This book is meant for those who do not believe in Evolution. But those who do not believe in Evolution would continue not to believe in evolution (despite the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year) and in fact, if I were one of them, I would be offended by the tone of the entire book. He hammers, he berates. he pours facts after facts down the throat, and he clearly shows that he thinks that non-believers in evolution are stupid. Not the greatest combination to convince somebody.
As a scientist, I found the book fascinating. The evidences that Dawkins presents about evolution, about Darwin's theory, encompasses a wide swathe of science- biochemistry, evolution in laboratory, fossils, anatomy... the list is endless. Some of it I had read before. For example, he talks about Richard Lenski's E.coli long term evolution where he has been tracking genetic changes in 12 identical populations of E.coli since 1988.
Some of it was new to me. He describes an experiment where freshwater aquarium fish (Guppies) were grown in different tanks with different backgrounds. The guppies have spots over their body and these spots are changed such that the fish can merge with the background. So in effect the spots are used for camouflage purpose. In this experiment, he describes, the scientists use different backgrounds and watch how an initial population of identical guppies adapt to the environment.
But the most interesting chapter was the one entitled "History written all over us". Here, he traces how the body plan shows traces of how it evolved. Very often the body plan makes no sense. The retina is placed backward. The brain has to perform the most intricate deconvolution to ensure we see what we are supposed to see. This chapter, for me, nailed down why an Intelligent Designer did not create each one of us.
However, the skeptics will still argue that why we do not see the bacteria evolve into something else. Fair question. The Darwanian process is a very slow and does not completely account for how evolution happened. In evolution, it is understood that life began with a single cell. A bacteria. And from this evolved everything else.
But the Darwanian theory cannot explain how bacteria evolved into yeast. The bacteria and yeast are both single-celled organisms. But yeast contains an organelle called mitochondria which provides the energy for the cell. The bacteria does not contain mitochondria. How did mitochondria come up.
This was answered in the second book I read this past month.
As a scientist, I found the book fascinating. The evidences that Dawkins presents about evolution, about Darwin's theory, encompasses a wide swathe of science- biochemistry, evolution in laboratory, fossils, anatomy... the list is endless. Some of it I had read before. For example, he talks about Richard Lenski's E.coli long term evolution where he has been tracking genetic changes in 12 identical populations of E.coli since 1988.
Some of it was new to me. He describes an experiment where freshwater aquarium fish (Guppies) were grown in different tanks with different backgrounds. The guppies have spots over their body and these spots are changed such that the fish can merge with the background. So in effect the spots are used for camouflage purpose. In this experiment, he describes, the scientists use different backgrounds and watch how an initial population of identical guppies adapt to the environment.
But the most interesting chapter was the one entitled "History written all over us". Here, he traces how the body plan shows traces of how it evolved. Very often the body plan makes no sense. The retina is placed backward. The brain has to perform the most intricate deconvolution to ensure we see what we are supposed to see. This chapter, for me, nailed down why an Intelligent Designer did not create each one of us.
However, the skeptics will still argue that why we do not see the bacteria evolve into something else. Fair question. The Darwanian process is a very slow and does not completely account for how evolution happened. In evolution, it is understood that life began with a single cell. A bacteria. And from this evolved everything else.
But the Darwanian theory cannot explain how bacteria evolved into yeast. The bacteria and yeast are both single-celled organisms. But yeast contains an organelle called mitochondria which provides the energy for the cell. The bacteria does not contain mitochondria. How did mitochondria come up.
This was answered in the second book I read this past month.
No comments:
Post a Comment