© 2002 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
Denying Evolution. Creationism, Scientism and the Nature of Science
1 Department of ZoologyUniversity of WashingtonSeattle, Washington 98195E-mail: hardsnow{at}u.washington.edu
Denying Evolution. Creationism, Scientism and the Nature of Science. MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI. Sinauer Associates, 2002. 338 pp. (ISBN 0-87893-659-9 pbk, $24.95).
Bravo Massimo Pigliucci! You have written the book we have all needed. By all I mean the rational population at large, professional biologists, other scientists and the general public who accept the evidence that evolution provides the best, probably the only plausible, explanation for the history of life on earth. It is also for those who look for guidance through the thickets of the "debate," but despite his comprehensive exposure of their faulty claims it is not likely to persuade any creationist who is impervious to the evidence. His book maintains a lively, almost oral, style throughout. It has an orderly structure and it covers a lot of ground in readably few pages. With it comes a remarkable bonus: appendices that reprint excerpts from David Hume's 1779 "Dialogues concerning Natural Religion" which had already brilliantly put Intelligent Design to rest 200 years ago, alongside William Jennings Brian's closing speech intended for the Scopes trial in 1925. These two pieces should be required reading for all participants in the evolution/creation war.
Pigliucci delivers knock-out blows to all of the claims of the creationists. Nor does he spare excesses of scientism on the Darwinian side, and he shows a convincing relationship between postmodern critiques and the anti-intellectualism of creationists in their various flavors. But will this mark the end of the creationist cause? No, because their arguments are not based on the evaluation of the overwhelming evidence, but on faith that blinds to the accepted basis for discourse in science as a way of knowing. In this respect it would be useful to have Pigliucci's ideas on why the issue is so conspicuous and politically loaded in the United States while creationism in its various guises is a fringe in the rest of the educated world. His brief history of creationism in the US is well done, but its cause is not apparent. My, perhaps naive, view is that American religio-political fundamentalism may be a product of the search for bedrock certainty in the rough and tumble of a turbulent history in the struggle to realize the American Dream.
Pigliucci provides a valuable set of ripostes to the so-called "Ten Icons of Evolution" (arguments against evolution by adherents of intelligent design that have been distributed as book marks by the Discovery Institute to tens of thousands of students), in the course of which he also assails the prevalence of errors in standard biology textbooks. He concludes with a well aimed critique of science teaching. The book should be read as a whole and I will not attempt to summarize the contents but will quote the kernel of his argument. (p. 64): "Therefore, Behe's and Dembski's, and other creationists' claims that science should be opened to supernatural explanations and that these should be allowed in academic as well as public school curricula is unfounded and based on a misunderstanding both of design in nature and of what the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is all about."
I have minor quibbles about style. Too many bracketed comments tend to spoil the flow of arguments, some flip retorts to creationists depart from his objective approach, Werner von Braun is depersonalized to "that," not "who" (perhaps he deserved that?). And finally one hilarious typo (could it be intentional?): Newton's famous "Hypotheses non fingo" is translated as "I do not fake hypotheses," instead of make.
We can only thank Pigliucci and Sinauer for this forthright book: buy, beg or borrow it and read it before you next find yourself caught up in the "debate". It admirably complements Futuyma's book "Science on Trial: the Case for Evolution," also from Sinauer. But don't expect either of these excellent books to end the politics of creationism or the war on evolution.
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