For the second time, in the last year or so, I am poring over another book from Richard Dawkins - this one is called The Greatest Show on Earth. This is my second book of Richard Dawkins. It’s far more breezy and compared to the earlier book that I read: "The Ancestor’s Tale". Like the previous book, it makes me wonder at the emergent sense of what can only be called Intelligence. This intelligence - seemingly unconscious and purposeless but which nevertheless powers the process through which animals or plants - Life - evolves to its rich eventual tapestry.
Each of the chapters are essentially arguments against the so-called Intelligent Design or Creationism. These chapters are enlivened by amazing stories of various life forms. These stories are what create a sense of wonder. These stories evoke a sense of disbelief, make me marvel at the sheer unlikeliness of the specific way life evolved the way it did. It also evokes a sense of kinship with all the creatures which endured unfathomable struggles as it navigated its own unique set of circumstances. Listening to these stories give me a certain sense of joy. It is a joy borne out of intellectual pursuit and understanding. It is also joy borne out of getting a glimpse into a backstory of our fellow earthlings. I dare say this feeling of kinship is almost a spiritual connection to Nature and makes one reverent to the Intelligence that is Life. I am afraid Richard Dawkins will not approve at this sentimentality. One of the reviewers called this feeling out as a "wonderstanding" - I think this word abstracts the feeling I experience quite well.
Some of the stories that stood out for me:
- Homologous organs - How bats’ wings are supported by modified forelimbs (These correspond to the hands in case of human beings. The broader point being though externally two animals might look quite apart but there is an intrinsic similarity if we look deep enough.
Molecular Phylogentics: How the molecular biology created a stunning evidence for evolution which completely obviated the need for fossils or other morphological evidence. There was this particular experiment where some scientists created a tree of possibilities through which certain genes for certain sets of mammalian proteins have to travel - The clinching evidence here: These trees of genes lined up exactly how the family trees of those mammals should look like.
- How some of the animals like dolphins, though actually mammals, superficially look more like fish. You had only need to look at the homology to confirm this. Especially wonderful is how a dolphin fin moving up and down mirrors the up/down movement of the spine in mammals than the side-to-side movement of other, true fish.
- The strange way how the vagus nerve for the larynx of the giraffe gets incrementally longer as it tries to loop around the artery—similar to how they used to work back in the day when we were fishes.
- The anecdote on how long it would take for a tiny single celled ancestor to slowly evolve to the complexity that we see today—the answer from a renowned biologist was that it should not be hard to fathom the idea as we all did it as an embryo ourselves. After all, the journey of a human embryo starts with a single undifferentiated cell.
- His ingenuity was equalled by the effortless style and wit of his writings, wherein he approached a huge variety of subjects – from astrophysics to zoology, politics to history – with alacrity and humour. I first encountered him whilst at college via the works of Richard Dawkins, whom he is often quoted by, and eventually read a collection of his essays entitled What I Require From Life during my first year at university. I have admired him ever since, and am keen to impress him upon others. When asked by a lady ‘Even given the billions of years that you say were available for evolution, I simply can not believe it is possible to go from a single cell to a complicated human body’ he replied ‘But madam you did it yourself, and it only took you nine months.’
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