7.9 Books NS

NATURE|Vol 443|7 September 2006 BOOKS & ARTS Blowin’ in the wind Whether clinging to a sock, surfing the breeze or sliding through an animal’s gut, seeds have been beautifully designed by evolution for dispersal. They first appeared 360 million years ago and have helped plants colonize much of Earth’s surface. True time capsules of life, seeds may travel thousands of miles STUPPY/PAPADAKIS W. R. KESSELER, and wait for many years until they encounter the right conditions for germination. In Seeds: Time Capsules of Life (Papadakis, £35/Firefly, $60), artist Rob Kesseler and seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy, both of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, present a natural history of seeds, showcasing their specialized architecture in stunning close-up photographs and scanning electron micrographs. The walls of the ‘balloon’ seed of the yellow paintbrush (Castilleja flava) shown here have dissolved, leaving a honeycombed cage ready to ride the wind. B.K. well-meaning friends, teachers or parents, does not really matter. A pro-darwinian tool-kit As a philosopher, Ruse is well placed to dis- cuss darwinism’s ethical, religious and philo- These concerns may conceal a deeper affective sophical dimensions. If the discontents stay Darwinism and its Discontents — indeed a limbic — response to the theory. with his book long enough to reach its later by Michael Ruse This divide between the disaffected and chapters, they will find material that tran- Cambridge University Press: 2006. 328 pp. $19.99, $30 the merely uninformed or misinformed may scends the conventional empirical challenges be why it is so difficult to get anti-darwin- to their disbelief. A common misunderstand- Mark Pagel ists to join the contents. If it is repellent for ing of darwinism is that, somehow, the facts In the UK House of Lords, peers who vote for a creationist to believe facts about evolution of biology about mere animals are pointers to a piece of legislation are called the ‘contents’ and geology, trying to persuade them by using the characteristics of humankind. This belief and those who vote against it are called the more such unpleasant facts may be a strug- has been called the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, and ‘not contents’. They are not called ‘discontents’ gle. Daniel Dennett memorably described is a conflation of what is and what ought to or ‘malcontents’, and this is an important dis- darwinian theory as a ‘universal acid’ capable be the case, wrongly justifying in humans all tinction. Being merely not content gives hope of dissolving all biological facts dropped into sorts of activities from sex discrimination to that were the legislation to be modified, a not it. But religious belief effortlessly bats away aggression. More broadly, some believe in what content could move to the content lobby. To empirical and philosophical challenges, philosophers call ‘evolutionary epistemology’ be discontented connotes something more making darwinism appear about as acidic — that the ways we behave and the views we extreme — a disaffection or dislike. Worse yet, as baby lotion. It is as if nothing less than a hold must be accurate reflections of the true malcontents evince seditious or even treason- visit from God himself saying “Don’t worry, nature of the world, otherwise natural selection ous leanings. darwinism is true, I made it that way” will pro- would not have favoured them. Michael Ruse, then, has probably chosen vide the reassurance that believing in evolu- Of course, deductions from evolutionary the title of his new book, Darwinism and its Dis- tion is not a one-way ticket to Dante’s seventh epistemology, although undoubtedly some- contents, accurately. What seems clear from the circle of hell. times true, are formally wrong, not least attention received by critics of darwinism — the Failing help from above, darwinists can only because culture has allowed humans, probably creationists and the proponents of ‘intelligent do what they can: indefatigably and hopefully uniquely in degree, to weaken the links to their design’ — is that they are more than merely not chip away at the edifice of wrong beliefs that biology. Ruse sums it up nicely: “No one is sur- content with darwinism; they are disaffected, underpin the views of discontents. The jacket prised that Mendel, who was right about hered- they actively do not like darwinism. The dis- to Darwinism and its Discontents says the book ity, had no children, and that Darwin, who tinction is, again, important. “will appeal” to “concerned citizens who worry was wrong about heredity, had ten children.” The book is not a sociological study of the that Darwinism is a naturalistic religion that is Equally, this seemingly obvious point should discontents; Ruse does not tell us who they forced on schoolchildren”. It may be optimistic give the discontents of Ruse’s title pause. Reli- are or even whether they are large in number. to think it will appeal to these people. But Ruse’s gion is found in all human cultures, and most Rather, it is a sort of ‘battle book’, containing biographical chapter on Darwin, an informa- include creation stories not unlike those of the facts about evolution and natural selection, tive survey of how known facts of biology fit major religions. But this universality, although and is designed to be instructive in changing the theory of evolution, and well-framed chap- perhaps signalling some human predilection people’s minds about darwinism. But creation- ters on the origin of life, descent with modifi- to hold religious views, should not necessarily ists’ disaffection with darwinism may only cation and human evolution, form a concise reassure: superstition is also universal. ■ be cloaked in quibbles about design, the age tool-kit of pro-darwinian chisels. Whether the Mark Pagel is professor of evolutionary biology, of Earth, fossils, missing links and the impor- discontents use these newly acquired chisels School of Biological Sciences, University of tance of the peppered moth, Biston betularia. on themselves, or have them used on them by Reading, Reading RG6 6AJ, UK. 31 © 2006 Nature Publishing Group.

Load more