Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good? Are we built to pledge our lives to a group, even to the risk of death, or the opposite, built to place ourselves and our families above all else? Scientific evidence, a good part of it accumulated during the past 20 years, suggests that we are all of these things simultaneously. Each of us is inherently complicated. We are all genetic chimeras, at once saints and sinners — not because humanity has failed to reach some foreordained religious or ideological ideal — but because of the way our species originated across millions of years of biological evolution. …
The eternal conflict is not God’s test of humanity. It is not a machination of Satan. It is just the way things worked out. It might be the only way in the entire universe that human-level intelligence and social organization can evolve. We will find a way eventually to live with our inborn turmoil, and perhaps find pleasure in viewing it as a primary source of our creativity.
—E.O. Wilson, from his New York Times Opinionator post “Evolution and Our Inner Conflict”
Definitely worth a read, especially if you have never heard of the competing theories of kin selection and multilevel selection being battled out by evolutionary biologists.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
2009 National Book Award Finalist, on Darwins' Leap of Faith
Trent Gilliss, online editor
The finalists for this year’s National Book Awards have been announced. One of the books that intrigues me (yes, I’m a daddy with two boys) is Deborah Heiligman’s young people’s book titled Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith.
Reading Darwin’s transmutation notebooks and correspondence with family and colleagues — as well as Krista’s fascinating interview with James Moore — helped me gain a greater appreciation for the complexity of the man, the influential role of the religious and a-religious leanings of his wife and father’s side, and the death of his daughter at such a young age.
From the National Book Foundation’s site:
“Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, his revolutionary treatise on evolution, in 1859. Even today, the theory of evolution creates tension between the scientific and religious communities. This same debate raged within Darwin himself and played an important part in his marriage: Emma’s faith gave Charles a lot to think about as he on his controversial theory.
This biography of Charles Darwin takes a personal look at the man behind evolutionary theory. His children doubled as scientific specimens, and his wife’s religious convictions made him rethink how the world would receive his ideas. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant man, a radical science, and a great love.”
If anybody has read this book and has thoughts they’d like to share, I’d enjoy hearing more.
