I see that
Mark Vernon has taken another swipe at one of his favourite
bête noires: Richard Dawkins. It strikes me as a particularly foolish piece. In it, he seems to be complaining that Dawkins’ latest series of TV Programmes (
The Genius of Charles Darwin) focuses too much on the challenges to Darwin’s theory, rather than on some of the latest findings such as evolutionary convergence.
Er, Mark, the clue is in the title, the programmes are about Darwin, his original theory and how he wrestled to reconcile it with his (and particularly his wife’s) religious beliefs, and about how the theory continues to challenge some believers to this day.
Despite the mountains of evidence, a large number of people still insist on sticking their fingers in their ears and go "la la la, I can’t hear you…". I actually find their reaction perfectly understandable. I too, would find it difficult to reconcile species such as the
Ichneumonoidea and
Toxoplasma gondii with the idea of a loving god. Indeed, even Darwin said:
"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."
If anything, their existence (and of thousands of species like them) is evidence of either a sublimely indifferent deity or one who apparently revels in sadism. Or, of course, by Occam’s razor, the total absence of any deity at all.
Mark also rather shot his bolt a little too soon, after apparently seeing only two of the three programmes. So his banging on about the absence of any mention of convergent evolution was rendered spectacularly pointless when, in the third programme, Dawkins pointed to the fact that eyes have been reinvented at least forty times in nature as a perfect example of convergent evolution. I would also point Mr. Vernon to Dawkins’
The Ancestor’s Tale, where convergence is examined at length; indeed, a whole chapter (The Host’s Return) is devoted to the concept of re-running the tape of evolution and to the emergence of recurring patterns. As Dawkins says (not that you would think it, from Vernon’s strawmen arguments):
"As I look at these natural experiments, mostly I am impressed by how similarly evolution turns out when it is allowed to run twice. We have seen how alike Thylacinus is to a dog, Notoryctes to a mole, Petaurus to flying squirrels, Thylacosmilus to the sabretooths (and to various ‘false sabretooths’ amongst the placental carnivores). The differences are instructive too. Kangaroos are hopping antelope-substitutes."
…
"I am tempted by Conway Morris’s belief that we should stop thinking of convergent evolution as a colourful rarity to be remarked and marvelled at when we find it. Perhaps we should come to see it as a norm, exceptions to which are occasions for surprise. For example, true syntactic language seems to be unique to one species, our own. Perhaps – and I shall return to it – this is one thing that a re-evolved brainy biped would lack?
In my opening chapter, The Conceit of Hindsight, I listened to warnings against seeking patterns, rhymes or reasons in evolution, but said that I would cautiously flirt with them. The Host’s Return has provided an opportunity to sweep over the whole course of evolution in the forward direction and see what patterns we can descry. The idea that all evolution was aimed at producing Homo sapiens was certainly well rejected, and nothing we have seen on our journey reinstates it. Even Conway Morris claims only that something approximately similar to our kind of animal is one of several outcomes – others being insects, for example – that we would expect to see recurring if evolution were rerun again and again."
Mark finishes his article by venturing into woo-woo territory as far as I’m concerned:
For example, if there is some kind of independent mentality within the universe, then this might help us to understand the existence of consciousness. Think of another branch of science, quantum mechanics. As the physicist
Eugene Wigner put it: "The very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of consciousness is an ultimate reality." Consciousness existing like air, land and water? It is a contentious proposition but not simply "not science".
Yeah, Mark, but applying the scientific method may not bring any comfort to that sort of wishful thinking. That way lies woo and
Deepak Chopra. Methinks that the direction pointed to by the scientific method lies elsewhere.
But what I think really takes the biscuit in Mark’s article is the closing:
Ruse himself is more cautious: it is easy to run ahead of the science. "Darwinism has major implications for thoughts of purpose," he concludes, but be careful. On the other hand, it is easy to lag behind the science too, not least when evolution is used as a political stick rather than celebrated as part of the human quest for knowledge.
The clear implication, to me, is that Vernon seems to be suggesting that Dawkins is guilty of using evolution as a political stick rather than celebrating it as part of the human quest for knowledge. If so, I find this absolutely outrageous, and the total opposite of the facts of the case. In all three programmes, Dawkins has explicitly celebrated both Darwin and his theory as part of the human quest for knowledge. And for Dawkins not to show that some are bent on extinguishing the beacon lit by Darwin would be failing in his duty to show the truth. Now I am beginning to think that not only is this piece by Mark Vernon foolish, but it also apparently has elements of both ingenuousness and mendacity in it as well.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
Leave a comment