It’s very rare that in reading a book, your views on life can be changed quite so profoundly. These two books, however, have managed to do just that in a quite surprising, entertaining and altogether unexpected fashion.
I’d heard talk of “
The Selfish Gene” before. It’s one of those books that has been mentioned to me frequently. However, it wasn’t until I was listening to “The Salmon of Doubt”, in which Douglas Adam’s referred to it as a seminal book with regards his understanding of evolution, that I decided to give it a go. Having read A Short history of nearly everything, I also thought it was time to tackle some of the areas I wanted to understand in more detail. I ordered both books from Amazon, so didn’t get a chance to flick through them before hand: I had this (false) impression they’d be dry and dusty academic tomes, so with both books before me, I semi-reluctantly packed the first, “The Selfish Gene”, into my bag to read. I’d was just finishing “Just a geek” about a month ago. When I finally started reading it, I was prepared for a bit of a slog, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Compared to “A brief history of time” (that other much bought, but - I suspect - seldom read popular science book), these books were readable and engrossing: I found it very hard to put them down. Deeply scientific, meticulously well written (to the point of being remarkable in itself for such an imposing subject), and most importantly of all very approachable to the reader. Before I delve into the detail of the books, I can quite easily say they were both probably the most approachable, enjoyable, well written science books I have ever read.
The subject of course, is Evolution by the process of natural selection. I had until now viewed evolution as a given, but not really understood the mechanics of how it occurred. In reading the Selfish Gene, the reader is introduced to the concept of the gene, how it is the basic building block of life, and how it it - fundamentally - selfish. However, the surprising truth is how this fundamental selfishness is nothing of the sort. The processes that occur can actually lead to altruism, complex communities and social hierarchies.
I clearly cannot do Dawkins justice in a brief paragraph summary of the Selfish Gene principals, but the logical steps by which he leads the reader ensure that it’s very much the way in which everything happens in the evolutionary and selection processes.
His conclusion is strong, and he succeeds in explaining not only why all life is driven by this process, but how even the subtle changes at the microscopic level of genes, ultimately leads to the complex behaviour we see in life all around us. Dawkins also coined the phrase “Meme” in this book, and whilst I understood the point he was making, felt it detracted a little from the key purpose of the book. None the less, he uses it to demonstrate that many concepts (including his frequent target, religion) are simply a successful concept that hits a nerve and is passed on.
After a brief interlude with Walking Barefoot (another excellent book by Wil Wheaton, which further enhances his reputation with me as (to paraphrase Gag Halfrunt) “Wil is just this guy, you know”. A hoopy frood indeed. A great little book, and I’m looking forward to the two additional books Wil Wheaton is working on, including one in the Dancing Barefoot style.
The Blind Watchmaker takes on the task of explaining evolution by natural selection. It seeks to explain not just the mechanisms by which evolution works, but how it is the only self contained and complete explanation for the evolution of complex creatures and machines, such as the eye and bat sonar.
In perhaps the most provocative chapter (”Doomed Rivals”) Dawkins tackles the various proposed alternatives to evolution by natural selection head on. He is not seeking to win friends in the Creationist camp with this book, rather he actively seeks to demonstrate there is simply no need for a God (even when evolution is pulled into a religious view of the world as the “process” by which we appeared).
Some of the subtleties by which, amongst others, Creationists attack evolution are dealt with in a rigourous style. Dawkins explains why we do not see strange half-evolved creatures in the fossil record, how evolution isn’t a perfectly continuous process of increments, and why it’s above all a very gradual process.
I can’t emphasise enough how much I was thoroughly taken aback by the fundamental simplicity of the processes Dawkins described, and that once the replicators appeared the only vital ingredient that led to complex life was simply lots and lots of time.
Speaking personally, I’ve only recently in the last year or so given up on the cop-out description of “agnostic” in my world view. It been a badge of convenience that meant I wouldn’t upset relatives or friends for quite some time. Reading these books has left me with absolutely no doubt that life on earth is a simply natural, and self-contained, phenomenon. Whilst some might view this as a cold world view, I’d argue it’s nothing of the sort. Dawkins gives a taster of the sheer variety and magnitude of life that exists, and that it is something to marvel at. It’s really quite amazing how much we understand of the processes compared to even 50 or 100 years ago.
It really is a remarkable world out there, and one all the better for our understanding of it that a writer of Dawkins clear ability to be able to explain it in such a delightful, entertaining and approachable way. Both these books are stunning examples of approachable scientific writing at its very best. And as if further proof was needed that these books have hit a nerve with me, the imposingly titled Extended Phenotype is in my shopping basket at Amazon…
See also
July 23rd, 2005 at 6:01 pm
[...] Francis Wheen’s book How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world was an enjoyable and interesting book, but marks the end - for now - of my extended reading of science/political/analytical books. For the last few months I’ve been devouring books by authors such as Richard Dawkins and Jung Chang, on Mao, and to be honest I need a break! [...]
September 1st, 2005 at 7:00 pm
[...] As you might expect, I’m thoroughly in agreement with Richard Dawkins (see my review of his books). The arguments given for “Intelligent Design” almost always fail to provide a scientifically founded alternative that is open to study, and invariably are self-referential, superstitious nonsense. [...]
January 4th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
[...] I’ve just seen a tantalising trailer for Richard Dawkins’ documentary “The root of all evil”, which will be making an appearance next Monday. I’m a huge fan of Richard Dawkins books (more here), so I’m sure it’ll make for interesting viewing. [...]
January 10th, 2006 at 11:28 am
[...] There has been other criticism, such as this piece from last Saturday’s Guardian, which attacks the supposed lack of rigour in Dawkins’ arguments. However, this looses sight of the fact that the two hours available to the subject is insufficient to do the subject justice, especially when compared to the hours of religious programming given over in the weekly television schedule. Dawkins made an admirable attempt to outline how evolution and science rely on understanding evidence and proving, or disproving, theories to explain the natural world about us, but having read some of his seminal books, it’s perhaps unsurprising the television version would be disappointingly brief. He was always bound to upset people of strong religious convictions, as anybody saying they were believing in a work of fiction and fabrication would. It really isn’t possible to mitigate the two. [...]
December 19th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
[...] Darwin could be replaced with something. Well, of course. Look at Newtonian physics. It was superseded by relativity, after Einstein came along. Science theory is not set in stone, and yes, it could and probably will be superseded by something that explains the process more accurately. But Liddle’s painfully built straw-man, was that Darwinism is held up as a holy-scripture for atheists, and to ‘disprove’ or ‘challenge’ it, was to undermine atheists central tenant. But Darwinism isn’t core to Atheism (in my view). It’s certainly important because, until Darwin came along, there was no adequate scientific explanation for how complex life appeared. Now there is, and it’s a remarkably simple explanation. Dig deep enough and you’ll find people who will say what you want, and sure the scientist he spoke too could have something interesting, but I’ll leave it to the peer-reviewed scientific process to help establish whether it’s valid. There are plenty of things we don’t understand, but that doesn’t catastrophically undermine the process and the theory. It struck me as the whole ‘god of gaps‘ argument reworked, along with a probable misunderstanding by Liddle about the unit of natural selection. Try reading the The Selfish Gene, and come back to me. [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 12:53 am
I had until now viewed evolution as a given, but not really understood the mechanics of how it occurred.
You believed something was a “given” without understanding how it happened. That seems very much like “faith” to me.
I can’t emphasise enough how much I was thoroughly taken aback by the fundamental simplicity of the processes Dawkins described, and that once the replicators appeared the only vital ingredient that led to complex life was simply lots and lots of time.
So how did the first cell appear then with this replication ability? How did the replicator “evolve” from the non-living chemical soup. Dawkins doesn’t explain this, “simply” or otherwise. He has “faith” that it did.
See http://russp.org/Dawkins.htm
January 5th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Thanks for your comments Greg, and I’ll be sure to take a look at your link when I’ve a bit of time: Something that is sadly lacking in my life right now as the dearth of posts demonstrates. This response is a bit hurried too.
I think what you’re primarily referring to what’s the generally given argument known as ‘The God of gaps’ (Wikipedia definition here). Just because we don’t specifically know, or cannot currently prove, the exact steps that were moved through, somehow the overall theory of evolution is undermined.
With regards the first replicator, Dawkins was (if I recall correctly; I don’t have the book to hand) only offering a view; Postulating, not stating, as an exercise. It’s fair to say that there are a lot of opinions as to what happened, but nothing has so far been widely accepted, hindered not least by the lack of a fossil record or (so far) evidence of a specific process. I’m aware too that it’s an area of active research.
The main argument that you imply that atheist views - specifically of scientists such as Dawkins - are no different from theistic faith in their (you imply) unshakeable nature - is in my view incorrect. Whilst scientific discourse is protracted, time consuming and no doubt fallible as any human endeavour, I’d argue it is open to new views and approaches backed by evidence, with solid facts and observations. There was no claim his version of the formation of life was absolutely true, just that it was one explanation for how things started.
I addressed some of these points in a longer article last month following the Liddle programme. See ‘A response to The Trouble with Atheism’, which includes a few links to some other more lucid discourses you might find of interest (from both sides of the argument).