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Darwin Loves You by George Levine
(Princeton University Press, 2006). xxiii - + 304 pp.
THOMAS B. FOWLER is senior principal engineer at
the Center for Information Technology and Telecommunications
at Noblis and author of The Evolution
Controversy (2007). He earned his Ph.D. in
science from George Washington University.
It is a bit difficult to classify this book. It is
not science, philosophy, intellectual history,
or literature. Ostensibly the book is
about Darwin’s fascination or “enchantment”
with nature and the evolutionary processes
that led to the marvelous organisms and
processes we can observe today—as opposed
to the view, held in some quarters, of Darwin
as an arid mechanist. This in turn is presumably
to help the reader recognize that evolution
(and other naturalistic processes) can still
yield a view of the world that retains values
and some type of moral order. The author
tells us, “…my primary objective is to demonstrate,
through the example of Darwin and
of his writing, the compatibility between an
enchantment that has the power to stimulate
ethical engagement and a naturalistic vision of
the world.” (169). Presumably this indicates
that “Darwin loves you.”
Unfortunately, the effort is largely a waste
of time for a number of reasons. First, all
schools of thought in the evolution controversy
agree that nature is fascinating or enchanting
(or whatever term one cares to use).
Many if not most scientists entered the field
for just this reason, and often this fascination
leads them beyond science to religious thought
and reflection. As far as the dispute over
evolution is concerned, nobody cares whether
Darwin was fascinated with nature; they care
about the overarching questions of naturalism,
reductionism, and nominalism, and how
these play out in the biological sciences. That
is, they care about whether natural processes
can fully account for the history and development
of life on earth, whether all science (and
all knowledge) can be reduced to physical
laws, and whether the mechanisms proposed
by Darwin are in fact adequate to explain the
origin of species (or anything else). To their
own satisfaction at least, all schools of thought
can explain fascination or enchantment with
nature—for the creationist and intelligent
design schools, it is a manifestation of God’s
power and creativity. For the neo-Darwinian
school, some (those who advocate theistic
evolution) also see it as a manifestation of
God’s power and creativity; for others it is just
a reflection of evolution at work in the
development of our own (materialistic) minds.
Enchantment or fascination with nature is
undoubtedly real; but in the context of the
evolution debate, with its complex issues and
high scientific and cultural stakes, enchantment
is little more than a footnote. Of much
greater interest is the fact that enchantment
leads one to recognize something beyond,
viz. the power of nature, the power of the
real, which is the starting point for much
philosophical reflection about
man and Deity; Spanish philosopher
Xavier Zubiri, in
particular, makes the power
of the real the entrée into his
comprehensive natural theology.
Secondly, nobody cares
about getting a warm fuzzy
feeling about Darwin and his
family; that may be of some
interest to a few, but for most,
the extent to which Darwin’s
personal views were the product
of Victorian society,
whether he was really anti-feminist, racist, or
shared any other Victorian “vices,” are concerns
not relevant even to the question of
whether Darwinian ideas have been used to
justify some rather horrific ideologies (which
they have, a point admitted by the author).
Third, stylistically, the book contains so
much repetition that the reviewer wonders
whether it was edited at all. Over and over
and over again we read that Darwin was really
enchanted by this or that aspect of nature, was
fascinated by this or that, saw beauty in this or
that organism…. Emerging as it is from
Princeton University Press, the reader can
reasonably expect something more succinct.
Indeed, the author’s thesis could be expounded
in a twenty to twenty-five-page journal article;
it is not worth book-length treatment.
Fourth, the author is in way over his head
with respect to science and philosophy, both
of which are crucial to the topic. He does not
understand the theory of evolution very well,
confusing “natural selection” with the total
process of evolution. (Natural selection is a
well-known process that was recognized at
least a quarter of a century before Darwin
published the Origin of Species. It merely says
that those organisms with the most favorable
phenotype will survive better. The total process
of evolution requires a new source of
genetic information, and an
ability to make this new genetic
material not only propagate
within a population, but
also to create more complex
organisms and structures.) The
author does not have a clue
about the real issues raised by
the Intelligent Design school
(whether the aforementioned
processes can actually produce
the order and structure that
we observe), and he is apparently
oblivious to the fact that
there is an entire school of
thought about evolution that rejects Darwin’s
(and its updated version, neo-Darwinism’s)
mechanisms as inadequate. Whether he knows
anything about the creationists, or realizes
that many of them are serious scientists (and
not yahoos) is anyone’s guess.
In the philosophical realm, he has no idea
of the complexity and subtlety of the problems
involved in any sort of fully naturalistic
approach, especially the problem of assigning
values in a materialistic, evolutionary world.
He wants to maintain modern liberal values
such as full acceptance of women’s rights, gay
rights, and so forth (though it really wouldn’t
matter much which values he sought to maintain),
but fails to recognize that absent transcendental
values, no ethical theory really has
any meaning, nor can it override “survival of
the fittest.” In the end, no amount of fascination
with nature by itself will compel the
strong to protect the weak, the rich to refrain
from exploiting the poor, the well-fed to give
food to the starving. They can all say that they
are “following the laws of nature, i.e., survival
of the fittest.” In effect, the author stumbles
over Hume’s old problem that from an “is”
you cannot get an “ought.” Only if the fascination
with nature serves as a jumping off point
for something more significant, such as recognition
of higher, non-naturalistic power,
can progress be made in the ethical arena.
He does little better with the issue of
reductionism: one can nuance reductionism
as much as one pleases. For example, one can
maintain that we will never be able to explain
everything with scientific theories due to
complexity, stochastic effects, or other factors,
but that everything ultimately reduces to
the laws of physics anyway. While somewhat
indirect, this is still reductionism. The broad
question of reductionism is what is important:
can you, in any meaningful sense, reduce
all of human experience to physicalism—not
sketch it out as a program, but actually do it.
Or are the fundamental obstacles that prevent
any such reduction from being realized?
Obstacles such as the fact that some aspects of
human experience cannot even be meaningfully
expressed in scientific language? Can
one even talk about truth, value, or beauty in
any meaningful way under a physicalist paradigm?
The author touches on artificial intelligence,
and similar remarks apply: not can
you sketch it out as a program, but do it. The
artificial intelligence problem is often compared
to the problem of reaching the moon
by climbing a tree. A lot of progress is made
at first, and then the effort peters out. All of
this is lost on the author of this book.
Overall, if one is interested in Darwin as a
person, this book may be of interest, despite
its stylistic problems. With respect to the
major scientific, philosophical, and cultural
issues of evolution and the evolution controversy,
it falls rather short.