Can we be Evolutionists without God?
Introduction
Many years ago, a new Dean was hired at my college. He asked me and a
colleague from the English department to help them investigate various Honors Programs
around the country. When we finished, he took our very ambitious, somewhat
controversial (and expensive) proposal to the Board of Trustees. To our surprise and
elation, it was accepted without significant modification. As a result, for almost twenty
years, the core of Butte College’s Honors Program was an interdisciplinary, team taught
sequence of four courses in which highly motivated students read and discussed the
major texts of the Western Tradition. Among the books read in the first semester were
Homer’s Iliad, Plato’s Republic, Virgil’s Aeneid, Augustine’s Confessions, Dante’s
Inferno and Aquinas’s On the Principles of Nature. Admittedly, the last title is a little
incongruous. It is hardly one of Aquinas’s more famous works, but it made the list
because our proposal required students to read the works “in their entirety” and assigning
all five volumes Summa Theologica was simply unworkable.
Can we be Evolutionists without God? is an unpacking, up-dating, and
sympathetic exposition of a single short sentence from the Principles of Nature. Yet, my
conclusion is of more than mere historical interest—if Aquinas is correct (as I think he
is), then it is very hard to be a good evolutionist without God. Clearly such a conclusion
is contrary to most popular opinion.1
The all important sentence goes something like this: “The cause of the causality
of the efficient cause is the final cause.”2 I still remember the day, over two decades ago,
when I began my exposition of this sentence. Back then, all Honors classes were team
taught. My co-instructor was a quick wit from the English department, and though we
were friends, that didn’t mean I wasn’t fair game. I can still see the smirk on his face
when he asked, “And how many angels did Aquinas think could dance on the head of a
pin?” 3 The students were equally befuddled—“The cause of the causality of the efficient
cause is the final cause”! Could there be a better demonstration of philosophical mumbojumbo than this piece of nonsense?
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I can no longer remember the details of my response, but my strategy—to wow
students with erudition—was a rhetorical loser. Looking back, I realize how stupid I was.
After all, On the Principles of Nature was Aquinas’s “Senior Thesis;” it never pretended
to be a work of vast scholarship. Aquinas was working on his Bachelor’s degree, and his
immediate goal was to demonstrate a good understanding of Aristotle’s cutting edge
“scientific” works. “The cause of the causality of the efficient cause is the final cause” is
anything but Aquinas’s “original contribution” to the sum of human understanding. It
was a virtual truism at the time, something like “The three laws of gravity determine the
planets’ orbits.”
However, Aquinas’s truism concealed a sharp edge. Among theologians, the so
called “Errors of Aristotle” were infamous. These included Aristotle’s assumption that
the universe was eternal, his explicit denial of divine providence and his apparent denial
of the immortality of the soul. Given Aquinas’s professional goal of teaching biblical
theology, writing a senior thesis sympathetically explicating the new Aristotelian
“science” was certainly gutsy, and maybe even foolish. The same, I suppose, might be
said of someone like me who argues that evolutionary biologists need Aquinas’s “truism”
as much as astronomers need Newton’s laws of gravity.
Chapter 1: Efficient and Final Causes
“The cause of the causality of the efficient cause is the final cause.” What could
that possibly mean? And how could such apparent drivel contain a truth that today’s
biology can only ignore at its own peril? Though there are certainly many details about
which evolutionary biologists disagree, they universally agree that (1) life has not always
existed on earth and (2) DNA contains information. These two propositions cannot be
true if Aquinas is wrong. Without some principal of final causation it makes no sense to
talk of DNA’s information. And obviously, without DNA and the information it contains
the foundations of modern biology collapse.
So the question becomes: Where does the information in DNA come from? Our
argument will be that there can be no information without a rational in-former. The
information in the DNA of the first living organisms obviously didn’t come from human
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in-formers. Therefore, unless there is something like a divine In-former of the DNA in
the first living organisms, evolutionary explanations make no sense.
Let me be clear from the outset: my argument has nothing to do with
“Creationism” as it is currently understood or even with the Intelligent Design
movement. Both of these argue that evolution is nothing more than a “just so story.” If
evolution was truly scientific, so these critics argue, then biologists would make
predictions that are experimentally testable. In point of fact, evolutionary biologists don’t
do this; they only tell stories about the distant past which no one has ever observed. Since
these Darwinian stories can never be falsified, they are really matters of faith, not
science.
Many evolutionary biologists agree with at least half of this argument; they too
believe that real science must be falsifiable. But contrary to the claims of their critics,
these scientists say that evolution is just as falsifiable as physics. One of evolution’s
predictions, for example, is that human and dinosaur fossils will never be discovered in
the same geological strata. Since this has not happened after decades of digging have
produced thousands of human and dinosaur fossils, all separated by millions of years of
sediment, we have empirical confirmation of Darwin’s theory. Judge John E. Jones III in
his well publicized Kitzmiller v Dover (2005) decision similarly assumed that
falsifiability was the sine qua non of science. Yet, Judge Jones ruled that it was
creationism—not evolution—which was non-falsifiable, and hence, not constitutionally
fit for a high school biology classes.
The irony is that philosophers of science have for decades expressed strong
reservations about the early Karl Popper’s argument that falsifiability is the standard for
distinguishing “real” science from pseudo-science.4 And as we will see, some
evolutionary biologists are also beginning to have reservations about falsifiablity. Instead
of reducing biology to terms that would make it acceptable to physicists and chemists,
they are now defending the uniqueness of their own discipline.
Perhaps the most famous case in point is Ernst Mayr. He is the recently deceased
dean of evolutionary biology who spent the last thirty of his hundred year life arguing
that historical disciplines like geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology are just as
“scientific” as physics and chemistry, even if their results cannot be experimentally tested
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in the laboratory. It is a serious mistake, he argued, for these historical disciplines to
attempt to mimic the ways of non-historical sciences like physics and chemistry.
Biologists should not, says Mayr, hide the fact that all attempts to reduce biology to the
terms of physics and chemistry have failed. Rather, they should acknowledge that
biological explanations transcend (though they do not contradict) the laws of physics and
chemistry.
His argument is two-fold. First, he distinguished between physical causation and
predictability. Everything that is predictable must have a physical cause. But many things
which are physically caused are not predictable, even in principle. For example, if I throw
a hundred pennies in the air, it is predictable that they will fall to the ground and never
enter Earth’s orbit. However, the specific location of each penny and its orientation to all
the other pennies is not predictable. Of course, just a few decades ago, many scientists
would have retorted that our inability to make such a predication rested solely on our lack
of information. As Laplace famously said,
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the
cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces
that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is
composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis,
it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the
universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be
uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.5
But today, Laplace’s Demon has been slain by science itself. First, there is the
“butterfly effect.” My favorite example comes from a mathematician, Michael Berry (via
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s, The Black Swan). He analyzes the parameters for predicting the
motion of colliding billiard balls. Using the laws of Newtonian physics it is easy to
predict the outcome of the first impact. The second impact, of course, is more difficult to
calculate and requires more careful measurement of the initial conditions. By the ninth
impact, in order to make an accurate prediction you must take into account the
gravitational “pull” of a 150 pound person standing next to the table. “And to compute
the fifty-sixth impact, every single elementary particle of the universe needs to be present
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in your assumptions! An electron at the edge of the universe, separated from us by 10
billion light-years, must figure in the calculations, since it exerts a meaningful effect on
the outcome.”6
Second, there is the “three body problem.” Go to Google, type in “double
pendulum” and you will find several computer simulations of the problem. A double
pendulum is nothing more than a second pendulum attached to the bob of the first
pendulum—not exactly a complex machine! Yet there is no mathematical formula for
predicting the future behavior of something as simple as this. All one can do is to wait
and watch. Yet, after the fact, there is no mystery about what was observed. The behavior
of double pendulums is wholly the result of physical causes. There are no metaphysical
gremlins to frustrate our calculations. Nor are we dealing with quantum mechanics.
Working solely with the assumptions of Newtonian physics the “three body problem”
defies mathematical analysis.
Though Aquinas knew little about mathematics, he fully understood the need to
distinguish between causation and predictability. Something is predictable, he said,
because it has a “per se efficient cause”; whereas something will be unpredictable if it
only has a “per accidens efficient cause.” Updating his terminology, we will call the first
a lawful physical cause and the second an accidental physical cause. The laws of
Newtonian physics allow us to predict that no human can throw pennies into earth orbit.
However, there are no laws, only accidental conditions, which determine precisely where
a handful of pennies will land.
Aristotle, Aquinas and Mayr are in whole hearted agreement: “making falsifiable
predictions about future events” is not the hallmark of real science; it is only the mark of
bad philosophy 50 years out of date. The good philosophy contained in Aquinas’s truism
explains why this is the case.
When Aquinas says, “The cause of the causality of some efficient causes is the
final cause,” his point is that without some sort of final cause an efficient cause will not
be lawful. Without final causes, physical causes would have no predictive or explanatory
value. When a hand full of pennies are falling to the ground there is a virtually infinite
number of accidental physical causes effecting the precise place where each penny will
come to rest. Here, prediction is impossible. Yet, only the mass of the pennies, the
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velocity with which they are tossed and the three laws of gravity are necessary to predict
that the pennies will not enter Earth’s orbit. It is only when we have lawful physical
causes that predictions are possible. But, as we will argue, lawful causes require final
causes.
We frequently speak of the cause of some event. But in the vast majority of cases,
things or events will have many causes. For example, biologists have long wondered
about the extinction of the dinosaurs. Most scientists now believe the cause was a
massive asteroid which struck the earth about 65 million years ago. Of course, they don’t
mean that a single asteroid broke into millions of pieces, each of which “miraculously”
hit an individual dinosaur. Instead, they are saying that the asteroid was the explanatory
cause in a whole series of causal events (a massive cloud of dust shooting high into the
atmosphere, trade winds distributing the dust around the globe, which then blocked the
sun, thereby causing many species of plant to die for lack of sunlight, etc.).
But why and in what sense was the asteroid an explanatory cause? Not because it
was somehow the first in a temporal series. Many things happened before the asteroid
struck the Earth. Rather, we say of the almost infinite number of events that preceded the
death of the dinosaurs that this is the one that elicits the response, “Ah, now we
understand why the dinosaurs became extinct.” Yet, whether the asteroid would strike
land (initiating one series of events) or the sea (initiating a quite different series of
events) was no more predictable than the ninth impact of colliding billiard balls. It is only
after the asteroid strikes the earth where it did that the extinction of the dinosaurs is the
object of lawful physical causes. Then, and only then, could scientists predict that the
dust cloud would seriously diminish plants’ ability to photosynthesize food which in turn
would create a paucity of plants for the very large reptiles making it hard for them to
compete with smaller more agile mammals.
This distinction between accidental and lawful physical causes was captured long
ago in the ditty,
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
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For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Of course, the last line is ironic. No one, after learning about the lost nail, will say: “Ah,
now we know how to retain kingdoms—never loose a nail! The nail cannot be the
explanation for losing the kingdom because it was simply one of the virtually infinite
number of preceding events.
Prior to Laplace, the philosophical distinction between accidental and lawful
physical causes was taken seriously. Aristotle and Aquinas, for example, argued that an
infinite series of lawful physical causes is impossible. Moderns tend to be skeptical. The
series of whole numbers is infinite. So why can’t a series of causes also be infinite? But
this question is ambiguous. A series of accidental causes can be infinite; a series of lawful
causes cannot. The reason is fairly simple: by definition, in an infinite series there can be
no first or originating member. And conversely, a series which has a first or originating
member isn’t infinite. In an infinite series, all causes are equally significant which means
there is no single cause which causes us to say, “Ah, now we understand.” As Henry Ford
said of history, in any infinite series, there’s “just one damn thing after another.”7
Perhaps the universe is “just one damn thing after another.” But if it is, it is also a
universe where science is impossible. If the universe is composed of an infinite series of
accidental causes, then all causes are of equal significance and no causes will be lawful.
Temporal and spatial proximity would be the sole criteria for causation. Yet this is clearly
insufficient since there will always be an infinite number of “events” contiguous in time
and space to any event. So once again, it will be impossible to distinguish the cause.
For example, suppose you wake up one morning with a terrible headache and
want to know its cause. It is impossible simply to list all the “contiguous circumstances”
which preceded the headache and then, one-by-one eliminating those which are causally
irrelevant. Just try making a complete list of all the “contiguous circumstances” involved
in the last hour of your life. Obviously the list would include things like: ate breakfast,
took a shower, drove my car to school, etc. But unless we beg the question by assuming a
criterion of relevancy (something only final causes provide), the list must include things
like: opened a brown door with my left hand while a mosquito was sucking blood from
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the top portion of my right ear during which time I was kissing my wife’s left check and
grabbing my lunch with my right hand. . . .
The truth of the matter is that when we try to determine the cause of a headache
we rule out as irrelevant literally billions and billions of temporally and spatially
proximate “circumstances” as not worth worrying about. How do we do this? How do we
know that certain “circumstances” are irrelevant without an understanding of the “first
principles” which govern the natural world? These “first principles” are the final causes
which Aquinas refers to as the cause of the causality of the efficient cause. 8
Mayr has no objection to physicists and chemists limiting their investigations to
repeatable events whose lawful causes can be determined in the laboratory. But he does
object to any attempt to hijack the mantle of “scientist” by demanding that biologists do
the same. Though evolutionary explanations are not “scientifically” falsifiable, biologists
justify their explanations just like everyone else who tries to understand the past, namely,
they search for the most likely narrative of non-lawful causes which, with hindsight,
explains present observations. Why are there no dinosaurs alive today? Because a giant
asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago which caused a massive cloud
of dust to encircle the Earth, slowing the ability of plants to photosynthesize sun light
which in turn killed most of the food for the dinosaurs thereby providing a new niche for
smaller and swifter mammals, etc.
Even though no biologist can predict the future of evolution here on earth, this in
no way diminishes the legitimacy of biology. To demand that biologists work like
physicists and chemists is to deny the most obvious fact about the world in which we
live—not all causes are lawful. As Karl Popper himself argues, the unpredictable
behavior of clouds is much more common than the predictable behavior of clocks.9 (It is
also easy to forget that even physicists and chemists are unable to predict the future
behavior of something as simple as a double pendulum.)
Now to Mayr’s second point—biological explanations transcend (though they
don’t contradict) the laws of physics and chemists. He writes, “Aristotle’s eidos is a
teleonomic principle which performed in Aristotle’s thinking precisely what the genetic
program of the modern biologist performs.”10 Of course, a rhetorically skillful critic
could have as much fun with this sentence as my English colleague had with Aquinas’s,
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at least in part, because Aquinas and Mayr are making precisely the same point. Though
Mayr fails to define the Greek word “eidos,” in this context it can mean nothing other
than “final cause,” as in—“The cause of the causality of the efficient cause is the final
cause.”
The idea of transcending, without contradicting, can be illustrated by considering
Saint James’ comparison of angry words to the rudder on a large ship (James 3:4). In
both cases, their physical effects transcend by far their physical significance. True, there
is a big difference between words and rudders. The large effect of rudders can be
explained solely in terms of physical causes (i.e., leverage); the effects of an angry word,
however, cannot. Words spoken in English to an American audience may have quite
different affects than precisely the same words spoken to a Russian audience. The
physical effects on the English set of ears may cause a riot while precisely the same
physical effects on the Russian set of ears may produce only puzzled faces.
If we are to understand the difference between words and rudders we will need
more than physics and chemistry. There is no mystery about what the additional element
is—it’s the meaning (or as some say, the informational content) of the words. Yet, as this
example suggests, meaning/information is dependent on more than the laws of physics
and chemistry. Mayr argues that the same is true of genetic programs.
Having said this, we must stress the fact that there is nothing about either words
or genetic programs which contradicts the laws of physics and chemistry. It is just that
physics and chemistry by themselves can’t explain their informational content. And it is
the information contained in DNA which makes a whole new kind of science possible—
evolutionary biology. But before we can understand how information makes biology
possible, we must understand why it is invisible to physics and chemistry.
Chapter 2: Form is not Shape
Toward the end of the spring semester each year we took our Honors students to
The Shakespearian Theater in Ashland, Oregon. One year we saw two Shakespeare plays
and a third by Moliere. A character in the third play was a philosopher, though this was
never explicitly announced. Instead, Moliere had this character repeatedly say things like:
“Form is not shape” and “Don’t say ‘form’ when you mean ‘shape.’” To Moliere there
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was not a dime’s worth of difference between form and shape—a thing’s shape is its
form and vice versa. He assumed that his audience would agree and infer that his
character must be a philosopher since only a philosopher would insist on such a silly
distinction.
We beg to differ. Without the distinction between form and shape neither good
philosophy nor good biology are possible. A couple “thought experiments” and a parable
help make this crucial distinction.
Thought experiment one:
Close your eyes and form a mental image of a circle. Now form a mental image of
an octagon. Most of us will have no difficulty “seeing” these two images as distinct. But,
now, form a mental image of a chiliagon. (A chiliagon is a 1000-sided regular polygon).
Can anyone honestly claim that their mental image of a circle is distinct from their mental
image of a chiliagon? Nonetheless, we have no difficulty thinking about the difference
between circles and chiliagons because our concept of a circle is quite distinct from our
concept of a chiliagon. Even though we are unable to form distinct images of circles and
chiliagons, we understand that the two are distinct.
Thought experiment two:
Imagine you are in a room with a piano, a map of North America and several
people who drive cars. Now suppose you are asked to count the number of keys in the
room. Can you do it? Answer: Not until you know whether you are supposed to count
both car keys and piano keys, or perhaps even the key on the map. Even then, there may
be disagreement since someone may decide to count the individual islands of the Florida
Keys.
How much worse would it be if you are asked to count the number of “things.”
What’s a “thing?” Are we supposed to count each person as one thing? Or do we count
their noses, feet and toes as three separate things? Or perhaps we should count the cells in
their noses as individual things? What about counting the individual molecules which
make up the cells? If there are three dots on a white board, do we count each dot as one
thing or do we also count pairs of dots as a thing? And why stop there? Why not count
triads of dots as a thing too? Obviously, our questions don’t end here.
A Parable:
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A peripatetic philosopher, a number crunching statistician and a super-sleuthing
forensic scientist are hiking down a trail when they see rocks on the side of a hill shaped
like this:
The statistician says that the odds against random chance arranging rocks in the
shape of the English word for “Taco” and an arrow pointing straight ahead are so great
that the rocks must be a sign that they are approaching a taco stand. Somewhat skeptically
the forensic scientist sets about to discover physical evidence that some person or group
of people actually arranged the rocks. Yet, using his most sophisticated tools, he finds no
evidence of human activity and concludes that the statistician is wrong. The rocks are
nothing more than a highly unusual event, utterly devoid of meaning.
The statistician, not to be outdone by the tools of the forensic scientist, gets out
his calculator, punches in some numbers, pushes a button, and outcomes 1081. He
explains that this is larger than scientists’ best estimate of the number of fundamental
particles in the entire universe. So it is simply irrational, he says to his forensic friend, to
conclude that these rocks are the result of random chance just because his tools can’t
detect the physical presence of human activity.
Finally, though without much hope, the statistician and the forensic scientist turn
to their tool-less philosophical friend for assistance. “Well,” says the philosopher,
“maybe the rocks have meaning and maybe they don’t—it all depends on their form. If
they are only shaped like words, then they’re not meaningful. But if the rocks are in the
form of a word, then they are meaningful.” Their initial hunch is confirmed—without the
sophisticated tools of math or science, their philosophical friend can only utter
meaningless mumbo-jumbo.
So the dispute continues as they walk down the road. Five minutes later they see a
taco stand. The statistician is delighted and takes this to be a sure vindication of his tools.
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The forensic scientist is crest-fallen, wondering why his scientifically sophisticated tools
didn’t uncover evidence of human activity. The philosopher remains agnostic—maybe
the unusually shaped rocks were a product of chance, maybe not.
A day later, the owner of the taco stand drives up the road and sees the same
rocks. He thinks to himself—“What a great advertisement!”—and makes arrangements
with his lawyer to purchase the land. When the peripatetic philosopher reads of this
transaction in the local newspaper, he says to himself: “Whatever the rocks were
previously, now they are words in-formed with meaning.”
The point in all three cases is that Form is not Shape. Not, of course, in Moliere’s
sense, but in the Aristotelian sense in which a thing’s “form” is its defining or essential
nature whereas a thing’s “shape” is merely its physical composition and appearance. In
other words, Aristotelians are using the term “shape” as a shorthand to refer to the totality
of a thing’s physical and chemically quantifiable properties, i.e., its physical shape, size,
height, weight, chemical composition, electrical conductivity, specific gravity, etc., in its
most complete description. Whereas they use the term “form” as that essential quality
that defines what something is.
No matter how completely scientists describe a thing’s physical characteristics—
even including characteristics that are invisible to the naked eye but can be “observed” by
the sophisticated tools of modern science—something will be missing. That “something”
is what Aristotelians call form, essential nature or quidity (Latin for “whatness”).
Consider, for example, the word “tool”. It can be written in several different shapes.
Tool
tool
tool
tool
TOOL
It can also be written in several different mediums, e.g., ink, rocks, electrically charged
neon, etc.
Yet any instance of the word “tool,” irrespective of its quantifiable shape and
chemical composition, has exactly the same qualitative form because they all have the
same meaning, even though their meaning will never be observed by the most
sophisticated tools of science. The “essential nature” of words is not some super subtle
physical property of words that exists in between the individual ink molecules. Hence,
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essential natures are not something that one day might be observed by the next generation
of super powerful electron microscopes. But the in-form-ation found in a word is no less
real just because it is invisible to the tools of science.
(I ask the reader to indulge my hyphenating of “in-form-ation.” I do this to keep
firmly in the reader’s mind the fact that real information, properly understood, has
nothing to do with complexity of shape and everything to do with the mind that has informed a particular shape.)
Our two thought experiments and one parable illustrate one crucial aspect of the
Aristotelian distinction between form and shape. (The historically savvy reader will
understand that we are here explicating Aristotle’s hylomorphism in a modern idiom)
(1) The conclusion that Aristotelians draw from the chiliagon vs. circle example is
that humans can conceive of (i.e., think about, reason and understand) all sorts of things
which cannot be pictured or perceived. As Hamlet said to Horatio “There are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your [materialistic] philosophy.” Any
philosophy that conflates form with shape (i.e., conceiving with perceiving) is subject to
a devastating counter-example at the outset, namely, it cannot explain how humans can
understand what a chiliagon is even though we have never actually observed a chiliagon
or even formed a mental image of such a thing. Horatio limited his philosophy to what
could be observed; Aristotelians and evolutionary biologists include in-form-ation that
can only be understood.
(2) The conclusion Aristotelians draw from the ill conceived request to “count
things” is that “quantity” is itself a “quality.” We already addressed the assertion that
“real science” must be falsifiable. Now we need to address the assertion that “real
science” only deals with measurable quantities. Galileo admonishes scientists “to
measure what can be measured and to make measurable what cannot be measured.” Ernst
Mayr admonishes biologists to ignore Galileo.11 While Galileo’s advice might work in
physics, as a working biologist, Mayr knew intuitively that it would not work in biology.
Being both a working biologist and a philosopher, Aristotle explained why. Galileo
assumed that quantifiable properties are objectively real while qualitative properties were
merely subjective experiences. This gets it exactly backwards. Quality is not parasitic
upon quantity. Rather, quantity is parasitic upon quality. Here’s the reason.
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It is impossible to count or measure anything without knowing what it is that we
are counting or measuring. There is absolutely nothing that one table, one atom, one
person, one baseball game, one pain, one poem, one corporation and one concept have in
common except, as Aquinas put it, the indefinable quality of unity.12 Since all quantities
are iterations of one, it follows that all quantifiable measurements are conceptually
dependent on humans’ ability to abstract (in the sense of mentally “pull out”) a thing’s
essential nature while ignoring all its accidental properties. If we were not able to abstract
essences, we could never distinguish heaps from integrated wholes. Real rabbits are more
than a heap of rabbit parts.13 (Notice how the adjective “integrated” points back to
integer, i.e., the abstract quality of “oneness”.) And if, as Galileo’s remark suggests, our
judgments about qualities are nothing more than a subjective, airy-fairy, socially
constructed and idiosyncratic “feelings,” then so is the most scientifically sophisticated
set of quantifiable measurements.
Though it may be obvious, we will be explicit—the most fundamental quality of a
thing is its form. Until we know what something is (i.e., until we have abstracted its
essential nature) we cannot know whether the “thing” being observed is a heap or an
integrated whole, and hence, we cannot know what to count or measure.
(3) The conclusion of the parable is that form is not in things the way dirt is in a
rug. To put dirt into a rug or to pull dirt out of a rug requires some sort of physical
contact with the rug. A boy’s dirty shoes can put dirt in a rug and a good vacuum cleaner
can pull dirt out of a rug. But the way humans put meaning (in-form-ation) into physical
shapes is radically different; so too, is the way humans pull out meaning (in-form-ation)
from physical shapes. When we come to understand what something is (i.e., when we
have abstracted its form/essential nature) we are not performing a physical process.
Remember: At no point did the owner of the taco stand establish “physical contact” with
the rocks to make them words.
Though physical processes are at work when we speak or write, the in-form-ation
conveyed is not the result of a physical process. It is only intentional action (i.e., action
aiming at a goal or end) that can create meaning. The process of in-forming always
presupposes a final cause, though today philosophers prefer to call it “intentionality.”
Whenever physical causes (efficient causes) mean something—“the south wind and
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gathering clouds means that it is going to rain”—that is, whenever physical causes allow
humans to make predictions about the future, it is only because “the cause of the causality
of the efficient cause is the final cause.”
Aquinas’s truism, of course, is not without critics. It was Descartes who first said
that “the entire class of causes which people customarily derive from a thing’s ‘end’ . . .
[are] utterly useless is physics”14 and it didn’t take long for like minded satirists to begin
their mockery of final causes. Why do bunnies have white tails—so that hunters have a
target to aim at! Why do people have noses—so that eye doctors have something on
which to hang their prescriptions! Isn’t it obvious, assumes the satirist, that only people
are able to do things “on purpose” or “to reach a goal.” Falling rocks, rushing rivers and
rain laden clouds do not move or act to achieve an end, but only in conformity to the laws
of nature. To apply such attributes to inanimate nature, say Aristotle’s critics, is a
misguided and hopelessly outdated anthropomorphism, only slightly better than primitive
animism.
But the charge of misguided anthropomorphism cuts both ways. When did nature
convene its (her?) legislative session to propound these laws? Did the laws of nature
receive a clear majority of the ballots cast or only a simple plurality? Does “nature”
decide such questions with a written constitution like the United States or with a “virtual”
constitution like the British? Mocking the “laws of nature” is no more difficult than
mocking final causes. The language of “Laws of Nature” is just as “anthropomorphic” as
the language of Aristotle. Besides, serious Aristotelians no more believe that rocks, rivers
and rain laden clouds consciously strive to reach their end or goal than serious scientists
believe a legislative session was convened in the murky pre-history of our universe to
establish the “laws of nature.”
Nonetheless, some non-Aristotelian theories of final causation deserve criticism.
In the past, many philosophers invoked final causes to gloss over our ignorance of lawful
physical causes. Today, some Christians argue that scientists’ inability to explain
extremely complex organs and organisms in terms of lawful physical causes points to an
Intelligent Designer. But Aristotelians will tolerate no theory of final causation which
prematurely stifles scientific investigation into lawful physical causes.
15
Properly understood, final causes will never impede science. Again, efficient
causes and final cause never compete with each other; they always complement each
other. Here again, the form/shape distinction resolves the difficulty. “TOOL” in bold
upper case letters and “tool” in italic lower case letters have the same form, even though
they have different shapes. Yet, these two differently shaped words are carriers of the
same in-form-ation, namely, they refer to things we call tools. How these words were
written is irrelevant. The efficient cause in one case might be a person moving his right
hand over a piece of paper while holding a pen and in another case it could be a person
moving fingers on both hands over a keyboard attached to a computer. All that matters is
the person’s intention, that is, why these different bodily movements occurred in the first
place.
When Aristotelians say that a person’s intention is the final cause of the word’s
in-form-ation it must be stressed that they are distinguishing, not separating. We can
distinguish a smile from a face, even though the smile can never be physically detached
from its face. So too, writing is always composed of two distinguishable (though not
physically separable) causes. The efficient cause answers the question—how were the
lines shaped? The final cause answers the question—why are these lines a word (as
opposed to a meaningless scribble)?
Aristotle illustrated this distinction between how and why questions by asking his
students to consider a wolf raising his hackles. Is this a case of final causation or
efficient causation he asked? Should we say that the wolf raised its hackles to scare off
intruders (final causation) or should we say that the sight of another animal caused the
temperature of the wolf’s blood to increase thereby causing the muscles on his back to
contract (efficient causation)? Aristotle’s answer was quick and clear— both are
necessary.15 Though there are not two separable events, a full understanding of this single
event requires two distinct explanations.
I once invoked this illustration in an Honors class only to hear my biologist
colleague say that it was unscientific to say, “The wolf raised its hackles to scare off
intruders.” He explained himself by writing these two sentences on the board:

The turtle came ashore to lay her eggs.

The turtle came ashore and laid her eggs.
16
The first obviously suggests a goal or end (final cause), but since these, he said, are not
empirically observable, they must be avoided at all costs. The second, however, only
reports what is directly observable, and is thus “scientific.” (I know a recently minted
Ph.D. in molecular biology from a major research universe who was similarly
admonished by her graduate advisor.)
Though my biologist colleague was a big fan of Ernst Mayr, he must not have
read his later works. There Mayr repeatedly argues that the first description is perfectly
good “science” while the second is utterly useless to evolutionary biologists. The
problem with the second statement is that it is indistinguishable from countless other
things that would be empirically observed by a super-camcorder. For example,

The turtle came ashore and kicked some sand.

The turtle came ashore and stepped on a piece of driftwood.

The turtle came ashore and reflected a photon into the eye of an owl.
All of these, from a purely perceptual point of view are equally good descriptions
of what a turtle did, yet none of them are of any interest to a biologist. Why? In
Aristotelian terms, the answer is obvious—these latter three descriptions only describe
accidental characteristics of turtles. Until we have a concept of what a turtle is we have
learned nothing of “scientific” interest from any of the five bullet points above. However,
once we know what a turtle is—a living organism with the goal (final cause) of
reproduction—we “see” immediately that the first bullet point is scientifically relevant,
while all the others are utterly irrelevant.16
Of course, we must be clear about two points. First, in describing a turtle as
coming ashore to lay her eggs we are saying nothing, one way or the other, about the
turtle’s conscious intention. We are only describing an essential (i.e., per se and thus
lawful) element in what it means to be a turtle. Second, the reason egg laying is essential,
not accidental, is that by definition reproduction is part of any good definition of what it
means to be a turtle. Reproduction is a distinguishing characteristic of life—it is, so to
speak, life’s final cause. The physical causes which preceded the laying of eggs only have
biological significance given the goal of reproduction.
The same is true of DNA. The un-zipping and then re-zipping of the two base
pairs in sexual reproduction are, at least in principle, fully explainable in physical and
17
chemical terms. But this physically describable process does nothing more to explain the
origin and flow of in-form-ation from one generation to the next than the chemical
composition and physical properties of ink (i.e., its shape) explains the origin and flow of
a word’s in-form-ation. The word’s information could have equally well been conveyed
in smoke signals. So too, the genetic information conveyed in carbon molecules here on
earth could be equally well conveyed by silicon molecules elsewhere in the universe.
Mayr was absolutely correct when he said “Aristotle’s eidos is a teleonomic
principle which performed in Aristotle’s thinking precisely what the genetic program of
the modern biologist performs.” The conclusion of this chapter is that it is impossible to
understand what Mayr means apart from some kind of philosophical distinction between
form and shape.
Chapter 3: Darwinian Explanations of Life’s Origin are Incoherent
Richard Dawkins famously said that Darwin made it possible to be “an
intellectually fulfilled atheist.”17 Prior to Darwin, the best an atheist could do, says
Dawkins, is to repeat Hume’s philosophical defense of atheism: “I have no explanation
for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn’t a good explanation, so we
must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.”18 But Dawkins thinks
that Hume seriously underestimated the complexity of even the simplest biological
organism. A single hemoglobin cell, for example, has about a negative 10190 chance of
coming about by mere chance.19 So appeals to mere chance and the immensity of time
don’t satisfy Dawkins. Given the choice between Hume’s atheism and William Paley’s
divine watchmaker, Dawkins says he would opt for Paley.
Of course, he quickly adds a third alternative—not chance, and not divine design,
but instead, chance plus cumulative (i.e., natural) selection. Though Dawkins is a master
of metaphors and illumining illustrations, I’ve never heard him mention Yahtzee—the
popular American dice game—as an obvious analogy for cumulative selection. The game
is played with five dice and the highest score awarded is for five of a kind, what’s called
a “Yahtzee.” On a single roll, the odds against rolling a Yahtzee are one over six to the
fourth power (or 1/1296).20 True, a player gets three rolls per turn, so on any single turn a
18
player has a 1/432 chance of rolling a Yahtzee. I have not played many games of
Yahtzee, but even from my limited experience I know that Yahtzees are much more
frequent than the above calculation indicates.
Of course, those familiar with the game will immediately see that I have seriously
mis-described the game. The reason Yahtzees occur far more frequently than once every
four hundred and thirty two turns is that my description fails to mention the “cumulative”
aspect of Yahtzee. After each roll, the player gets to select which dice to leave on the
board and which to re-roll. If, for example, a player rolls two “twos” on the first roll, she
only has to roll the other three dice next time. And if there are one or more “twos” on the
second roll, those can be left on the board too. Each of these selective iterations increases
the odds of rolling a Yahtzee at a geometrical ratio.
My mathematics colleagues warned me that making statistical calculations here
are extremely tricky, so instead of trying to do the calculations, I invited six friends over
for dinner, after which we rolled dice. Here are the results of two hundred attempts to roll
five of kind when the iterations were increased: after the 3 iterations there were 8
Yahtzees or 4%; after six iterations there were 48 Yahtzees or 24%; after 9 iterations
there were 107 Yahtzees or 54%. Dawkins points to this sort of cumulative selection, not
chance, as the power driving evolution and the explanation of life’s tremendous
complexity.
1 iteration
3 iterations
6 iterations
9 iterations
.02%
4%
24%
54%
Creationists, of course, would not be convinced by such an example because they
argue that the actual complexities of life are so great that they overwhelm even
cumulative selection. Aristotle and Aquinas, however, would have no interest in a dispute
about mathematical odds. Again, quantity is itself a quality. Until we know what to count,
talk of “mathematical complexity” is as meaningless as trying to count the number of
“things” in a room. So too, it is meaningless to ask: “Of the three “Channel Lock” pliers
in my garage—one 22 inch, one 12 inch, and one 6 inch—which is most complex?” If we
count molecules, the 22 inch pliers are the most complex for the simple reason that it has
19
the most “parts”; but if we count functional parts, the “mathematical complexity” for all
three sizes of pliers is the same. Or again, if we count letters in words, then “rojo” is
more complex than “red” since it has more letters. But if we are counting concepts, then
their complexity is the same since “rojo” and “red” name exactly the same concept.
But this chapter is not intended as a critical examination of the Creationist’s
arguments, so we will ignore such problems and simply assume,21 for all the reasons that
Dawkins, Mayr and other biologists have laid out, that Darwin’s explanation for the
evolution of species in terms of natural selection is basically correct.
What is almost always overlooked, however, is that we still have no evolutionary
explanation of the origin of life. Darwin explained the origin of species in terms of
natural selection. He said nothing about the origin of life. And his silence on this second
question is not accidental. The problem is logical, not scientific. It has nothing to do with
the fact that Darwin lived prior to the invention of high powered electron microscopes
and all the other sophisticated tools of modern molecular biology. Rather, his silence
underscores his profound understanding of natural selection. Natural selection
presupposes the existence of life (or as some like to say, replicators), so it cannot explain
the origin of life without logically begging the question.
I say that this problem is “almost always overlooked” because at least Dawkins
understands the difficulty—and for this piece of honesty and forthrightness he should be
commended.22 He understands that without presupposing the existence of “replicators”
there is no thing to accumulate small improvements over multiple generations. “No
accumulation without an accumulator” is a truth of logic, not science. In other words,
without presupposing the existence of replicators there is nothing analogous to leaving
the “desirable” dice on the table and rolling the “undesirable” dice another time. So the
origins of the first replicator cannot logically be explained in terms of cumulative
selection.
Early in the twentieth century, when biologists posited something called
“protoplasm,” it was assumed that this gooey precursor of life was pretty simple. But now
we know that even the simplest single cell organism is astronomically complex. This
creates an empirical problem. Since even the simplest forms of life are incredibly
“complex,” Dawkins says that it is unreasonable to suppose that they came about by a
20
single “throw of the dice.” Remember, Dawkins is as dismissive of Hume’s philosophical
defense of atheism (i.e., in an infinite amount of time anything is possible) as he is of
Creationists.
To keep his atheism “scientific” and not “philosophical” Dawkins adopts a twofold strategy—the first to solve the logical problem, the second to solve the empirical
problem. First, to solve the logical problem he argues for the prior existence of much
simpler replicators than the original, single cell, DNA based organisms that first lived on
earth. Second, to solve the empirical problem he argues that though the amount of time is
not infinite, it is immense. So when you combine the immensity of time with the
incredible power of cumulative selection to improve any replicator, the improbability of
undirected mutations creating something so complex and seemingly “designed” as the
human eye is not all that great.
So what’s Dawkins’ argument for the existence of a simple replicator at some
time in the distant past? He will be the first to admit that he has no empirical evidence for
the existence of these non-DNA simple replicators. Yet, he has a good reason for the lack
of evidence. It is this: these simpler replicators functioned like scaffolding for the
construction of tall buildings. Once the building is complete (in this case the original
single cell, DNA based organism) the original scaffolding simply fades away.
It is as if we are trying to build a stone arch but we are only allowed to touch one
stone at a time. Until the final capstone is put in place, none of the other stones can stand
by themselves. The only way to build an arch one stone at a time is by first building a
mound of dirt or sand of the proper shape, and then laying individual stones in their
proper place. Until the final stone in the arch is in place, the stones are inherently
unstable. But once the final stone is in place, the arch is much more stable and durable
than the initial dirt and sand on which it was built. So over time, this “scaffolding” will
be swept away by the wind and rain, but the stone arch will remain. This is the kind of
story Dawkins tells about the original, non-DNA simple replicators.
The hypothesis of such replicators came from A.G. Cairns-Smith. According to
this hypothesis, the first replicators had no DNA (or even RNA) in them. Instead, they
were composed of simple clays. Instead, he is basing his hypothesis on the simple and
21
incontestable fact that the crystalline structure of many simple clays have both of the
physically necessary properties required for transmitting in-form-ation—namely, chance
and necessity.
Zeros and ones are the substrate of everything in our “digital world.” All the inform-ation that travels over the internet—no matter how complex, how sophisticated,
how exotic and eloquent—came to us as a very long series of zeros and ones. This means
that it only takes two “working” keys on a typewriter to say anything anyone wants to
say. After all, with enough time anything and everything can be said using the century
old conventions of Morse Code.
However, to accurately transmit in-form-ation, the digital device we are using
must be in working order. That is, every time the “zero” key is punched, a “zero” must be
received at the other end of the transmission. This corresponds to the “necessity”
requirement for the transmission of in-form-ation. Second, it must be equally possible to
punch the zero key as it is to punch the one key. If some mysterious forces makes it
impossible to punch the zero key, and instead, only punch the one key, then in-form-ation
cannot be sent. “Equal possibility” corresponds to the chance requirement for the
transmission of in-form-ation.
What Cairns-Smith points out, is that any crystalline structure—even simple
clays—satisfy both of the logically necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the
transmission of in-form-ation. Here’s how clays can transmit in-form-ation. First we
must consider the elegance of clay. At the atomic level its crystalline structure, says
Dawkins, has “all the regularity of a machine-woven piece of herringbone tweed.”23 Yet,
crystals don’t require sophisticated machinery to reproduce their pattern because the
shape of the clay molecules acts like a sieve. Sieves can separate heaps of disorderly
material into neatly ordered piles using nothing more than the force of gravity. So too,
given the chemical forces binding clay molecules together, the crystalline shape of a
single molecule is all that is required to neatly order all succeeding molecules into
complex patterns like “a machine-woven piece of herringbone tweed.” Here we have the
“necessity” required for the transmission of in-form-ation.
But nothing in nature is perfect. On rare occasions a random flaw changes the
pattern. This corresponds to the “chance” required for the transmission of in-form-ation.
22
And once the random change of pattern is introduced, this “information” will then be
transmitted to the succeeding rows of the herringbone with sieve-like lawfulness.
(In the next paragraph, we will consider Dawkins’ brilliant analogy connecting
clay to natural selection. But parenthetically I must first explain the punctuation of the
last paragraph. In the third sentence I continue my practice of hyphenating in-form-ation.
I hope this has not become too annoying and, again, I only do this to keep firmly planted
in the reader’s mind the conclusion of the previous chapters, namely, real information
has nothing to do with physical complexity. What makes something information is not its
shape but its form. But then in the fourth sentence of the previous paragraph I
deliberately drop the hyphens, but add scare quotes. The scare quotes around
“information” in the fourth sentence are to warn readers that we have yet to say anything
about the origin of the alleged “information” which is being transmitted via the change in
the crystalline structure of the clay. If this is a bit unclear, don’t worry. We will say much
more about Dawkins’ use of scare quotes as we proceed.)
So Dawkins’ first point is that the chance and necessity required for the
transmission of in-form-ation is found in something so simple and abundant as the
crystalline structure of different kinds of clays. His second point is that it is not hard to
imagine how something analogous to natural selection (and hence, the power of
cumulative selection) might act on clay. Imagine a time millions of years ago when all
the clay on earth had the same crystalline structure and that this structure lawfully
determined its stickiness. This stickiness-factor would in turn determine its propensity to
dam up steams and form pools of water behind the clay dams. Now suppose, by mere
chance, a flaw arose in the crystalline structure of particular clay. And imagine that this
flaw caused this particular clay’s new crystalline structure to be slightly stickier. This in
turn would mean that it would form slightly higher dams and thereby would form slightly
larger pools of water behind them. (And now I will let Dawkins finish the story in his
own words.)
“In these still pools, more of the same kind of clay is laid down. A succession of
such shallow pools proliferates along the length of any stream that happens to be
‘infected’ by seeding crystals of this [new] kind of clay. Now, because the main flow of
the stream is diverted, during the dry season the shallow pools tend to dry up. The clay
23
dries and cracks in the sun, and the top layers are blown off as dust. Each dust particle
inherits the characteristic defect structure of the parent clay that did the damming. . .The
dust spreads far and wide in the wind. . .”24 Voila! This initially random flaw has
produced a particular kind of new, stickier clay which by “natural selection” will pass on
its improved stream-damning capabilities to the next generation of seasonal pools until
eventually the whole world will be colonized with this new, improved clay!
The logic of Dawkins’ argument is flawless and the analogy with biological
evolution brilliant. To summarize, it goes like this. The origin of life cannot be explained
by natural selection without begging the question because natural selection presupposes
the existence of replicators. But the DNA replicators we know of today are far too
complex to have arisen by random chance. However, something so simple and abundant
as the crystalline structure of clay enables it to “pass on” random variations to succeeding
generations of crystals. This ability to “pass on” random variation satisfies the definition
of replicator. The big advantage of such a hypothesis is that given the ubiquity of clay
and the simplicity of these original replicators, the probability of their coming to exist by
a single throw of the dice is high.
Again, there is no empirical evidence for these silicon replicators, but then, there
is no empirical evidence for the scaffolding that once surrounded the White House.
Remember, the only roll these clay replicators play in the argument is to start a process
of cumulative selection. And once the amazing power of cumulative selection is initiated,
their relative simplicity and lack of sophistication meant that they would be “out
competed” by their DNA progeny.
Dawkins’ second step is now easy. Once the possibility of very simple pre-DNA
replicators is acknowledged, then all that is necessary is to rehearse what we already
know—the universe is very big and very old! The odds against a particular event
occurring “by chance” are a function of not only of intrinsic complexity, but of the
number of attempts available to produce the event in question. Flipping an honest coin so
that it lands heads ten times in a row is highly improbable (210 or one over
20,000,000,000). But if a person has 20,000,000,000 attempts to flip an honest coin, then
it is probabilistically certain that he or she will produce a series of ten straight heads. (Or
24
perhaps we should say “they will succeed” since it would undoubtedly take a team of
people to flip a coin that many times!)
So once we acknowledge the theoretical possibility of a very simple replicator
built out of clay, given the immensity of time and space, it is not improbable that such a
replicator might come to exist by pure chance. And once we remember that the
scaffolding required to build something is frequently much less durable than the thing
built, the absence of evidence for clay replicators is no longer evidence of absence. This
is Dawkins scientific, as opposed to Hume’s merely philosophical, explanation of how
incredibly complex organisms came to be with any kind of supernatural designer.
So what are we to make of Dawkins’ argument? With respect to the origin of
life’s complexity, Dawkins may be correct. There is nothing in the philosophy of either
Aristotle or Aquinas that precludes the prior existence of simple replicators acting as
scaffolding for the enormous complexity we see today in even a simple one-cell
organism. (It is worthy noting that Aquinas himself never questioned the reigning
assumption of his age that life could be spontaneously generated.) Nonetheless, we must
not forget that this is not an evolutionary explanation in terms of natural selection.
Stephen Jay Gould understood this better than most. The magnum opus that he
completed just before his death, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, was
commendably explicit about the limits of evolutionary explanations. Creationists, he
says,
[U]se the following argument for rhetorical advantage: (1) evolution treats the
ultimate origin of life; (2) evolutionists can’t resolve this issue; (3) the question is
inherently religious; (4) therefore evolution is religion, and our brand deserves
just as much time as theirs in science classrooms. We reply, although creationists
do not choose to listen or understand, that we agree with points two and three, and
therefore do not study the question of ultimate origins or view this issue as part of
scientific inquiry at all (point one).”25
There is, however, something slightly disingenuous about Gould’s use of “we” and his
chastisement of creationists. It would not be difficult to put together a long list of
25
biologists who think that “the ultimate origins of life” is a scientific issue. (Somewhat
ironically, the list would probably include Ernst Mayr.)
There is also something slightly misleading in suggesting that science cannot deal
with the origin of life because such questions are “religious.” Perhaps this is ultimately
true, but penultimately they are philosophical. Listen again to Mayr, “Furthermore, all
biological processes differ in one respect fundamentally from all processes in the
inanimate world; they are subject to dual causation. In contrast to purely physical
processes, these biological ones are controlled not only by natural laws but also by
genetic programs. This duality fully provides a clear demarcation between inanimate and
living processes.”26
Mayr’s invocation of dual-causation leads to the second, more important point in
this chapter. Explanations of life’s origin are necessarily going to be non-evolutionary—
because they will rely wholly on chance, even if the probability for a kind of
“spontaneous generation” of life can be shown to be fairly good. But the appeal to chance
raises one huge question—namely, where did the all the in-form-ation in DNA come
from? How did it get there in the first place?
As we argued in chapter 2, meaning is not in words the way dirt is in rugs. So too,
in-form-ation is not in deoxyribonucleic acid the way hearts are in animals. True, DNA is
an incredibly complex and sophisticated molecule for the transmission of in-form-ation.
But it is not the shape of complex DNA molecules that make them a code; it’s their
form.27
Dawkins writes like a magician performs. The Blind Watchmaker, from which the
story about clay is taken, is filled with examples of mindless matter, ruled by nothing
more than efficient causes, performing feats which—to the biologically uninformed, he
quips—look like they have overwhelming indications of purpose, meaning and goalseeking behavior. His stories about the amazing properties of clay which allow these
seemingly simple crystalline structures to transmit “information” are truly mesmerizing.
But his stories always begin with a liberal use of scare quotes. Here’s just one example.
“Obviously this second variant [of clay] will tend to become common, because it happens
to manipulate streams to its own ‘advantage’. This will be a ‘successful’ variant of
clay.”28
26
Now “advantage” and “successful” are both words which imply intentionality (as
modern philosophers use the term) or of final causation (as Aristotle and Aquinas used
the term). Of course, every one of Dawkins’ readers knows that clay doesn’t really act for
its own “advantage,” and hence, it is meaningless to talk about variants of clay which are
“successful.” So he uses scare quotes, as a good magician uses sleight of hand, to distract
his readers. Since he is such a magnificent storyteller he is able to tell long stories and
still maintain the reader’s attention. But then, as if by magic, when he approaches the end
of his story, the scare quotes suddenly disappear! What began as mindless clay has turned
into mindful organisms fully able to successfully seek their advantage where neither
“successful” nor “advantage” requires quotes.
But Aristotle and Aquinas would never have been fooled by the scares quotes and
missed his equivocation. Dawkins has successfully explained how mindless matter can
transmit real information. But he has only explained the origin of “information” in scare
quotes. About the origin of in-form-ation outside of scare quotes he has absolute nothing
to say. However, evolutionary biology only makes sense because it assumes that DNA
transmits real information. So the obvious question becomes: where did this information
come form?
Postscript
Final causes are not material; everyone agrees on that. But what are they? Where
do they come from? Here Aristotle and Aquinas give different answers. According to
Aristotle, final causes don’t “come from” anywhere. His universe, remember, is eternal—
it always has and always will exist pretty much as it exists today, including the number of
different species of plants and animals. So while final causes/genetic programs point to
something like a god in Aristotle’s philosophy as the ultimate explanation of in-formation, there is no reason to think that this god is either the creator or is providentially
involved with the universe that it in-forms. Such a “god” is quite tame and hardly offends
modern sentiments.
But if species have not always existed, and even more, if “genetic programs” have
not always existed, then the question—“Where did the in-form-ation in deoxyribonucleic
27
acid come from?”—becomes more pressing. To a Christian like Aquinas, the answer was
obvious: an eternal God who created and now providentially sustains all things.
About the same time I was ineptly responding to questions about angels dancing
on the head of pins, Atlantic Magazine published a lead piece which asked: Can we be
good without God? The author’s answer was: It’s hard.29 If Aquinas were alive today, he
would ask: Can we be evolutionists without God? Our answer is: It’s hard. Unless DNA
contains in-form-ation, evolutionary explanations make no sense. But without the
presence of human in-formers, how can we rationally believe that dinosaur DNA
contained in-form-ation if there is no divine In-former?30
28
Historically this was not always the case. Darwin’s friend and first advocate in the United States was Asa
Gray, a professor of botany at Harvard University. Gray argued that evolution by natural selection both
requires and supports a teleological view of nature. Though his arguments were primarily biological, and
ours will be philosophical, nonetheless we reach similar conclusions.
1
2
Thomas Aquinas, On the Principles of Nature, chapter 4. There are many published editions and
translations. The phrase—“The cause of the causality of the efficient cause is the final cause”—is my own
paraphrase of Robert P. Goodwin’s more literal translation which reads: “Moreover, the end does not cause
that which is the efficient cause, rather, it is a cause of the efficient cause’s being an efficient cause.”
3
The smirk carried with it additional significance—my co-instructor was both my Dean and the same Dean
I helped write the initial proposal for the Honors Program!
It was Karl Popper’s 1934 book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, that first argued for falsifiability as the
“demarcation” between science and pseudo science. And it was Thomas Kuhn’s 1969 book, The Structure
of Scientific Revolution, which marks the beginning of the end for Popper’s falsifiability thesis. In fact, by
1982, Popper had himself abandoned it. He wrote, “I no longer think, as I once did, that there is a
difference between science and metaphysics regarding this most important point [i.e., falsifiability]”
(Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physic, Totowa, N.J.: Rowan and Littlefield, 1982, p. 199).
4
5
Pierre Laplace. A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. Translated from the 6th French ed. by Fredrick
Wilson Truscott and Frederick Linclon Emory. London: Chapman & Hall, 1902, p. 4.
6
Nassim Taleb. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random, 2007, p. 178.
See Patterson Brown, “Infinite Causal Regression” in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by
Anthony Kenny, Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1969, pp. 214-36.
7
Modern philosophers rarely talk about “first principles.” Instead, they use the vaguer term “background
knowledge” to explain how we automatically ignore irrelevant circumstances when searching for efficient
causes. However, one wonders whether “background knowledge” is more of an explanation or a cover up?
8
Karl Popper, “Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of
Man” available online at http://www.the-rathouse.com/2011/Clouds-and-Clocks.html.
9
10
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982, p. 88.
11
ibid, p. 95.
“Unity” is one of Aquinas’s Transcendentals—the other three are Being, Truth and Good. These are all
called “transcendentals” because there is no more general term to which they belong as a genus, and hence,
they cannot be defined in terms of genus and specific difference.
12
Of course, W.V. O. Quine would famously disagree. Whether we translate “gavagai” ( a word in some
heretofore unknown language) as “rabbit” or “a collection of undetached rabbit parts” is, he argued,
ontologically indeterminable, i.e., there is nothing in reality that makes one “interpretation” of the word any
better than the other. Ernst Mayr, to the contrary, said, “There is no more devastating refutation of
nominalistic claims than the fact that primitive natives in New Guinea, with a Stone Age culture, recognize
as species exactly the same entities of nature as western taxonomists. If species were something purely
arbitrary, it would be totally improbable for representatives of two drastically different cultures to arrive at
the identical species delimitations” (Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Obervations of an Evolutionist.
Cambridge, MA. Belknap, 1988, p. 317).
13
14
Descartes, Meditations, no. 4.
15
Aristotle, On the Soul, 403b7.
29
The “see” in quotes means something like “see with the mind’s eye.” I unpack this expression in some
detail in my two previous books, In Defense of the Soul (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos, 2002) and Life,
the Universe and Everything (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Press. 2011), especially in chapter 6 and 7.
16
17
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987, p. 6.
18
ibid.
19
ibid. p. 45.
Someone might wonder if “one over six to the four power” is a mere typo on my part—since there are six
sides to each dice and since there are five dice, shouldn’t it be six to the fifth power? No. As I say latter on,
statistics can be tricky. The odds of rolling a Yahtzee on a single roll are one over six to the fourth because
a Yahtzee is defined as five of any kind. It would only be one over six to the fifth if a Yahtzee was defined
as five of a particular kind, e.g., five straight ones.
20
21
See my appendix in In Defense of the Soul.
22
See chapter 6, “Origins and miracles,” in The Blind Watchmaker.
23
ibid. p. 152.
24
ibid. p. 154.
25
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002, p. 101n.
26
What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 30).
27
It is somewhat ironic, and certainly worth noting, that the very biologists on whom Dawkins relies for his
clay replicator example, Carins-Smith, makes our point too. He writes, “In biology both goods and
messages are passed on from one generation to the next. But it is the messages that are the most important
inheritance: only they can persist over millions and millions of years. This distinction between goods and
information is a case of the ancient distinction between substances and forms. While a message may have
to be written in some material substance, the message is not to be identified with the substance. The
message as such is form” (A. G. Carins-Smith, Steven Keys to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective
Story. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 12).
28
The Blind Watchmaker, 154.
29
Glenn Tinder, Atlantic Magazine, December 1989.
30
I wish to thank Greg Cootsona, Bill Martin and Justin Gilley for their careful reading and helpful
comments on earlier drafts of my Kindle Single.
30