Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

"Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe," by Simon Conway Morris, received a critical review from a mainstream evolutionary biologist in SCIENCE, 5 December 2003. It was stated that many biologists may be convinced that Conway Morris is giving aid and comfort to the enemy (the creationists). The reviewer saw that Conway Morris opposes creationism, but was still critical.I can see that the book might be irritating to materialists (scientific or otherwise), but if its sometimes-controversial tone is overlooked, it has much to offer the general reader. When Conway Morris takes a position that is not orthodox, it is usually qualified with a question mark. I think the major positive contribution of the book is its many fascinating examples of convergence.There is a remarkable relationship between the views of Stephen Jay Gould in "Wonderful Life," published in 1989, and those of Conway Morris in "Life's Solution," published in 2003. Conway Morris opposes Gould's idea of contingency. But the strange thing is that Gould, while claiming support for contingency from the Cambrian fauna, praised the work of Conway Morris on that fauna.From the time of the Cambrian explosion of animal forms to the present there has been a marked reduction in the number of general forms. Gould would take this as evidence of the fragility of forms in the face of chance contingencies. But Conway Morris sees it as a consequence of convergence. The two men seemingly differ only in their conclusions from the evidence, but I think there is a deeper divide. To Gould nature is fundamentally probabilistic, but to Conway Morris it is deterministic. I agree, recalling that Einstein championed determinism in physics.Gould used the idea of replaying the tape of evolution. He argued that contingencies would make the reappearance of man very unlikely. To Gould, a replay is only a thought experiment to help us understand. But Conway Morris asks what can be done in the laboratory? On pages 121-124 he describes experiments done by Lenski and Travisano with the bacterium Escherichia coli over a large number of generations. It was first separated into several populations. Then they were allowed to diversify, and were separated further. Finally all populations were switched from their customary and agreeable glucose diet to a maltose diet and allowed to try to adapt during 1000 generations. The degree and mode of their adaptation was partly due to convergence, in addition to starting points and chance, and the three could be separated statistically. Over the long term, convergence won.Conway Morris questions the theory of the "RNA world," including the idea that the RNA was self-replicating. I think he overdoes his skepticism there. A Perspective by Leslie Orgel: "A simpler nucleic acid," in SCIENCE, 17 Nov 2000, discusses self-replication of the simpler nucleic acid TNA as well as RNA. It seems to me that the self-replicating property of RNA, TNA and similar nucleic acids assures the appearance of life by one route or another, and so discounts Conway Morris's notion that the conditions for life have to be "just right," as they are on Earth. He argues that those conditions are rare in the universe, and so account for our failure to see evidence of life elsewhere. My own view is different: My guess is that we don't find intelligent life elsewhere because when it reaches our stage of development it self-destructs. Maybe that creates a challenge: Can we be the first to acquire wisdom as well as technical skill?Is evolutionary convergence merely a convergence of characters of two or more species when they adapt to similar ecological niches? Conway Morris would like to embed the concept in a more structured context. In reference to an interesting application he expresses it in terms of "morphological space." The particular application is to "skeleton space" as defined by Thomas and Reif. He seems to be saying that each of the conceivable morphologies in skeleton space is a fixed-point attractor. The attractor emerges as the laws of nature guide the unfolding dynamics of evolution.Is this concept of fixed-point attractors in a character space too discrete? In "The Crucible of Creation" Conway Morris gives another example, from the work of D.M. Raup: the morphospace for the geometry of the shells secreted by the molluscs. Some regions of this morphospace are thickly populated. But other zones are more or less empty. In these, the solutions to the equations that govern the geometry can be used to visualize the hypothetical shapes, but they somehow look "wrong." Thus the general morphospace is continuous, but only particular points are realized in the real world determined by evolution.Conway Morris makes a good case for the inevitability of humans, but the evidence is sometimes fragmentary. I think this is only the beginning. There may be as yet untapped evidence in our own present natures. In particular, I suspect that a physical understanding of the network dynamics of our nervous systems will lead to the conclusion that the brains which appeared in the Cambrian explosion would inevitably evolve to the present level, and perhaps beyond.In Chapter 10 Conway Morris returns to the ubiquity of convergence. Convergence is found not only in directly observable phenotypic characters, but also at the molecular level. For instance, the protein rhodopsin for color vision is tuned to particular colors by substitutions at key sites, and different species adapting to the same color sometimes use identical substitutions. It can become uncertain whether molecular similarities and identities are due to convergence or common ancestry. Thus there is at the present level of knowledge a measure of uncertainty which could be exploited by creationists. But fortunately overall outlines of order are found in cladistic analysis based on molecular evidence. This reflects general human understanding as it looks out on the world with faith that order will be found.

Many years ago I took an advanced course on phycology where we discussed evolutionary convergence, particularly with regard to the volvocine line of evolution observed in both Chlorophyta and Chrysophyta. I tucked this information away as being interesting but not pertaining to anything particularly important. "Life's Solution" brought this all back to me and made me realize how important convergence may be to understanding the evolution of life on this planet. With apologies to the late Stephen Jay Gould, perhaps if the tape were run again, the results would be the same, or at least close. Perhaps intelligent beings such as us, or something very much like us, were inevitable. The philosophical implications are profound. Conway Morris avoids these philosophical and theological implications until the last chapter of his book and concentrates on providing example after example of convergence in evolution. Although not as eloquent a writer as Richard Dawkins, he successfully challenges Dawkins' "ultra-Darwinist" views. And as one of the leading paleontologists in the world today, Conway Morris has the scientific credentials to do this.Because of his scientific and philosophical views, Conway Morris has been branded by some to be a proponent of "Intelligent Design." However, he clearly cannot be categorized with this group for purely scientific reasons. Intelligent design denies that evolution can explain complex biological structures or relationships among living things. Conway Morris goes to great lengths to show that evolution does indeed provide an explanation for these structures and relationships. Intelligent design, for instance, denies that the cameric eye could have evolved because of its extraordinary complexity. It must have been designed and created by an intelligent being. Conway Morris shows in his book that it not only did the eye evolve, but the basic "design" evolved six separate times involving different tissues in each instance. In fact, the cephalopod eye variation is more efficient than the vertebrate variation of the "design." Make no mistake about it Conway Morris is a "Darwinian evolutionist."In his last chapter, Conway Morris plays his philosophical-theological hand and discusses the implications of his views in terms of teleology and directionality to evolution. In doing so, he shows himself to be a successor to the great early 20th century paleontologist and philosopher/theologian Teilhard de Chardin. Conway Morris' views of Christianity are well known and perhaps this is why he has drawn the ire of so many ultra-Darwinist "theologians" such as Dawkins.Randomness is a basic tenant of evolution. However, that does not mean that certain structures are not inevitable for purely physical and biological reasons. If you roll the dice enough times you inevitably will roll snake eyes or box cars. And in a philosophical and theological sense, it does not mean that God does not play with loaded dice.

A chunky read and full of interesting concepts

Dieses Buch ist auch im abschließenden Kapitel von Richard Dawkins'lesenswertem Buch "Ancestor's Tale" sehr positiv aufgenommen worden. Allein das Literaturverzeichnis von Conway Morris "erschlägt" einen. Sehr überraschend, daß es zu einem bislang eher als abseitig gehandelten Thema wie dem der "Konvergenten Evolution" plötzlich eine solche Fülle von allerjüngsten Forschungsergebnissen gibt. Conway Morris versteht es hervorragend, eine so umfangreiche Literatur kurz und knapp auf das Wesentliche reduziert zu referieren. Dennoch - oder gerade deshalb - eine höchst anspruchsvolle Lektüre! Ein im Grunde genommen vorwiegend PHILOSOPHISCHES Buch allein mit naturwissenschaftlichen Fakten geschrieben. (Das letzte Kapitel allerdings kann - und sollte man - übergehen.)

un livre qui est la réplique du fameux "la vie est belle" de Gould. Parfois un peu ardu, mais convaincant.

reads like the work of a man full of bile, how he can be so scathing about Gould AND dawkins leaves me flumoxed. detailed, well constructed arguments are derailed by psuedo-mystical musings, leaving a deeply unsatisfying whole.

bad very bad