More Articles on Evolution
Enough Speculation
Michael Ruse
Allen Orr's critique of Darwin's Black Box is
devastating and, assuming that there are some out there who find the book
plausible and yet have open minds, might do some good. For me, although I
did not need convincing, there is the sheer pleasure in seeing an expert in
his field take on the ignorant and arrogantly presumptuous. However, I do
feel that Orr failed to raise the most important issue of all: Did Behe have
the right, in the first place, to appeal to design?
Do not misunderstand me. As far as I am concerned, if Behe wants to appeal
to design to understand the world, he can do so all that he wants. I will
defend to the end his right to do so. If he wants to spend the next six months
standing on his head in Harvard Square, I am his backer. Rather, I ask whether
he has the right to do so in a context where he expects us to take him seriously,
especially to take him seriously as a scientist.
Think of an analogous example. This last summer, a large jetliner went down
in the Atlantic just off Long Island. Six months later, no one has any real
idea as to how or why it happened. Would the pertinent aviation authorities,
or the President of the United States for that matter, have the right to declare
that it was an act of God, in the sense of a miraculous intervention by the
Deity? Or, if you prefer, by an evil spirit? Our reaction to such a suggestion
would be somewhere between humor and disgust, even in a country like the United
States where God is invoked in public discourse with a frequency and familiarity
which makes the members of older civilizations cringe with embarrassment.
Why is this so? Two reasons. First, we know that bringing in the Deity is
simply not helpful--a hinderance rather. Experience has shown us that, when
we are faced with a mystery, the way to get an answer is to keep inquiring,
not to give up and put in all on the shoulders of the Chap Upstairs. In the
nineteenth century, the English scientist and philosopher William Whewell,
faced with an inability to explain the Swiss Alps, told us that geology says
nothing, but "points upwards." Fortunately for us all, practitioners of that
particular science ignored him and now finally we have plate tectonics. The
same is true of flight. Perhaps we will never be absolutely certain as to
what happened. But my bet is that an answer will come. Even if one does not
come in this particular case, it is still more reasonable to blame our own
limitations (together with the difficulty of the puzzle) than to invoke the
supernatural.
Second--and this is a point which would be stressed by today's theologians,
including no doubt the present Pope given his recent endorsement of evolution--dropping
a dollop of design into your scientific mix is not only not the way to do
good science, it is not the way to do good theology either! Design is not
something you add to science as an equal--miracles or molecules, take your
pick. Design is an interpretation which makes some kind of overall metaphysical
or theological sense of experience. In the words of the theologian Langdon
Gilkey, it is answering the why questions whereas science is answering
the how questions.
What this means is that the early stages of life can be both designed and
natural (in the sense of understandable by science). It is not a question
of one or the other, but not both. Of course, you may not opt for design at
all--things like the imperfections in organic nature may spoil that interpretation
for you--but that is something quite apart from whether there is a scientific
explanation of the world of experience.
Moving across now to Robert Berwick's critique of Richard Dawkins's Climbing
Mount Improbable, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. I agreed with
everything that Berwick said, but at the same time I agreed with Dawkins too!
Part of the problem here is that I am not really quite sure of the level of
disagreement. As far as I can make out, everyone agrees to some adaptation;
everyone agrees that not everything is always tightly adapted; everyone agrees
that sometimes evolution is gradual; everyone agrees that if not jumpy, sometimes
evolution moves quickly sideways or forwards.
Some of the dispute is over the meaning of a "large" mutation, but I am still
in the dark as to the exact meaning of this. If my wife gives birth to an
elephant, then this is a large mutation. But if she gives birth to a child
with Down's syndrome is this a large or a small mutation, and does Berwick
think that this kind of mutation could ever be effective and does Dawkins
think that this kind could never be effective? Or if not Down's syndrome,
what about a mutation which makes my children two inches taller? Is this a
large mutation or not? How many inches until it is?
My suspicion is that (as with Orr's critique of Behe), two points are worth
making. First, we have a cultural difference between author and reviewer.
This is a difference which is really a question of perspectives and not going
to be solved by argumentation--at least, not of the kind that Berwick and
Dawkins offer. Since Darwin, English evolutionists have tended towards selectionism
and adaptationism and gradualism--think of Alfred Russel Wallace, of Raphael
Weldon, of Ronald Fisher. Since Darwin, American evolutionists have tended
towards a more Germanic transcendentalism, downplaying selection and playing
up Bauplan and jumps--this position came partly through the influence of Herbert
Spencer (always more popular in America than in his homeland) and partly thanks
to Louis Agassiz, who may have lost the evolution battle with Asa Gray, but
who won the biological war since it was he who had the students and thus influenced
the future generations. What we have in the Dawkins/Berwick clash is this
national divide playing on--both sides arguing that the positive cases support
their case and that the negative cases fail to support the other side.
Second, and this takes me back to Orr's critique, whether or not we can ever
bridge this national divide, would we not all be better if we stopped this
kind of philosophical argumentation that we find in Berwick and Dawkins and
got on instead with looking at the real science of the professional practicing
evolutionist? I am getting tired of computer analogies. I want to see what
the real workers are finding in the field and how their discoveries affect
their thinking. Even though I am myself a professional philosopher, I think
the time for speculation and pop science is over. We need to look at what
is really being discovered. Then some of these issues about gradualism and
adaptation may get resolved--or perhaps they will not seem so important and
other matters will come to the fore.
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