On 7–9 November, the Royal Society held a discussion meeting with the title ‘New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives’.
Twenty-two luminaries of the biological world explained why the neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis is broken and contemplated some ways of mending it.
In the audience were a number of scientists from a different community, whose approach to origins is based on the idea of intelligent design (ID). Several of these were from the Discovery Institute in Seattle, but there were also some European-based creationists and ID proponents.
Darwin in deep deficit
Neo-Darwinism is the idea of evolution familiar from school textbooks and television – the orthodoxy of Richard Dawkins or David Attenborough, which reduces everything to random variation and natural selection. So it may be a surprise to the general public that many biologists find it inadequate. The opening address by Professor Gerd Müller from Vienna (not to be confused with a certain famous footballer) set the tone by outlining the ‘explanatory deficits’ of neo-Darwinism, in particular, the problem of phenotypic1 complexity and novelty.
The conference contained some absorbing science, revealing the genome to be far more complex and active than in the neo-Darwinian picture. A highlight was the talk by Professor James Shapiro (Chicago) on the complex cellular mechanisms that operate everywhere in the genome2, not just in the ‘coding regions’. He and others argued that epigenetics, symbiosis, developmental constraints, ‘natural genetic engineering’, niche construction and other mechanisms are all needed to provide a rounded theory of evolution. To quote Professor Denis Noble (Oxford), the evidence should drive biology towards an ‘integrative’ approach.
A few of the old guard in the audience kept pointing out that some of this wasn’t new. (Several of the speakers have been involved for some time in the ‘Third Way’ project 3 to argue for this ‘Extended Evolutionary Thesis’.) And, fascinating as the meeting was, nothing really addressed Müller’s explanatory deficits. The problems he outlined were largely to do with macroevolution; the ‘solutions’ only enriched our knowledge of microevolution. Of course, attempts were made to de-emphasise this distinction, but at this feast it was the spectre that nobody was willing to acknowledge. For all the brilliance of some of the science, in the final analysis it was (to modify Shakespeare) much ado about not very much.
The real problem
The real problem was revealed by a speaker who advocated exploring any marginal idea whatsoever, ‘except God, of course; not God’. The building in which we sat displays the death mask of Isaac Newton, who saw God not as marginal, but central 4:
Was the Eye contrived without Skill in Opticks, and the Ear without Knowledge of Sounds? … [Therefore] … does it not appear from Phaenomena that there is a being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent … ?
As for the ID people there, we listened attentively in the hall and later enjoyed great discussions and true fellowship in the Lord. Nothing we heard threatened our confidence in the Word of God; rather it caused us, like Newton, to wonder afresh at the extraordinary wisdom and power of our Creator.
