What Darwin Got Wrong: Book Review (hardly)

There appears to be a gaping flaw in the most popular theory of evolution, modern evolutionary synthesis, and it's natural selection. This seems like a bold statement, and maybe it is, but there are a growing number of biologists that agree. At least, this is what Jerry Fodor and Massimo Plattelli-Palmarini found while putting together their new book What Darwin Got Wrong.

Unfortunately, whenever there is an attack, even a pure scientific attack, on anything involving evolution there is always a need to address the religious implications. The authors put this to rest at the introduction, assuring the readers that they are die hard atheists, allowing Richard Dawkins fans to read on for at least a few more pages without extreme bias. Then, the authors turn to an analogy comparing natural selection with Skinner's failed behaviorism. I didn't like or completely understand this comparison from the outset. Behaviorism is inputs and outputs that effect a single organism, and natural selection is long term adaptations that formulate new species. They spend around 50 pages on this comparison that was never quite clear to me.

Actually, most the book is full of technical jargon and seemingly illogical structure. I was very unimpressed with the writing ability of the authors. Most of the time the language was so technical that it was indecipherable. Maybe if I was an evolutionary biologist I could understand the ridiculous amount of terms that weren't defined in the book. Which brings me to my next problem; the book is full of undefined technical writing, while the title is an obvious marketing ploy geared toward laymen.

However, their main point appears valid, and natural selection has some possibly fatal flaws. For starters, it's a logical fallacy by definition. In the authors' words, they claim that natural selection is: "(1) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and (2) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected for their adaptive traits. We will argue that Darwinism is committed to inferring 2 from 1; that inference is invalid (in fact it's what philosophers call intensional fallacy.)" The authors didn't do a great job of explaining the flawed philosophy of natural selection further, again because of the language used, but that argument did get me thinking, and I think it does hold up, at least under circular reasoning. Darwin tried to explain evolution of species by saying that the fittest survive to pass on their genes. And what defines fit? The ability to survive. And how is survival proven? Existence. Survival = Fitness = Existence; Circular! So, natural selection is logically a flawed, or at least an incomplete argument.

But, we've seen it work, right? There are fossil records showing adaptations morphing creatures into different species. Well yes, and some species did in fact develop from natural selection, we have some pretty clear evidence for that, but there are plenty of species in which we have no reason to believe that natural selection had any part in. The book covered this, but again I couldn't make out their language. Actually, I think I'm done reviewing this book, I didn't really learn anything from it, although I think it said a lot, I just couldn't understand it. So, I'll just keep going on the issue.

Anyway, when Darwin developed his theory he knew nothing of genetics, and natural selection strictly spoke to the environment. Modern Darwinists just added genetics into his theory, and OK, that fits well at first glance. The problem is that modern genetics has also found that there is another major aspect to evolution, and that is random genetic drift. Random genetic drift happens completely within the species and doesn't depend on the environment. Random alleles in small populations get passed from generation to generation creating large changes, and eventually even new species. Again, this has nothing to do with fitness in an environment, and happens within organisms themselves. Since modern evolutionary synthesis claims that natural selection can account for all variations and all species, it must be false.

So, natural selection may be valid in that in some cases it has been shown to cause variation in species. Natural selection should certainly not be scrapped, but it really should be analyzed and reworded. It may still be salvaged to become a major part of the evolutionary process, but definitely not the be all end all of evolution. If science has told us anything, it's that a theory that starts out really simple (natural selection) usually ends up being very complicated. This was covered in the What Darwin Got Wrong, so there is my attempt to salvage my butchered review. Natural selection is entirely too simplistic and general to account for the evolution of life. How convenient is it that natural selection makes no predictions? Darwinists are free to explain away any problems that arise, after the fact. Maybe if modern biologists *cough* Richard Dawkins *cough* paid more attention to research in their fields, rather than launching an attack on religion using natural selection and evolution as their weapons, science would have a better understanding of evolution. My hat goes off to the scientists in quantum physics, because of the progress they've made since Newton. Biology, on the other hand, has been trying to preserve Darwinism when it should be trying to build on it.