The following excerpt from the audio version of the book (read, as usual, by Dawkins himself and Lalla Ward) explores the kind of question that a young inquiring mind might ask her parents: who was the first person really?
Dawkins provides a wonderfully clear explanation not only of the answer but of the thought process required to try to come to grips with the significance of such a question. The greatest accomplishment, I think, is that the very same excerpt can be understood by children and it can stimulate adults to think about some of the philosophical implications of the answer, such as the sorites problem of what a species really is if no one's parents are ever members of a different species... and yet most of our ancestors do belong to different species.
Maybe I'll have to end up getting a copy for myself too :)
Update: Here's Dawkins briefly explaining what the book is about
I'm a big fan of science and evolution, but it does make me wonder something. For evolution to work properly, it requires the deaths of individuals and the passing of entire species. I've no problem with that. But why then does self-awareness - itself a product of evolution - reject death and seek to overcome it? No self-aware creature would want to die, I imagine. So does that make consciousness an aberration?
ReplyDeleteIf a species gets to the point of ensuring its continual existence, where does that "fit" into the universal scheme of things?
Oh, that's an interesting question. Part of the answer has to do with whose point of view you're considering when trying to understand the details of evolution.
ReplyDeleteAs you can imagine, any adaptation that makes individuals try to avoid death is going to provide a greater survival advantage (to those individuals) over any individuals lacking this instinct (whether conscious or not).
It seems that you're assuming (at least to some extent) that evolution works for the benefit of the species, but since evolution is the result of differential survival (due to competition), then in most cases, those competing will be members of the same species, and so the species will not be a stable unit of selection.
Dawkins would go so far as to argue that the unit of selection is not even the group or the individual but the gene, so insofar as the same genes are found in different bodies, their interests will many times align. But if what we have is competition between different genes (as in my example above about death-avoidance), then we shouldn't expect the species itself to be very stable.
So, even if a species gets to the point of ensuring its continual existence (due to circumstances, not foresight), there is still going to be competition between its members (for access to food and mates, for instance, or for resistance to different disease vectors, etc.).
When we try to explain evolution, we tend to use teleological (purpose-driven) language. So we say that some things are 'selected against' or that something 'evolved for' or we talk about functions and purposes. While useful when understood properly, this kind of language can also be very misleading.
Technically, evolution works as a consequence of preceding circumstances (not as a goal-directed process): if certain conditions have met, then this will be the likely consequence.
As such, evolution is a local and almost-immediate process. There is therefore no sense in which its workings "fit" into some universal scheme of things. Evolution is a local process, not global.
I hope that helps.