THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH:

The Evidence for Evolution

Remember that Greek guy who sat in a bathtub, who presumably watched the effects of his body displacing the water, and shouted ‘Eureka!’ as (in an instant of insight) he figured out how to calculate the volume of irregular objects?

I feel like that guy when I read books written by Richard Dawkins.

The first time it happened was when I read The Blind Watchmaker. At that time I couldn’t see how anything like ‘life’ could be put together by random chance. I think I was unduly influenced by an argument about a tornado being an unlikely candidate for constructing a 747 by tearing through a junkyard.

The ‘Eureka!’ moment happened when Dawkins explained in great detail that evolution isn’t random – that it is the cumulative affects of non-random natural selection that shaped all life on earth, the seemingly infinite variety of descendants of a common ancestor.

The Greatest Show on Earth has moments like that too.

The chapter titled, You Did It Yourself in Nine Months is a quick introduction to embryonic development and how D.N.A. works as a recipe using a code that has been put together and edited over time (by natural selection). The analogy of the production of three dimensional proteins with origami to illustrate how the various tissues grow and form into functional organs and bodies is a tantalizing glimpse into a field of study that simply inspires awe. It is easy to see how such a complex process can inspire incredulity, but the history written into the code testifies to the Rube Goldberg like tinkering of evolution and not an independent designer.

Another chapter called The Tree of Cousinship serves as a whirlwind tour of the concept of homology, the idea that, for instance, all vertebrate skeletons (despite the incredible diversity of individual bones in the skeleton) are invariant across the whole class of vertebrates because all vertebrates share a common ancestor. The ‘Eureka!’ moment in this case comes when you look at the skeleton of a bat and realize its wings are like modified hands.

It is clear that Dawkins is well aware of the political and ideological controversy surrounding evolution in America. Much of his book seems designed to counter the arguments of creationists who have lately been adopting the language of science and insinuating that ‘intelligent design’ is a viable scientific alternative to evolution. Not even a Bush appointed judge believes intelligent design is science, but Dawkins is concerned with the polling figures that suggest that 44% of Americans do.

This book seems like just the thing those 44% of Americans ought to try reading, but they will doubtless be put off by Dawkins’ recent reputation as an arch atheist.

REVIEW BY S. DIETZ copyright 2011