Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Introduction

This book is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but it is mystery no longer because it is solved. With this stunning sentence begins one of the bestsellers of the last 10 years in the popular science category. Richard Dawkins, its author, holds the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science (whatever that may be) at Oxford University, and has been named one of the top five public intellectuals of our time (see www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3260). He is a self-proclaimed adversary of religion and an advocate for science. He sees these two realms of knowledge as adversaries. The subtitle of this book (why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design) unfortunately evidences a blind faith in science as a purveyor of truth, which is exactly what many proponents of Intelligent Design point out about scientists. A major faux-pas even before turning to page one.

Executive Summary

In this 350 page book, published in 1996, the famous author of The Selfish Gene sets out to prove that the problem of life can be explained entirely without the intervention of a designer, and that Evolution is the correct paradigm to frame the problem. Although the focus is on the problem of life, Dawkins skims over the physics and chemistry that are needed to make sense of the mystery and focuses instead, through a series of rather cumbersome analogies, on the evolution of the very complex through the effects of selection. The book is a rather confusing exposition of the theory of evolution and a very passionate tribute to the supreme genius of Charles Darwin. It is a mystery to me how someone as brilliant as E.O. Wilson could have defined this book "the best general account of evolution I have read in years". Although here and there engaging, the book lacks structure, clarity and takes an anti-religious tone that will be offensive not only to practicing Christians, but also to skeptics who see the clash between science and religion as a battleground between bad theologians and misguided scientists.

Personal Motivation

The battle fought in the US between Christian fanatics, who in Kansas have already redefined what science is in order to downplay it and return our society to the obscurity of the Middle Ages, and scientists who safeguard their field is an important one indeed, because it is simply the tip of the iceberg in our ongoing secular struggle to keep our society an open one. It is always of interest to me to see how scientists fight this battle, and in particular I was interested in reading Dawkins, who has been hailed as the most lucid leader in this current struggle.

Structure of the Book

The book is divided into 11 chapters, and has no clear structure, which is dismaying for a book of pro-science propaganda.

In the first chapter (Explaining the very improbable), Dawkins explains that the complexity of biological structures should leave us astounded and in search for an explanation. In the second chapter (Good design) he explores at length the stunning echo-sounding mechanism of bats and begins to ask how all this could have evolved by "blind chance". Our incredulity- explains Dawkins - is based on our wrong intuition of probability theory and our inability to imagine the interplay between random chance and non-random natural selection over enormously long time spans. This theme is expanded in the third chapter (Accumulating small change), where the author illustrates through examples how non-random cumulative selection can slowly lead to what appears as excellent design. The analogy that is explored here is between nature and computer programs. Diversity and complex shape emerge simply through computer algorithms, an analogy that most readers, including this one, will find too abstract and totally unimpressive.

Chapter 4 (Making tracks through animal space) attempts to defend the notion that gradual changes can lead to perfect design. "What good is 5% of an eye, when only a complete eye can see?" asks the author. Through a number of interesting examples from the world of zoology, Dawkins tries to make the case that 5% of an eye is better than no eye. Chapter 5 (The power and the archives) explores the usual analogy between DNA and computer chips as information storage centers, but does so without delving too much into the structure and function of DNA and RNA. Surprisingly, Dawkins does nor even clearly explain how the information in the DNA is translated into protein function, a rather important detail.
Chapter 6 (Origins and miracles) steps back to the origins of the molecules of life, i.e. the dawns of organic chemistry. Here Dawkins muses about inorganic clays having been perhaps the first prototype of life. Clearly the author downplays or ignores the most fascinating problems presented by the chemical nature of life, only to skip back to his more comfortable field of evolutionary biology. Indeed, chapter 7 (Constructive evolution) and 8 (Explosions and spirals) are full of more fascinating details of evolution at play.

Chapter 9 (Puncturing punctuationism) is rather puzzling in that the author seeks to deflate punctuationist ideas as being simple extensions of Darwin's thought. He feels obliged to do this because some misguided creationists have misconstrued punctuationism as contradicting Darwin. In chapters 10 and 11 (The one true tree of life / Doomed rivals), we are told why Evolution is a true theory and why alternative ideas, presented at various other times, are faulty. It is unusual for a scientist to have to defend a ruling paradigm against old paradigms. This is hardly ever done in science, because it is reputed unnecessary. Imagine modern physicists going to extremes to prove that the "ether" does not exist, or chemists trying to convince modern readers that the theory of phlogiston was rightfully supplanted! These are the most obscure chapters of the whole book, and in his conclusion Dawkins manages to utterly confuse the reader about his intentions and about his ideas.

A Misguided Perspective

This book is hard to read, not because the science in it is very complex, but because it is convoluted, has no structure, and is replete with unfitting analogies which are pursued to the point of looking plain silly. I dare to guess that this great bestseller lies unread in the shelves of many private American libraries. Dawkins is a fellow of uncommon arrogance. His opening sentence, with its cockiness, only proves the author's ignorance. The fact that spirituality is treated with ridicule here and there through the book does not make the read endearing even to an agnostic like myself.

When one claims that science has solved all the mysteries, one is asking for trouble, and one becomes an obvious target of ridicule by non-scientists, who intuitively understand that such a position is based on faith and not on facts. If one claims to understand how life originated, one should begin with chemistry, not with biology. Yet the book is woefully silent on some basic problems that are still eluding us, such as: how did organic molecules originate? How did natural molecules acquire optical activity (the ability to rotate polarized light) in a world that had no such optical bias? How did molecules that replicate evolve? What was the mechanism that led to the first cell? When and how did life properly "begin"? Indeed, what is life?
None of these questions has been answered with authority. Of course, there is no reason to postulate that the solution to these mysteries requires a supernatural explanation, but nevertheless, mysteries still abound.

The mystery of life will be solved when we can create it in a test tube, and when we can create totally artificial living beings not based on nucleic acid and protein chemistry. Discharging electricity through a "primordial soup" and finding traces of purines is a million miles away from explaining life. This simple fact, apparently, Dawkins does not grasp or just glosses over. His book is simply about how organisms evolve one from the other, which is only a small part of the story. In insisting that Evolution is the "Truth" instead of "just a theory", as creationists charge, Dawkins betrays the fact that he has misjudged the nature of science and the nature of the controversy between Creation and Evolution. Intelligent design cannot be construed as a scientific theory, as any practicing scientist can easily demonstrate, and therefore cannot be taught in science class. "Just a theory" is not a pejorative, because all science deals with provisional theories, which are kept around as long as they explain the observable facts and are discarded when a new, more powerful theory emerges. Evolution may well be supplanted, one day, by a more powerful theory.

Creation is a story and a myth, and it is not false in absolute terms. Its truth lies in embodying certain themes which can be translated directly into human values, values about which science is silent. It is when people mistake these myths for "facts" that scientists must simply remind lay people that the Bible cannot be used to define what science is and how it is taught, and that the phrase "God created the world" has no useful scientific content. It is a significant problem nowadays that "myths" have become equivalent to nonsense, and in this lies the problem with modern science: the implication that all other realms of knowledge are somehow less respectable and "less true". Hence the reaction from all other camps. Dawkins, with his fanatic attitude, is simply adding fuel to the fire.