Evolution for Everyone--Even Biologists?

Those defending the importance of teaching evolutionary science often like to quote a famous remark by Theodosius Dobzhansky (an evolutionary biologist): "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Some of us would like to expand that claim to read: "Nothing in any of the academic disciplines--the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities--makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Opponents of evolution--including the proponents of creationism and intelligent design--like to challenge such claims. In fact, they argue, evolutionary ideas are not essential to biological research, and they certainly contribute nothing good to the social sciences and humanities.

Oddly enough, it really is true that many biologists have no great interest in evolution, and they certainly don't see evolution as a bridge across all of the intellectual disciplines.

This point comes up in the first issue of the EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium. One of the articles is by Neil Blackstone. Neil is a colleague of mine at Northern Illinois University. He's an evolutionary biologist in the biology department. We have team-taught a course on evolutionary topics that is cross-listed in the political science and biology departments. He has complained to me that his fellow biologists often show little interest in evolutionary reasoning. In this article, he illustrates his point by showing how molecular cell biologists fail to see how evolutionary thinking could help them in their research. In particular, he argues that research on the functioning of the STAT3 protein could be illuminated by considering the evolutionary history of mitochondria as originally bacteria that entered into a symbiotic relationship within eukaryotic cells.

Such thinking is rare, Neil indicates, because evolutionary theorists tend to study genetics and organisms without studying cell biology, while cell biologists often pay no attention to evolution. A similar kind of narrowness is indicated in another article in this same issue of EvoS. The article by Fisher et al. is a report by young evolutionary psychologists on how their careers have developed. One of them--Aaron Goetz--says that while he developed an early interest in evolution in high school, he was not so interested in other areas of biology. "I was (and still am) fascinated by whole organism biology and absorbed in macroevolution but turned off when zooming in to the cellular level. Golgi bodies and ATP transport systems (whatever those are) never excited me" (13). This is remarkable because ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is the primary source of energy for almost every process in the cell requiring energy. As Neil indicates, the STAT3 protein contributes to this vital generation of ATP. But evolutionary psychologists don't think this has any interest for their evolutionary studies, just as many cell biologists have no interest in evolution.

Similarly, another one of the evolutionary psychologists--Karol Osipowicz--reports that many neuroscientists don't apply the principles of evolution to cognition (20). And Steven Platek expresses shock that many biologists don't accept the reasoning of evolutionary psychology (25).

The fundamental problem is that career paths in higher education today often tend to be highly specialized, so much so that even within the same academic department, faculty can hardly talk to one another. Consequently, extending evolutionary reasoning across all areas of biology and then even across other disciplines in a university meets resistance.

But as the EvoS program at Binghamton University shows, the intellectual excitement generated by such expansion of evolutionary ideas will attract thoughtful students and faculty. After all, what can be more exciting than the prospect of that ultimate unification of all knowledge that has always been the seductive promise of liberal education?

For some of my posts on "Darwinian liberal education," go here, here, here, here, here, here, and .here.