Wonderful Life, Indeed

"The March of Progress," an image of evolution despised by the late biologist Stephen Jay Gould.

I enjoyed Stephen Jay Gould’s essays about biology and evolution immensely when my 6th grade science teacher read a few of them to us in class. Now, years later, I’m hoping to understand Gould and his ideas better. I borrowed Wonderful Life from my biology professor in August; I’ve only now gotten around to starting it. I’m hoping to finish it over Thanksgiving break. I imagine my professor is wondering where it is by now.

However, my old respect for Gould is giving way to a wariness of some of his motives and ideas. I’m only on page 44, and I’ve already found something that raised my hackles. After revealing “geology’s most frightening fact”—that Earth existed and life flourished for billions of years before humans—Gould uses his discussion of evolution  to begin a very philosophical one. It’s a very startling switch, and while one's view of evolution certainly has philosophical implications, it feels to me that he takes a step too far, the biology becoming almost an excuse for a soapbox speech. Consider the conclusion he makes from the modern view of an old earth and a young human species:

We cannot bear the central implication of this brave new world. If humanity arose just yesterday as a small twig on one branch of a flourishing tree, then life may not, in any genuine sense, exist, for us or because of us. Perhaps we are only an afterthought, a kind of cosmic accident, just one bauble on the Christmas tree of evolution.

What options are left in the face of geology’s most frightening fact? Only two, really. We may, as this book advocates, accept the implications and learn to seek the meaning of human life, including the source of morality, in other, more appropriate, domains—either stoically with a sense of loss, or with joy in the challenge if our temperament be optimistic. Or we may continue to seek cosmic comfort in nature by reading life’s history in a distorted light.

Sure, humans occupy only the tiniest slice in the history of life. Sure, we have arrogantly placed ourselves far above all else in the natural world, and are now dealing with the startling revelation that we are more similar than we wish to realize. But I believe Gould skips over important considerations due to his agenda. A strict materialist, he would not consider that humans are somehow different in a non-physical sense—in other words, I don’t think he would ever discuss the idea of a soul and that humans are the first to bear this development, even though many of his readers (say, me) subscribe to that idea. Simply ignoring it will not convince them, and if he’s willing to make this book philosophical, he can’t only go halfway—he can’t just end the philosophical discussion when it’s to his advantage. (Well, he can, but I think it's unbalanced.)

In addition, I hope he will eventually consider the idea that humans have an ability to choose and determine themselves that is somehow different from the rest of living things—an idea that fits in with a materialist mindset. Perhaps that’s what he means by “the meaning of human life, including the source of morality”. I’m looking forward to that next overtly philosophical section with interest.

“What this book advocates”—that phrase has the flavor of an ideological manifesto. Is the book really meant to be reduced to that? I feel that a scientist can have a worldview, but in a book nominally about biology, the worldview should come through by implication.  I have been very impressed with what Gould has done so far in this book—first of all, he demolished the idea of evolution as a continuous ladder of increasing excellence, which is extremely simplistic and traditionally has had racist implications. An excellent writer, he has drawn on examples from both science and popular culture to prove his point. But it bothers me that this whole discussion of evolution is being driven by his need to prove an utterly materialistic view of life. In a way, that pursuit is as simple-minded as the “March of Progress” depiction of evolution as a linear, ladder-like process that he hates so much (see above).

Is it unfair to expect a biologist to be interested in biology for biology’s sake? Ars gratia artis, scitum gratia scientiae? I’m going to finish the book before I decide one way or another.