Fatal flaws in reductionist evolutionary theory
Julie Hannah
At the heart of the conflict between a theistic and a Darwinian worldview lies the notion of meaning and purpose. The theist believes that the world and its creatures have significance because they are God’s designed creation, while Darwinism regards all life forms as outcomes of blind natural processes that have no ultimate purpose, as explained by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr:[i]
· “The truly outstanding achievement of the principle of natural selection is that it makes unnecessary the invocation of ‘final causes’—that is, any teleological forces leading to a particular end. In fact, nothing is predetermined.”
· “The theory of evolution by natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. It no longer requires God as creator or designer.”
There is a wide range of opinions as to whether any aspects of evolutionary thinking can be reconciled with Christian theology. This article does not enter that complex debate but argues that there are fundamental flaws in both the reductionism of standard evolutionary theory and its application to questions of faith. The argument will address two issues:
1. Scientific challenges facing standard evolutionary theory as a complete explanation of all life forms
2. The influence and limitations of a materialist philosophy applied to science
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1. Scientific challenges facing standard evolutionary theory as a complete explanation of all life forms
According to the standard theory of evolution, known as the Modern Synthesis (MS), all life forms are the result of an unguided process: random genetic mutations produce outcomes that have an accidental environmental advantage and flourish through natural selection; over time these small adaptations gradually accumulate to produce major changes. However, although textbooks confidently present this as a complete theory, many leading evolutionary scientists are certain that it does not provide a full explanation, and they continue to search for additional (natural) mechanisms. While faith is independent of scientific developments, it is valuable to hear directly from a few of these experts.
a. Douglas Erwin, paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institute
Erwin points out that Darwinian processes cannot explain sudden and dramatic periods of developmental change:
· “One of the most striking macroevolutionary patterns is the nonrandom origination of evolutionary novelties in time . . . Microevolution provides no satisfactory explanation for the extraordinary burst of novelty during the late Neoproterozic-Cambrian radiation, nor the rapid production of novel plant architectures associated with the origin of land plants during the Devonian, followed by the origination of most major insect groups.”[ii]
b. Denis Noble, computational evolutionary biologist
In his article “Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology,” Noble discusses weaknesses in the reductionist approach of standard evolutionary theory, and he judges it to be inadequate:
· “We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution.”[i]
· “The aim is simply to distance ourselves from the biased conceptual scheme that neo-Darwinism has brought to biology, made more problematic by the fact that it has been presented as literal truth . . . In retrospect, neo-Darwinism can be seen to have oversimplified biology and over-reached itself in its rhetoric.”[ii]
a. Eugene Koonin, evolutionary and computational biologist
Koonin makes these blunt statements:
· “The idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable.. . . In the post-genomic era, all major tenets of the Modern Synthesis are, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution . . . characterized by the pluralism of processes and patterns in evolution that defies any straightforward generalization.”[iii]
b. Gerd Müller, previously Head of Theoretical Biology at the University of Vienna
Müller argues that the Modern Synthesis has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of the development of organisms, and he supports the development of a non-reductionist theory referred to as the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES):[iv]
· “The limitations of the MS theory are not only highlighted by the criticisms directed against several of its traditional tenets but also by the failure to address some of the most important phenomena of organismal evolution.”
· “The primary evolutionary effect of natural selection is not to eliminate the unfit but to release generative potential.”
· “In the EES, genes are not causally privileged as programs or blueprints that control and dictate phenotypic outcomes, but are rather parts of the systemic dynamics of interactions that mobilize self-organizing processes in the evolution of development and entire life cycles. This represents a shift from a programmed to a constructive role of developmental processes in evolution.”
c. Simon Conway Morris, Cambridge Chair in Evolutionary Palaeobiology
Conway Morris argues that biological adaptations do not seem to result from an undirected, random walk through all possibilities. He therefore rejects the view of evolution as a meaningless and open-ended process, and instead suggests that a greater mystery might underlie the development of life forms:
· “The study of evolution itself already hints that to reduce all to the accidental and incidental may turn out to be a serious misreading of the evidence . . . . More particularly the view that evolution is open-ended, without predictabilities and indeterminate in terms of outcomes is negated by the ubiquity of evolutionary convergence.”[v]
· “Far from evolution being chaotically contingent, in fact the way in which biological ‘hyperspaces’ are navigated points to a deeper, and to date largely unrecognized, structure.”[vi]
· “Again and again we discover that even in apparently straightforward functions there is an exactness to purpose which is eerily precise . . . We are left in the rather extraordinary position of describing things which at one level we hardly understand.”[vii]
· “The additive approach of the Darwinian paradigm has enjoyed immense success, but its reductionist programme has now led us into the sands.”[viii]
d. Kevin Laland, behavioural and evolutionary biologist
Laland makes the following points in his article “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink? Yes, Urgently.”
· “Experimental findings are proving tricky to assimilate into SET [Standard Evolutionary Theory]. Particularly thorny is the observation that much variation is not random because developmental processes generate certain forms more readily than others . . . Rather than selection being free to traverse across any physical possibility, it is guided along specific routes opened up by the processes of development.”[ix]
· “Living things do not evolve to fit into pre-existing environments, but co-construct and coevolve with their environments, in the process changing the structure of ecosystems.”[x]
In short, the processes involved in the development of life are proving to be vastly more complex than those described in standard evolutionary theory, which falls far short of providing a complete explanation. Consequently, as long ago as 1980 evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould dramatically announced that the Modern Synthesis “is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy.”[1] Leading scientists such as Conway Morris, Laland, Müller and Noble propose an extended theory that includes a variety of non-Darwinian mechanisms such as niche construction, developmental bias, phenotypic plasticity, and non-genetic inheritance.
Unfortunately, the fatal flaws in standard evolutionary theory are often not acknowledged. For example, in his best-selling book The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, biologist Richard Dawkins continues to insist that “cumulative selection, by slow and gradual degrees, is the explanation, the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed, for the existence of life’s complex design.”[xi] However, fellow atheist biologist Richard Lewontin points out that this claim ignores the extensive amount of contrary research findings: “Dawkins’s vulgarizations of Darwinism speak of nothing in evolution but an inexorable ascendancy of genes that are selectively superior, while the entire body of technical advance in experimental and theoretical evolutionary genetics of the last fifty years has moved in the direction of emphasizing non-selective forces in evolution . . . What worries me is that they [the public] may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution.”[xii]
2. The influence and limitations of a materialist philosophy applied to science
We have seen that there are serious scientific challenges to the claim of the Modern Synthesis that all life forms are the accidental result of unguided, gene-driven, open-ended processes. It is important to note that, as evolutionary biologist Denis Noble points out, this reductionist approach has never been a necessary conclusion from the research evidence. He writes:[xiii]
· “We have to review the way in which we interpret and communicate experimental biology. The language of neo-Darwinism and 20th century biology reflects highly reductionist philosophical and scientific viewpoints, the concepts of which are not required by the scientific discoveries themselves . . . As the Modern Synthesis has dominated biological science for over half a century, its viewpoint is now so embedded in the scientific literature, including standard school and university textbooks, that many biological scientists may not recognise its conceptual nature, let alone question incoherences or identify flaws . . . [But] the conceptual scheme is neither required by, nor any longer productive for, the experimental science itself.”
But if this oversimplified reductionism is not a necessary conclusion from the research evidence, we need to ask where it does have its foundations. The answer lies largely in the way scientific results have been interpreted through the filter of the pre-existing philosophical lens of materialism. Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin frankly acknowledged that the developers of scientific theories have been strongly biased by this prevailing western worldview, which has set science in opposition to faith:
· “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs . . . because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”[xiv]
This insistence on allowing only materialistic explanations for all aspects of life has led to objective results in science being used to denounce faith in a Creator God as ignorant and anti-scientific. However, such judgments ignore the fact that the scope of science is strictly restricted to natural phenomena that can be observed and measured, resulting in a narrow focus that must disqualify it from commenting on any metaphysical concept or supra-natural phenomenon, and certainly any transcendent reality. It is worth hearing from highly regarded anthropologist Eugenie Scott on this issue. As a self-proclaimed nontheist, Scott urges us to recognise the difference between methodological materialism (what we do to understand the world) and philosophical materialism (what we believe about the world)—the first is science while the second is not. She writes:[xv]
· “An ideology drawn from science is not the same as science itself . . . We must not equate science with materialist philosophy. I argue for the separation of methodological from philosophical materialism . . . A clear distinction must be drawn between science as a way of knowing about the natural world and science as a foundation for philosophical views.”
· “If to test something scientifically requires the ability to hold constant certain effects, this means that omnipotent powers cannot be used as part of scientific explanations. Logically, if there are omnipotent powers in the universe, it is impossible to hold their effects constant, to ‘control’ them in the scientific sense. An omnipotent power could interfere, or not interfere or interfere but make it look like it’s not interfering — that’s omnipotence for you! . . . If science is limited by methodological materialism because of our inability to control an omnipotent power's interference in nature, both ‘God did it’ and ‘God didn’t do it’ fail as scientific statements . . . Properly understood, the principle of methodological materialism requires neutrality towards God; we cannot say, wearing our scientist hats, whether God does or does not act.”
Cambridge paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris provides his own warning about the distorting influence of materialistic presumptions in the field of evolutionary science:[xvi]
· “The undoubted continued hostility between science and religion in is no small part exacerbated by the sleight of hand whereby a materialist philosophy is illicitly imported to bolster a particular world-view of science.”
· “We forget at our peril that language presupposes deep assumptions about the way the world is. If we decide it is arid, machine-like and meaningless then it will be all the less odd that its richness will slip through our nets. That satisfactory definitions of life elude us may be one hint that when materialists step forward and declare with a brisk slap of the hands that this is it, we should be deeply skeptical.”
The strong prior commitment to a philosophy of materialism also sheds light on the passionate resistance within the scientific community to any proposals that go beyond Darwinian mechanisms. Gerd Müller notes that “sometimes these challenges are met with dogmatic hostility.”[xvii] Kevin Laland supports this perception: “The mere mention of the EES often evokes an emotional, even hostile, reaction among evolutionary biologists. Too often, vital discussions descend into acrimony . . . This is no storm in an academic tearoom, it is a struggle for the very soul of the discipline.”[xviii]
To sum up, the reductionist materialism of standard evolutionary theory is not only incomplete but fundamentally flawed, and it is a product of prior assumptions rather than evidence. Whatever form this theory might develop in the future, it is also an illegitimate overreach of science’s domain to use it as a basis for any dogmatic statement regarding non-material influences or phenomena.
Let us give the closing word to chemist Marcos Eberlin, winner of the prestigious Thomson Medal. The Modern Synthesis makes this claim about the apparent driving mechanism of evolution: “natural selection has no plan, no foresight, no intention.”[xix] However, in his 2019 book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose (which is endorsed by three winners of Nobel Prizes in science), Eberlin makes this plea to fellow scientists:
· “Almost every week reveals some new wonder in the biological realm . . . I am now convinced that many of these discoveries, taken together, point beyond themselves to something even more extraordinary. This new age of discovery is revealing a myriad of artful solutions to major engineering challenges, solutions that for all the world appear to require something that matter alone lacks. I will put this as plainly as I can: This rush of discovery seems to point beyond any blind evolutionary process to the workings of an attribute unique to minds—foresight. And yes, I know: We’re told that it’s out of bounds for science to go there . . . [but] I urge you to inspect the evidence.”[xx]
[1]. Stephen Jay Gould, “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?” Paleobiology 6 (1980), 120.
[i] D. Noble, “Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology,” Experimental Physiology 98 no. 8 (August 2013), 1235.
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134
[ii] D. Noble, “Evolution Beyond Neo-Darwinism: A New Conceptual Framework,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 218 no. 1 (January 2015), 7–8, doi:10.1242/jeb.106310.
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/218/1/7/13568/Evolution-beyond-neo-Darwinism-a-new-conceptual
[iii] E. V. Koonin, “The Origin at 150: Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis in Sight?” Trends in Genetics 25 (November 2009), 474–75, doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2009.09.007.
[iv] G. B. Müller, “Why an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is Necessary,” Interface Focus 7 no. 5 (August 2017), 4, 8, 7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015.
[v]S. Conway Morris, “Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation,” Science & Christian Belief 18, no. 1 (2006), 13.
https://www.faith.org.uk/article/november-december-2005-the-boyle-lecture-2005
[vi] Conway Morris, “The Cambrian ‘Explosion’ of Metazoans and Molecular
Biology: Would Darwin be Satisfied?” International Journal of Developmental Biology 47 (2003), 511.
https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/pdf/14756326.
[vii] Conway Morris, “Darwin’s Compass,” 10.
[viii] Conway Morris, The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe Became Self-Aware (Templeton, 2015), 299.
[ix] Kevin Laland, et al., “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature 514 (October 2014), 162, doi:10.1038/514161a.
[x] Laland et al., “Evolutionary Theory,” 162.
[xi] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (Norton, 1987), 317.
[xii] Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons: A Review of The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan,” New York Review of Books 44 (January 1997) 29–30.
[xiii] Noble, “Evolution Beyond Neo-Darwinism,” 12.
[xiv] Lewontin, “Billions of Demons,” 30.
[xv] Eugenie C. Scott, “Science and Religion, Methodology, and Humanism,” Reports of the National Center for Science Education 18 no. 2 (March-April 1998).
https://ncse.ngo/science-and-religion-methodology-and-humanism
[xvi] Conway Morris, “Darwin’s Compass,” 6, 11.
[xvii] Müller, “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” 8.
[xviii] Laland et al., “Evolutionary Theory,” 162.
[xix] Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Review: Darwinian or ‘Oriented’ Evolution?” Evolution 29, no. 2 (June 1975), 377, https://doi.org/10.2307/2407229
[xx] Marcos Eberlin, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose (Discovery Institute, 2019), 13–14.
NOTES
Ernst Mayr, “Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought,” Scientific American (July 2000).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/darwins-influence-on-modern-thought1/D. H. Erwin, “Macroevolution is More than Repeated Rounds of Microevolution,” Evolution & Development 2, no. 2 (March 2000), 81.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1046/j.1525-142x.2000.00045.xD. Noble, “Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology,” Experimental Physiology 98, no. 8 (August 2013), 1235.
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134D. Noble, “Evolution Beyond Neo-Darwinism: A New Conceptual Framework,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 218, no. 1 (January 2015), 7–8. doi:10.1242/jeb.106310.
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/218/1/7/13568/Evolution-beyond-neo-Darwinism-a-new-conceptualE. V. Koonin, “The Origin at 150: Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis in Sight?” Trends in Genetics 25 (November 2009), 474–75. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2009.09.007.
G. B. Müller, “Why an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is Necessary,” Interface Focus 7, no. 5 (August 2017), 4, 8, 7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015S. Conway Morris, “Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation,” Science & Christian Belief 18, no. 1 (2006), 13.
https://www.faith.org.uk/article/november-december-2005-the-boyle-lecture-2005S. Conway Morris, “The Cambrian ‘Explosion’ of Metazoans and Molecular Biology: Would Darwin be Satisfied?” International Journal of Developmental Biology 47 (2003), 511.
https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/pdf/14756326S. Conway Morris, “Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation,” Science & Christian Belief 18, no. 1 (2006), 10.
S. Conway Morris, The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe Became Self-Aware (Templeton, 2015), 299.
Kevin Laland et al., “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature 514 (October 2014), 162. doi:10.1038/514161a.
Kevin Laland et al., “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature 514 (October 2014), 162.
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (Norton, 1987), 317.
Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons: A Review of The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan,” New York Review of Books 44 (January 1997), 29–30.
D. Noble, “Evolution Beyond Neo-Darwinism: A New Conceptual Framework,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 218, no. 1 (January 2015), 12.
Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons: A Review of The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan,” New York Review of Books 44 (January 1997), 30.
Eugenie C. Scott, “Science and Religion, Methodology, and Humanism,” Reports of the National Center for Science Education 18, no. 2 (March-April 1998).
https://ncse.ngo/science-and-religion-methodology-and-humanismS. Conway Morris, “Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation,” Science & Christian Belief 18, no. 1 (2006), 6, 11.
G. B. Müller, “Why an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is Necessary,” Interface Focus 7, no. 5 (August 2017), 8.
Kevin Laland et al., “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature 514 (October 2014), 162.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Review: Darwinian or ‘Oriented’ Evolution?” Evolution 29, no. 2 (June 1975), 377.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2407229Marcos Eberlin, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose (Discovery Institute, 2019), 13–14.