Darwins Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

8/7/2019 Darwins Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

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DARWIN'SD A N G E R O U SI D E A

E V O L U T I O N A N DT H E M E A N I N G S O F L I F E

Danie l C. Denne t t

S I M O N & S C H U S T E R P A P E R B A C K SN ew Y o r k Toronto London Sydney


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To V A N Q U I N Eteacher and fr iend

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1230 Avenue of the Am ericasN ew York, N Y 10020C opyright 1995 by Daniel C . Dennett

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please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales:1-800-456-6798 or [email protected] by Irving Perkins AssociatesM anufactured in the U nited States of A merica17 19 20 18

The Library of C ongress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:Dennett, Daniel Clement.Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life /Daniel C . Dennett.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Natural selection. 2. Evolution (Biology)Philosophy.3. Human evolutionPhilosophy. I. Title .Q H 3 7 5 . D4 5 1995146'.7dc20 94-49158C IP

I S B N 0-684-80290-20-684-8247l - X ( P b k )

The author is grateful for permission to repr int the following copyrighted material:F igure 7.1: 1991 Sidney Harris. R eprinted with permission. A l l rights reserved.

{Continuedat back ofbook)
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Contents

Preface 11P A R T I: S T A R T I N G IN T H E M I D D L E

C H A P T E R O N ETell M e Why 17

1. Is N o thing Sacred? 172. What, Where, , When, Whyand H ow? 233. Locke's "Pro of" of the P rimacy of M i n d 264. H ume's C lose E ncounter 28

C H A P T E R T W OAn Idea Is Born 35

1. What Is So Special About Species? 352. N atural Selection an A wful Stretcher 393. D id Darw in E xplain the Origin o f Species? 424. N atural Selection as an A lgorithm ic Process 485. Processes as A lgorithm s 52

C H A P T E R T H R E EUniversal Acid 61

1. Early Reactions 612. Darwin's A ssault on the C osm ic P yramid 643. T he P rinciple of the A ccumulation of Design 684. T he T oo ls for R and D: Skyhooks or Cranes? 735. Who's Afraid of R eductionism? 80


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8 C O N T E N T S

C H A PT E R FO U RTh e Tree of Life 85

1. H ow Should W e Visualize the T ree of Life? 852. C olor-coding a Species o n the T ree 913. Retrospective C oronations: M itochondr ial Eve and

Invisible Beginnings 964. P atterns, O versimplification, and E xplanation 100

C H A PT E R FI VETh e Possible and the Actual 104

1. G rades o f P ossibility? 1042. The Library of M endel 1073. The Complex Relation Between G enome and O rganism 1134. P ossibility N aturalized 118

C H A PT E R SIXThreads of Actuality in Design Space 124

1. Drifting and Lifting T hro ugh Design Space 1242. F or ced M oves in the G ame of Design 1283. The Unity of Design Space 135

P A R T I I : D A R W IN I A N T H I N K I N G IN B I O L O G YC H A PT E R SE VE NPriming Darwin's Pump 149

1. Back B eyond Darwin's F rontier 1492. M olecular E volution 1553. T he Laws of the G ame of life 1634. Eternal R ecurrence Life W ithout F oundations? 181

C H A PT E R E I G H TBiology Is Engineering 187

1. The Sciences of the A rtificial 1872. D arw in Is Dead Lo ng Live Darw in! 1903. F unctio n and Specification 1954. O riginal Sin and the B irth of M eaning 2005. T he C om puter That Learned to Play C heckers 2076. A rtifact H erm eneutics, o r Reverse Engineering 2127. Stuart K auflman as M eta-E ngineer 220


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Contents 9C H A P T E R N I N ESearching fo r Quality 229

1. T he Po wer of A daptationist T hinking 2292. T he Leibnizian Paradigm 2383. Playing w ith C onstraints 251

C H A P T E R T E NBully fo r Brontosaurus 262

1. The Boy Who Cried Wolf? 2622. T he Spandrel's T hum b 2673. Punctuated Equilibrium: A H opeful M onster 2824. T inker to E vers to C hance: T he B urgess Shale

Double-Play M ystery 299C H A P T E R E L E V E NControversies Contained 313

1. A Clutch of Harmless Heresies 3132. T hree L osers: T eilhard, Lamarck, and P irected

M utation 3203. C uiBo no ? 324

P A R T I I I : M I N D , M E A N I N G , M A T H E M A T I C S , A N D M O R A L I T YC H A P T E R T W E L V EThe Cranes of Culture 335

1. The Monkey's Uncle M eets the M eme 3352. Invasion of the B ody-Snatchers 3423. C ould T here Be a Science of M emetics? 3524. T he P hiloso phical Importance of M emes 361

C H A P T E R T H I R T E E NLosing O ur Minds to Darwin 370

1. The Role of Language in Intelligence 3702. C homsky C ontra Darwin: F our Episodes 3843. N ice T ries 393

C H A P T E R F O U R T E E NThe Evolution of Meanings 401

1. T he Quest for R eal M eaning 4012. T w o Black Boxes 412


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10 C O N T E N T S3. B lock ing the E xits 4194. Safe Passage to the F uture 422

CH AP T E R F I F T E E NThe Emperor's N ew M i n d , an d Other Fables 4281. The Sword in the Stone 4282. The librar y of T oshiba 4373. The Phantom Quantum-Gravity Computer:

Lessons fro m Lapland 444CH AP T E R S I X T E E NOn the Origin of Morality 452

1. E Pluribus Unum? 4532. Friedrich Nietzsche'sJust So Stories 4613. Some Varieties of G reedy E thical R eductionism 4674. Sociobiology: G oo d and Bad , G oo d and Evil 481

C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E NRedesigning Morality 494

1. C an E thics B e N aturalized? 4942. Judging the C om petition 5013. The Moral First A id Manual 505

C H A P T E R E I G H T E E NThe Future oj an Idea 511

1. In Praise of B iodiversity 5112. Universal Acid: Handle with Care 521

Appendix 523Bibliography 525Index 551


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Preface-z^rr vfNT*

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has always fascinated m e,but over the years I have foun d a surprising variety of thinkers wh o cannotcon ceal their discom fort w ith his great idea, ranging fro m nagging skepticism to outright hostility. I have found not just lay people and religiousthinkers, but secular philosophers, psychologists, physicists, and even biologists who wo uld prefer , it seems, that Darwin w e re w ro n g . This book isabout why Darw in's idea is so po wer ful, and w hy it pro m ises not threatenstoput o ur mo st cherished visions of life o n a new foundation.

A few wo rds about method. This bo ok is largely about science but is no titself a w or k o f science. S cience is not don e by quo ting authorities, how evereloquent and eminent, and then evaluating their arguments. Scientists do,how ever, quite pro per ly persist in ho lding forth, in popular and not-so-popular books and essays, putting forward their interpretations o f the wo rkin the lab and the field,and trying to influence their fellow scientists. W h e nI quote them, rh etoric and all, I am doing w hat they are doing: engaging inpersuasion. There is no such thing as a soun d ArgumentfromAuthority, butauthorities can be persuasive, sometimes righdy and sometimes wro ngly. Itry to sort this all out, and I myself d o no t understand all the science that isrelevant to the theor ies I discuss, but, then, neither d o the scientists (withperhaps a few polymath exceptions). Interdisciplinary work has its risks. Ihave gone into the details o f the various scientific issues far enough, I hope ,to let the uninformed reader see just what the issuesare, an d w hy I put theinterpretation o n them that I do , and I have provided plenty of references.

N ames w ith dates refer to full references given in the bibliography at theback o f the bo ok . Instead of providing a glossary o f the techn ical terms u sed,I define them briefly whe n I first use them, and then often clarify theirmeaning in later discussion, so there is a very extensive index, w hich wil l le tyo u survey all occur rences of any term or idea in the book . F oo tnotes arefo r digressions that some but not all readers will appreciate or require.


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12 P R EF A C EO ne thing I have tried todo in this boo k is tomake it po ssible for yo u toread the scientific literature I cite, by providing a unified vision o f the field,along with suggestions about the importance or non-importance of the

contro versies that rage. Som e o f the disputes I bo ldly adjudicate, and othersI leave wide open but place in aframeworkso that yo u can see what theissues are, an d whether it matters to you how they com e o ut. I hope youwil l read this literature, for it is packed with w ond erful ideas. Some of thebooks I cite are amo ng the mo st difficult boo k s I have ever read. I think ofthe boo k s by Stuart Kauffman and R oger P enrose, for instance, but they arepedagogical tours deforce o f highly advanced m aterials, and they can andshould be read by anyone w ho wants to have an informed opinion about theimportant issues they raise. O thers are lessdemanding clear, inform ative,we l l worth some serious effort and still others are not just easy to read buta great delight superb examples o f A rt in the service o f Science. Since yo uare reading this boo k, you have probably already read several of them, so m ygrouping them together here wil l be recomm endation enough: the b o o ksby Graham Cairns-Smith, Bill Calvin, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamo nd, Manfred Eigen, Steve Gould , John Maynard Smith, Steve Pinker, Mark Ridley, andMatt R idley. N o area ofscience has been better served by itsw riters thanevolutionary theory.

Highly technical philoso phical arguments o f the sort m any philosopher sfavor are absent here. That isbecause I have a prior problem todeal with.I have lear ned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often M l o n deafears. I ammyself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous andunanswerable but that are often no t som uch rebutted o r even dismissed assimply ignored. Iam not com plaining about injustice we, all must ignorearguments, and n o d o u b t w e all igno re argum ents that history wil l tell us w eshould have taken seriously. Rather, Iwant to play a more direct role inchanging what is ignorable by w ho m . I want to get think ers in o ther disciplines to take evolutionar y thinking seriously, toshow them how they havebeen underestim ating it, and to show them w hy they have been listening tothe w ro ng sirens. F or this, I have to use mo re artful m ethods. I have to tella story. Y o u don't want to be swayed by a story? Well, I know you won't beswayed by a formal argument; you won't even listen toa formal argumentfo r my conclusion, so I start w her e Ihave to start.T he story I tell is mostly new, but it also pulls together bits and piecesfrom a wide assortment of analyses I've wr itten o ver the last twenty-five

years, dire cted at various controver sies an d quandaries. Som e o f these piecesar e incorporated into the boo k almost w hole, w ith imp rovements, an d others are only alluded to W hat I have m ade visible here is enough of the tipof the iceberg, Ihope, to inform and even persuade the newcomer and atleast challenge my opponents fairly and crisply. I have tried to navigatebetween the Scylla o f glib dismissal and the Charybdis o f grindingly detailed


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Preface 13infighting, and w hene ver I glide swiftly by a con tro versy, I w arn that I amdo ing so, and give the reader references to the op po sition. T he bibliographycould easily have been do ubled, but I have chosen on the principle that anyserious reader needs only one or two entry points into the literature andcan find the rest fro m there.

In the fron t o f his marvelous new book , Metaphysical Myths, MathematicalPractices: The Ontology and Epistemology of the Exact Sciences (Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), my colleague Jody A zzounithanks "the philo sop hy d epartment at T ufts U niversity for providing a near-perfect environment in w hich to do philosophy." I want to second both thethanks and the evaluation. At many universities, philosophy is studied butnot done"philosophy appreciation," one might call it and at many otheruniversities, philosophical research is an arcane activity conducted out ofsight o f the undergraduates and all but the mo st ad vanced postgraduates. A tTufts, w e do philosophy, in the classroom and among our colleagues, andthe results, I think, show that Azzouni's assessment is correct. Tufts hasprovided me w ith excellent studentsand colleagues, and an ideal setting inwhich to work with them. In recent years I have taught an undergraduateseminar o n Darwin and philosophy, in wh ich most of the ideas in this bo okwer e hamm ered out. T he penultimate draft was pr ob ed, criticized, andpolished by a particularly strong seminar of graduate and undergraduatestudents, for whose help I am grateful: Karen Bailey, Pascal Buckley, JohnCabral, Brian C avoto, T im C hambers, Shiraz Cupala, Jennifer F ox, A ngelaGiles, Patrick H awley, Dien H o, M atthew K essler, Chris Lerner, KristinMcGuire , M ichael R idge, Jo hn R oberts, Lee R osenberg, Stacey S chmidt,Rhett Smith, Laura Spiliatakou, and Scott Tanona. The seminar was alsoenriched byfrequentvisitors: Marcel Kinsbourne, B o Dahlbom, David Haig,Cynthia Schossberger, Jeff McConnel l , David Stipp. I alsowant to thank mycolleagues, especially Hugo Bedau, Ge o rge Smith, and S tephen White, for avariety o f valuable suggestions. A nd I must especially thank Alicia Smith, thesecretary at the C enter for C ogn itive Studies, whose virtuoso performanceas a reference-finder, fact-checker, permission-seeker, draft-updater/printer/mailer, an d general coordinator of the wh ole pro ject put wings o n my heels.

I have alsobenefited fro m d etailed com ments fro m those who read mosto r all the penultimate-draft chapters: Bo Dahlbom, Richard Dawkins, DavidHaig, D ou g H ofetadter, N ick H umphrey, R ay Jackendoff, Philip Kitcher, Justin Leiber, Ernst Mayr, Jeff McConnel l , Steve P inker , Sue Stafford, and K imSterelny. A s usual, they are not responsible for any errors they M e d todissuade me from.( A n d if you can't write a good book about evolution w iththe help of this sterling group of editors, you should give up!)

Many others answered crucial questions, and clarified my thinking in


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14 PREFACEdozens o f conversations: R on A mundsen, Robert Axelrod , Jonathan B ennett,Robert B randon, M adeline Caviness , T im C lutton-Bro ck, Leda Cosmides,Helena C ronin, Arthur Danto, Mark De Voto , Marc Feldman, Murray Gell-Mann, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Steve Gould , Danny Hillis, John Holland, Alas-tair Houston , David H oy, Bredo Johnsen, S tu KaufEtnan, C hr is Langton, DickLewontin, John Maynard Smith, Jim M o o r e , R oger P enrose, Joanne P hillips,Robert Richards, Mark an d Matt (the R idley conspecifics), Dick Schacht, JeflFSchank, Elliot Sober, John To oby, R obert Trivers, Peter Van Inwagen, G eorgeWilliams, David Sloan Wilson, Edward O . W ilson , and Bill Wimsatt.

I want to thank my agent, John Brockman, for steering this big projectpast many shoals, and helping me see ways of making it a better book.Thanks alsogo to Terry Zaroflf, whose exper t co py editing caught m any slipsand incon sistencies, and clarified an d unified the expression o f many po ints.A nd Ilavenii Subbiah, who drew the figures, except for Figures 10.3 and10.4, which were created by Mark M c C o n n e l l o n a H ewlett-Packard Apol loworkstation, using Idea.

Last and most important: thanks and love to my wife, Susan, for heradvice, love, and support.DANIEL DENNETTSeptember 1994


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, ^ A V J ^ * . .

P A R T I

S T A R T I N G I N T H EM I D D L E

Neurath h a s likened science t o a boat which, i f w e a r e t o rebuild i t t w emust rebuildplank b y plank while staying afloat i n i t . T h e philosophera n d t h e scientist a r e i n t h e same boat....

Analyze theory-building h o w w e will, w e a l l must start i n t h e middle.O u r conceptual Srsts a r e middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, a n do u r introduction t o them a n d t o everything comes midway i n t h ecultural evolution o f t h e race. I n assimilating this cultural fare w e a r elittle more aware o f a distinction between report a n d invention, substance a n d style, cues a n d conceptualization, than w e a r e o f a distinction between t h e proteins a n d t h e carbohydrates o f o u r material intake.Retrospectively w e m a y distinguish t h e components o f heory-building,a s w e distinguish t h e proteins a n d carbohydrates while subsisting o nthem.

WiiiAJtD V A N O R M A N Q U I N E I960, p p . 4 - 6


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C H A P T E R O N ETell M e W hy->yr w^

1. Is N O T H I N G S A C R E D ?We used to s ing a lot w hen I was a child, aro und the campfire at summ ercamp, at scho ol and Sunday schoo l, o r gathered around the p iano at hom e.O ne of my favorite songs was "Tell M e Why." ( F o r those whose personalmemories don't already embrace this little treasure, the music is providedin the appendix. T he simple melody and easy harmony line are surprisinglybeautiful.)

Tell me why the stars do shine,Tell me why the ivy twines,Tell me why the sky's so blue.Then I will tell you just w hy I love yo u.Because G od made the stars to shine,Because G od made the ivy twine,Because G od made the sky so blue.Because G od made yo u, that'swhy I love you.This straightforward, sentimental declaration still brings a lump to mythroatso sweet, so inno cent, so reassuring a vision o f life!A nd then along comes Darwin and spoils the picnic. O r does he? That isthe topic of this book. From the moment of the publication of Origin of

Species in 1859, C harles Darw in's fundamental idea has insp ired intensereactions rangingfromferocious condem nation to ecstatic allegiance, sometimes tantamount to religious zeal. Darwin's theory has been abused andmisrepresented byfriendand foe alik e. It has bee n misappropriated to lendscientific resp ectability to app alling po litical and social do ctrines. It hasbeen pilloried in caricature by opponents, some of whom would have i t


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18 T E L L M E W H Ycompete in our children's schoo ls w ith "creation science," a pathetic ho dgepodge of pious pseudo-science.1

Almost no on e is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. T he Darw inian theo ry is a scientific theor y, and a great on e, but that is no t a ll it is.T he creationists who oppose it so bitterly are right about one thing: Darwin's dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our m ost fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted,even to themselves.

T he sweet, sim ple vision of the song, taken literally, is on e that most of ushave o utgrow n, however fondly we may recall it . Th e kindly G o d wholovingly fashioned each and every o ne of us (all creatures great and small)and sprink led the sky w ith shining stars for our delightthat G o d is, lik eSanta Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adultcould literally b elieve in . That G o d must either be turned into a sym bo l forsomething less concrete or abandoned altogether.

N o t all scientistsan d ph ilosop her s are atheists, and many who are believers declare that their idea o f G o d can live in peaceful coexistence with, oreven find support from, th e Darwinian frameworko f ideas. Theirs is not ananthropomorphic Handicrafter G o d , but still a G o d wo rthy of worship intheir eyes, capable o f giving conso lation and m eaning to their lives. O thersground their highest con cern s in entirely secular p hilosop hies, viewsof themeaning of life that stave off despair without the aid of any concept of aSuprem e B eing other than the U niverse itself. So mething is sacred to thesethinkers, but they do not call it G o d ; they call it, perhaps, Life, o r Love, o rG oo dness, or Intelligence, or B eauty, or H umanity. W hat bo th gro ups share,in spite of the differences in their deepest creeds, is a conviction that lifedoes have meaning, that goodness matters.

B ut can any ver sion o f this attitude of wo nder and purpo se be sustainedin the face of Darwinism? From the outset, there have been those w hothought they saw D arw in letting the w or st possible cat out o f the bag:nihilism. They thought that if Darwin was right, the implication w o u ld bethat n othing co uld be sacred. T o put it bluntly, nothing co uld have anypoint. Is this just an overreaction? What exactly are the implications ofDarwin's idea and, in any case, has it be en scientifically proven o r is it still"just a theory"?Perhaps, yo u m ay think, w e co uld m ake a useful d ivision: there are theparts of Darwin's idea that really are established beyond any reasonabledoubt, and then there are the speculative extensions of the scientifically

1.1 w ill not devote any space in this bo ok to cataloguing the deepflaws n creationism,or supporting my peremptory condemnation of it. I take that job to have been admirablydone by Kitcher 1982, Futuyma 1983, Gilkey 1985, and others.


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Is Nothing Sacred? 19irresistible parts. Thenif we wer e lucky perhaps the r ock -solid scientificfacts w o uld have no stunning implications about r eligion, or human nature,o r the meaning o f life, wh ile the parts of D arwin's idea that get peo ple allupset co uld be put into quarantine as highly contro versial extensions of, ormere interpretations of, the scientifically irresistible parts. That would bereassuring.

B ut alas, that is just about backw ards. T her e are vigoro us con trov ersiesswirling around in evolutionary theory, but those who feel threatened byDarwinism should not take heart from this fact. Mostif not quite allofthe controversies concern issues that are "just science ,,; no matter whichside wins, the outcome will not undo the basic Darwinian idea. That idea,which is about as secure as any in science, really does have far-reachingimplications for our vision of what the meaning of life is or could be.In 1543, C op ernicus pro po sed that the Earth was not the center of theuniverse but in fact revolved around the Sun. It took over a century forthe idea to sink in, a gradual and actually rather painless transformation.( T h e religious reform er P hilipp M elanchthon, a collaborator of MartinLuther, opined that "some Christian prince" should suppress this madman,but aside fro m a few such salvos, the w o rld was not particularly shaken byCopernicus himself.) T he C op ern ican R evolution did eventually have itso w n "shot heard round the world": Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the TwoChief World Systems, but it was not published until 1632, when the issuewas no longer controversial among scientists. G alileo's projectile pro vok edan infamous response by the R om an C atholic Church, setting up a shockwave whose reverberations are only now dying out. But in spite of thedrama of that epic confrontation, the idea that our planet is not the centerof creatio n has sat rather lightly in people's minds. Every schoolchild todayaccepts this as the matter o f fact it is, w ithout tears o r terro r.

In due cour se, the Darwinian R evolution will com e to o ccupy a similarlysecure and untr oub led place in the mindsand heartsof every educatedperso n o n the globe, but today, m ore than a century after Darwin's death,we still have no t co m e to terms with its mind-boggling implications. U nlikethe Copernican Revolution, wh ich d id not engage widespread pu blic attention until the scientific details had been largely sorted out, the DarwinianRevolution has had anxious lay spectators and cheerleaders taking sidesfrom the outset, tugging at the sleeves of the participants and encouraginggrandstanding. The scientists themselves have been moved by the samehopes and fears, so it is not surprising that the relatively narrow conflictsamong theorists have often been not just blown up out of proport ion bytheir adherents, but seriously distorted in the process. Everybody has seen,dimly, that a lot is at stake.Moreover , although Darwin's own articulation of his theory was monumental, and its pow ers wer e imm ediately reco gnized by many of the scien-


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20 T E L L M E W H Ytists and other thinkers o f his day, there really wer e large gaps in his theorythat have o nly recently begun to be properlyfilled n. T he biggest gap look salmo st co m ical in retro spect. In all his brilliant musings, Darwin never hitup on the central concept, w ithout w hich the theory of evo lution is hopeless:the concept of a gene. Darwin had no pr oper unit of heredity, and so hisaccount of the process of natural selection was p lagued w ith entirely reasonable doubts about whether it w ou ld w o r k . Darwin suppo sed that offspringwould always exhibit a sort of blend or average of their parents' features.Wouldn't such "blending inheritance" always sim ply average o ut all differences, turning everything into uniform gray? H ow co uld diversity survivesuch relentless averaging? Darwin recognized the seriousness o f this challenge, an d neither he nor his many ardent suppor ters succeeded in respondin g with a descript ion of a convincing an d well-docum ented mechanism ofheredity that cou ld com bine traits of parents w hile maintaining an underlying and unchanged identity. T he idea they needed was r ight at hand, uncovered ("formulated" w o uld be too strong) by the m onk G regor M endel andpublished in a relatively o bscure Austrian journal in 1865, but, in the best-savored iro ny in the history o f science, it lay there un no ticed un til its im portance was appreciated (at first dimly) around 1900. Its triumphantestablishment at the heart o f the "Modern Synthesis" (i n effect, th e synthesisof Me n d e l and D arwin) was eventually made secure in the 1940s, thanks tothe wo rk o f T heodo sius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, an d others.It has taken another half-century to i ron out most of the w rinkles o f that newfabric.

T he fundamental core of contempo rary Darwinism, the theory of D N A -based reproduction an d evolution, is now beyon d dispute am ong scientists.It demonstrates its po w er every day, con tributing crucially to the explanation o f planet-sized factso f geology an d meteorology, through middle-sizedfacts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts o fgenetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planetinto a single grand story, like Gulliver t ied dow n in Lilliput, it is unbudge-able, no t because of some one or two huge chains of argument that mightho pe against hope have w eak links in them, but because it is securely tiedby hundr eds of thousands of threads of evidence ancho ring it to virtuallyevery other area of human knowledge. New discoveries may conceivablylead to dramatic, even "revolutionary" shifts in the Darwinian theory, butthe hope that it wil l be "refuted" by some shattering breakthrough is aboutas reasonable as the ho pe that w e w ill return to a geocen tric vision anddiscard C opernicus.

Still, the theory is embroiled in remarkably hot-tempered controversy,an d one of the reasons for this incandescence is that these debates aboutscientific matters are usually distorted by fears that the "wrong" answerw o uld have intolerable moral implications. So great are these fears that the y


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Is Nothing Sacred? 21are ca refu lly left unarticulated, displaced from attention by several layers ofdistracting r ebuttal and counter-rebuttal. T he disputants are forever changing the subject slightly, conveniently keeping the bogeys in the shadows. Itis this m isdirection that is mainly respon sible for p ostpo ning the day w henwe can all live as com fortably w ith our new biolo gical perspective as w e d owith the astronomical perspective Copernicus gave us.

Whenever Darwinism is the top ic, the temp erature rises, because m or e isat stake than just the empirical facts about how life on Earth evolved, or thecorr ect logic of the theory that accounts for those facts. One of the pr eciousthings that is at stake is a vision of what it means to ask, and answer, thequestion "Why?" Darwin's new perspective turns several traditional assumptions upside do w n, und erm ining ou r standard ideas about what ought tocou nt as satisfying answers to this anpient and inescapable que stion . H er escience and philoso phy get co m pletely intertwined. Scientists sometimesdeceive themselves into thinking that p hilosop hical ideas are on ly, at best,decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs o fscience, and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no such thing asphilosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggageis taken o n board without examination.

T he Darwinian R evolution is bo th a scientific and a philoso phical revolution, and neither revo lution could have occurred without the other. A s w eshall see, it was the philosophical prejudices of the scientists, more thantheir lack of scientific evidence, that prevented them from seeing how thetheory co uld actually wo rk , but those philoso phical prejudices that had tobe overthro wn w ere too deeply entrenched to be dislodged by mere philosophical brilliance. It took an irresistible parade of hard-won scientific factsttf force thinkers to take seriously the weird new outlook that Darwinproposed. T ho se w ho are still ill-acquainted w ith that beautiful pro cessioncan be forgiven their continued allegiance to the pre-Darwinian ideas. A ndthe battle is not yet over; even among the scientists, there are pockets ofresistance.

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the singlebest idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead o f N ewton andEinstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution bynatural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with therealm o f space and tim e, cause and effect, m echanism and physical law. B utit is not just a wonderful scientific idea. It is a dangerous idea. M y admirationfor Darwin's magnificent idea is un bo und ed, but I, too , ch erish m any o f theideas and ideals that it seems to challenge, and want to pro tect them. F orinstance, I want to pr otect the campfire song, and what is beautiful and tr uein it, for my little grandson and his friends,and for their children when theygrow up . T her e are m any mor e m agnificent ideas that are also jeopard ized,


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22 T E L L M E W H Yit seems, by Darw in's idea, and they, too, may need pro tection. T he onlygo o d way to d o thisthe on ly way that has a chance in the lon g runis tocut throug h the smok escreens and loo k at the idea as unflinchingly, asdispassionately, as possible.O n this occasion, we are not going to settle fo r "There, there, it will allcome out al l right." O ur examination will take a certain amount of nerve.Feelings may get hurt. Writers on evolution usually steer clear of this apparent clash between science and rel igion. F ools rush in , A lexander P opesaid, where angels fear to tread. D o you want to follow me? Don't yo u reallywant to k no w w hat survives this confrontation? What if it turns out that thesweet vision or a better one survives intact, strengthened an d deepenedby the encounter? W ouldn't it be a shame to forgo the oppo rtunity for astrengthened, r enew ed cre ed, settling instead for a fragile,sickbe d faith thatyo u mistakenly supposed must not be disturbed?

There is n o future in a sacred m yth. W hy not? B ecause of our curiosity.Because, as the song reminds us, we want to know why. We may haveoutgrown the song's answer, but w e wil l never outgrow the q uestion. Whatever we hold precious, we cannot protect it from our curiosity, becausebeing who w e are , one of the things w e deem pr ecious is the truth. O ur loveof truth is surely a central element in the meaning we find n our lives. In anycase, the idea that w e might preserve m eaning by kidd ing ourselves is amore pessimistic, more nihilistic idea than I for one can stomach. If thatwere the best that co uld be do ne, I w o uld co nclude that no thing matteredafter all.

This book , then, is fo r those w ho agree that the o nly meaning o f life w o r t hcaring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to exam ine it. O ther sare advised to close the bo ok now and tiptoe away.F or those who stay, here is the plan. Part I of the book locates theDarwinian Revolution in the larger scheme of things, showing how it cantransform the w orld-view of those who know its details. Thisfirstchapter

setsout the background o f philosophical ideas that dom inated o ur thoughtbefore Darwin. Chapter 2 introduces Darwin's central idea in a somewhatnew guise, as the idea of evo lution as an algorithmicprocess, and clears upsome common misunderstandings of it . Chapter 3 shows how this ideaoverturn s the tradition encountered in chapter 1. Chapters 4 and 5 exploresome of the strikingand unsettling perspectives that the Darwinian w ayof thinking opens up.

Part II examines the challenges to D arwin's ideato neo-Dar winism orthe M o d e r n Synthesisthat have arisen within biology itself, showing thatcontrary to what some of its o ppo nents have declared, Darw in's idea survives these controversies not just intact but strengthened. Part III thenshows what happens w hen the same thinking is extended to the species w ecare about m ost: Homo sapiens. Darwin himself fully recognized that this


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What, Where, When, Whyand How? 23was going to be the stick ing point for many peop le, and he d id what hecould to break the news gendy. M o r e than a century later, there are stillthose who want to dig a moat separating us from most if not all of thedreadful implications they think they see in Darwinism. Part III shows thatthis is an error of both fact and strategy; not only does Darw in's dangerousidea apply to us direcdy and at many levels, but the p ro per application ofDarwinian thinking to human issuesof mind, language, knowledge, andethics, for instanceilluminates them in ways that have always eluded thetraditional approaches, recasting ancient problems and pointing to theirsolution. Finally, we can assess the bargain we get wh en w e trade in pre-Darwinian fo r Darwinian thinking, identifying bo th its uses and abuses, andshow ing ho w what really matters to us and ought to matter to usshinesthrough, transformed but enhanced by its passage through the Darw inianRevolution.

2. W H A T , W H E R E , W H E N , W H Y A N D H O W ?O u r curiosity about things takes different forms, as Aristode noted at thedawn of human science. H is pioneering effort to classify them still makes alot of sense. H e identified four basic questions w e might want answeredabout anything, and called their answers the four aitia, a tru ly untranslatable G reek term traditionally but awkw ardly translated the four "causes."

(1 ) W e may be cu riou s about what som ething is made of, its matter o rmaterial cause.(2 ) W e may be curious about the form (or structure or shape) that thatmatter takes, its formal cause.

(3 ) W e may be cur ious about its beginning, ho w it got started, or itsefficient cause.(4 ) W e may be curious about it s purpose o r goal o r en d (as in "Do theends justify the means?"), which Aristode called its telos, sometimestranslated in English, aw kw ard ly, as "final cause."

It takes some pinch ing and shoving to make these four Aristotelian aitialine up as the answers to the standard E nglish questions "what, w here,when, and why." The fit is only fitfully good. Questions beginning with"why," how ever, do standardly a s k f o r Aristode's fourth "cause," the telos o fa thing. W h y this? we ask. What is it for? A s the French say, wh at is its raisond'etre, or reason for being? F or hundreds of years, these "why" questionshave been recognized as problematic by philosophers and scientists, sodistinct that the topic they raise deserves a name: teleology.


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24 T E L L M E W H YA teleological explanation is one that explains the existence or occurren ce of som ething by citing a goal or pur pose that is served b y the thing.Artifacts are the m ost obvious cases; the go al or pur pose o f an artifact is the

function it was designed to serve by its creator. There is no controversyabout the telos o f a hammer: it is for ham mering in and pulling out nails. T hetelos of m or e com plicated artifacts, such as cam cord ers o r tow trucks or C Tscanners, is if anything mo re o bvious. B ut even in sim ple cases, a problemca n be seen to loo m in the background:

"Why are you sawing that board?""To make a door.""And what is the door for?""To secure my house.""And why do you w ant a secure house?""So I can sleepnights.""And why do you want to sleep nights?""Go run along and stopasking such silly questions."

This exchange reveals one of the troubles with teleology: where does itall stop? "Whatfinalfinalcause ca n be cited to bring this hierarchy of reasonsto a close? A ristotle had an answer: G o d , the Prime Mover , ihtfor-which toend all for-whiches. T he idea, w hich is taken up by the Christian, Jewish,an d Islamic trad ition s, is that all our purposes are ultimately God's purposes.T he idea is certainly natural and attractive. If we look at a pock et watch an dwonder why it has a clear glass crystal on its face, the answer obviouslyharks back to the needs an d desires of the users of watches, wh o want to te lltim e, by lo ok ing at the hands through the transparent, protective glass, an dso forth. If it weren't for these facts about us, for whom the watch wascreated, there would be no explanation of the "why" of its crystal. If theuniverse was cr eated by G o d , fo r God's purpo ses, then all the purpo ses w eca n find in it must ultimately be due to God's purposes. B ut what are G od'spurposes? That is something of a mystery.

O ne way of deflecting discomfort about that mystery is to switch thetopic slightly. Instead of responding to the "why" question with a"because"-type answer (the sort of answer it seems to demand), peopleoften substitute a "how" question for the "why" question, and attempt toanswer it by telling a story about how it came to be that G o d created usand the rest o f the universe, without dw elling overm uch on just why G o dmight want to have done that. The "how" question does not get separatebilling on Aristotle's list, but it was a popular question and answer longbefore A ristotle und ertoo k his analysis. T he answers to the biggest "how"questions are cosmogonies, stories about how the cosmos, the whole universe and all its denizens, came into existence. The book o f Genes is i s


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What, Where, When, Whyand How? 25a cosmogony, but there are many others. Cosmologists exploring thehypothesis of the Big Bang, and speculating about b lack holes and super-strings, are present-day creators of cosmogonies. Not all ancient cosmogonies follow the pattern of an artifact-maker. Som e involve a "w orld egg"laid in "the D eep" by one m ythic bird or another, and some involve seeds'being sown and tended. Human imagination has only a few resources todraw upon when faced with such a mind-boggl ing question. One earlycreation myth speaks of a "self-existent Lord" w ho , "with a thought, created the waters, and deposited in them a seed which became a goldenegg, in which egg he himself is torn as Brahma, the progenitor of theworlds" ( M u ir 1972, vo l. IV, p. 26).

A nd what's the p o int o f all this egg-laying o r seed-sow ing o r w o rld -building? O r , for that m atter, what's the po int o f the B ig Bang? T oday'scosmologists, like many of their predecessors throughout history, tell adiverting story, b ut prefer to sidestep the ''why" q uestion of teleology. Doesthe universe exist for any reason? D o reasons play any intelligible ro le inexplanations o f the cosmos? C o u ld something exist fo r a reason without itsbeing somebody's reason? O r are reasons A ristotle's type (4 ) causesonly appropriate in explanations of the w ork s and deeds of people o r otherrational agents? If G od is n ot a person , a rational agent, an Intelligent Artificer, what possible sense could the biggest "why" que stion make? And if thebiggest ''why" question doesn't make any sense, how could any smaller,m o r e parochial, "why" questions make sense?

O ne o f Darwin's most fundamental contributions is showing us a newway to make sense o f "why" questions. Like it o r n ot, Darw in's idea offerson e way a clear, cogent, astonishingly versatile way of dissolving theseold conundrums. It takes some getting used to, and is often misapplied, evenby its staunchest friends. Gradually exposing and clarifying this way ofthinking is a central pro ject o f the present book . Darwinian thinking mustbe carefully distingu ished from some over sim plified and all-too-popular impostors, and this wil l take us into som e technicalities, b ut it is w o rt h it. T heprize is, for the first time, a stable system of explanation that does not goround and round in circles or spiral off in an infinite regress o f m ysteries.Some people would much prefer the infinite regress of mysteries, appar-endy, but in this day and age the cost is prohibitive: you have to get yourselfdeceived. Y ou can either d eceive yourself or let others do the dirty w o r k ,but there is no intellectually defensible way of rebuilding the mighty barriers to com prehension that Darwin smashed.Thefirststep to appreciating this aspect of Darwin's co ntribution is to seehow the w or ld loo k ed before he inver ted it . By looking through the eyes o ftwo of his countrymen, John Locke and David H um e, w e can get a clearvision o f an alternative wo rld-view stil l very mu ch w ith us in m any quartersthat Darwin render ed obsolete .


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26 T E L L M E W H Y

3 . L O C K E ' S " P R O O F " O F T H E P R I M A C Y O F M I N DJohn Locke invented common sensey and only Englishmen have had itever since!

BERTRAND RUSSELL2

John Locke, a contemporary o f "the incomparable M r. N ewton," was on eof the founding fathers of British Empiricism, and, as befits an Empiricist, hewas not much given to ded uctive arguments of the rationalist sort, but on eof his uncharacteristic forays into "pfoof' deserves to be quoted in full,since it perfectly illustrates the blockade to imagination that was in placebefore the Darw inian R evolution . T he argument may seem strange andstilted to moder n minds, but bear w ith it con sider it a sign of ho w far w ehave come since then. Locke himself thought that he was just remindingpeople of something obvious! In this passage from his Essay ConcerningHuman Understanding (1690, IV, x, 10), Locke wanted to prove something that he thought all people knew in their hearts in any case: that "in thebeginning" there was Mind. H e began by asking him self what, if anything,was eternal:

If, then, there must be som ething eternal, let us see wjiat sort o f Being itmust be. And to that it is very obvious to Reason, that it must necessarilybe a cogitative Being. For it is as impossible to conceive that ever bareincogitative M atter should prod uce a think ing intelligent B eing, as thatnothing shou ld o f itself produce MatterLocke begins his proof by alluding to one of philosophy's most ancient

and oft-used maxims, Ex nibilo nihil fit: nothing can com e from nothing.Since this is to be a deductive argument, he must set his sights high: it is no tjust u nlikely or implausible or hard to fathom but impossible to conceivethat "bare incogitative Matter should produce a thinking intelligent Being."The argument pro ceeds by a series o f mounting steps:

2, Gilbert Ryle recounted this typical bit of Russellian hyperbole to me. In spite of Ryle'sown distinguished career as Waynflete Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, he and Russellhad seldom met, he told m e, in large measure because Russell steered clear of academicphilosophy after the Second World War. O nce, however, R yle found himself sharing acompartment w ith R ussell on a tedious train journ ey, and, trying desperately to makeconversation with his world-famous fellow traveler, Ryle asked him why he thoughtLocke, wh o was neither as original nor as good a writer as Berkeley, Hume, or Reid, hadbeen so much more influential than they in the English-speaking philosophical world.This had been his reply, and the beginning o f the o nly good conversation, Ryle said, thathe ever had with Russell.


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Locke's "Proof of the Primacy of Mind 27Let us suppose any parcel of Matter eternal, great or small, we shallfind t,in itself, able to prod uce nothing M atter then, by its ow n strength,cannot pro duce in itself so much as Motion: the Motion it has, must alsobefrom Eternity, or else be produced, and added to Matter by some otherBeing mo re pow erful than M atter But let us suppose M otion eternaltoo: yet Matter, incogitative Matter and Motion, whatever changes it m ightproduce of Figure and Bulk, could never produce Thought: Knowledgewill still be as far beyond the p ow er of Motion and M atter to p rod uce, asMatter is beyond the power of nothing or nonentity to produce. And Iappeal to everyone's own thoughts, whether he cannot as easily conceiveMatter pro duced by nothing, as Tho ught pro duced by pure Matter, whenbefore there w as n o such thing as Tho ught, or an intelligent B eing existi n g . . . .It is interesting to note that Lo ck e decid es he may safely "appeal toeveryone's own thoughts" to secure this "conclusion." H e was sure that his"common sense" was truly common sense. Don't we see how obvious it isthat whereas matter and motion could produce changes of "Figure and

Bulk," they could never pr od uce "Thought"? W ouldn't this rule o ut theprospect of robotsor at least robots that would claim to have genuineT houghts amon g the m otions in their m aterial heads? C ertainly in Locke'sdayw hich was also Descartes's daythe very idea o f Artificial Intelligencewas so close to unthinkable that Locke co uld confidently expect unanimousendorsement o f this appeal to his audience, an appeal that w o uld risk hootso f derision today.3 A nd as we shall see, the field of Artificial Intelligence isa quite direct descendant of Darwin's idea. Its birth, which was all butpro phesied by D arw in himself, w as attended by one of the first truly impressive demonstrations of the formal power of natural selection (Art Samuel's legendary checkers-playing program, w hich will be described in somedetail later). A nd both evolution and AI inspire the same loathing in manypeo ple w ho should k no w better, as w e shall see in later chapters. B ut backto Locke's conclusion:

So if we will suppose nothing f irst ,or eternal: M atter can never begin to be:If we suppose bare M atter, without M otion, eternal: M otion can neverbegin to be: If we suppose only Matter and Motion first, or eternal: T houghtcan never beg in to be . F o r i t is imp oss ible to co nceive that M atter e itherw i th o r wi thout M ot i o n co u l d ha ve or i g ina lly in a nd fr om it se lf Sense,

3. Descartes's inability tp think of Thought as Matter in Motion is discussed at length inmy book ConsciousnessExplained (1991a).John H augeland's aptly titled bo ok , ArtificialIntelligence The Very Idea (1985 ), is afine ntro duction to the ph ilosop hical paths thatmake this idea thinkable after all.


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28 T E L L M E W H YPerception, and Knowledge, as is evident from hence, that then Sense,Perception, a n d K now ledge must be a property eternally inseparable fromM atter and every particle of it.S o , if Locke is right, Mind must come first or at least tied for first Itcould not come into existence at some later date, as an effect of someconfluence of more modest, mindless phenomena. This purports to be anentirely secular, logicalone might almost say mathematicalvindication

o f a centr al aspect o f Judeo-Christian (and also Islamic) cosmogony: in thebeginning was som ething w ith Mind"a cogitative B eing," as L ock e says.T h e traditional idea that G o d is a rational, thinking agent, a Designer andBuilder of the wo r l d , is here given the highest stamp o f scientific approval:like a mathematical theorem, its denial is supposedly impossible to conceive.

A n d so it seemed to many brilliant a n d skeptical thinkers b efore Darwin.Almost a hundred years after Locke, another great B ritish E mp iricist, DavidHume, confronted the issue again, in one of the masterpieces of Westernphilosophy, his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779).

4 . H U M E ' S C L O S E E N C O U N T E RNatural religion, in H ume's day, meant a religion that was supp or ted by thenatural sciences, as opposed to a "revealed" religion, which wo uld dependo n revelation on mystical experience or some other uncheckable sourceo f conviction. I f your only grounds fo r your religiou s belief is " G o d to ld meso in a dream," your r eligion is not natural religion. T he distinction wo uldnot have made much sense before the dawn of modern science in theseventeenth century, w hen science created a new, and com petitive, standard of evidence for all belief. It opened up the question:

C a n you give us any scientific grounds for your religious beliefs?Many religious thinkers, appreciating that the prestige of scientificthought wasother things being equala worthy aspiration, took up thechallenge. It is hard to see why anybody would want to shun scientificconfirmation o f one's creed, if it wer e there to be had. T he overwhelming

favorite am ong p urp or tedly scientific arguments for religious conclusions,then and now, was one version or another of the ArgumentfromDesign*,among the effectsw e can objectively observe in the world , there are manythat a r e not (cannot be , f o r various reaso ns) m ere accidents; they m ust havebeen designed to be as they are, and there cannot be design without aDesigner; therefore, a Designer, G o d , must exist (or have existed), as thesource o f a l l these wonderful effects.


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Hume's Close Encounter 29Such an argument can be seen as an attempt at an alternate route toLocke's con clusion, a route that will take us through somewhat mo re em

pirical detail instead of relying so bluntly and direcdy on what is deemedinconceivable. The actual features of the o bserved designs may be analyzed,fo r instance, to secure the grounds for our appreciation of the wisdom ofthe Designer, and our co nvictio n that mere chance co uld not be responsiblefo r these marvels.In Hume's Dialogues, three fictional characters pursue the debate withconsummate w it and vigor . Cleanthes defends the A rgum ent fro m Design,an d gives it one of its most eloquent expressions.4 Here is his openingstatement o f it:

Look roun d the world: C ontemplate the who le and every part of it: Y o uwillfind t to be nothing bu t one great m achine, subdivided into an infinitenumber of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degreebeyond what human senses and facultiescan trace and explain. A ll thesevarious machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to eachother w ith an accuracy w hich ravishes into admiration all men w ho haveever contemplated them. T he curio us adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles, exacdy, though it much exceeds, the pro ductions of human contrivanceof human design, thought, wisdom, andintelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led toinfer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble, and that theAuthor of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, pro por tioned to the grandeur of the wo rkwhich he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do w e pro ve at once the existence of a Deity and his similarityto human mind and intelligence. [Pt. II.]

Philo, a skeptical challenger to Cleanthes, elaborates the argument, sett ing it up for dem olition. Anticipating Paley's famous example, Philo notes:"Throw several pieces o f steel together, without shape or form; they willnever arrange themselves so as to compose a watch."5 H e goes on: "Stone,an d mo rtar, and w oo d, w ithout an architect, never erect a house. B ut the

4. William Paley carried the ArgumentfromDesign into much greater b iolog ical detail inhis 1803 book, Natural Theology, adding many ingeniousflourishes.Paley's influentialversion was the actual inspiration and target of Darwin's rebuttal, but H ume's Cleanthescatches all of the argument's logical and rhetorical force.5. G jertsen points o ut that two millennia earlier, Cicero used the same example for thesame purpose: "When you see a sundial or a w ater-clock, yo u see that it tells the time bydesign and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole isdevoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?" (Gjertsen 1989, p. 199).


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30 T E L L M E W H Yideas in a human mind, w e see, by an unk now n, inexplicable econo my,arrange themselves so as to form the plan of a watch o r house. E xperience,therefore, proves, that there is an original principle o f order in mind, not inmatter" (Pt. II).N ote that the ArgumentfromDesign depends o n an inductive inference:where there's smoke, there'sfire;and w here there's design, there's mind.B ut this is a dubiou s inference, P hilo observes: hum an intelligence is

no more than one of the springs and principles of the universe, as w ell asheat or cold, attraction or repulsion, and a hundred others, which fallunder daily ob servation But can a conclusion, w ith any propriety, betransferred fro m parts to the w ho le?. . . From observing the growth of ahair, can we learn any thing co ncerning the generation of a man?.. .Whatpeculiar pr ivilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought,that we must thus make it the m odel of the whole un iverse? .. . Admirableconclusion! Stone, wood, brick, iron, brass have not, at this time, in thisminute globe of earth, an order or arrangement without human art. andcontrivance: Therefore the universe could not originally attain its orderand arrangement, w ithou t something similar to human art. [Pt. II.]

Besides, Philo observes, if we put mind as the firstcause, w ith its "unknown,inexplicable economy," this only postpones the pro blem :W e are still obliged to mount higher, in order to find the cause of thiscause, w hich yo u had assigned as satisfactory and conclusive H owtherefore shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the cause of that Being,who m you suppose the Author of nature, or , according to your system ofanthropomorphism, the ideal world, into which you trace the material?Have we not the same reason to trace that ideal world into another idealworld, o r new intelligent principle? But if we stop, and go no farther; whygo so far? Why not stop at the material world? H ow can we satisfy ourselveswithout going o n in infinitum? A nd after all, what satisfaction is there inthat infinite progression? [Pt. IV.]Cleanthes has no satisfactory responses to these rhetorical question s, andthere is worse to come. Cleanthes insists that G od's mind is like the human a n d agrees w hen P hilo adds "the liker the better." B ut, then, P hilo

presses on , is G od's mind perfect, "free fr o m every error, mistake, o r inco heren ce in his undertakings" (P t. V)? There is a rival hypothesis to rule out:

A nd what surpr ise must we entertain, when we findhim a stupid mechanic,who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long successionof ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, andcontroversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have


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Hume's Close Encounter 31been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system wasstruck out: Much labour lost: Many fruitless trials made: A nd a slow, butcontinued improvement carried on during infinite ages of world-making.[Pt. V.]

W h e n Philo presents this fanciful alternative, with its breathtaking anticipations of Darwin's insight, he doesn't take it seriously except as a debatingfoil to Cleanthes' vision of an all-wise Artificer. H u m e uses it only to makea point about what he saw as the limitations on our knowledge: "In suchsubjects, w ho can determine, wh ere the truth; nay, w ho can co njecturewhere the probability, lies; amidst a great num ber o f hypotheses wh ich maybe pro posed, and a still greater number w hich may be imagined" (Pt. V ).

Imagination ru ns riot, and, exp loiting that fecundity, P hilo ties Cleanthesup in knots, devising weird and comical variations on Cleanthes' own hypotheses, defying Cleanthes to show why his own version should be preferred. (


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32 T E L L M E W H Ya new species of analogy, even in our globe. A nd were there a planetwholly inhabited by spiders (w hich is very po ssible ), this inference wouldthere appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribesthe origin of all things to design and intelligence, as explained by Cleanthes. Why an orderly system may not be spun fromthe belly as w ell as f ro mthe brain, it w ill be difficult for him to give a satisfactory reason. [Pt. VII.]Cleanthes resists these onslaughts gamely, but Philo shows fatalflaws nevery version o f the argument that C leanthes can devise. A t the very end o fthe Dialogues, how ever, P hilo surprises us by agreeing w ith C leanthes:. . . the legitimate conclusion is th at .. . if we are not contented w ith callingthe firstand supreme cause a God or Deity, but desire to vary the expression, what can we call him but Mind o r Thought to which he is justlysupposed to bear a considerable resemblance? [Pt. XII.]Philo is surely Hume's mouthpiece in the Dialogues. Why did H u m e cavein? O ut of fear o f reprisal fro m the establishment? N o . H um e knew he hadshow n that the ArgumentfromDesign was an irreparablyflawedbridge be

tween science and re ligion, and he arranged to have his D ialogues publishedafter his death in 1776 pr ecisely in o rd er to save himselffrompersecution.H e caved in because he just couldn't imagine any other explanation o f theorigin of the m anifest design in nature. H ume could not see ho w the "curiousadapting o f means to ends, througho ut all nature" could be due to chancean d if no t chance, what?

What co uld p ossibly account for this high-quality design if not an intelligent God? P hilo is one of the mo st ingenious and resourceful com petitorsin any philosop hical debate, real o r imaginary, an d he makes some wonderfu l stabs in the dark, hun ting for an alternative. In Part VIII, he dreams upsome speculations that come tantalizingly close to scooping Darwin (andsome more recent Darwinian elaborations) by nearly a century.

Instead of suppo sing matter infinite, as Epicurus did, let us suppose it finite.A finitenumber of particles is only susceptible of finitetranspositions: A ndit must happen, in an eternal duration, that every po ssible order o r positionmust be tried an infinite number of t im es Is there a system, an order, aneconomy of things, by which matter can preserve that perpetual agitation,which seems essential to it, and yet maintain a constancy in the forms,which it produces? There certainly is such an economy: F or this is actuallythe case with the present world. T he continual mo tion of matter, therefore, in less than infinite transpositions, must produce this economy ororder; and by its very nature, that order, when once established, supportsitself, for m any ages, if not to eternity. B ut wherever matter is so poised,arranged, and adjusted as to continue in perpetual motion, and yet pre-


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Hume's Close Encounter 33serve a constancy in the forms, its situation must, of necessity, have all thesame appearance o f art and contrivance w hich we observe at pr esen tA defect in any of these particulars destroys the form; and the matter, ofwhich it is composed, is again set loose, and is thrown into irregularmotions and fermentations, till it unite itself to som e other regular f o r m S up po se.. . that m atter were thrown into any position, by a blind, un-guided force; it is evident that thisfirstposition must in all probability bethe most confused and most disorderly imaginable, without any resemblance to those works of human contrivance, which, along with a symmetry of parts, discover an adjustment of means to ends and a tendency toself-preservation Suppose, that the actuating force, whatever it be, stillcontinues in matter T hus the universe goes on for many ages in acon tinued succession of chaos and disorder . B ut is it no t po ssible that itmay settle at last . . . ? M ay we not hope for such a position, or rather beassured of it, fromthe eternal revolutions of unguided m atter, and may notthis accoun t for all the appearing w isdo m and contrivance w hich is in theuniverse?H m m , it seems that som ething like this might w o r k . . . but H u m e couldn'tquite take Philo's daring foray seriously. Hisfinalverdict: UA total suspenseo f judgment is here our only reasonable resource" (Pt. VIII). A few years

before him, De nis D ider o t had also w ritten som e speculations that tantaliz-ingly for eshadowed Darwin: "I can m aintain to you . . . that m onsters annihilated one another in succession; that all the defective combinations ofmatter have disappeared, and that there have o nly sur vived those in whichthe organization did no t involve any important con tradiction, and w hichcould subsist by themselves and perpetuate themselves" (D ider o t 1749).Cute ideas about evo lution had beenfloatingaround fo r millennia, but, lik emost philosophical ideas, although they did seemto offer a so lution o f sortsto the p ro blem at hand, they d idn't pro m ise to go any farther, to op en upnew investigations or generate surprising pr edictions that cou ld be tested,or explain any facts they weren't expressly designed to explain. The evolution revolution had to wait until Charles Darwin saw how to weave anevolutionary hypothesis into an explanatory fabric composed of literallythousands o f hard-won and o ften surprising facts about nature. Darwin neither invented the wonderful idea out of whole cloth all by himself, norunderstood it in its entirety even when he had formulated it. But he didsuch a mo num ental job o f clarifying the idea, and tying it dow n so it w o uldnever againfloataway, that he deserves the cr edit if anyone do es. T he nextchapter reviews his basic accomplishment.

C H A P T E R 1: Before Darwin, a "Mind-first" view of the universe reignedunchallenged; an intelligent God was seen as the ultimate source of allDesign, the ultimate answer to any chain of "Why?" questions. Even David


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34 T E L L Me W H YHume, who deftly exposed the insolubleproblems with this vision, and hadglimpses of he Darwinian alternative, couldnot see how to take it seriously.C H A P T E R 2: Darwin, setting out to answer a relatively modest questionabout the origin ofspecies, described aprocess he called natural selection,a mindless, purposeless, mechanical process. This turns out to be the seedof an answer to amuch grander question: how does Design come intoexistence?

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Darwins Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

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