Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

Rating:
Summary: Filled with leads to further thought and research
Review: "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe," by Simon Conway Morris, received a critical review from a mainstream evolutionary biologist in SCIENCE, 5 December 2003. It was stated that many biologists may be convinced that Conway Morris is giving aid and comfort to the enemy (the creationists). The reviewer saw that Conway Morris opposes creationism, but was still critical.

I can see that the book might be irritating to materialists (scientific or otherwise), but if its sometimes-controversial tone is overlooked, it has much to offer the general reader. When Conway Morris takes a position that is not orthodox, it is usually qualified with a question mark. I think the major positive contribution of the book is its many fascinating examples of convergence.

There is a remarkable relationship between the views of Stephen Jay Gould in "Wonderful Life," published in 1989, and those of Conway Morris in "Life's Solution," published in 2003. Conway Morris opposes Gould's idea of contingency. But the strange thing is that Gould, while claiming support for contingency from the Cambrian fauna, praised the work of Conway Morris on that fauna.

From the time of the Cambrian explosion of animal forms to the present there has been a marked reduction in the number of general forms. Gould would take this as evidence of the fragility of forms in the face of chance contingencies. But Conway Morris sees it as a consequence of convergence. The two men seemingly differ only in their conclusions from the evidence, but I think there is a deeper divide. To Gould nature is fundamentally probabilistic, but to Conway Morris it is deterministic. I agree, recalling that Einstein championed determinism in physics.

Gould used the idea of replaying the tape of evolution. He argued that contingencies would make the reappearance of man very unlikely. To Gould, a replay is only a thought experiment to help us understand. But Conway Morris asks what can be done in the laboratory? On pages 121-124 he describes experiments done by Lenski and Travisano with the bacterium Escherichia coli over a large number of generations. It was first separated into several populations. Then they were allowed to diversify, and were separated further. Finally all populations were switched from their customary and agreeable glucose diet to a maltose diet and allowed to try to adapt during 1000 generations. The degree and mode of their adaptation was partly due to convergence, in addition to starting points and chance, and the three could be separated statistically. Over the long term, convergence won.

Conway Morris questions the theory of the "RNA world," including the idea that the RNA was self-replicating. I think he overdoes his skepticism there. A Perspective by Leslie Orgel: "A simpler nucleic acid," in SCIENCE, 17 Nov 2000, discusses self-replication of the simpler nucleic acid TNA as well as RNA. It seems to me that the self-replicating property of RNA, TNA and similar nucleic acids assures the appearance of life by one route or another, and so discounts Conway Morris's notion that the conditions for life have to be "just right," as they are on Earth. He argues that those conditions are rare in the universe, and so account for our failure to see evidence of life elsewhere. My own view is different: My guess is that we don't find intelligent life elsewhere because when it reaches our stage of development it self-destructs. Maybe that creates a challenge: Can we be the first to acquire wisdom as well as technical skill?

Is evolutionary convergence merely a convergence of characters of two or more species when they adapt to similar ecological niches? Conway Morris would like to embed the concept in a more structured context. In reference to an interesting application he expresses it in terms of "morphological space." The particular application is to "skeleton space" as defined by Thomas and Reif. He seems to be saying that each of the conceivable morphologies in skeleton space is a fixed-point attractor. The attractor emerges as the laws of nature guide the unfolding dynamics of evolution.

Is this concept of fixed-point attractors in a character space too discrete? In "The Crucible of Creation" Conway Morris gives another example, from the work of D.M. Raup: the morphospace for the geometry of the shells secreted by the molluscs. Some regions of this morphospace are thickly populated. But other zones are more or less empty. In these, the solutions to the equations that govern the geometry can be used to visualize the hypothetical shapes, but they somehow look "wrong." Thus the general morphospace is continuous, but only particular points are realized in the real world determined by evolution.

Conway Morris makes a good case for the inevitability of humans, but the evidence is sometimes fragmentary. I think this is only the beginning. There may be as yet untapped evidence in our own present natures. In particular, I suspect that a physical understanding of the network dynamics of our nervous systems will lead to the conclusion that the brains which appeared in the Cambrian explosion would inevitably evolve to the present level, and perhaps beyond.

In Chapter 10 Conway Morris returns to the ubiquity of convergence. Convergence is found not only in directly observable phenotypic characters, but also at the molecular level. For instance, the protein rhodopsin for color vision is tuned to particular colors by substitutions at key sites, and different species adapting to the same color sometimes use identical substitutions. It can become uncertain whether molecular similarities and identities are due to convergence or common ancestry. Thus there is at the present level of knowledge a measure of uncertainty which could be exploited by creationists. But fortunately overall outlines of order are found in cladistic analysis based on molecular evidence. This reflects general human understanding as it looks out on the world with faith that order will be found.

Rating:
Summary: Filled with leads to further thought and research
Review: "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe," by Simon Conway Morris, received a critical review from a mainstream evolutionary biologist in SCIENCE, 5 December 2003. It was stated that many biologists may be convinced that Conway Morris is giving aid and comfort to the enemy (the creationists). The reviewer saw that Conway Morris opposes creationism, but was still critical.

I can see that the book might be irritating to materialists (scientific or otherwise), but if its sometimes-controversial tone is overlooked, it has much to offer the general reader. When Conway Morris takes a position that is not orthodox, it is usually qualified with a question mark. I think the major positive contribution of the book is its many fascinating examples of convergence.

There is a remarkable relationship between the views of Stephen Jay Gould in "Wonderful Life," published in 1989, and those of Conway Morris in "Life's Solution," published in 2003. Conway Morris opposes Gould's idea of contingency. But the strange thing is that Gould, while claiming support for contingency from the Cambrian fauna, praised the work of Conway Morris on that fauna.

From the time of the Cambrian explosion of animal forms to the present there has been a marked reduction in the number of general forms. Gould would take this as evidence of the fragility of forms in the face of chance contingencies. But Conway Morris sees it as a consequence of convergence. The two men seemingly differ only in their conclusions from the evidence, but I think there is a deeper divide. To Gould nature is fundamentally probabilistic, but to Conway Morris it is deterministic. I agree, recalling that Einstein championed determinism in physics.

Gould used the idea of replaying the tape of evolution. He argued that contingencies would make the reappearance of man very unlikely. To Gould, a replay is only a thought experiment to help us understand. But Conway Morris asks what can be done in the laboratory? On pages 121-124 he describes experiments done by Lenski and Travisano with the bacterium Escherichia coli over a large number of generations. It was first separated into several populations. Then they were allowed to diversify, and were separated further. Finally all populations were switched from their customary and agreeable glucose diet to a maltose diet and allowed to try to adapt during 1000 generations. The degree and mode of their adaptation was partly due to convergence, in addition to starting points and chance, and the three could be separated statistically. Over the long term, convergence won.

Conway Morris questions the theory of the "RNA world," including the idea that the RNA was self-replicating. I think he overdoes his skepticism there. A Perspective by Leslie Orgel: "A simpler nucleic acid," in SCIENCE, 17 Nov 2000, discusses self-replication of the simpler nucleic acid TNA as well as RNA. It seems to me that the self-replicating property of RNA, TNA and similar nucleic acids assures the appearance of life by one route or another, and so discounts Conway Morris's notion that the conditions for life have to be "just right," as they are on Earth. He argues that those conditions are rare in the universe, and so account for our failure to see evidence of life elsewhere. My own view is different: My guess is that we don't find intelligent life elsewhere because when it reaches our stage of development it self-destructs. Maybe that creates a challenge: Can we be the first to acquire wisdom as well as technical skill?

Is evolutionary convergence merely a convergence of characters of two or more species when they adapt to similar ecological niches? Conway Morris would like to embed the concept in a more structured context. In reference to an interesting application he expresses it in terms of "morphological space." The particular application is to "skeleton space" as defined by Thomas and Reif. He seems to be saying that each of the conceivable morphologies in skeleton space is a fixed-point attractor. The attractor emerges as the laws of nature guide the unfolding dynamics of evolution.

Is this concept of fixed-point attractors in a character space too discrete? In "The Crucible of Creation" Conway Morris gives another example, from the work of D.M. Raup: the morphospace for the geometry of the shells secreted by the molluscs. Some regions of this morphospace are thickly populated. But other zones are more or less empty. In these, the solutions to the equations that govern the geometry can be used to visualize the hypothetical shapes, but they somehow look "wrong." Thus the general morphospace is continuous, but only particular points are realized in the real world determined by evolution.

Conway Morris makes a good case for the inevitability of humans, but the evidence is sometimes fragmentary. I think this is only the beginning. There may be as yet untapped evidence in our own present natures. In particular, I suspect that a physical understanding of the network dynamics of our nervous systems will lead to the conclusion that the brains which appeared in the Cambrian explosion would inevitably evolve to the present level, and perhaps beyond.

In Chapter 10 Conway Morris returns to the ubiquity of convergence. Convergence is found not only in directly observable phenotypic characters, but also at the molecular level. For instance, the protein rhodopsin for color vision is tuned to particular colors by substitutions at key sites, and different species adapting to the same color sometimes use identical substitutions. It can become uncertain whether molecular similarities and identities are due to convergence or common ancestry. Thus there is at the present level of knowledge a measure of uncertainty which could be exploited by creationists. But fortunately overall outlines of order are found in cladistic analysis based on molecular evidence. This reflects general human understanding as it looks out on the world with faith that order will be found.

Rating:
Summary: Life is more than the sum of its parts.
Review: A study of the phenomena of convergence: "the recurrent tendency of biological organization to arrive at the same 'solution' to a particular 'need'".

Cambridge paleontologist Morris gives us a tour of the biological universe, pointing out how various environmental adaptations seem to follow similar patterns, hinting at some higher purpose at work in the cosmos. I don't believe that you can ever rationally prove God's existence; faith is intuitive. Yet it is reassuring to know that it is possible to integrate a respect for science and learning with that faith.

This is an exhaustive and meticulous book that makes an argument for human significance and religious meaning without abandoning evolutionary biology or legitimate science.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book
Review: Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway Morris in this book covers convergence and its implications for understanding evolution. Convergence (also called homoplasy) is the independent evolution of similar traits among distantly related organisms such as humans and octopi have similar eye anatomy (although one is inverted, the other verted). Life is replete with examples of convergence on every level: molecular, cellular, even behavioral. Convergence is the key to understanding that evolution, despite its tremendous variety, is fraught with direction, or shall we dare say, purpose. It is a bold statement that will undoubtedly receive a strong reaction from the bulk of the evolutionary community. Morris uses almost half of the book to discuss the building blocks of life (DNA, RNA, proteins, and sugars such as ribose) .He shows that, although these building blocks are very easy to synthesize, this does not help us to understand the origin of life, which, he argues persuasively, is about as unlikely an event as can be conceived. Every approach we have taken to understand how life could have originated now seems at a dead end. Morris spends one chapter looking at the uniqueness of our planet and concludes, as does Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, that life of any kind is a phenomenally unlikely state of affairs anywhere in the universe. While upholding an adaptationist view, Morris labels adherents of the cold, ruthless, and ultimately purposeless evolutionary reality, such as Huxley, Simpson, Mayr, Ernst Haeckel, Clarence Darrow, and even Richard Dawkins as "ultra-Darwinists". He finds fault with the religious fervor of their pronouncements, and their utter ignorance of theology. Convergence, argues Morris, tells us that a Higher Purpose controls Nature. Morris is also as critical of those who harbor doubts about evolution as he is of those who seek to glorify it, but the criticism of ID and creationism is brief compared to the time spent against "ultra-Darwinists". Morris, no doubt, realizes that he left himself open to the charge of being a creationist, and so makes a few remarks castigating them.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book
Review: Conway Morris attempts to demonstrate to the reader that life on earth is unique, and wherever life gets going, intelligent, humanoid life is certain to follow. On both points, Conway Morris fails to present a coherent case. The text is littered with claims which don't support his conclusion, hypothetical events that go nowhere, and some of the most graceless prose I've ever seen outside an academic journal. I can forgive bad prose if the information contained is worth it, but in this case Conway Morris fails to deliver.

As self-contained stories of convergence in evolution, the book works well, and this is why I give it two stars. However, when he tries to tie his anecdotes into the larger theme, the thin reeds break under the strain. As an example, Conway Morris identifies a feature in evolutionary history he calls "inherency." He doesn't define it, but illustrates it by an example of the brain of a lancelet, which apparently lacks the division of fore-, mid- and hindbrain characteristic of vertebrates. However, according to Conway Morris, "the molecular evidence, which is also backed up by some exquisitely fine studies of microanatomy, suggests that, cryptically, the brain of amphioxus has regions equivalent to the tripartite division seen in the vertebrates." From this, Conway Morris reasons "in some sense amphioxus carries the inherent potential for intelligence." Does this support Conway Morris' thesis? No. The fact that early chordates possessed a three-part division in their brains doesn't imply intelligence, it is a structure which later evolutionary adaptations accommodated.

Conway Morris then introduces the idea that life is immensely improbable. Unfortunately, he does it by attacking the comprehensiveness of contemporary research. Yes, DNA is immensely intricate, and yes, the transition from RNA to DNA is poorly understood, but to make a case for the improbability of the emergence of life, he would have to address the mechanisms of generating self-replicating structures in light of the chemistry of the early earth. Conway Morris never attempts a detailed critique, with an emphasis on the probable chemistry of the origin of life, but is content to regale us with conventional platitudes. The argument's lack of substance becomes apparent when one compares Conway Morris' position with the published opinions of researchers in the origins of life.

He also throws in a few bromides related to the anthropic principle, including the apparent size of the moon being just right for full solar eclipses. Since it has nothing to do with the main themes in the book, it is one of those examples of an illustration that goes nowhere.

Now we get to the substance of the book, a paean to convergence in evolution. However, convergence, in general, fails to support the argument. Since Conway Morris is arguing that humanoids are a likely end result of evolution, he needs to provide some evidence that the convergence between humans and other organisms implies that, on another planet, all the traits of humans will be realized in one organism.

Biogeography past and present mitigates against Conway Morris' claims too. For example, there are fishing birds and predatory mammals in both Antarctica and the Arctic. So far, so good for Conway Morris' thesis. However, the fishing bird in the Arctic is the auk, and in Antarctica the penguin. The differences are even more pronounced comparing the two predatory mammals--in the Arctic it's the polar bear, and in Antarctica it's the leopard seal. In both cases, the organisms survive in the same ways, under the same conditions, but they are different because of their evolutionary history. This is not to say that Gould's thesis is correct in every particular. Gould was too enthralled with the idea of evolution as a random walk. Natural selection certainly does constrain evolution, but these constraints merely produce organisms which are similar in broad strokes.

One of Conway Morris' illustrations is especially puzzling. Conway Morris points out that both eutherian cats and metatherians have evolved saber-toothed species. To me, this is not surprising news: you take predators, and they'll have sharp, tearing teeth. Give them much larger herbivorous animals to prey on, and they'll evolve teeth which are equal to the challenge. There the similarities end: the saber-toothed marsupials had oversized incisors and the saber-toothed cat's saber teeth were canines. A pair of big sharp pointy teeth (forgive the Python reference :-D) seems to be the only commonality, and that characteristic only emerges because the theria, as a group, had differentiated teeth. When you take a Cretaceous era predator which also fed on prey much larger than itself, you see something like Velociraptor, which had a enlarged claw, rather than saber teeth, because the teeth of Velociraptor were not very differentiated. Here again, different evolutionary trajectories produce different solutions to the same problem. Curiously, Conway Morris identifies *Allosaurus* as the Mesozoic parallel for the saber-toothed cats, despite the absence of saber teeth in Allosaurus. If the key characteristic that Conway Morris uses to identify convergence is missing in Allosaurus, how can we understand his use of the term convergence? It would seem that Conway Morris, like Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty, wants convergence to mean whatever he wishes it to mean.

Conway Morris, in this book, attempts to start a dialogue between religion and science by utilizing bad scientific arguments. However, a more famous professing Christian had this to say about such arguments:

"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." -- St. Augustine

Would that Conway Morris had considered this before writing.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful and thought provoking
Review: Life's Solution is one of those books that does not easily submit to a pithy review. The book is many things. It is first of all a striking and elegantly written catalogue of what Conway Morris calls "the ubiquity of convergence" in the biological world.

While many folks are familiar with a handful of examples of convergence (the camera eye and those marsupials in Australia come to mind), it is remarkable how pervasive the phenomenon is. In fact, although I still don't know what to make of it, Conway Morris convinced me that convergence is a fact about the world that deserves more attention than it has received.

But the book is much more than a mere compendium of examples. For Conway Morris uses the ubiquity of convergence as a counterweight to the almost orthodox view that the history of life is a governed by a large helping of luck and accident, and that, to paraphrase S.J. Gould, if we reran the tape of life's history, it would have turned out entirely differently. Convergence suggests that, whatever the role played by happenstance, natural selection has worked under narrow constraints built into the structure of reality.

Conway Morris concludes the book with some perhaps preliminary discussions about the possibility of religious and scientific understandings of the world peacefully co-existing. Here as elswhere, Conway Morris only hints at certain ideas rather than pursuing them exhaustively. As a result, some reviewers have written unfair and uncharitable things about the book. But I, for one, was left with much to ponder, and with the hope that Conway Morris will continue his provocative explorations.

Rating:
Summary: A strong argument for evolutionary convergence
Review: Morris, a well-known evolutionist, challenges those biologists who argue that life and intelligence on Earth are the products of chance events. Citing many examples of biological convergence, he argues that evolutionary outcomes are constrained, not infinite in potential number. Sooner or later, evolution on Earth would have produced intelligent beings; if not in primates, then from some other lineage. While perhaps a bit overstated, this argument is a useful counter to the prevailing theory that evolution is a completely random process. However, Morris does not extend that inevitability to other worlds. He believes that the Earth itself may be unique because of a mixture of advantages such as a large moon.

Morris argues that evolution may have purpose, that life is not just a bleak working out of statistics. In his last chapter, he writes that "there has been a resurgence of interest in the connections that might serve to reunify the scientific world with the religious instinct." This connection of evolution to religion may make some readers uncomfortable. While Morris' writing style is generally lively, his digressions into the details of biology may leave behind non-scientist readers.

Rating:
Summary: Considering convergence
Review: Overstating your case has become almost the norm in evolutionary studies. By gathering reams of supporting material, using every possible example, all while reproaching your critics, lets you can produce a book such as this one. Conway Morris has a deserved reputation as a fine palaeontologist. Working with early fossils has given him a firm foundation to address how life has evolved on this planet. In this book he builds on that basis to take an additional step. Is human intelligence unique, or will we someday encounter it on distant worlds? What do we know about early [and present] life on this planet that would enable us to forecast what might be found elsewhere? Conway Morris addresses these and other questions directly, using an abundance of supportive evidence.

He starts with deepest chronological base, the formation of stars and planets. Even at this level, he stresses, there are constraints. Stars have sequential mechanisms, now fairly well defined. Following them, planets' structures and even orbits may follow almost predictable pathways. After the earliest emergence of life, rules of form, options of habitat and, ultimately, the way intellect occurs, may be broadly set and followed. Darwin understood this from the beginning - evolution builds on what's gone before. Even the most bizarre-looking sea or land life has resulted from a series of steps reaching into the past.

The body of the book portrays those steps, where identifiable in the past and as seen today. The steps, as Conway Morris rightly reminds us, are the results of adaptations through time - which he defines as "inherency". He bristles with indignation at the critics of the adaptationist programme who contend if you can't identify the "usefulness" of a trait, it's not an adaptation. Just because we are ignorant of a function doesn't mean there is none. Since evolution works on all parts of an organism, even if unequally in time or location, all evolutionary steps are adaptations. To Conway Morris, the frequent appearance of similar adaptations - "convergences" - in varying environments indicates that life operates under some general orders - it's not "rule by roulette". Among is many examples is the bizarre similarity in brain structure between human beings and mormyid fish. The latter is a creature living within an intense electrical environment. With high demand on its cognitive functions, the mormyid's brain uses about half the body's oxygen supply - three times that of the average human.

After fashioning his thematic structure with lavish amounts of material, Conway Morris nearly demolishes the edifice in explaining why he's constructed it. In a final, rambling chapter, he lays out the plans for the building. Most of it lashes out at things he deplores, including amazingly, "ultra-Darwinism", that catch-all phrase his target Gould used so ineptly. According to Conway Morris, something - not a deity, not "just six numbers", not anything even definable - but something is "out there" guiding everything from the construction of stars to evolving apes who can write sonnets. Much of this foundation is based on the thoughts of a few other writers, mostly philosophers. Here, Conway Morris exhibits a form of colour aberration - instead of using John Greene, he would better have chosen John Grey. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]



Rating:
Summary: The inevitability of creation
Review: This book is yeat another example of evolutionists' leaps of faith. Instead of comming to the obvious conclusion that the convergence of biological principles and mechanisms is the result of the inteligent design of a Common Creator, the author concludes by the inevitability of evolution. This is not fact. This is the author's convenient interpretation. Frankly I don't see any evidence that supports that conclusion. All the evidence supports instantaneous creation ex nihilo.The convergence of millions of nucleotides to precisely build and sequence aminoacids, proteins, molecular machines and cells and to assemble all that in highly complex and diverse biological organisms and systems cannot be axplained both by gradualism or by saltationism. It can only reasonably be the result of creation ex nihilo by a Super Intellect, God "the author of Life".

Rating:
Summary: An overdue challenge to dogmas
Review: Thumbs up indeed, despite reservations. This book at least makes clear Morris' debate with Gould who should be rolling over in his grave. Without fulling agreeing it must be said this perspective is both very much needed, and overdue. Non-specialists can read the tiresome literature here and feel a sense of 'dis-ease'--one is not getting the full picture. The literature is filled with contempt for the reader, for they cannot easily figure out what's been left out. Someone like Morris clearly confirms one's not quite coherent suspicions by pointing to the 'obvious' with some hard data to back it up. And this is quite apart from his take on theological issues, which seems unnecessary to the argument.
At one and the same time, finding convergence, directinality, is not as such the same as finding teleology, although it may constitute indirect evidence. Also, it is important to distinguish natural and supernatural teleology, a distinction actually once present in biological thought--thirty years before Darwin, whose theory caused a declien in theory.
Good show, let's hope the facade cracks once and for all. Important read, though a bit technical (fortunately).