oct. 2004, p. 903) "The evolutionist's tale: A journey back through our evolution with a growing band of ancestors" is a book review of _The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life_ by our old nemesis, Richard Dawkins. The review is written by Jerry A. Coyne who, if I'm not mistaken, is the guy who stepped out of the "good evolutionists" line to write an article for public consumption admitting that Kettlewells' peppered moth studies weren't really good science. I think I've seen a couple articles by him since then that sound as if he's trying very hard to prove what a good and faithful evolutionist he is after all. This review certainly avoids any hint of doubt or criticism of any major evolutionary interpretation, icon, or dogma.
A lot of the review dwells on purely literary matters, noting that Dawkins "adopts a literary conceit, modelling the book on Geoffrey Chaucer's _The Canterbury Tales_," and unlike other recent overviews of the evolutionary mythology (my term, of course), "he writes his history in reverse."
What's most striking to me is the reason Coyne deduces for Dawkins' "pair of gimmicks" -- that Dawkins has left the familiar territory of pure concepts in his former books to deal here "in facts: the history of life on Earth." Facts? Oh, please! Even this review, based on that idea, makes it clear (to anyone not already brainwashed into having faith that imaginary things and opinions can be "facts") that Dawkins tacks a bunch of facts (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt) onto a rich tapestry of imaginary "history" that was never observed, let alone recorded. He "views species as pilgrims marching into the past, joining each other genetically on a 3-billion year journey to evolution's Canterbury: the first 'replicator'." It starts as we go back to join with the chimps in our common ancestor, or as Dawkins coins, "concestor." (cue eye rolling).
Yes, our common ancestor, also know as... oh, that's right, NOT known, just imagined. Such are the "facts" that Dawkins presents... Nor do we find that virtually every new human or hominid fossil represents yet another stage on a continuous imaginary road this literary pilgrimage is supposed to retrace. Instead, we find distinct groups, and the oddball single specimens described as new species more often than not are described as "surprising" -- and often end up on dead-end alleys with no known connections to the invisible road.
I'm intrigued by Coyne's statement (probably taken in agreement from Dawkins' book) that "Human evolution has involved 40 such joints...and each is the subject of a single chapter." 40 is an awfully round number, if you know what I mean. I wonder if he might just as easily have come up with 42. Before the human-chimp "concestor" there was one we share with "gorillas, then other primates, and so on through the fusion with early mammals, sponges, plants, Eubactera and ultimately the _Ur_-species, probably a naked molecule of RNA." Oh, there's a good one -- a "probably" fact. Should I laugh, cry, or just feel sick? I'd like to check this book out of the library (I'm sure not going to PAY for such tripe) to see just how much that is truly factual Dawkins manages to work in.
I wonder if he does any better when "he interrupts his dutiful account of ...evolution" with "58 sidebars: chaucerian 'pilgrim's tales' told by extant species, each describing a biological concept or method." There may be potential for controversy in "The grasshopper's tale," which "uses geographic variation within orthopteran species to inspire a remarkably sesnsible treatment of human racial variation, a topic whose political overtones usually drive biologists to panicked circumlocution." I wonder if Dawkins mentions the study in which one insect was suspected of being in the process of splitting into two species, just because some of them had stripes and the two varieties "tended" to avoid crossbreeding?
The tale of the peacock is of course illustrative of sexual selection, and we probably wouldn't have any problem with that, but the flounder's tale supposedly "introduces us...to evolutionary imperfection." I suppose this is because Dawkins finds it awkward and less than optimal design for flounders to start out looking like other fish and then having one eye migrate over the top of the head and all that. I wonder if there are any fossils or living fish showing a line of fish that only reached partial adaptation to living flat on their sides for Dawkins to present. I'm pretty sure Dawkins hasn't designed any living fish, let alone one as fascinating as the flounder.
Some of the "digressions" are said to "have a whiff of the textbook" about them and to be "simply too long and complicated." Still, some on this list might want to see what Dawkins has to say about "log-log plots, radiometric dating and molecular clocks." (BTW, the book is a whopping 528 pages long).
So it's not as if Coyne is prostrating himself in lavish praise of Dawkins. He even criticizes him on an evolutionary point, but of course not in a way that would imply that even one point of standard evolutionary theory is wrong. No, his "main gripe" is with "Dawkins's strong emphasis...on sexual selection as a likely engine for the evolution of important human traits." Oh dear, Mr. Coyne, are you accidentally giving us another hint that Dawkins's book isn't just chock full o' facts after all? In this case, Coyne rightly makes fun of this example of Dawkins's "strong opinions on many issues": "Why, then, don't we see knuckle-walking women with chimpanzee-sized brains? Although we may never know why humans became erect and brainy, sexual selection seems among the least plausible of many alternative theories." Hey, hey, if we don't know why something happened and we only have a bunch of alternative theories about it, could it be we have here another non-fact?
In wrapping up his review, Coyne says, "Thankfully, Dawkins returns to top form in the final chapter, a philosophical overview of the extraordinary events he's just recounted." Okay, philosophy -- more stuff that is not facts. Then, what's this nonsense about "extraordinary"? What could possibly be "beyond ordinary" in a universe where everything is chalked up to the same basic interactions of matter and energy that have been around since the beginning? What's extraordinary about speciation events or the development of "higher taxa" when there are billions of species, they all came about by ordinary random mutations that just happened to fit existing environmental conditions, and higher classifications are just artificial collections of species?
Coyne does seem to stoop to boot-licking when he describes the book's "final sentences" as "language at its most lambent and elegant, used simply to express profound truths." Excuse me, but if evolution (at least, the atheistic evolution of Dawkins) is "fact," then there are no "profound" truths, because there's nothing to distinguish one ordinary fact or truth above another. Does contemplating one truth seem to affect you more than another? This is merely a difference in the pattern of interactions of electricity and chemicals in your brain cells. Evolutionists keep turning their backs on the full import of their beliefs and trying to borrow terms like "profound truth" -- Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow" may be the best example of this trying to eat your cake and then still have it, too.
Oh, here's the first of the last sentences: "The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing...is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice." Well, here's another "fact" that was never observed, and not only that, it has never been demonstrated that it's even possible! And again, if it is a fact, and that the "nearly nothing" had no intelligent (let alone miraculous) assistance in evolving into life, then how can it be said to be "staggering"? It just happened, that's all. Big deal. What I might find disconcerting about contemplating this, if I were an evolutionist, is that it might just as easily "unhappen" -- some wandering black hole or a rogue star about to go supernova might just happen to wander into our neighborhood and return us all to almost nothingness. Mmph, for that matter, people like Dawkins must live with the assurance of their beliefs that they as individuals will indeed soon return to being almost nothing, so really the eventual destruction of all life isn't that big a deal.
Wow, just think of it... this wonderful imaginary pilgrimage back in time shows us that "evolution's Canterbury" is a mere "almost nothing." The bear went over the mountain, and all that he could see was the other side of the mountain. How can anyone be interested in working out the details of a voyage to nowhere?
Until Next Time,
David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.
http://home.att.net/~david.bump
