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Ascent by Natural Selection provement-in short, a belief in Progress- arosein the eighteenthand nineteenthcen- turies"(p. 23). Ruse tells us of Condorcet, BOOKJrv REVIEWS Voltaire, and other EnlightenmentFrench philosophes,who propoundedthat knowledge acquiredby the powers of human reason woulddispel superstition and bring about ma- terial benefits,as well as moral and social Ascent by NaturalSelection progress.In Britain,Adam Smith proclaimed that the doctrineof self-interestwould usher transcendsthe standardmodes of scientific in universaleconomic and social benefits. Monad to Man. The Concept of Progress in discourse.I do not meanto denythat we can The Germanidealist philosophers, from Kant Evolutionary Biology. MICHAELRUSE. Harvard use scientificdiscourse to decidewhether or to Hegel,believed in the unstoppableforward University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996. xii, 628 not one organismis morecomplex than an- thrust generatedby the powers of reason. pp., illus. $49.95 or ?33.50. ISBN 0-674-58220-9. otheror to ascertainwhether a certainspecies Omittedby Ruseis that the FoundingFathers is more numerousor more widespreadthan of the UnitedStates, from Benjamin Franklin The process of evolution appears to be pro- another.But investigationof these matters to ThomasJefferson, saw the birth of the gressive.The earliest organismswere no more will in no waysettle the issueof whichorgan- AmericanRepublic as the beginningof a new complex than today's bacteria; now their de- ism is moreprogressive, unless we have first eraof materialprosperity, equality, and justice scendants include orchids, honeybees, dol- decidedby which standardwe will measure for all. phins, and human beings. But upon reflection progress;for this decision science is hopelessly Rusedoes not longdelve into the Enlight- the matter of progressbecomes murky.Bacte- incompetent. enment'sbelief in humanprogress, nor does ria are simpler, but they surpassdolphins in "Progress,"writes Michael Ruse in Monad he pretendthat he has much to say that is their ability to synthesizeall their components to Man,"is a modem(that is, post-medieval) new or profoundabout the matter.The point and obtain the energy they need from inor- notion." As he recounts it, "belief in the that engageshis sustainedeffort is that the ganic compounds. Some evolutionarylineages possibilityof ongoing moral and social im- Enlightenment'sphilosophy of progresswas do not seem progressiveat all: living bacteria transferredwholesale into the bi- are similar to their ancestors of three billion ologyof the time, so that emerg- years ago. Moreover, many evolutionary lin- ing ideasabout biological evolu- eages and more than 99.9% of all species that tion becamepermeated from the lived in the past have become extinct, which startby a belief in progress.The could hardly be considered progressive for attributesof knowledge,econom- those lineages and species. ic sucess,social welfare,and the The notion that living organisms can be like used for assessinghuman classified in a hierarchy from lower to higher progresswere translated into bio- forms goes back to Aristotle and earlier. The logical attributessuch as com- creation of the world described in Genesis plexity of organization,adapta- contains the explicit notion that some organ- 1 ~~~' tion to the environment,and spe- isms are superior to others, with man at the cialization.The connection be- climax. The image of a scalanaturae or "ladder tween belief in progress and of life" rising from amoeba to man is present, biologicaltheorizing is, for Ruse, implicitly or explicitly, in all preevolutionary fundamentalfor understanding biology. The theory of evolution added the the historyof evolutionarytheo- dimension of time, or history. The ascendance ry.He seeksto provethis connec- from amoeba to man could now be seen as the tion by meansof a three-pronged result of a natural, progressive development test that he repeatsat key histor- through time from simple to gradually more ical points. What needs to be complex and more diverse organisms. demonstratedin each case, he But why should greater complexity or di- says, is that (i) "biologicaltheo- versity be considered progress?One might rizinghas in fact been influenced favor longer persistence of kind, or greater by the idea of Progress";(ii) the number of individuals, or lesser dependence biologists"consciously or uncon- on other organisms as criteria of progressive- sciously leaned on the idea of ness. By any of these three criteria, bacteria Progress,or, conversely,hoped to are among the most progressive organisms. support the idea indirectly The point I am leading to is that in order to throughthe organicworld"; and decide which organismsare more or less pro- (iii) "thebiology outstrips the ev- gressive, we need first to settle the matter of idence"(pp. 39-40). With this what we mean by the term. And I fail to see resolve,Ruse proceedsto probe how this could be done by studying organisms evolutionary biology's history or analyzingthe evolutionaryprocess. It seems Humansat the top of the Towerof Time as displayedin the startingin mid-18thcentury. rather to me that deciding upon a criterion of SmithsonianInstitution, a representation"touchingly politically Ruse's first set of biological progressis a matter of personal preference;or, correctin the carefuldepiction of the evolutionarytriumph of a worthiesincludes the Swissnat- to put it more formally, the concept of blackman, an orientalwoman, and an aged whitemale. "[From uralist Charles Bonnet (1720- "progress"implies value judgments and thus Monad to Man Smithsonian Press] 1793); the FrenchJean-Baptiste SCIENCE * VOL. 275 * 24 JANUARY 1997 495 Robinet (1735-1820), Buffon (1707-1788), late-19th-and early-20th-centuryevolution- ested in volcanoes,whether it be a synopsis and, at greatextent, Lamarck(1744-1829); ists. He insightfullyscrutinizes at length the of eruptionson the Jovian satellite Jo or a the BritishJames Burnett (1714-1799) and mathematicalevolutionists R. A. Fisher,J. B. treatmentof new techniquesfor monitoring ErasmusDarwin (1731-1806), Charles'sre- S. Haldane,and SewallWright, whose major the deformationpatterns on historicallyun- doubtable grandfather;and the German contributionsstarted in the 1920s, and the stableterrestrial volcanoes. LorenzOken (1779-1851).Then he proceeds great biological theoristsTheodosius Dob- In his solar-system-widesurvey of volca- to biologistswho dominatethe firsthalf of the zhansky,George Simpson, Ernst Mayr, and 0. noes and the processesby which they are 19th century:Cuvier (1769-1832) and Eti- LedyardStebbins, who between 1937 and formed Charles Frankeladdresses a broad enne GeoffroySaint-Hilaire (1772-1844) in 1950 completedthe integrationof evolution range of readerswithout many of the eso- France;Robert Grant (1793-1874), Robert with genetics,paleontology, systematics, and teric details that lie behind the theories Chambers(1802-1871), and RichardOwen botany.The exertionsof even these greatest presented.Frankel's treatment is synoptic (1804-1892) in Britain;von Baer (1792- of all evolutionistsare tainted, Ruse con- and includes some captivating images of 1876) in Germany;and the Swiss-American cludes,by a belief in progress,however nu- newly discovered volcanic landforms on LouisAgassiz (1807-1873). Owen and Agas- anced. Ruse then brings the story to the Venusas well as fromthe outersolar system. siz were ardentanti-evolutionists. Ruse skill- presentand to thoseof us still in the trenches It is assumedthat the readerhas a rudimen- fullyshows how the temperof the times,most pursuingevolutionary research with theory taryknowledge of geologicalprinciples. The particularlyoptimism about cultural progress, and experiment.He sees that the ideologyof underlyingtheme is that of comparative pervadedthese earlybiologists' highly specu- progresssubtly persists, even as this is explic- planetaryvolcanology. The text presentsa lative theorizing.Whether his applicationof itlydenied by evolutionists.He proclaimsthat veryunderstandable case forcomparing vol- the three-prongedtest amounts to a "proof"of "weshould not expectprogressionism to dis- canoes acrossall of the rockyplanets of the the case,as he wouldhave it, is forme uncer- appearfrom evolutionary theory anytime soon solar systemby employingseveral interest- tain and of little consequence. ... , howeverprofessional and matureevolu- ing analogies.Indeed; the author captures The study of biological evolution be- tionarystudies become" (p. 539). By this time many of the newly developed paradigms comes seriouslyscientific with CharlesDar- and on this point, Ruse and I have parted that have emerged as a result of global win's (1809-1882) publicationof The Ori- company. reconnaissanceby spacecraftof bodies such gin of Species(1859). Darwinsystematically FranciscoJ. Ayala as the moon, Venus, Mars, and Jo. While accumulatedevidence (bringingin artificial Departmentof Ecologyand Evolution, excellent treatmentsof this subject have selection, biogeography,and other consid- Universityof California, been published in the past few years (for erationsthat previouslyhad receivedscant Irvine,CA 92697, USA example,P. W. Francis'sVolcanoes: A Plan- or no attention) making a strong case for etaryPerspective, Oxford Univ. Press,1993), the evolutionaryorigin of organisms;and, U Volcanoesof theSolar System seeks to capti- of greatest import, he discovered natural vate the readerby providinga high-level selection, the causalprocess accounting for review in the formof an inventory.Indeed, evolutionary change and diversification.
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