SCIENCE TODAY:Richard Dawkins's new book brings him back to familiar territory, tackling theories of creation head-on, but it is also an accessible, colourful and beautifully detailed look at many scientific wonders, writes SHANE HEGARTY
RICHARD Dawkins is a little distracted. He's been delayed by an earlier appointment, is a little tight for time and his new computer is bursting into song unexpectedly. But in his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, he is not distracted at all. In fact, he is very focused on two things in particular: laying out the evidence for evolution; and laying into the creationists who prefer the idea that the Earth is 10,000 years old and all life was placed in it simultaneously.
It is, he says, “a necessary book”.
“Of all the great findings in science, and there are quiet a lot of them, it’s the one that arouses the most irrational opposition from people who don’t know what they’re talking about. They are never against gravity, or against Newton.”
He will be in Dublin this evening to talk with an audience at the RDS (the event is sold out), and those who have already picked up the book will find that it is Dawkins's return to his scientific speciality following the success, and controversy, of The God Delusionand an addition to works about evolution that began with The Selfish Genemore than three decades ago. And although The Greatest Show on Earthdeals head-on with the creationists' arguments, in keeping with his past writings, it is otherwise an accessible, colourful and beautifully detailed look at many scientific wonders – whether it's the great variety of dogs or the sex lives of orchids – and a great primer for those coming fresh to the subject.
Despite the obvious tone of impatience and frustration that bobs up in his writing, and which many people find a less than attractive trait, Dawkins concedes that misconceptions that many people have about evolution are not always based on religion.
“Partly it’s because it is, lamentably, left out of most people’s education,” he says. “Most of us have an idea that it has something to do with monkeys. It’s difficult, though, because we do need to suspend our normal judgement of time. It only works on a scale of millions of years, yet that’s difficult to comprehend. But we do need to understand that to understand evolution.”
Evolution can also be traced to Victorian times when so many of those things people think it is about took root in the public consciousness. That idea that we’re descended from monkeys is comprehensively explained in the book (with the exception of very recent splits, no modern species is descended from another modern species). But is it the case that the intricacy of evolution is so complex that it has become too difficult for lay-people to really understand – in the way that, for example, quantum theory is so baffling? Dawkins disagrees. “Well, quantum theory is genuinely mind-blowing. It takes on paradoxes that are enormously difficult to comprehend.
Evolution just needs time to be understood. Besides, you don’t get campaigns against quantum theory.”
Among the preconceptions he tackles is the still-popular notion of a "missing link". Apart from refuting creationists' argument that there are no transitional fossils in the record, or some claims that there should be crocoducks or fronkeys, he also argues that all species are transitional – just links in the chain. He takes on the example of the recent unveiling of the supposed missing link that was "Ida", the 47-million- year-old, beautifully preserved fossil of Darwinius masillae, which was the focus of headlines globally as if it offered something truly revelatory.
It is a useful fossil, says Dawkins, but the furore around it was "badly handled. It was all hype, a deliberate attempt to gain publicity". Ultimately, it is "one of many fossils" in the record. With Dawkins, though, the discussion cannot fail to come around to religion. The Greatest Show on Earthends with a certain despair over surveys results which show how many people believe in the idea that the earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. In Ireland, 27 per cent agreed with that statement. Dawkins calls those who actively propagate the idea "history deniers".
Isn’t it likely, though, that his book will be read by those who already care for the scientific proof rather than the speculations of creationists? “I fear that you’re right, but that would be a great pity because there are a great many people out there who are in the middle, who are interested in understanding it and who will find a lot in it. They will discover that it’s all rather fascinating.”
The Greatest Show on Earth: T he Evidence for Evolutionby Richard Dawkins is published by Bantam Press