|
The beginning of modern biology can be dated with some precision
to 1859 and the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. For 125 years,
the mechanism of natural selection, Darwin's vision of life as chance variation
in the hereditary material of organisms, and the preservation of better variants
in his "survival of the fittest," has served as the only explanatory
thesis for life on earth -- for its array of forms and behaviors, its origins
and extinctions. To paraphrase Keats, "Darwin is truth, truth Darwin. That
is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." No
more. The "leopard" in the title of How
the Leopard Changed Its Spots is the science of biology, today poised for
a massive change in its theoretical perspective. Here Brian Goodwin, described
by colleagues as "the poet of theoretical biology," proposes an alternative
to the modern synthesis of Darwinism and twentieth-century genetics. Goodwin rigorously
and clearly demonstrates the flaws in the quasi-religious fervor with which Darwin's
theory of natural selection is defended, and presents another, equally powerful
engine for the origin and diversity of species. The consequences
of this altered perspective are both scientific and metaphorical. The images of
Darwinism that color so much of modern life -- survival of the fittest, selfish
genes, survival strategies, "a war of all against all" -- are incomplete,
says Goodwin. If we regard organisms as more than survival machines, they take
on an intrinsic value, with worth in and of themselves. Darwinism has shortchanged
us, scientifically and ethically, for more than a century. This book demonstrates
that organisms are every bit as cooperative as they are competitive, as altruistic
as they are selfish, as creative and playful as they are destructive and repetitive.
Erudite, dazzling, and elegantly written, at once a brilliant application of the
laws of physics to the study of life, an exposition of the powerful force -- not
Darwinian selection -- that shapes life on earth, and a meditation on the evolution
of complex forms, it is certain to be the science book of the year. Brian
Goodwin is a professor of biology at the Open University, Milton Keynes, and the
author of Temporal Organization in Cells and Analytical Physiology.
He is coauthor, with Gerry Webster, of Form and Transformation: Generative
and Relational Principles of Biology. He lives in Aspley Guise, England. |
