Darwin's Dangerous Idea (100 page)

520 THE FUTURE OF AN IDEA

Universal Acid: Handle with Care
521

makes life worth living. Our people, it says, benefit more from having a place 2. UNIVERSAL ACID: HANDLE WITH CARE

of splendor in which to worship than from a little more food. Any atheist or agnostic who finds this cost-benefit analysis ludicrous might pause to con-There is no denying, at this point, that Darwin's idea is a universal solvent, sider whether to support diverting all charitable and governmental support capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in sight. The question is: for museums, symphony orchestras, libraries, and scientific laboratories to what does it leave behind? I have tried to show that once it passes through efforts to provide more food and better living conditions for the least well everything, we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important off. A human life worth living is not something that can be uncontroversially ideas. Some of the traditional details perish, and some of these are losses to be measured, and that is its glory.

regretted, but good riddance to the rest of them. What remains is more than And there's the rub. What will happen, one may well wonder, if religion is enough to build on.

preserved in cultural zoos, in libraries, in concerts and demonstrations? It is At every stage in the tumultuous controversies that have accompanied the happening; the tourists flock to watch the Native American tribal dances, and evolution of Darwin's dangerous idea, there has been a defiance born of fear: for the onlookers it is folklore, a religious ceremony, certainly, to be treated

"You'll
never
explain
this\"
And the challenge has been taken up: "Watch with respect, but also an example of a meme complex on the verge of me!" And in spite of—indeed, partly because of—the huge emotional extinction, at least in its strong, ambulatory phase; it has become an invalid, investments the opponents have made in winning their sides of the argument, barely kept alive by its custodians. Does Darwin's dangerous idea give us the picture has become clearer and clearer. We now have a
much
better sense anything in exchange for the ideas it calls into question?

of what a Darwinian algorithm is than Darwin ever dreamt of. Intrepid In chapter 3, I quoted the physicist Paul Davies proclaiming that the reverse engineering has brought us to the point where we can confidently reflective power of human minds can be "no trivial detail, no minor by-assess rival claims about exactly what happened where on this planet billions product of mindless purposeless forces," and suggested that being a by-of years ago. The "miracles" of life and consciousness turn out to be even product of mindless purposeless forces was no disqualification for better than we imagined back when we were sure they were inexplicable.

importance. And I have argued that Darwin has shown us how, in fact, The ideas expressed in diis book are just the beginning. This has been an
everything
of importance is just such a product. Spinoza called his highest introduction to Darwinian thinking, sacrificing details again and again to being God or Nature
(Deus sive Natura),
expressing a sort of pantheism.

provide a better appreciation of the overall shape of Darwin's idea. But as There have been many varieties of pantheism, but they usually lack a con-Mies van der Rohe said, God is in the details. I urge caution alongside the vincing
explanation
about just how God is distributed in the whole of nature.

enthusiasm I hope I have kindled in you. I have learned from my own As we saw in chapter 7, Darwin offers us one: it is in the distribution of embarrassing experience how easy it is to concoct remarkably persuasive Design throughout nature, creating, in the Tree of Life, an utterly unique and Darwinian explanations that evaporate on closer inspection. The truly dan-irreplaceable creation, an actual pattern in the immeasurable reaches of gerous aspect of Darwin's idea is its seductiveness. Second-rate versions of Design Space that could never be exactly duplicated in its many details.

the fundamental ideas continue to bedevil us, so we must keep a close watch, What is design work? It is that wonderful wedding of chance and necessity, correcting each other as we go. The only way of avoiding the mistakes is to happening in a trillion places at once, at a trillion different levels. And what learn from the mistakes we have already made.

miracle caused it? None. It just happened to happen, in the fullness of time.

A meme that occurs in many guises in the world's folklore is the tale of the You could even say, in a way, that the Tree of Life created itself. Not in a initially terrifying friend mistaken for an enemy. "Beauty and the Beast" is one of miraculous, instantaneous whoosh, but slowly, slowly, over billions of years.

the best-known species of this story. Balancing it is "The Wolf in Sheep's Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not.

Clothing." Now, which meme do you want to use to express your judgment of But it
did
make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love Darwinism? Is it truly a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? Then reject it and fight on, tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space ever more vigilant against the seductions of Darwin's idea, which is truly or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which dangerous. Or does Darwin's idea turn out to be, in the end, just what we need in nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything our attempt to preserve and explain the values we cherish? I have completed my any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something case for the defense: the Beast is, in fact, a friend of Beauty, and indeed quite sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in beautiful in its own right. You be the judge.

affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.

Appendix

Tell Me Why

Traditional

The harmony line is usually sung by the higher voices an octave above the Melody.)

• Contents
  
• Preface
  
• PART 1 STARTING IN THE MIDDLE
  
  • CHAPTER ONE
    Tell Me Why
    
  • CHAPTER TWO An Idea Is Born
    
  • CHAPTER THREE Universal Acid
    
  • CHAPTER FOUR The Tree of Life
    
  • CHAPTER FIVE The Possible and the Actual
    
  • CHAPTER SIX Threads of Actuality in Design Space
    
• PART II DARWINIAN THINKING IN BIOLOGY
  
  • CHAPTER SEVEN Priming Darwin's Pump
    
  • CHAPTER EIGHT Biology Is Engineering
    
  • CHAPTER NINE Searching for Quality
    
  • CHAPTER TEN Bully for Brontosaurus
    
  • CHAPTER ELEVEN Controversies Contained
    
• PART III MIND, MEANING,MATHEMATICS, ANDMORALITY
  
  • CHAPTER TWELVE The Cranes of Culture
    
  • CHAPTER THIRTEEN Losing Our Minds to Darwin
    
  • CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Evolution of Meanings
    
  • CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Emperor's New Mind, and Other Fables
    
  • CHAPTER SIXTEEN On the Origin of Morality
    
  • CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Redesigning Morality
    
  • CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Future of an Idea
    
• Appendix