MSNBC has an interesting, if speculative, story that profiles some thinkers who project far into the the future the trajectory that macroevolution will take. When I was a child I was more interested in macroevolution than I am now, and I did stumble upon some beautifully illustrated works which depicted giant carnivorous post-rats stalking enormous post-rabbits. It was only a step below science fiction in many ways, but it is interesting to note that in any given future it is likely that the vast majority of genera, and many classes, of animals, plants and fungi1 will have disappeared. The Tree of Life is populated by many more dead ends than it is by viable shoots.
Which brings me to a question, I am thinking about reading Jerry Coyne and Allen Orr’s book Speciation. Is it the real deal?
I know Allen Orr mostly from his Boston Review columns, where he fights the good fight against Dembskification and less clean bouts against evolutionary psychology.2 Readers might find it amusing that Orr’s lab technician between 1993-2003, who studied the genetics of adaptation and speciation, attended a Baptist Church which rejects speciation!3 From their web site:
We believe in the Genesis account, and that it is to be accepted literally, and not allegorically or figuratively; that man was created directly in God’s own image and after His own likeness; that man’s creation was not a matter of evolution or evolutionary changes of species, or developments through indeterminable periods of time from lower to higher forms; that all animals and vegetable life were made directly and God’s established law was that they should bring forth only “after their kind.”
William Dembski is rather less direct than that….
1 – Taxonomic categories are fuzzier and less precise for many unicellular organisms that reproduce asexually so I am much more reluctant to make any generalizations about the prokaryotes.
2 – One might wonder about the second point, as I’ve made clear I don’t buy the whole package of Evolutionary Psychology. I will elaborate on my own irrelevant opinions on phenotypic plasticity or the importance of cognitive biases in guiding development (my views are irrelevant because the science is being done). But Orr’s review seems to paint with too broad a brush based on Pinker’s specific work. Like many evolutionary biologists who can grapple with nature, red in tooth and claw, I think that Orr is overly harsh about what might be acceptable as a standard of evidence, and what is acceptable as a null hypothesis.
3 – This is not meant to be a hit against Orr or anything like that, I just found it kind of bizarre. After all, Orr is not just a biologist, he is an evolutionary biologist, and he is not just an evolutionary biologist, he is interested in speciation. Then again, I was a brown atheist who was once a member of the Korean American Christian Fellowship, so anything is possible.
Posted by razib at 12:39 AM