Malik, Kenan. "Pigs Won't Fly." LITERARY REVIEW (March 2010).

Fodor, Jerry, and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. What Darwin Got Wrong. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Evolution is weird - far weirder than Darwin ever imagined. But does that mean that Darwinism itself should go the way of the dinosaur and the dodo? That's the question that Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini pose in What Darwin Got Wrong. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection rests on three elements: the existence of variation in a trait; the differential effects of such variation upon reproductive success; and a mechanism by which the trait is inherited. Little was known in Darwin's time of the principles underlying heredity and variation. It was the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel who started unravelling the story of genetic inheritance. His ideas were eventually fused with those of Darwin to create the 'Modern Synthesis', the foundation stone of contemporary evolutionary theory. Only over the last twenty years, however, have we begun to understand in greater detail what genes are, how they express themselves and how variation in the genotype relates to variation in the phenotype (observable characteristic). Most biologists working within the Modern Synthesis had assumed that an organism was a straightforward reflection of its component genes. Specific genetic mutations, they believed, gave rise to specific changes in bodily structure or behaviour. Recent research has revealed a far more complex story of how genes make organisms. Some genes have multiple functions while others act as 'master genes' helping to switch bits of DNA on and off. Master genes seem not to recognise species boundaries. The same master genes for eye development can be found in sea urchins (in which they remain unexpressed), fruit flies and humans. The implication is that major differences between species may be less about the evolution of new genes than about the same genes being regulated and expressed in new ways. According to Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, these discoveries reveal not just the complexity of the evolutionary process but also the wrongness of Darwinian theory. Biologists such as Richard Lewontin and the late Stephen Jay Gould have in recent years challenged what they call 'ultra-Darwinism', insisting that adaptation is only one of a number of evolutionary mechanisms. All, however, have accepted adaptation as important and real. Not so Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini. Fodor is a leading philosopher of mind. Piattelli-Palmarini is a distinguished cognitive scientist. What Darwin Got Wrong is a trenchant, entertaining assault on the very basis of contemporary evolutionary theory. There are two halves to the argument. . . . .

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