Shallow Water

Jerry Coyne just reviewed the books of Richard Dawkins and Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini.  I can’t comment on the books themselves, as I have not read either one.  However, shocking as it may be – are you sitting for this? – Coyne lavishes great praise on Dawkins’ book and sneers at Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini’s book.  Never saw that one coming, did ya?

In one part, Coyne gushes as follows:

Dawkins describes selection as an “improbability pump,” for over time the competition among genes can yield amazingly complex and extraordinary species. Here’s how he describes the evolution of tigers:

“A tiger’s DNA is also a “duplicate me” program, but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger’s DNA says, “Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first.””

Only Dawkins could describe a tiger as just one way DNA has devised to make more of itself. And that is why he is famous: absolute scientific accuracy expressed with the wonder of a child–a very smart child.

So Dakwins writes yet another book about Darwinian evolution that recycles his signature argument from 35 years ago and Coyne squeals like a young school girl.