- River out of Eden
Infobox Book
name = River out of Eden
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author =Richard Dawkins
illustrator =Lalla Ward
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subject =Evolutionary biology
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publisher =Basic Books
release_date =1995
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pages = 172
isbn = ISBN 0-465-01606-5
preceded_by =The Blind Watchmaker
followed_by =Climbing Mount Improbable "River out of Eden" (subtitled "A Darwinian View of Life") is a 1995
popular science book byRichard Dawkins . The book is aboutDarwinian evolution and includes summaries of the topics covered in his earlier books, "The Selfish Gene ", "The Extended Phenotype " and "The Blind Watchmaker ". It is part of the "Science Masters" series and is Dawkins' shortest book. It also includes illustrations byLalla Ward , Dawkins' wife. The book's name is derived from passage 2:10 ofGenesis relating to theGarden of Eden . The King James Version reads "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.""River out of Eden" comprises five chapters. The first chapter lays down the framework on which the rest of the book is built, that life is a
river ofgene s flowing throughgeological time whereorganism s are mere temporary bodies. The second chapter shows how human ancestry can be traced via many gene pathways to different "most recent common ancestor s", with special emphasis on the "African Eve". The third chapter describes how gradual enhancement via natural selection is the only mechanism which can create the complexity we observe all around us in nature. The fourth chapter expounds on the utter indifference of genes towards organisms they build and discard, in their relentless drive to maximize their ownutility function s. The last chapter summarizes milestones during the evolution of life onEarth and speculates on how similar processes may work in alienplanetary system s.The digital river
Dawkins begins the book with a startling, yet true claim on behalf of all
organism s that have ever lived: not a single one of our ancestors died before they reached adulthood and begot at least one child. In a world where most organisms die before they can procreate, descendants are common but ancestors are rare. But we can all claim an unbroken chain of successful ancestors all the way back to the firstsingle-celled organism .If the "success" of an organism is measured by its ability to survive and reproduce, then all living organisms can be said to have inherited "good
gene s" from "successful ancestors" instead of less successful contemporaries. Eachgeneration of organisms is a sieve against which replicated and mutated genes are tested. Good genes fall through the sieve into the next generation while bad genes are weeded out. This explains why organisms become better and better at whatever it takes to "succeed", and is in stark contrast toLamarckism . Successful organisms do not and cannot refine their genes during their lifetime. Rather, good genes make successful organisms which perpetuate good genes themselves.Following this
gene-centered view of evolution , it can be argued that an organism is no more than a temporary body in which a set of companion genes (actuallyalleles ) cooperate toward a common goal: to grow the organism into adulthood, before they part company and go on their separate ways in bodies of the organism's progenies. Temporary bodies are created and discarded, but good genes live forever in the form of perfect replicas of themselves, a result of high-fidelity copy process which is typical of digital encoding.Through
meiosis (sexual reproduction ), immortal genes find themselves sharing temporary bodies with different set of intimate companion genes in successive generations of organisms. Thus genes can be said to flow in a river through geological time. Scoop up a bucket of genes from the river of genes, and we have an organism. Even though genes are selfish, over the long run every gene needs to be compatible with all other genes in thegene pool of apopulation of organisms, in order to produce successful organisms.A river of genes may fork into two branches, mostly due to the geographical separation between two populations of organisms. Because genes in the two branches never share the same bodies, they may drift apart until genes from the two branches become incompatible. Organism created by these two branches (or two rivers) will form separate, non-interbreeding
species , completing the process ofspeciation . [ [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.07/dawkins_pr.html "Revolutionary Evolutionist"] , profile by Michael Schrage, "Wired", July 1995.] [ [http://scepsis.ru/eng/articles/dawkins01.php "Darwin's dangerous disciple"] , interview with Frank Miele, "Scepsis", 1995.]All Africa and her progenies
When tracing human lineage back in time, most people look at parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on. The same approach is often taken when tracing descendants via children and grandchildren. Dawkins shows that this approach is misguided, as the numbers of ancestors and descendants seem to grow exponentially as generations are added to the lineage tree. In just 80 generations, the number of ancestors can exceed a trillion trillion.
This simple calculation does not take into account the fact that every
marriage is really a marriage between "distantcousin s" which include second cousins, fourth cousins, sixteenth cousins and so on. The ancestry tree is not really a tree, but a graph.A better way to model ancestry is to think in terms of genes flowing through a river of time. An "ancestor gene" flows down the river either as perfect replicas of itself or as slightly mutated "descendant genes". Dawkins fails to explicitly contrast "ancestor organism" and "descendant organisms" against "ancestor genes" and "descendant genes" in this chapter. But the first half of the chapter is really about differences between these two models of lineage. While organisms have ancestry graphs and progeny graphs via
sexual reproduction , a gene has a single chain of ancestors and a tree of descendants.Given any gene in the body of an organism, we can trace a single chain of "ancestor organisms" back in time, following the lineage of this one gene, as stated in the
coalescent theory . Because a typical organism is built from tens of thousands of genes, there are numerous ways to trace the ancestry of organisms using this mechanism. But all these inheritance pathways share one common feature. If we start with all humans alive in 1995 and trace their ancestry by one particular gene (actually a locus), we find that the farther we move back in time, the smaller the number of ancestors become. The pool of ancestors continues to shrink until we find the "most recent common ancestor " (MRCA) of all humans alive in 1995 "via this particular gene pathway".In theory, one can also trace human ancestry via a single chromosome, as a chromosome contains a set of genes and is passed down from parents to children via
independent assortment from only one of the two parents. Butgenetic recombination (chromosomal crossover ) mixes genes from non-sisterchromatids from both parents duringmeiosis , thus muddling the ancestry path.However, the
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is immune to sexual mixing, unlike thenuclear DNA whose chromosomes are shuffled and recombined inMendelian inheritance . Mitochondrial DNA, therefore, can be used to trace matrilineal inheritance and to find theMitochondrial Eve (also known as the "African Eve"), the most recent common ancestor of all human via the mitochondrial DNA pathway.Do good by stealth
The main themes of the third chapter are borrowed from Dawkins' own book,
The Blind Watchmaker . This chapter shows how the gradual, continuous and cumulative enhancement to organisms vianatural selection is the only mechanism which can explain the complexity we observe all around us in nature. Dawkins resolutely refutes the need ofCreationist s to invokesupernatural powers in order to account for complexities. He refutes thier "I cannot believe so and so could have evolved by natural selection" argument, calling it "the Argument from Personal Incredulity ".Creationists often claim that some features of organisms (e.g. resemblance of
Ophrys (orchid ) to female wasp, figure-eight dances ofhoneybee s, mimicry ofstick insect s, etc.) are too complicated to be a result of evolution. Some say, "half of an X will not work at all." Others say, "in order for X to work, it had to be perfect the first time." Dawkins shows that these are no more than bold assertions based on ignorance:... Do you actually know the first thing about orchids, or wasps, or the eyes with which wasps look at females and orchids? What emboldens you to assert that wasps are so hard to fool that the orchid's resemblance would have to be perfect in all dimensions in order to work?
Dawkins goes on to illustrate his point by demonstrating how scientists have been able to fool creatures big and small using seemingly dumb triggers. For instance,
stickleback fish treat a pear-shaped as a sex bomb (asupernormal stimulus ). Gulls' hard-wiredinstinct s make them reach over and roll back not just their own stray eggs, but also wooden cylinders and cocoa tins. Honeybees push out their live and protesting companion from their hive, when the companion is painted with a drop ofoleic acid . Furthermore, a turkey will kill anything which moves unless it cries like a baby turkey. If the turkey is deaf, it will mercilessly kill its own babies.An even more convincing way to refute "the Argument from Personal Incredulity" is to emphasize the gradual nature of evolution. For example, some creatures such as the
stick insect s possess the most amazing degree ofcamouflage , but in fact any sort of camouflage is better than none. There is agradient from perfect camouflage to zero camouflage. A 100 percent camouflage is better than 99 percent. A 50 percent camouflage is better than 49 percent. A 1 percent camouflage is better than no camouflage. A creature with 1 percent better camouflage than its contemporaries will leave more descendants over time (an evolutionary success), and its good genes will come to dominate the gene pool.Not only can we classify the degree of insect camouflage using a gradient, we can also study all aspects of the surrounding environment as gradients. For instance, a 1 percent camouflage may not be distinguishable from no camouflage under bright daylight. But as light fades and night sets in, there is a critical moment when the 1 percent camouflage helps an insect escape detection by its predator, while its companion with no camouflage is eaten. The same principle can be applied to the distance between prey and predator, to the angle of view, to the skill or the age of a creature, etc.
Not satisfied with merely demonstrating how gradual changes can bring about features as complex as the human
eye , Dawkins states thatcomputer simulation work by Swedish scientists Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger (although it is not a computer simulation but simple mathematical model) shows that the eye could have evolved from scratch a thousand times in succession in any animal lineage. In Dawkins' own words, "the time needed for the evolution of the eye... turned out to be too short for geologists to measure! It's is a geological blink." And, "it is no wonder "the" eye has evolved at least forty times independently around the animal kingdom."God's utility function
This chapter explores the "
meaning of life " or, in other words, the "purpose of life". This is the "why" question about life which philosophers and theologians have been pondering in vain for ages, and is a counterpart to the "how" question about nature which engineers have been able to resolve successfully.Dawkins opens the chapter quoting how
Charles Darwin lost his faith in religion, "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent andomnipotent God would have designedly created theIchneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies ofCaterpillars ." We ask "why" a caterpillar should suffer such cruel punishment. We ask "why"digger wasp s couldn't first kill caterpillars to save them from a prolonged and agonizing torture. We ask "why" a child should die an untimely death. And we ask "why" we should all grow old and die.Dawkins rephrases the word "purpose" in terms of what
economists call autility function , meaning "that which is maximized".Engineers often investigate the intended purpose (or utility function) of a piece of equipment usingreverse engineering . Dawkins uses this technique to reverse-engineer the purpose in the mind of the Divine Engineer of Nature, or the "Utility Function of God".Dawkins shows that it is a mistake to assume that an
ecosystem or aspecies as a whole exists for a purpose. In fact, it is wrong to suppose that individual organisms lead a meaningful life either. In nature, only genes have a utility function – to perpetuate their own existence with indifference to great sufferings inflicted upon the organisms they build, exploit and discard. As hinted at in chapter one, genes are the supreme lords of the natural world. In other words, theunit of selection is the gene, not an individual, or any other higher-order group as championed by proponents ofgroup selection .As long as an organism survives its childhood and manages to reproduce thus passing its genes down to the next generation, what happens to the parent organism afterwards does not really bother genes. Because an organism is always at the danger of dying from accidents (a waste of investment), it pays for the genes to build an organism which pools almost all its resources to produce offspring as early as possible. Thus we accumulate damages to our body as we age and harbor late-onset diseases such as
Huntington's disease which have minimum impact on the evolutionary success of our gene overlords.Genes are pitilessly indifferent to who or what gets hurt, so long as DNA is passed on. Dawkins wrote at the end:
During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying from starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.
The replication bomb
In the last chapter, Dawkins considers how Darwinian evolution may look outside of planet Earth. It seems that the trigger event would be the spontaneous arising of
self-replicating entities or the phenomenon ofheredity . Once this process is initiated, it will launch an explosion of replicating entities until all available resources are used and all vacant niches are taken. Thus the title of the chapter.Dawkins tries to distill ten milestones from the history of the only one replication bomb we know of, life on Earth. He strips any "local conditions" peculiar to Earth from these milestones which he calls "thresholds", in the hope that these "thresholds" will be applicable to an alien evolution in an alien
planetary system .From the starting point of the "Replicator Threshold", we may eventually reach the higher thresholds of "Consciousness", "Language", "Technology", and "Radio". The final threshold is "Space Travel". In reaching the moon, we have hardly made it past the front door.
References
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