October 01, 2004
Matt Ridley welcomes Richard Dawkins's genetic pilgrimage, The Ancestor's Tale
"Evolution is both a process and a narrative; a science and a history. Richard Dawkins has made himself the foremost philosopher of the process, exploring with ruthless and surprising logic how bodies can be best understood as vehicles for the propagation of genes. But until now he has left the history to others such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Fortey: the grand narrative of how (some) microbes became men over three billion years. Now, in this extraordinary book, Dawkins turns chronicler.
He does so with a clever twist that avoids the perennial problem of evolutionary history-telling: how not to make it sound like an inevitable progression towards complexity and us. After all, bacteria and worms did not 'fail' to evolve into mammals. You could argue the opposite: that they were so good at being what they were that our ancestors had to invent a different way of living. Dawkins's twist is to tell the story backwards, starting with us."
More here from Matt Ridley (picture on left) in The Guardian.
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I have a few questions and was wondering if the new book addressed them. They are as follows: So how did the few microbes begin to think, to communicate, and know how to form male or female once they reached the human phase? Microbes operate the same way DNA does, by designed operation due to chemical reactions. Where in the lines of chemical reactions did a mind form? Where did the initial microbe come from and all the energy? The answer can't be the big bang because then you have to answer where the energy and mass came from for that. How could something irreducibly complex as a microbe or the components in it create themselves from another thing? These complex items require every operation working in unison and are destroyed if one particulate fails to meet the demand. It would also take many more years than a billion for a human to form out of a microbe also, how do you establish that quantity of years?
Posted by: Robert Cagle | Feb 13, 2008 7:53:31 PM
Robert Cagel fails at trolling posts from 2004. I digress, however. I will answer your "questions" even though they are clearly just the parroting of ideas that you liked the sound of, rather than questions you honestly have. Irreducible complexity is false. I can't prove this in this comment space, as there is more than a little math involved, but others can. In all honesty Dawkins doesn't like to go into the math either because its pretty dry. What you mistake for irreducible complexity is in fact a series of more or less irreversible actions. It is a logical fallacy to assume that because I can't remove any piece from a system and have it function it follows that the system could not have been gradually created. You fail to account for the many intermediate steps that we are not necessarily privy to. Also you imply a certain amount of destiny or anthropomorphism in your question that is, to put it frankly, stupid. Microbes have no desire, will, or destiny. How did a microbe know how to form male and female? Microbes don't "know" anything. Also single celled organisms are not people, nor are people a bag full of single celled organisms. Incidentally if you're looking for an intermediate step between single celled organisms and multicellular organisms it exists. Colonies. Next time try acquainting yourself with a high school education before you post thinly veiled creationist mumbojumbo. In all seriousness: while I disagree with Stephen Jay Gould on most issues (as he was an ass and an idiot) I will consent that he was right on in saying that the domain of religion does not extend into the domain of science. You should take this to heart, or be prepared for intellectual decimation.
Posted by: Friedrich Engels | Apr 16, 2008 8:06:53 PM
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