Science Literature

The Galapagos Islands have long been recognised as the home of numerous endemic species, stimulating questions about how such species came into being. Those responding with answers have supported their views more by theory than observation. But Peter and Rosemary Grant are different, because they have pioneered longitudinal studies of the Galapagos finches, particularly on the small (and relatively isolated) island of Daphne Major. A newly reported study of an immigrant male ground finch (Geospiza fortis) covers the period 1981 to the present.

"We have followed the survival and reproduction of this individual and all of its known descendants, here termed the immigrant lineage, for seven generations (F0 to F6) spanning 28 years."

This finch's odd beak and song make it unpopular with the locals. (Credit: Peter Grant/PNAS, Source here)

The Grants have observed a clustering of male territories of the immigrant lineage and have established that these birds formed a new, albeit small, breeding population. The story is one of interbreeding followed by inbreeding. The authors consider they have gained an "important insight into the process of speciation" - although they hasten to add that they do not regard these birds as a new species.

"How many generations of exclusively within-group mating are needed before the group is recognized as a separate species that deserves taxonomic status? There is no nonarbitrary answer. We treat the endogamous group as an incipient species because it has been reproductively isolated from sympatric G. fortis for three generations and possibly longer."

This is not a story involving new mutations, or any significant genetic change outside the normal range of groundfinches. It is relevant to discussion of sympatric speciation, because the new population coexists with other medium groundfinches on the same island and interbreeding did take place in the earlier generations of the lineage. So what factors are associated with a barrier to interbreeding? The Grants identify two factors: one is morphological (immigrants have larger beak dimensions) and the other is song (immigrants differ from residents lower maximum frequency and higher note repetition rate).

"Our observations provide insight into speciation and hence, into the origin of a new species. They show how a barrier to interbreeding can arise behaviorally and without genetic change in sympatry. A necessary condition was prior ecological divergence, and introgressive hybridization was possibly another. Evidently it takes only a single diploid immigrant to start the process by breeding with a resident, and tolerance of the effects of inbreeding is needed to complete it."

These observations, and the emerging ecological perspective on speciation is interesting - but how does it relate to the broader issues faced by evolutionary biologists? In particular, does it help to understand how innovation occurs? The answer must be - no. There are no genetic changes that can be associated with novel characteristics and although this population is currently reproductively isolated, a few environmental traumas could easily lead to unification. Darwinism is exactly where it has always been - explaining the origin of complexity by appealing to theory and the imagination.

On the other hand, these data can be understood readily in terms of speciation by gene pool reduction. Although normally presented in terms of allopatry, this model considers the possible loss of alleles when a breeding population is split. The resultant populations may not have the genetic diversity of the parent population, and whilst this may be workable in the short-term, environmental change may reveal that the daughter population(s) are unfit and the end result may be extinction. Clearly, this perspective on the data has nothing to give Darwinism but it is compatible with several non-Darwinian perspectives on speciation.

Science reports of stories relevant to evolutionary theory can degenerate to the level of cheer-leading for a favoured cause. One account of the Grants' research refers to "a real-time record of evolution in action. In the PNAS paper, they describe something Darwin could only have dreamed of watching: the birth of a new species." For more, please refer to Jonathan Wells comments here.

The secondary contact phase of allopatric speciation in Darwin's finches
Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition, Nov. 16, 2009 | doi 10.1073/pnas.0911761106

Abstract: Speciation, the process by which two species form from one, involves the development of reproductive isolation of two divergent lineages. Here, we report the establishment and persistence of a reproductively isolated population of Darwin's finches on the small Galapagos Island of Daphne Major in the secondary contact phase of speciation. In 1981, an immigrant medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) arrived on the island. It was unusually large, especially in beak width, sang an unusual song, and carried some Geospiza scandens alleles. We followed the fate of this individual and its descendants for seven generations over a period of 28 years. In the fourth generation, after a severe drought, the lineage was reduced to a single brother and sister, who bred with each other. From then on this lineage, inheriting unusual song, morphology, and a uniquely homozygous marker allele, was reproductively isolated, because their own descendants bred with each other and with no other member of the resident G. fortis population. These observations agree with some expectations of an ecological theory of speciation in that a barrier to interbreeding arises as a correlated effect of adaptive divergence in morphology. However, the important, culturally transmitted, song component of the barrier appears to have arisen by chance through an initial imperfect copying of local song by the immigrant. The study reveals additional stochastic elements of speciation, in which divergence is initiated in allopatry; immigration to a new area of a single male hybrid and initial breeding with a rare hybrid female

See also:

Cressey, D. Darwin's finches tracked to reveal evolution in action, Nature News (16 November 2009) | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1089

According to James Pusey, writing in Nature, "Charles Darwin's banner was first unfurled in China during the Reform Movement of 1895-98, in response to China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War." There were two groups seeking change: the reformers, who were loyal to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the revolutionaries, who wanted a clean break with the past.

"The watchword of the reform movement was 'bianfa', meaning 'change our institutions'. But the very word 'change' was anathema to the conservative officialdom of China. So reformers turned to Darwin as a foreign authority on change, presenting him not first and foremost as a natural scientist who had discovered an amazing fact of life, but as a political scientist who had discovered a cosmic imperative for change."

Some today see Darwin as inspiring revolution (Source here)

This led to a change in the way intellectuals approached ethics: reform meant that traditional codes of conduct were fast losing their appeal.

"Meanwhile, the Europeans waved Darwin's banner to justify imperialism. Dubbing themselves 'the fit', they declared their right to rule the 'unfit'. And some Chinese accepted this argument. Liang Qichao, one of the leading reformers, said in 1898: "If a country can strengthen itself and make itself one of the fittest, then, even if it annihilates the unfit and the weak, it can still not be said to be immoral. Why? Because it is a law of evolution.""

The reformers were very interested in democracy, but realized the people were totally unprepared to handle it. Their solution was to emphasise the step-by-step gradualism of Darwinism with direction and stability provided by an appeal to natural law. The revolutionaries also embraced Darwin, drawing inspiration from the thought that the "superior survive and the inferior are defeated". "The man who introduced Darwinian evolution to the reformers of 1895 was Yan Fu."

"Yan wanted democracy for China - even anarchic democracy, without presidential rule. In Whence Strength? his call for reform was revolutionary: "Establish a parliament at the capital and let each province and county elect its own officials." But 'Darwin' held him back from real revolution. Yan believed that step-by-step progress was a fixed natural law, so stages had to be taken in order. America had skipped constitutional monarchy and gone straight to democracy, but a resulting class war, he felt, would be their undoing. "Should we, then, now throw away all loyalty to our ruler?" he asked in his essay. "We most certainly should not! Because the time has not arrived. ... Our people are not yet ready to rule themselves.""

The reformers and the revolutionaries debated vigorously "with both sides wildly waving Darwin's banner" The leaders of these movements imbibed the message of scientific racism coming from America and Europe and presented themselves as 'fit' to rule.

"Sadly, both camps also accepted the pervasive Western view that Darwin had proven races unequal - that one race was 'fitter' and therefore better than another. The reformers had originally done so to disassociate themselves from those who had fallen prey to the imperialists, such as the Africans and Indians. But in their exile in Japan, reformers and revolutionaries alike turned angrily on the Manchus as scapegoats, labelling them evolutionary low life, whose 'unnatural' conquest of the Han Chinese was responsible for China's peril."

The tensions after the end of World War I were extreme. The traditional pacifist Chinese philosophies were perceived as weak and this led to a philosophical and political vacuum. In their place came Marxism: this "seemed to them the fittest faith on Earth to help China to survive".

"This was not, of course, all Darwin's doing, but Darwin was involved in it all. To believe in Marxism, one had to believe in inexorable forces pushing mankind, or at least the elect, to inevitable progress, through set stages (which could, however, be skipped). One had to believe that history was a violent, hereditary class struggle (almost a 'racial' struggle); that the individual must be severely subordinated to the group; that an enlightened group must lead the people for their own good; that the people must not be humane to their enemies; that the forces of history assured victory to those who were right and who struggled.
Who taught Chinese these things? Marx? Mao? No. Darwin."

Ideas have legs and ideas walk. These developments are possible because Darwinism is more than a scientific theory: it is fundamentally a philosophical stance about the nature of reality. The materialism that underpins the Darwinian worldview has spawned scientific racism + eugenics in the West, and revolutionary fervor in the East. We should help the next generation understand and recognize the significance of such matters, and encourage them to ask questions about the philosophical roots of science.

Global Darwin: Revolutionary road
James Pusey
Nature 462, 162-163 (12 November 2009) | doi:10.1038/462162a (Restricted access link)

In China, under the threat of Western imperialism, interpretations of Darwin's ideas paved the way for Marx, Lenin and Mao, argues James Pusey in the third in our series on reactions to evolutionary theory.

Earlier this year, Eugene Koonin published a masterly analysis of the impact of genomics on evolutionary thinking. This proved to be too meaty a study for a concise blog, and my initial draft was abandoned. Happily, a shorter overview has now been published, and this abstracts salient points from the research paper. Koonin notes that the 1959 Origin centennial was "marked by the consolidation of the modern synthesis" but subsequent years have witnessed great changes which have undermined its credibility.

"The edifice of the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair."

It is time for a paradigm change - but neoDarwinists are stuck because they have so much philosophical baggage holding them down (Image credit: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images, Source here)

Koonin uses the metaphor of "the landscape of evolutionary biology". There are three distinct revolutions have occurred over the past half-century: the molecular, the microbiological and the genomic revolutions.

"[T]his year is the perfect time to ask some crucial questions: how has evolutionary biology changed in the 50 years since the hardening of the modern synthesis? Is it still a viable conceptual framework for evolutionary thinking and research?"

The molecular revolution culminated, says Koonin, in the neutral theory, which means that purifying selection is more common than positive selection. The microbiological revolution brought the world of prokaryotes into the domain of evolutionary biology, but it then became apparent that the concepts of Darwinism and the modern synthesis "applied only to multicellular organisms". The genomic revolution revealed that the living world was "a far cry from the orderly, rather simple picture envisioned by Darwin and the creators of the modern synthesis". In particular, it is now interpreted as an "extremely dynamic world where horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is not a rarity but the regular way of existence, and mobile genetic elements that are vehicles of HGT are ubiquitous".

"The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the tree of life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the modern synthesis inherited from Darwin, namely gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable."

Koonin is serious in saying that all the concepts of the modern synthesis are in need of a fundamental overhaul.

"Moreover, with pan-adaptationism gone forever, so is the notion of evolutionary progress that is undoubtedly central to traditional evolutionary thinking, even if this is not always made explicit.
The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking. In the postgenomic era, all major tenets of the modern synthesis have been, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution. So, not to mince words, the modern synthesis is gone."

Koonin tentatively identifies two candidates to fill the vacuum left by the discarded modern synthesis. The first of these appears to emphasis the role of chance; the second appears to emphasise law.

"The first is the population-genetic theory of the evolution of genomic architecture, according to which evolving complexity is a side product of non-adaptive evolutionary processes occurring in small populations where the constraints of purifying selection are weak. The second area with a potential for major unification could be the study of universal patterns of evolution such as the distribution of evolutionary rates of orthologous genes, which is nearly the same in organisms from bacteria to mammals or the equally universal anticorrelation between the rate of evolution and the expression level of a gene. The existence of these universals suggests that simple theory of the kind used in statistical physics might explain some crucial aspects of evolution."

It is not difficult to predict that Koonin's analysis will not be received quietly by the very vocal leaders of evolutionary biology. They are still entrenched in neoDarwinism and show no signs of conceding any ground to anyone. From a design perspective, Koonin's analysis of the changing landscape of evolutionary biology is spot on. His two candidates for moving forward the theoretical framework are interesting - but lack any recognition of purposeful design in nature. Dembski's design filter concept is relevant here: there are features in the biological world that are best understood in terms of stochastic processes; there are other features that are best understood in terms of natural law; but there are also features that require a design perspective in order to understand them. It is the latter element, prominent in the thinking of design-orientated scientists, which needs to be part of any discussion of where evolutionary biology is heading.

The Origin at 150: is a new evolutionary synthesis in sight?
Eugene V. Koonin
Trends in Genetics, 25(11), November 2009, 473-475.

Abstract: The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin and the 150th jubilee of the On the Origin of Species could prompt a new look at evolutionary biology. The 1959 Origin centennial was marked by the consolidation of the modern synthesis. The edifice of the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair. The hallmark of the Darwinian discourse of 2009 is the plurality of evolutionary processes and patterns. Nevertheless, glimpses of a new synthesis might be discernible in emerging universals of evolution.

Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
Eugene V. Koonin
Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, 37(4), 1011-1034 | doi:10.1093/nar/gkp089

ABSTRACT: Comparative genomics and systems biology offer unprecedented opportunities for testing central tenets of evolutionary biology formulated by Darwin in the Origin of Species in 1859 and expanded in the Modern Synthesis 100 years later. Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one of the forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas non-adaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected. Major contributions of horizontal gene transfer and diverse selfish genetic elements to genome evolution undermine the Tree of Life concept. An adequate depiction of evolution requires the more complex concept of a network or 'forest' of life. There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a nonadaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation. Several universals of genome evolution were discovered including the invariant distributions of evolutionary rates among orthologous genes from diverse genomes and of paralogous gene family sizes, and the negative correlation between gene expression level and sequence evolution rate. Simple, non-adaptive models of evolution explain some of these universals, suggesting that a new synthesis of evolutionary biology might become feasible in a not so remote future.

Darwin was a great composer of metaphors, of which "natural selection" is the best known. Today, few are aware of negative responses from scientists uncomfortable with Darwin's imagery. One of these was Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-originator of evolution by natural selection.

"Wallace remarked, in his article Mr Darwin's Metaphors Liable to Misconception (1868), that the Malthusian progressions and struggle for existence were self-evident "facts". Yet because natural selection seemed to personify a perceptive and forward-thinking selector, or god, he urged Darwin to replace the term with "survival of the fittest". [See also here]
Darwin, however, had brushed him off. "Everyone knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions," he had demurred. "And they are almost necessary for brevity"."

Does "natural selection" have the dominant role in unravelling Darwin's entangled bank? (source here)

In a perceptive essay, Daniel Todes focuses attention on the reactions of Russian biologists to Darwin's writings. Many of these naturalists "were evolutionists before 1859", so they did not dissent from common ancestry. However, their experiences of the living world were quite different from Darwin and Wallace, who drew their inspiration from densely populated tropical forests and related habitats. They witnessed a struggle for existence that matched the description Thomas Malthus had given of human communities. Using the same logic, Darwin and Wallace were stimulated to think about winners and losers in populations of animals and plants. The Russian scientists lived in a different world.

[They] "investigated a vast under-populated continental plain. For them, nature was not an "entangled bank" - the image Darwin took from the Brazilian jungle. It was a largely empty Siberian expanse in which overpopulation was rare and only the struggle of organisms against a harsh environment was dramatic."

The Russian response to living in a harsh environment was to develop "the language of communalism - stressing not individual initiative and struggle, but the importance of cooperation within social groups and the virtues of social harmony." The analysis of Malthus did not match the biological communities in their part of the world, so Darwin's metaphor of the "struggle for existence" was not, in their view, well grounded.

"Russian political commentators of the left, right and centre reviled Malthus as an apologist for predatory capitalism and soulless individualism." [. . .]
"[F]ew Russians shared Darwin and Wallace's respect for Malthus, and [. . .] many saw the struggle for existence as an infusion of the British enthusiasm for individualistic competition into natural science. Darwin's theory, as Danilevskii put it, was a "purely English doctrine"."

Dissent did not apply just to the "struggle for existence" metaphor. Natural selection was equally controversial. The Russians wanted to give more emphasis to concepts like the "harmony of nature" and "cooperation". Many of them advocated "the theory of mutual aid". Indeed, Todes says that it became a "staple of Russian evolutionary thought".

"Darwin too had called attention to such cooperation, but the theory of mutual aid went further. It held that the central aspect of the struggle for existence is an organism's struggle with abiotic conditions, that organisms join forces in this struggle, that such mutual aid is favoured by natural selection, and that cooperation so vitiated intraspecific competition as to render it unimportant in the origin of new species."

This essay highlights issues which have been discussed often by design-orientated scientists. These are identified below.

1. Scientific criticism of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism. It will come as a surprise to many that dissent about the role of natural selection comes from within science. Such dissent was present in Darwin's day and it is still significant. This blog has drawn attention to relevant papers here and here. Those who portray requests for a 'critical evaluation of the role of natural selection' as religiously motivated are living in denial of history and are undermining the integrity of science.

2. Scientific analysis of harmony within the natural world. Due to the dominance of Darwinism, ecological studies have been imbalanced. Evidences of populations regulating their own numbers and of cooperative behaviour have been underplayed or reinterpreted in terms of a "struggle for survival".

3. Science is not a culture-free discipline. Objectivity is a worthy aspiration but it cannot be fully realised because scientists are unaware of most of the cultural norms they bring to their work. Since many aspects of culture are linked to religious/secular convictions, it is absurd when individuals and organisations try to set up demarcation arguments to separate science from ideology (whether religious or atheistic).

"Researchers bring their life experiences and culture with them into the field and laboratory, and in the course of their investigations actively originate, interpret, develop and reject metaphorical pathways. As is shown by the reception of Darwin's theory in Russia, the deployment and criticism of metaphors are part of the ineffably human process by which scientists mobilise their experiences and values to explore the infinite complexity of nature."

Global Darwin: Contempt for competition
Daniel Todes
Nature 462, 36-37 (5 November 2009) | doi:10.1038/462036a (restricted access here)

Darwin's idea of the 'struggle for existence' struck a chord with his fellow countrymen. But Russians rejected the alien metaphor, says Daniel Todes, in the second of four weekly pieces on reactions to evolutionary theory.

See also:

Todes, D.P. Darwin's Malthusian Metaphor and Russian Evolutionary Thought, 1859-1917, Isis, 78(4), December 1987, 537-551

This topic forces us to assess the relationship between science and spirituality: is the invisible spiritual realm generated from the material or should it be considered as having a separate existence? Is religion a phenomenon that can ultimately be explained by science in naturalistic ways, or does religion represent a dimension of reality that cannot be directly probed by the methodologies of science? In an essay in Science, Elizabeth Culotta writes:

"[I]n the past 15 years, a growing number of researchers have followed Darwin's lead and explored the hypothesis that religion springs naturally from the normal workings of the human mind. This new field, the cognitive science of religion, draws on psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to understand the mental building blocks of religious thought."

Neanderthal burial, considered to be 60,000 years old (Kabara, Israel). Material culture analysis can stimulate hypotheses but the interpretations can easily be dominated by researcher presuppositions. (Source here)

Darwin approached the topic from the perspective of his thesis on the origin of species. He looked for evidence that religion itself could be explained by small incremental steps in human cognition and social structure. He started his "story" with the idea that primitive people had no belief system in an all-powerful God. He wrote: "There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea." But if the enquiry starts at a much more rudimentary level of spirituality, the emerging picture is different:

"If, however, we include under the term "religion" the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief seems to be almost universal with the less civilised races. Nor is it difficult to comprehend how it arose. As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally have craved to understand what was passing around him, and have vaguely speculated on his own existence." (Source here)

Culotta quotes the above passage to illustrate the thought that "to Charles Darwin, the origin of religious belief was no mystery". Yet those following in Darwin's footsteps have been puzzled, because humans put extraordinary resources into "elaborate religious buildings and rituals, with no obvious boost to survival and reproduction". Her article suggests that while there is no consensus yet among scientists, "potential answers are emerging from both the archaeological record and studies of the mind itself".

Archaeology certainly offers some data that is potentially relevant: geometric designs interpreted as an indication of symbolic behaviour; deliberate burials of the dead pointing to "the birth of metaphysical anguish", and carved figurines suggestive of shamanism. The problem with all these is that the metaphysical messages are read in different ways by scholars: these artefacts may stimulate thoughts about belief systems, but they are not hard evidence that reveals the minds of our ancestors.

Cognitive psychologists often start with children, who are said to reflect innate, rather than cultural, biases. It is not difficult to show that "young children prefer "teleological" or purpose-driven, explanations rather than mechanical ones for natural phenomenon". This leads them to perceive nature as purposefully designed by a designer. For children older than age 5, the researchers refer to the "theory of mind" which is our understanding that other humans have intentions, desires and beliefs like us.

"If you suspect that an agent was responsible for some mysterious event, it's a short step to thinking that the agent has a mind like your own. "Higher order theory of mind enables you to represent mental states of beings not immediately or visibly present, and who could have a very different perspective than your own," says Barrett. "That's what you need to have a rich representation of what it might be like to be a god." (It's also what is needed to have a functional religion, because people need to know that others share their beliefs.) As Darwin put it, humans developing religion "would naturally attribute to spirits the same passions, the same love of vengeance, or simplest form of justice, and the same affections which they themselves feel.""

Although these cognitive models are regarded as building on Darwinian foundations, there is a recognition that they have not provided satisfactory answers. One researcher is quoted as saying: "Deriving belief from the architecture of the mind is necessary but not sufficient". What drives all this? What gives religion the fitness to survive? The adaptationist approach of Darwinism comes to the rescue:

[Religion] "promotes cooperative behavior among strangers and so creates stable groups. Other researchers hypothesize that religion is actually adaptive: By encouraging helpful behavior, religious groups boost the biological survival and reproduction of their members. Adhering to strict behavioral rules may signal that a religion's members are strongly committed to the group and so will not seek a free ride, a perennial problem in cooperative groups."
[. . .]
But others [. . .] counter that this adaptationist explanation is itself light on data. "It is often said that religion encourages or prescribes solidarity within the group, but we need evidence that people actually follow [their religion's] recommendations," says Boyer. "The case is still open."

So the "potential answers" Culotta mentions at the outset have the word potential in bold and the rest is in the imagination. What is strikingly lacking in these studies is any questioning of the materialist mindset of the researchers. The most significant way they follow Darwin is in excluding any thought that intelligent design issues need to be addressed before we can properly understand humanity. Indeed, the researchers set up a culture that portrays teleology as anti-science. Culotta reports on the findings of cognitive psychologists working with some undergraduate students:

"When the undergrads had to respond under time pressure, they were likely to agree with nonscientific statements such as "The sun radiates heat because warmth nurtures life." "It's hard work to overcome these teleological explanations," says Kelemen, who adds that the data also suggest an uphill battle for scientific literacy. "When you speed people up, their hard work goes by the wayside." She's now investigating how professional scientists perform on her tests. Such purpose-driven beliefs are a step on the way to religion, she says. "Things exist for purposes, things are intentionally caused, things are intentionally caused for a purpose by some agent. ... You begin to see that a god is a likely thing for a human mind to construct.""

These attitudes are deeply worrying, because the researchers have started with the premise of philosophical naturalism. If a teleological perspective is correct, these researchers have no way of discovering the truth. When we look at the radiation that life needs to be sustained, and then look at the radiation emitted by the sun, the match is superb. It is perfectly reasonable to make design inferences and to test teleological hypotheses.

The real problems are with researchers who say that the material processes that create the physical bodies of animals and plants are no different in essence from the material processes that create religion and morality. We can make a prediction that these researchers will continue to grope around in the dark, looking for a answers but never finding them. In the end, they will conclude that religion, morality and consciousness are spandrels.

On the Origin of Religion
Elizabeth Culotta
Science, 6 November 2009, 326, 784 - 787 | DOI: 10.1126/science.326_784

How and when did religion arise? In the 11th essay in Science's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Elizabeth Culotta explores the human propensity to believe in unseen deities. No consensus yet exists among scientists, but potential answers are emerging from both the archaeological record and studies of the mind itself. Some researchers, exploring religion's effects in society, suggest that it may boost fitness by promoting cooperative behavior. And in the past 15 years, a growing number of researchers have followed Darwin's lead and explored the hypothesis that religion springs naturally from the normal workings of the human mind. This new field, the cognitive science of religion, draws on psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to understand the mental building blocks of religious thought.

Sooner or later, students of abiogenesis will encounter Darwin's 1871 letter to Joseph Hooker with his speculations on the spontaneous generation of life. He was returning some pamphlets which triggered the reaction: "I am always delighted to see a word in favour of Pangenesis, which some day, I believe, will have a resurrection." The next paragraph has his "big if" dream:

"It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, - light, heat, electricity &c. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter wd be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."

Bon appetit Mr Darwin! (Source here)

When taken alongside other comments Darwin made on this theme, it is clear that his public stance was to be cautious. The science of his day was unable to say anything positive about spontaneous generation. He felt the power of Pasteur's experiments which brought to an end all the earlier speculations about life emerging from non-life. The authors of a paper reviewing Darwin's thinking summarises the "big if" in this way:

"In the absence of any real corroborative evidence, it is impossible to guess what Darwin thought about the nature of the first living beings. In any case, Darwin's remarks should not be read to imply that he was thinking in terms of prebiotic chemistry, but rather that he recognized that the chemical gap separating organisms from the non-living was not insurmountable."

Also to be considered is the reference to a "Creator" in the last sentence of all the editions of his magnum opus bar the first:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (Source on page 490 here)

Does this mean that Darwin was a Deist, invoking the Creator to explain the first cells that can be called living? What is this "breathing" he refers to? Is it a link with the biblical account of origins? Why was the "Creator" absent from the 1st edition but present thereafter? The authors draw attention to Darwin's own explanation, contained in an 1863 letter to Hooker and shortly afterwards another to the Athenaeum, based on the profound ignorance within science of any route for life to have emerged from non-life:

"[to Hooker] But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process. - It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter."
[to the Athenaeum] "Now is there a fact, or a shadow of a fact, supporting the belief that these elements, without the presence of any organic compounds, and acted on only by known forces, could produce a living creature? At present it is to us a result absolutely inconceivable. Your reviewer sneers with justice at my use of the "Pentateuchal terms", "of one primordial form into which life was first breathed": in a purely scientific work I ought perhaps not to have used such terms; but they well serve to confess that our ignorance is as profound on the origin of life as on the origin of force or matter."

In the light of these comments, it is curious that Darwin did not drop the word "Creator" in subsequent editions. Whatever regrets he expressed in 1863, they were not deep enough to excise the injudicious word. The authors note the consistency in Darwin's view that science did not have any insights into spontaneous generation. They show from his comments to Haeckel, from the apochryphal account of Darwin's encounter with fossils in a meteorite, and from several other comments made in letters, that Darwin was publicly silent because he could find no basis in science for making any positive statements.

"As for myself I cannot believe in spontaneous generation & though I expect that at some future time the principle of life will be rendered intelligible, at present it seems to me beyond the confines of science." (Letter 5282, 1866)
"I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of the so-called Spontaneous generation. I believe that I have somewhere said (but cannot find the passage) that the principle of continuity renders it probable that the principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence of some general law; but this is only conjecture and not science." (Letter to Wallich, 1882)

This being said, the authors are also at pains to point out that Darwin was consistently predisposed to the origin of life being a wholly natural phenomenon. "Although he insisted over and over again that there was no evidence of how the first organisms may have first appeared, he was firmly convinced it was the outcome of a natural process that had to be approached from a secular framework."

"The intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable." (2nd Notebook, 1837)
"Though no evidence worth anything has as yet, in my opinion, been advanced in favour of a living being, being developed from inorganic matter, yet I cannot avoid believing the possibility of this will be proved some day in accordance with the law of continuity. [. . .] If it is ever found that life can originate on this world, the vital phenomena will come under some general law of nature." (Letter 13711, 1882)

The "secular framework" of Darwin resulted from his adoption of philosophical materialism. He was a child of Enlightenment rationalism, along with Lyell, Huxley and Hooker. He knew that some others wanted to put his ideas into a theistic or a deistic framework, but Darwin always resisted this. His explanation of using the word "Creator" ("I truckled to public opinion") simply reinforces the conclusion that Darwin's science was wholly secularised. It is surprising, therefore, to read this comment of the authors about people who misread Darwin:

"Indeed, a careful examination and critical reading of his public and private writings shows that what appear to be contradictory opinions on the problem of the emergence of life are the result of texts read out of context, sometimes maliciously, as shown by some publications of creationist groups and advocates of the so-called intelligent design."

It is remarkable how often such comments appear in scholarly work, nearly always unsupported by references or quotes. On this occasion, as is generally the case, the charge is erroneous and entirely misplaced. By and large, creationist and ID scholars have exactly the same understanding of Darwin's secular framework as the authors of this paper. Where they differ is in thinking that this secular framework is profoundly wrong and is an inappropriate foundation for science. Here is an example of an ID advocate who gives the same interpretation of events as the authors:

"Nor should we be misled by a sop Darwin attached to later editions of his Origin of Species. The first edition ended with the famous flourish: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one [. . .]" To smooth ruffled feathers, later editions read: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one [. . .]" Some are fooled by this sop even to this day. But what did Darwin himself say about this little addition? "I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used [a] Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process."" (Wiker, B. 2009)

Those who should be accused of taking Darwin out of context are the Theistic Evolutionists, who do not want to acknowledge Darwin's philosophical materialism. They generally refer positively to Darwin's reference to a Creator and try to suggest that Darwinism can be harmonised with Theism. Examples include Richard Aulie, Darwin and spontaneous generation, Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, 22, 1970, 31-33 (cited by the authors!), William Phipps, Darwin, the Scientific Creationist, Christian Century, 1983, 809-811, Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution - do we have to choose? Monarch Books 2008, and Nick Spencer, Darwin and God, SPCK 2009. The latter two names are associated with the "Rescuing Darwin" project, funded by The Templeton Foundation, which seeks to find a harmony between Darwinism and God's creative process. For some Christian comment on the project, go here.

As a final thought, Darwin was intellectually honest enough to see the difference between his philosophical materialism (which demanded some form of spontaneous generation) and empirical science (which gave no support for it). My question is: when does it become reasonable to use the findings of abiogenesis research as evidence against spontaneous generation? We have a large body of evidence today and it is telling us something! Some of us have concluded that the materialist paradigm cannot succeed because it fails to recognise the importance of biological information. The question (When does it become reasonable?) is never asked by philosophical materialists because they cannot entertain the notion that causation may be intelligent.

Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life
Juli Pereto, Jeffrey L. Bada and Antonio Lazcano
Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 39(5), October, 2009, 395-406 | doi 10.1007/s11084-009-9172-7

Abstract: When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago he consciously avoided discussing the origin of life. However, analysis of some other texts written by Darwin, and of the correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues demonstrates that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. As shown by notes from the pages he excised from his private notebooks, as early as 1837 Darwin was convinced that "the intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable". Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin rejected the idea that putrefaction of preexisting organic compounds could lead to the appearance of organisms. Although he favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds, his reluctance to discuss the issue resulted from his recognition that at the time it was [not] possible to undertake the experimental study of the emergence of life.

See also:

Dawkins, R. There is Grandeur in this View of Life, The Edge (30 September 2009)

Wiker, B., What were Darwin's Religious Views? Discovery Institute (1 May 2009)