S. Potter 2007-04-23
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
I wish I could review each essay individually as it bears on the sub-title. If it was not for the importance of getting works like this out, I might have been tempted to only give three.
The book is a collection of 16 essays, some of which deal directly with the "Intelligent Design" (ID) movement, some of which discuss the ramifications of neo-Darwinism. And some that go quite far afield.
The first essay, by Coyne, is about the fallicy of calling ID a science. He does a great job of describing what science is, why evolution meets that definition, and why ID does not. Basic and easy to follow, this was one of my favorite in the book because it goes straight to the heart of the "controversy".
Susskind writes well, but the main thrust of his essay is about the science-religion conflict and the politics that exist to prolong it, not about the crisis of trying to teach religion in science class.
The third review, by Dennett, covers why people are turned off by evolutionary theory's complexities and become convinced by ID'd PR that it has a valid point to make. It's a good overview of how a nonexistant "scientific debate" has been misrepresented to the public.
In the fourth essay, Humphrey discusses the evolution of human consciousness. This piece was confusing and a bit too philosophical for my liking. I know it was a reply to the ID idea that consciousness must have been designed in, but when he starts showing that consciousness is an illousion of mental activity, he lost me.
Paleotologist White rambles about various digs in Africa to show humans have changed over time.
Shubin does a great job of showing that the great transition at the start of the Cambrian wasn't so great, it was just successful. He covers the fish to tetrapod shift very well, showing that evolution is testable, but that's as close as he gets to dealing with ID.
In his essay, Dawkins starts off by showing that ID's claim that maybe aliens designed us begs the question of where did they come from. He writes mostly about the difficulty of finding alien life, but returns to ID at the very end, albeit briefly.
Next, Sulloway reviews Darwin's thought process from the creation idea that was the prime paradigm of his time to natural selection. More of a history of Darwin's change of mind and methods, it doesn't really address the ID topic.
Atran starts off well, showing that if there was a designer, he sure did a crappy job in some places. He provides several examples of anatomy that could have been designed much better, but make sense with evolution using what's available. Alas, he then turns off into a discussion of the role of religion that rambles off the stating point.
Pinker shows that morality can "evolve" in a society without the interferance of a mandate from a creator. I thought this whole thing was off the topic of the book.
Physicist Smolin discusses the possible origin of our universe and ways it might happen absent the creator's hand. It was a bit hard to follow, and, again, I'm not sure this essay belonged in this collection.
The next piece, by Kauffman, was about self-organization and assembly being possible without outside help. It was confusing.
According to Lloyd in the next essay, the universe is so big and so many chemical reactions, or information processing, happen that it was inevitable that life would arise, no help needed. Some good ideas, but boring.
Randall wrote a rambling piece about part of the history of the evolutionary debate, finishing with some comments about how science is almost never 100% sure, but it's still science.
Hauser chimes in with a piece about how the government shouldn't force subjects outside of a diciplin to be taught within the subject's curriculum. While a course on scientific controversies would be interesting, it shouldn't be part of an actual high-school science course for fear it would confuse the students as to what was accepted science and what is not. This was a good piece about education and the importance of keeping to the curriculum needed at that level.
And last, Sampson describes why it's important for evolution not only to be understood itself, but also in tandem with ecology.
Overall, the book was a good read, but some of the essays seemed out of place in this work. Still, I liked it. The addition of excerpts from the anti-ID decision in Kitzmiller vs Dover School District at the end was a nice touch.
