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EVOLUTION AND THE BIOLOGISTS DAUGHTER FRED D. LEDLEY* The birth of my first child has caused me to reflect on human evolution ; for in the act of reproduction, I have become a participant. The survival of my genes—my ultimate contribution to the human species— is contingent upon the success of this act. Moreover, my appreciation of human evolution, neoteny, and the disproportionate development of the human brain [1] have a new reality in dirty diapers, pureed foods, and the pain of labor. The birth of my daughter, however, has also been a time for religion; for celebrating the divine origin of life with a brit, naming, or baptism. Birth is indeed a miracle; among personal accomplishments it is both the most profound and the most unconscious. Its complexity and its precision are ineffable. If awe and wonder are the media by which we recognize the divine presence [2], then perhaps in my parentaljoy there is a tacit acceptance of a divine creation. In fact, becoming a parent has made me somewhat uncomfortable with the tenets of human evolution that have been proposed since Charles Darwin first placed humans among the primates in his classic book The Descent ofMan [3]. It is unpleasant to imagine my infant daughter in a "struggle for survival." It is often difficult to understand how any infant (or its parents) manage to survive at all! While I still appreciate the potential subtleties of kin selection, group selection, and other phenomena underlying natural evolution, these mechanisms hardly seem adequate to account for the evolution of a creature as frail and dependent as a human baby. Have I become a creationist? Or, like Alfred Wallace, the cofounder of evolutionary theory, am I willing to accept the evolutionary origin of species, yet unwilling to apply these principles fully to myself? This work was supported in part by the ACTA foundation. *Assistant investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Departments of Cell Biology and Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030.© 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1-5982/93/3602-08 1 1$0 1 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 36, 2 ¦ Winter 1993 | 281 I Evolution holds an unusual place among the sciences: accepted as a fundamental postulate by scientists, yet largely misunderstood, ignored, or rejected by the general population. It is no mistake that it remains controversial, for it is conceived as being both effacing and ephemeral. It is effacing because it insults the legion of human anthropocentricity without compassion or compromise. No other revelation of science, except perhaps the Copernican notion of humankind spinning purposelessly through space, elicits such visceral unease among general populations . Even scientists cling to the anachronism of referring to evolution as a "theory," while other less satisfactory ideas acquire the designation "law," perhaps because we, too, are uncomfortable with the personal application of its precepts. There is little appeal to envisioning my daughter engaged in a "struggle for survival" where insects and rodents are objectively as successful as humans. I do not look forward to measuring my daughter's ultimate success as a human being, or my own, in terms of our reproductive fecundity. So, too, evolution is ephemeral. Does it really matter whether my daughter evolved from the apes? Unlike many scientific advances of recent centuries, the discovery of evolution has no material impact on our lives. Its most profound impact, unfortunately, has been to instigate theories of social Darwinism and eugenics that are vile and shallow rationalizations for contemporary prejudice, anti-Semitism, and racism [4]. Perhaps the best defense of creationism, as opposed to evolution, is the contention that the recognition of humans as evolving primates has no necessity and no purpose, while the concept that men and women are God's ultimate creation provides the foundation for the development of human civilization and culture. Literally or figuratively, as history or as metaphor, the image of a special creation pervades even the most enlightened venues of thought and creativity. The myth of human creation and the sojourn in the Garden of Eden is elemental because it explains what is evident to human consciousness: namely, that the human form and function...

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