Template:Dawkins-Dennett
From Scienticity
Current revision as of 23:21, 11 January 2007
These two books attack what started out -- and still remains -- the biggest conceptual hurdle for most to overcome in accepting natural selection as the mechanism of evolution ("Darwin's Dangerous Idea", as Dennett names it): How could all the complexity of the natural world, its apparent design, have arisen naturally through the seemingly random process of evolution? Both authors build very strong arguments along very similar lines, but they do it with distinctly individual voices and styles.
Dawkin's style is excited exuberance as he hurries breathlessly from topic to topic: too little time, too many fascinating things to talk about to dwell for long on one. There is no feeling of being intellectually short changed, though, more a feeling of going for the big picture and an intuitive understanding. In contrast Dennett takes a slower, more philosophically considered approach: this topic is too interesting and too complex to speed ahead – let's linger and really, really understand it. By the end, the big picture emerges from layers of careful consideration. Each suits its author, the two products are stimulating, and both succeed admirably. My own taste inclines more towards Dennett's approach, but I found both books engaging and enlightening.
Given the similarities of thesis, it's certainly not surprising that both books hike along similar paths, albeit in different ways. Mark it down, perhaps, as convergent evolution that both authors felt the need to develop extended metaphors – a chapter in each book – to elucidate the idea that phenotypic expression of the genotype is highly constrained, i.e., very few mutations in the DNA lead to viable creatures, and very few of all imaginable variants in phenotype can likewise be brought about by variations in the genotype. Dawkins invents a computer model to examine the possible mutations in the "genes" of what he calls "biomorphs". Dennett constructs an intellectual model that he calls the "Library of Mendel", patterned after the literary "Library of Babel" of Jorge Luis Borges. Of the two I thought that Dennett's metaphor had more depth to it, but Dawkins' served its purpose well enough.
Despite how thoroughly and digestibly both books present a comprehensive understanding of how natural selection can produce the amazing complexity of plant and animal life on Earth, one has the sinking feeling that those who might profit most from reading these works will probably never actually peek between the covers. On the other hand, even if they are preaching to the choir, it is no doubt beneficial if the choir can sing better than ever after the sermon. In the end – and one can judge this to some extent since both books are now over ten years old – some of the arguments and some of the rhetoric will seep into popular discourse as Darwinism continues on its rocky road to popular acceptance.
I have one odd criticism common to both books: neither satisfactorily answered the question implied by each author's subtitle. I never felt that Dennett gave a satisfactory answer to "what is the meaning of life?", a question apparently at the root of objections for many deniers of evolution by natural selection, a feeling that it leaves life without a reasons, a "meaning". Likewise with Dawkins, I never felt that he demonstrated that the "evidence of evolution" revealed a universe without design, although it's entirely consistent with that; rather that he showed how apparent design could grow through natural selection. But, in the end, these are small criticisms that don't limit or undermine the strength of the argument in either book.
