Discovering new mysteries

It’s Darwin Day today and I’m at a a loss as to what to write about. I’ve been meaning to write on Robin Dunbar’s ideas about the evolution of religion. Right now I can’t lay my hands on either his book The Human Story or the New Scientist article that prompted me.

Evolution of religion as a cognitive model is plausible. It has been argued that even pigeons, creatures which seem to exist to define the phrase bird-brained, can be superstitious. There’s an article Superstition in the Pigeon by BF Skinner in the 1948 edition of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. Pigeons would be a very apt topic. Darwin’s editor for the Origin of Species suggested that he should write about pigeons because everybody was interested in pigeons: “The book would be reviewed in every journal in the kingdom; and would soon be on every library table.”

Why does Darwin remain important today when other geniuses like James Clerk Maxwell fail to arouse the same passion? One reason is perhaps that everybody is interested in origins. Darwin’s theory which shows how complex organisation is possible without guiding intelligence is an elegant theory because it explains so much about about origins.

Another reason is that Darwin understood the importance of the public understanding of science. His text is, by modern standards, a little difficult. It was however in the language of the day. Any reasonably educated person could follow the argument. This is something to get excited about. Science is specialised and it can require an effort to understand, but difficult text is not a virtue of itself. In the Devil’s Chaplain Richard Dawkins identifies the goal of scientific communication as to express complex ideas as simply as possible. Not a million miles away from the famous Einstein quote.

Just in time for Darwin Day comes another publication to get excited about. In December the discovery of the oldest flint tools in the British Isles was published in Nature. If you’re not a scientist then this is not an easy journal to get your hands on. However the magazine British Archaeology also published on the tools on the same day. Even better, the articles – minus the illustrations – have been released on the web. It’s not complete, for instance you won’t see the scale they spread across the top of several pages to demonstrate how old the tools are. There’s rather similar on the left.

Like Darwin’s work, it’s not just an answer to a question it’s also a signpost to a whole world of new questions we can ask about nature. That small gap at the top is the sum of British history. Evolution allows us to boggle the sheer scale of the human experience.