Critical Book Report- The Ancestor’s Tale

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Is it possible that man is not the pinnacle of existence and that we are not more significant than any other organism? I think that is one of the follies of man to believe that we are somehow at the end of the journey of evolution. That once homo sapiens were reached we were the crowning achievement and thus evolution eventually ends with us. Dawkins confronts this issue head-on through a “pilgrimage” through evolutionary time tracing our evolutionary history through our ancestors.

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Now admittedly he does start with humans, but this book treats other organisms as equals. Dawkins states that he could have started at multiple tips of the evolutionary tree and could trace their origins back the same way he did with homo sapiens. One of the most refreshing parts of this book is that homo sapiens are given their due respect, but nothing more. He states many times that we are surely not at the end of evolution, but merely the current extant species at the end of a very diverse and lush history of life and evolution.

“Biological evolution has no privileged beginning and no ending.” “Human hindsight” has created many of the issues we see with people who have misconceptions and Dawkins searches to fix this problem through his book as he recounts our evolutionary history. One of the main things that got reconfirmed for me in this book is the statement that “evolution is not goal-oriented.”

Such examples as the dodo bird were used to show that although the dodo’s ancestors had wings, they had somehow through evolution lost the ability to fly as their wings had become reduced in size and ability.

When mankind found them, they believed them to be stupid because they had become very trusting, but that is where we start to see how they “lost their wings”. Once dodos had reached the island, they did not have to evade predators as the island did not contain any, and over time evolution by natural selection pushed dodos to have reduced wings so that they could use that energy they saved for other biological needs such as reproduction. When the sailors made it to the island the dodos were sitting targets as they had not only lost their ability to fly, but with time they had lost their fear of predators and thus the slaughter occurred. In what can only be one of the most emotional parts of the whole book was when the poem by Hilaire Belloc was recited. I will refrain from reciting it as I’m sure you know it by heart, but in the Dodo’s fate, we can see that evolution is not capable of being goal-oriented. Dawkins mentions that evolution has no foresight, but the “wings were an expensive luxury that was sacrificed for more energy efficiency”. Although it would have been advantageous for the dodo to have wings that could fly in that moment of extinction, it was not advantageous proceeding that event and therefore it was acted on by natural selection. One of the things that stood out to me was when Dawkins addressed the subject of irreducible complexity when talking about the structure of the bacterium flagellum. I couldn’t help but think about the “watchmaker’s analogy” which is an argument made by William Paley.

It is found in his book Natural Theology states evolving that the world is too complex to have just worked out and that it must have been designed. Up until this class I was swayed by this argument as I too believed the world couldn’t have just formed by chance. When I took this class, I realized though that evolution by natural selection does not work by chance and that structures such as the bacterium flagellum, or the eye we learned about in class have developed into what they are by a series of evolutionary changes brought on by mutation and acted upon by natural selection. Dawkins mentions multiple times in his book that “evolution does not jump gaps.” He even goes so far as to describe the process as “like climbing a mountain”. It is a step-by-step process that doesn’t always head in the up direction. Dawkins states that evolution has a “winding directory” and that it is filled with multiple steps that are not goal-oriented. Irreducible complexity is not a very scientific or even evidence-backed term that was coined by people who simply did not understand evolution and could not see that evolution acts on what is already there and through a step by step process can create complex structures such as the refined eye or the bacterium flagellum. You can even look at the cell as proof of this increased complexity through evolutionary time. The eukaryotic cell as we know it now is very complex, but without the addition of mitochondrial bacteria or green bacteria through natural selection pushing two organisms into a mutualistic interaction, we would not have the complex cells we do today.

This was such a grand evolutionary step that Dawkins even coined it the “Great Historic Rendezvous”. I think if religious people, me included, learned more about science we can see that science doesn’t disprove religion, but it disproves uneducated attempts at explaining the world around us. Dawkins never states that he does not believe in a God because that is not the point he is trying to make. He is trying to help us all see that there are explanations for the world around us that have evidence and help us understand how the world works. One of the last things that really the the real to did get me thinking is when Dawkins brings up that “Darwinism is a selfish game.” He goes on to tell us that freeloading species would benefit more than the spetriestheir owactually that triesactuall to work altruistically. This is easy enough to understand as the effort and energy that is saved that would be doing some altruistic act can instead be used for biochemical processes or reproduction. It would only make sense that many species act in theirown self-interest. What seems interesting to me and apparently Dawkins is that humans do not follow this standard. He talks about how we have built roads and that we constantly are spending time and energy in the attempt to work together as a society. My question is why we would even adopt altruistic behaviors if it seems to do nothing for us and everything for the freeloader. As I thought about this, I remembered what we talked about in class. The reasons homo sapiens act altruistically could be because we are getting something out of it. We discussed in class that commensalism is often misidentified as it is actuallare either parasitism or mutualism. Either both benefit or one takes advantage of the other in a way that harms the other organism. It is easy to see that within a species altruistic behavior can benefit the species as a whole and many of the acts of altruism is reciprocated by other benefits of a species working together.

Let’s use the example of a pet though to see if this situation still benefits homo sapiens. From the outsidetheareoutside, it would seem that pets are more of a parasite on the owner as the owner needs to clean, feed, and provide a home for their pet. If you look closer though you see that a pet, owner relationship is mutualistic as pets receive all the before mentioned benefits and the owner receives companionship, love, and attention that they may have not had under other circumstances. I believe there might be multiple reasons that humans have begun to build things such as roads while other species have not. Things such as the development of language, critical thinking, and nerve connections made in the brain have pushed humans along to develop intricate interactions within family units and society. This allows homo sapiens to see the self-benefit of creating roads or government. What is an interesting thought to me is that we may see that other species one day might start demonstrating the same behavior. I cannot predict the evolutionary course that species will take as I have very limited knowledge in this subject, but we have already started to see that species such as chimpanzees work together and display some of the familial bonds that homo sapiens display. I think it would be a huge miscalculation to assume we will be the only species to reach anything evolutionarily.

One of the most important concepts from this book is that we are not the finale of evolution. “Evolution by natural selection” will always work on what exists creating new species and diversity along the way. Humans often attempt to paint ourselves at the center of everything we can, but the truth is we are just a species that like all others are subject to the evolutionary process that has created the wide range of life we have seen. This may alarm some people, but I think it is interesting to see that the fate of the world has not climaxed and that we are just another piece of the puzzle of this world. Life will continue to diversify and to start which statesevolving startevolvin evolve to best fit their surroundings and I myself am interested in seeing what is in store.