21.12.1995

The Darwinian revolution

Danny Hammill reviews 'Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life' by Daniel Dennett (The Penguin Press 1995, pp586) and 'River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life' by Richard Dawkins (Weidenfield & Nicolson 1995, pp172)

In both these new books we are treated to a passionate defence of Darwinism.  Dennett, in particular, directs his main polemical fire against those thinkers who refuse “to take seriously the weird new outlook that Darwin proposed” (p21).

Richard Dawkins, author of the most misunderstood book of all time - just because it had the words “selfish” and “gene” in consecutive order - outlines with crystal clarity the theory of Darwinian natural selection. He demonstrates gracefully how the near infinite variety and complexity of forms of life emerged from simplicity and, crucially, how everything can be explained logically using the categories developed by Darwin. As Dawkins bluntly puts it, “Never were so many facts explained by so few assumptions” (preface).

This is not crude reductionism, or some sort of act of intellectual ‘faith’ on Dawkins’ part. Quite the opposite. He is just stating, in an uncompromising and militant fashion, that there is a logical and materialist explanation for the existence of life, for all its mind-boggling complexity. This is the ‘evangelical’ message at the core of Dawkins brilliant body of work.

This is the theme taken up with a vengeance by Dennett, an American professor of philosophy and cognitive studies. His book is astonishingly erudite and dazzling, infecting the reader with the sheer beauty of the “Darwinian principle” or, as he constantly refers to it, the “Darwinian revolution”.

Showing the influence of Dawkins, Dennett describes natural selection as an “algorithmic process” - defining an algorithm as a certain sort of formal process that can be counted on, logically, to yield a certain sort of result whenever it is ‘run’ or instantiated. Darwin discovered the sheer power of an algorithm which has millions - if not billions - of years to ‘unfold’. For Dennett, this is the essence of Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea’.

This idea is dangerous precisely because algorithms do not have any purpose. Darwin’s theory, therefore, has no need for a god or any sort of creator - a universe devoid, in any real sense, of meaning. Naturally, such a ‘worldview’ is abhorrent to all manner of theologians, religious believers and idealists. There is no ‘mystery’ to life. Dennett points out, “It is hard to believe that something as mindless and mechanical as an algorithm can produce such wonderful things” (p59). Nevertheless, it is true.

Contrary to what many may feel, this is an optimistic doctrine - it restates the power of reason and the ‘knowability’ of all things. Dawkins, who is a supreme optimist and not the dreary believer in ‘genetic determinism’ made out by some ‘leftist’ mythmakers, expresses this rational outlook with admirable clarity: “[There] will be challenges to our ingenuity, but if our ingenuity fails, so much the worse for our ingenuity” (p84). 

Both River Out of Eden and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea are exciting books, which fire the imagination and show us the awesome power of nature. Yet this is a rational awe, not one based upon “mystical and obscurantist views of life” (Dawkins, p20). This is also the sentiment of Charles Darwin himself,  captured poetically in the last sentence of the Origin of Species: “Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”.

Danny Hammill