Deconstructing Evolutionism

The Evolutionist's Dilemma

In his important book, Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism versus Irony 1700-1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Stephen Prickett explores the way supposedly objective science is subject to and influenced by narrative or just-so stories. This phenomenon is recognized by the more self-aware scientists. He cites the French physicist, Bernard D'Espagnat, who:

insists that we must never lose sight of the narrative impulse in science: even to put what are essentially mathematical concepts in language is to creative (sic) narratives—or in his terminology, to “allegorize” them. “Texts in which the early stages of the Universe are described in terms of thermal agitation of particles in collision, but with no indication that such language is purely and simply allegorical, are unacceptable,” he insists, “even when they are written by eminent physicists.” (Ibid, p.24)

Eminent physicists writing allegory.  What happened to the stone cold sober objectivity of the hard scientist?  He also cites Stephen Jay Gould, another scientist who is self-aware of the “intrusion of 'unconscious literary assumptions' into 'just-so stories'.

Astute scientists understand that political and cultural bias must impact their ideas, and they strive to recognise these inevitable influences. But we usually fail to acknowledge another source of error that might be called literary bias. So much of science proceeds by telling stories—and we are especially vulnerable to constraints of this medium because we so rarely recognise what we are doing. We think we are reading nature by applying rules of logic and laws of matter to our observations. But we are often telling stories—in the good sense, but stories nonetheless. (Ibid, p. 24)

He then refers to Gould's account of the evolution of the horse, which has been a favorite example of evolutionary “progress” over the years, ever since it was first used by T. H. Huxley in 1870. Prickett then comments:

Gould's story of the creation of the “story of the horse” is an excellent illustration of our capacity for apprehending a loose mass of data in terms of a narrative. Indeed, it is clear that for him our tendency to tell stories may be one of the conditions of consciousness and intelligence itself. It is, quite simply, the way the human mind works. (Ibid, p.25)

He again cites Gould himself:

Any definition of this (human) uniqueness, embedded as it is in our possession of language, must involve our ability to frame the world as stories and to transmit these tales to others. If the propensity to grasp nature as story has distorted our perceptions, I shall accept this limit of mentality upon knowledge . . . (Ibid, p. 25)

Thus, science cannot proceed without telling stories, narratives, allegories, and tales. This is inevitable because science cannot proceed without scientists—and scientists, being human, are compelled to construct reality in terms of stories and narratives. It is the way we are made. Without stories there can be no meaning, period. “Practising science is just as much a matter of 'telling stories' as the plays of Shakespeare or the cycles of the Old Testament. They are simply different kinds of stories, not a different kind of knowledge.” (Ibid, p.26)

Prickett then focuses upon the meta-narrative of evolutionism, and looks at the way the language is used betrays the literary and imaginary foundations of the theory, albeit that such language and use of language is a contradiction of the theory itself.

Again, the story of the horse is revealing. . . . (T)he narrative of development told . . . is one of hierarchy and “progress”. In other words, an idea of purpose has been illegitimately smuggled into a series of changes which should be seen as the products of a strictly random variation coupled with enhanced survival and reproduction for a tiny number of those mutations—the process of “natural selection”. The fact is that it is very difficult to talk about natural selection without using purposive language. Almost any evolutionary writing (including Gould's own) is full of purposive language and metaphors. . . . Now it is possible to argue, as some have done, that such “purposive” language to describe evolution is merely a convenient shorthand. It enables us to make a point in three words rather than three carefully colourless sentences. This is very likely true, but to distinguish between mere “shorthand” and a way of thinking that is irredeemably purposive is not easy. We like a story to have a point, a meaning, a moral—or, at the very least, an ending. Unlike the “story of the horse”, as told by Gould, which, because it has a point to make, provides fascinating reading, “the story of the horse”, told in properly sober and correct Darwinian terminology, has none of these things. Strictly speaking, there is no “meaning” to the sequence of events, merely a number of contingent influences we can only guess at. (Ibid, pp 27,28)

Prickett uses another example, this time from a “recent and highly regarded book on sociobiology, Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue. The emphases in the passage that follows are Prickett's:

“When a T cell starts to multiply it is conscious of nothing and it is certainly not motivated by some urge to kill the invader. But it is, in a sense, driven by the need to multiply: the immune system is a competitive world in which only those cells thrive that divide when they get the chance . . . . So attacking the foreign invader is, for these cells, a by-product of the normal business of striving to grow and divide. The whole system is beautifully designed to the the self-interested ambitions of each cell can only be satisfied by each cell doing its duty for the body.

In the early 1970's, a biologist rediscovered the Alchian-Williams lesson. John Maynard-Smith had never heard of the prisoner's dilemma. But he saw that biology could use game theory as profitably as economics. He argued that, just as rational individuals should adopt strategies like those predicated by game theory as the least worst in any circumstances, so natural selection should design animals to behave instinctively with similar strategies.

Natural selection has chosen it to enable us to get more from social living.”

That Ridley does not mean us to take the italicized statements literally is made clear by the first sentence of the first extract. But from there on the anthropomorphic phrases flow thick and fast, and we are rapidly left floundering as to the exact boundary between metaphoric and literal. . . . My point is not that Ridley is writing badly—quite the contrary. In fact, he makes his points vividly and clearly. His dilemma is a universal one. To illustrate the problem, try re-phrasing each of those passages in totally non-purposive, non-metaphorical language. (Ibid, p.28)

A critical factor here is that purposive language and metaphors of intelligent purpose and design in T-cells are constantly implying the opposite of chance or randomness or stochasticity.

Such fundamental problems over the terminology of evolution have led one literary scholar, A.D. Nuttall, to offer his own, not entirely tongue-in-cheek “refutation” of Darwinism. It goes like this. There are actually two forms of Darwinism currently in circulation, a “strong” form and a “weak” one. The “strong” form is the correct account we have just outlined. It is rigorously non-directional and purposeless, not to mention exhaustive in the sens that it claims to account for all living phenomena. The “weak” pays lip-service to the “strong” form, but quietly allows that other factors might also have an effect. In practice is permits purposive language and imagery in its narrative, and is thus much more intelligible and easy to apply. As we see in the examples above, it is, in fact, the form in everyday use, not merely with the general public, but even among working biologists when off-guard. The problem with this “weak” version is that it is not really Darwinism at all. It is a covertly purposive theory which depends upon and is validated by the “strong” theory which it actually undermines. (Ibid, pp.29,30)

At this point, Prickett gets very close to the evolutionist's dilemma, as formulated by Karl Popper. If evolution were true, it could never be described, said Popper. And if it can be described, it must, therefore, be untrue. Prickett shows how evolutionists—and indeed the dominant powers-the-be in the West—have attempted to wriggle off this skewer. The “strong” form version of evolution is impossible to formulate in human language, both logically and literally. The only way out of the dilemma is to resort to the “weak” form version which draws upon and deploys concepts, images, metaphors, and narrative devices which cannot possibly be true or have any bearing, registration, or basis in “strong” form evolutionary reality. It is like using metaphors of sensory perception to describe the existence and experience of someone permanently comatose. If the metaphors were to have any meaning or positive point of reference for the one comatose, then he could not possibly be in a state of perpetual unconsciousness.