Evolution of a Scientist

The Darwin exhibit was conceived in 2002, when the current round of Darwin-bashing was still over the horizon, but just in those three years' time museum officials found they had to greatly expand their treatment of the controversy--in particular, the rise of "intelligent design" as an alternative to natural selection. ID posits a supernatural force behind the emergence of complex biological systems--such as the eye--composed of many interdependent parts. Although ID advocates have struggled to achieve scientific respectability, biologists overwhelmingly dismiss it as nonsense. Collins comments, in a video that is part of the museum show: "[ID] says, if there's some part of science that you can't understand, that must be where God is. Historically, that hasn't gone well. And if science does figure out [how the eye evolved]--and I believe it's very likely that science will... then where is God?"

Where is god? it is the mournful chorus that has accompanied every new scientific paradigm over the last 500 years, ever since Copernicus declared him unnecessary to the task of getting the sun up into the sky each day. The church eventually reconciled itself to the reality of the solar system, which Darwin, perhaps intentionally, invoked in the stirring conclusion to the "Origin": "There is grandeur in this view of life... that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." For all his nets and guns and glasses, Darwin never found God; by the same token, the Bible has nothing to impart about the genetic relationships among the finches he did find. But it is human nature to seek both kinds of knowledge. Perhaps after a few more cycles of the planet, we will find a way to pursue them both in peace.

With Anne Underwood and William Lee Adams

© 2005