QED,evolution

Do we still need evidence for evolution? Evidently,we do,because those whom Dawkins describes as “history-deniers” are more pervasive in their influence than we think. The opinion polls given in the appendix are revealing. In 2008,44 per cent of Americans believed “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so”. In Britain,22 per cent believe “God created human kind pretty much in his/her present form at one time within the last 10,000 years”. This book is full of nuggets,not just in the text,but also in the footnotes. There is one such quote from (British zoologist) Peter Medawar: “The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people,often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes,who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought”.

One wouldn’t have expected such high figures in US and UK. That such high numbers exist is due to teaching of evolution in schools. Dawkins writes in the opening chapter,“The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire….They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word ‘evolution’ systematically expunged,or bowdlerized into ‘change over time’. Once,we were tempted to laugh this kind of thing off as a peculiarly American phenomenon. Teachers in Britain and Europe now face the same problems,partly because of American influence,but more significantly because of the growing Islamic presence in the classroom — abetted by the official commitment to ‘multiculturalism’ and the terror of being thought racist.”

There are three objectives behind this book. First,countering of this dilution of school curricula. Second,since Dawkins’s earlier popular books didn’t directly present evidence for evolution,plug the gap. Third,2009 is a good year. Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago. On the Origin of Species was published 150 years ago.

Thomas Henry Huxley was a British biologist and was described as Darwin’s bulldog because of his spirited defence of evolution. Richard Dawkins has been described as Darwin’s rottweiler. In marshalling evidence for evolution (not exactly as Darwin propounded it,but as the theorum (a Dawkins coinage for something not a hypothesis,but proved) now stands,the rottweiler does extremely well. There are thirteen chapters and one is bombarded with evidence. Each chapter is written extremely well,but one wonders whether evidence couldn’t have been organised better across chapters. There is an impression of the book being a quickie,which it probably was. It is also very British,with Hillaire Belloc,Karen Blixen,A.A. Milne,Cecil Frances Alexander (“All things bright and beautiful”),Joseph Needham,Arthur Conan Doyle,Robert Burns (“Auld Lang Syne”) and Flanders and Swann (Michael Flanders and Donald Swann) thrown in. This is understandable and inevitable. But some of the sarcasm and the wit might be lost trans-Atlantic,the primary target.

There are several anecdotal gems. After a public lecture,J.B.S. Haldane was challenged by a lady,who didn’t believe billions of years were enough time for a single cell to transit to a complicated human body. Haldane retorted,“But madam,you did it yourself. And it only took you nine months.” William Donald Hamilton was an evolutionary biologist and entomologist and several species have been named after him. On an expedition to the Amazon,he was stung by a wasp. “His companion said,‘Bill,do you know the name of that wasp?’ “Yes,” Bill murmured gloomily in his most Eeyoreish voice. ‘As a matter of fact it’s named after me.’”

Dawkins should have the last word. “We are surrounded by endless forms,most beautiful and most wonderful,and it is no accident,but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection – the only game in town,the greatest show on Earth.” A great read and a lot of evidence.