Book: The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins
Krishna
This is another book about evolution from the famous author Richard Dawkins. He explains right at the beginning what is different about this book from the other numerous books he has written.
Of course you know that this is a completely different subject matter from The God Delusion of his, as the subject matter itself is different. But how is it different from The Selfish Gene (which coined the word meme which seems to be all the rage in the social media)? How is it different from The Ancestor’s Tale or The Blind Watchmaker? He tells you. I am not wholly convinced that it is an entirely different book.
But it is good that this man is one of the best writers and his language and thought process and the humour embedded in the writing pulls you in and takes you along on a fascinating journey. You enjoy this book as thoroughly as you would any of his other books.
This book is out to prove evolution is a fact and not merely as a ‘theory’ as it is commonly understood. He thinks even that phrase is a concession to the creationists. He draws parallels with the holocaust deniers and the flat-earthers when he talks about people who believe that the earth was created a mere six thousand years ago.
Amazing discussions – anything this man writes just grabs your attention and does not let go! – and he starts with how dogs were ‘sculpted’ by selective breeding into the wide variety of the beasts that exist today within just a couple of centuries.
He goes on to show how this ‘artificial selection’ mimics natural selection that has been going on for centuries. He shows how you can artificially breed rats with healthier teeth or weaker teeth by human intervention and why in nature the rats did not develop perfect teeth. All absolutely lovely arguments, in a language that is accessible, logical and truly exhilarating. His bit about domesticated wolves becoming dogs echoes the argument in Sapiens a bit, but is also quite different from it.
He demolishes the ‘Earth is 6000 years old’ argument of creationists systematically but the primary lesson on dating by half life and dendrochronology look like explaining the obvious to those who already know the concepts and want to skip forward quickly. In that respect this book is quite different from The Selfish Gene or the Ancestor’s Tale, which was spellbinding all the way through.
He talks about the evolutionary model and how a controlled experiment on guppies, a kind of fish, and some bacteria show how evolution works ‘before our very eyes’ in a short timeframe – the opposing pressures of mating and predation drive evolution in different directions. Amazing.
Also in it are tidbits about ‘invisible’ evolution. The flowers are fabulous looking in general but Richard shows that some flowers that look rather plain look fabulous under ultraviolet light. Why should this be? Because it is meant to attract insects which drink the nectar – they have vision that ranges into ultraviolet!
He talks about the ‘Missing Link’ missing no more. He is very persuasive in his arguments to systematically build up the case for evolution.
The only trouble is that, except God Delusion, all his other books have the same theme. Each book is brilliant in its explanation, very persuasive, funny, erudite and keeps you engaged. But reading book after book about the same subject feels like watching one movie and one story rebooted multiple times and after a while, you start thinking – yes, I know all this. Have read them in many of the same author’s other books!
He goes on to say how starling formations are by individual narrow actions of each bird. And also talks about the ‘missing link’ being found repeatedly and how the creationists refuse to look at any evidence that is thrust in front of their faces – because they do not want to believe.
The book sags a bit in the middle when he goes into the nomenclature of the genes of nematodes but again, these are a few tiresome patches in an otherwise great book. The example of where they grafted a small rectangle of skin from the back of a toad to its stomach and another from the stomach to the back (and exchange) and the results of where it thought the itch was coming from are astounding to read.
He then goes on to explain how a species to divide into two there needs to be a real or virtual ‘island’ that separates the two groups of the same species. In the context of real islands, this is easy to understand (think kangaroos in Australia) but what is novel is the other kind of ‘islands’ he mentions.
He systematically debunks the theory of Noah’s Ark by pointing out that some species, which landed in two to Noah’s ark went so far to settle in Australia and/ or Madagascar and nowhere else. How did they get there from wherever the boat landed (in the Middle East)?
He also talks about geological (as opposed to zoological) evidence that the continent of Africa split from South America.
The book also shows how using a ‘flexible rubber band theory’, an illustrator called D’Arcy Thompson showed how one animal (invertebrates in his famous example) can be converted to another. His work predated evolution, so he was simply talking about how similar they are, as against which common ancestor they descended from.
He also has a fascinating explanation of the details when someone says ‘At the genetic level humans and chimpanzees share 98% of the genome’. He explains what that 98% means. What is similar? At what level?
He moves to DNA evidence and how, despite incredible accuracy, is not foolproof for various reasons – inadvertent contamination, manipulation, even the fact that it is just a small subset of the genome that is used for analysis.
He goes into molecular clocks, how several of the genes ‘not doing anything’ is a clear proof against creationist grand design theories.
The other powerful argument is that the internals of mammals is a ‘design nightmare’ so much so that it in itself argues for the compromises that needed to be made for incremental change and against the intelligent design argument. He talks about the fallopian tube’s awkward design, the nerves of Giraffe and even humans that take a detour and criss cross the body in meaningless ways and much more. He then shows why this is so, when we evolved from simpler aquatic organisms to the more complex beings of today – how incrementally trade offs were made that piled on top of each other. Nature, unlike a fresh designer, has no way to ‘go back to the drawing board’ as it’s tool is only incremental change, each change as it occurs being compelled to be viable in its own right. Fascinating and powerful argument indeed.
He talks about the arms race of evolution, which in itself is a proof that animals evolve in their constant struggle to survive.
He ends the book with a speculation on what kinds of things were necessary in the primordial soup of the earth’s atmosphere for the evolutionary cycle to get going in the first place. From there, everything can be explained by the principles of natural selection but what got the self replicating mechanism of life and its variants started? It makes for an interesting reading.
He has an appendix where he laments the stubborn hold that creationism has on a large section of population from all countries despite mounting scientific evidence to the contrary.
Good read and thought provoking arguments.
Let us say 7/10
== Krishna