The Edge of Evolution

Dear readers, I’ve just been through the weirdest book-related experience I’ve had since a Canadian university professor with a loaded rat trap chased me around after a talk I gave a dozen years ago, threatening to spring it on me. Last week I got the following email bearing the title “Invitation to Appear on Bloggingheads TV” from a senior editor at that site: ************* Hi, Michael– I’d like to invite you to appear on Bloggingheads.tv, a web site that hosts video dialogues between journalists, bloggers, and scholars. We have a partnership with the New York Times by which they feature excerpts from some of our shows on their site. Past guests include prominent thinkers such as Paul Krugman, Paul Ehrlich, Read More ›

Dear Readers, Usually I use this space to address reviews of The Edge of Evolution that have appeared in print in journals, newspapers, or magazines. The reason is that usually print media recruit leading figures in evolutionary biology to write a review, and so those reviews represent the thoughts of some of the best minds in the field. Examining their thoughts, then, can quickly give us a good understanding of whether there are ready answers to the challenges and arguments posed by The Edge. After all, if reviews by the likes of Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne fail to engage the arguments of the book, and instead rely mainly on bluster and non sequiturs, then that’s solid evidence that no good replies exist. Read More ›

Science has published a letter by myself responding to Sean Carroll’s earlier review of The Edge of Evolution. In my letter I note that: In his unfavorable review of my book, The Edge of Evolution, Sean Carroll writes that “Behe’s chief error is minimizing the power of natural selection to act cumulatively,” and implies that I fail to discuss “pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites … –a notable omission given Behe’s extensive discussion of malarial drug resistance. But, I demurred, I did write about pyrimethamine. Carroll admitted in Science right after my published letter that, well, yes, I did discuss pyrimethamine resistance, but his real concern was that I didn’t give it the spin he wanted: Behe did indeed discuss pyrimethamine resistance on pages 75 and 76 Read More ›

The Dutch biologist Gert Korthof maintains a website devoted to in-depth reviews of many books on evolution. Aside from often-insightful remarks, a delightful feature of his site is that he can write with great strength of feeling and yet not engage in insults or ad hominem remarks. He has posted an extensive review of The Edge of Evolution. He makes two main points. First, that while I profess to believe in both common descent and intelligent design, he sees an internal contradiction — there cannot be, he thinks, common descent if there is intelligent design, and vice versa. The second point is that he thinks I contradict what I wrote in Darwin’s Black Box concerning the status of pseudogenes as evidence of common descent. I’ll Read More ›

Dear Readers, This is the second in a series of responses I’m posting this week, this one regardingthe Darwinian website The Panda’s Thumb,where a woman named Abbie Smith questioned whether results from HIV research actually square with the claims I made that little fundamental change has occurred in the virus, even though it attains enormous populations sizes and has a much increased mutation rate. Although she calls herself a “pre-grad student,” the tone of the post is decidedly junior high, the tone of someone who is trying hard to compete with all the other Mean Girls on that unpleasant website. I’ll pass over all that and try to stick to the substance. Her post mainly concerns a small protein coded for Read More ›

Dear Readers, As I wrote in The Edge of Evolution, Darwinism is a multifaceted theory, and to properly evaluate the theory one has to be very careful not to confuse its different aspects. Unfortunately, stories in the news and on the internet regularly confuse the facets of Darwinism, ignore distinctions made in The Edge of Evolution, or misstate the arguments of intelligent design. The disregard for critical distinctions blurs the issues badly. Over the next few days I will briefly respond to four separate stories ************************ 1) A few months ago an interesting paper in Science, “Adaptive mutations in bacteria: high rate and small effects”, by the group of Isabel Gordo demonstrated that beneficial mutations in E. coli were more frequent than had been thought. In fact, Read More ›

Dear Readers, As I wrote in The Edge of Evolution, Darwinism is a multifaceted theory, and to properly evaluate the theory one has to be very careful not to confuse its different aspects. Common descent, natural selection, and random mutation are separate concepts; the first two are well supported, but the power of random mutation is not. I argued that evolution — understood just as common descent — did happen, but that randomness played only a minor part. Instead, nonrandom processes — either front-loaded, guided, or somehow influenced by an intelligence — played by far the greatest part. Unfortunately, stories in the news and on the internet regularly confuse the facets of Darwinism, ignore distinctions made in The Edge of Evolution, or Read More ›

Dear Readers, This past Thursday I was a guest on The Colbert Report, where I was interviewed about The Edge of Evolution by the inimitable Stephen Colbert.  You can watch the video here.

Dear Readers, Here I respond briefly to Richard Dawkins’ review of The Edge of Evolution in theNew York Times. I must admit I was surprised that he agreed to do it. In the past Dawkins has said that on principle he would not interact with proponents of intelligent design, because that would give us publicity. I guess when the New York Times offers writing space, principles can be reconsidered. Other Darwinist reviewers have blustered; Dawkins is the only one who has dripped venom. I will pass on replying to that. He makes just two substantive points in his review. The first is that the success of artificial selection in things like dog breeding show the malleability of organisms, so why should Darwinian evolution be Read More ›

Dear Readers, Today I give you one last response for now, to Michael Ruse’s review of Edge of Evolution. After more reviews are in, I’ll compose a comprehensive response. I leave you with this for now. Michael Ruse in The Globe and Mail Michael Ruse is a philosopher of biology who has written over a dozen books on aspects of Darwinian thought. In his review of The Edge of Evolution he says a few kind words about me personally, and I will return the compliment. I like Michael Ruse and have always enjoyed our interactions (well, with one exception that I won’t mention). He is generally an amusing, fun fellow. Yet he is unwilling or unable to engage my arguments. He spends the Read More ›