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In this sweeping account of the emergence of fit, Gary Cziko
integrates numerous scientific disciplines within the perspective of universal
selection theory that attempts to account for all cases of fit involving living
organisms, including those that might appear miraculous. Cziko's bold assertion
is that all novel forms of adapted complexity -- whether single-celled organisms
or scientific theories -- emerge from an evolutionary process involving cumulative
blind variation and selection. Without Miracles
describes many remarkable examples of the fit of various structures, behaviors,
and products of living organisms to their environments in a broad synthesis of
humankind's attempt to understand the emergence of complex, adapted entities.
These explanations range from the providential accounts of the early philosophers
and "natural theologians," through instructionist theories of the type
proposed by Lamarck, to an ongoing "second Darwinian revolution" in
which natural and artificial selection are being applied to many fields of science
to both explain the emergence of naturally occurring adapted complexity and facilitate
the design of useful products ranging from microbes to computer programs.
The evolution of explanations of fit from providential through
instructionist to selectionist theories, Cziko argues, has occurred repeatedly
in many different fields of knowledge along with a growing realization that the
Darwinian mechanism of cumulative blind variation and selection is the only tenable
nonmiraculous explanation for the emergence of any kind of functional complexity.
Cziko applies this provocative selectionist thesis to a stunning
range of domains including biology, immunology, neuroscience, ethology, psychology,
anthropology, philosophy, education, linguistics, and computer science. The result
is an up-to-date, clearly summarized collection of selectionist arguments that
shows how our knowledge of the emergence of fit has itself evolved and continues
to do so. Gary Cziko is Associate Professor in the
Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
