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Journalism of Courage
IN THE year of Charles Darwins double anniversary 200 years since his birth and 150 since the publication of his masterwork,On the Origin of Species taking a potshot in print at Richard Dawkins must have looked like an irresistible idea. Darwins champion in his lifetime,Thomas Huxley,was known to many as his bulldog. Mr Dawkins,his modern champion,has been dubbed his rottweiler,a reflection of his uncompromising defence of both evolutionary theory and the atheism he thinks is a necessary consequence of it. What better way to sell a few books,then,than to attack the man whom many see as Darwins representative on earth?
Mr Dawkins famously draws fire from religious fundamentalists,and also from less than fundamentalist critics who,nevertheless,seem to resent a scientist daring to question revealed belief on the basis of empirical data. But he also has his critics within biology,and Fern Elsdon-Baker presents herself as one of these a true believer in evolution who,nevertheless,thinks Mr Dawkins has got the details wrong or,at least,only half right.
Once she gets personal,though,in the second half of the book,few of Ms Elsdon-Bakers shots hit their target. Her argument that the selfish-gene model is being superseded by other forms of evolutionary explanation relies on an overinterpretation of those alternatives. When picked apart,they also turn out to be based on selfish genery. The fact that a genes freedom of action is constrained by the way the organism it is part of develops ie,the activity of that organisms other genes,or the observation that genes sometimes migrate from one species to another,does not invalidate the basic Dawkinsian thesis that natural selection acts on genes,and genes alone,via their expression in an organisms body and behaviour.
She also revives the old argument that Stephen Jay Gould had with Dawkins,about how smoothly evolution progresses. Gould,a palaeontologist,observed that there are long periods of stasis in the fossil record,which is true,and inferred from this that selfish genery is therefore wrong because it predicts continual change,which is questionable. It is just as plausible that selfish genery arrives rapidly at optimal designs,and that these shift only when what is optimal alters because,say,the environment has changed.
Even the recently observed phenomenon of intergenerational epigenetics,which at first sight looks like the inheritance of acquired characteristics a real Darwinian no-no,probably has less to it than meets the eye. Epigenetic changes are heritable changes to the regulation of a cells genes,caused by extra molecules being attached to those genes. They happen when cells specialise so as to become parts of particular body tissues. Recently,it has been shown that germ-cells,too,are subject to epigenetic change,sometimes in response to environmental stimuli. To this extent,acquired characteristics are,indeed,being transmitted across the generations. But those changes are not passed on indefinitely,like a successful genetic mutation would be. Instead,they are wiped out over a generation or two. And,in any case,gene regulation happens under the control of genes that are as selfish as any others.
What is left,once these attacks are dismissed,is a critique of Mr Dawkinss proselytising atheism. It is true this wins him few converts,when a collaboration with religious moderates against the creationists might bear weightier fruit. But if his intellectual rigour forbids him making common cause with people he thinks are wrong,that perhaps only shows he is indeed the rottweiler of legend.
The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009
