The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism

by Michael J. Behe

Book Overview

When Michael J. Behe's first book, Darwin's Black Box, was published in 1996, it launched the intelligent design movement. Critics howled, yet hundreds of thousands of readers -- and a growing number... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743296206
• ISBN13: 9780743296205
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Edge of Evolution rescues Darwinian evolution from fanatics

Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution is, quite obviously, a fundamental challenge to the vast claims made for Darwinian evolution. Behe is exactly the right challenger. He has no concerns about (1) the age of the Earth, (2) whether Ronald Reagan and Bonzo are ultimately cousins, or (3) whether Darwinian evolution can create things. His questions are: What can Darwinian evolution actually create? What are the limits on what it can create? As it happens, the war between the malaria parasite and the human blood cell gives us a reasonable idea of what Darwinian evolution can do over many generations, and the answer is: a bit but not much Now here we come to a fork in the road: If you think evolution happened, but do not need it to explain everything, you will see Behe's book as a valuable achievement in science. He lays the groundwork for analyzing the effects a specific cause (Darwinian evolution) produces. If, on the other hand, you need Darwinian evolution to explain the origin and development of all life, and perhaps of the universe itself and even the human mind - you will not like this book. Not a bit. But then, it wasn't written to please you. It was written to rescue Darwinian evolution from the swamps of vulgar, materialist religion and restore it to its rightful, minor place in the history of life.

An Important Work

After reading the many negative reviews of this book, I decided to read the book from cover to cover. I conclude that the negative reviews do not reflect the total contents of the book. Much of the material in this book is a review of the literature, which almost none of the critics found fault with. One can quibble with Behe's statistics, most of which he relied on those computed by others, but I have concluded that his main point is valid. I and others would find it very helpful if those who disagree with Behe's results to do their own calculations or refer us to the relevant literature. I have done similar calculations, only with mammals, and have concluded that combining mutational probability and the number of mammal life forms that have existed historically paints a far worse picture than Behe documents for bacteria. The number of uncorrected mutations compared with the number of mammals does not provide much hope that Darwinian mechanisms alone could provide the raw material to evolve mammals from their theoretical common ancestor. There are far to few mammals and far too few uncorrected mutations, most all of which, as has been well documented, are detrimental or, worse yet, near neutral. Many if not most mammals have historically, and today, existed in relatively small numbers. Ecologists have estimated how many Pandas, bears, big cats, and other mammals have ever existed, and the numbers are tiny compared to bacteria. The most successful mammals are the rodents and even their number is tiny compared to bacteria. I also found that many of the critical reviews of this book were just plain wrong. One of many examples is the claim that Behe "quickly" dismissed "the Red Queen hypothesis as a 'silly statement' ....ignoring the existence of a substantial body of supporting scientific literature" is irresponsible. Professor Behe is not calling the Red Queen hypothesis silly, but the statement in Louis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Behe then spends much time discussing why he concluded the Red Queen hypothesis may not be correct.

Recommended

Michael J. Behe, in "The Edge of Evolution", shows himself to be an evolutionist. He believes in common descent, but he questions the limit of Darwin's theory. Behe sees Darwin's theory as describing only micro evolution. In his (page 83) words: "Charles Darwin deserves a lot of credit. Although it had been proposed before him, he championed the idea of common descent and gathered a lot of evidence to support it. Despite some puzzles, much evidence from sequencing projects and other work points very strongly to common ancestry. Darwin also proposed the concept of random variation/natural selection. Selection does explain a number of important details of life - including the development of sickle hemoglobin, drug and insecticide resistence, and cold tolerance in fish - where progress can come in tiny steps." Behe relates Darwinian evolution to a "trench warfare" that turns off life-giving functions by "burning molecular bridges". His evaluation of the human struggle with malaria shows only small genetic changes to both human and parasite. He (page 42) writes "the data show trench warfare, with acts of desperate destruction, not arms races, with mutual improvements." The burning of bridges seems to work as with the appearance of the sickle-cell trait (among others), but the desperation shows only that "the edge of evolution is indeed past the point of many [desperate] responses to parasites" (page 21). Behe finds the same pattern with the human struggle with HIV, he (page 139) writes: "HIV employs the same modest tricks that malaria uses to evade drugs - mostly simple point mutations to decrease the binding of the poison to its pathogen target." From studies (where there is the most data) on malaria, HIV and E. coli, Behe is able to set a conservative estimate on what is possible for Darwinian evolution in a constructive sense (not just in a destructive sense) to build protein-protein interactions. Behe's conservative estimate is roughly matched against the likelihood of chloroquine resistance in malaria, otherwise no new protein-protein interactions have been found in drug resistence studies involving HIV or E. coli. Because of the astronomical numbers of malaria parasites, Behe (page 61) makes this projection: "No [random or undirected] mutation that is the same complexity as chloroquine resistance in malaria arose by Darwinian evolution in the line leading to humans in the past ten million years." Behe (page 146) writes: "The immediate, most important implication is that complexes with more that two different binding sites - ones that require three or more different kinds of proteins - are beyond the edge of evolution, past what is biologically reasonable to expect Darwinian evolution to have accomplished in all of life in all of the billion-year history of the world... With the criterion of [greater than] two protein-protein binding sites, we can quickly see why stupendously complex structures such as the cilium, the flagellum, and the mach

The Limits of Random Mutation: An Argument for....

What in essence is Darwinian Evolution? Many philosophers would find that a fairly difficult question. For Daniel Dennett, it is a universal solvent that dissolves all non-materialist ideas. For some creationists, it is the root of much evil in the modern world, including racism, war, and a lack of compassion for the poor. For Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University, it is an extraordinarily successful set of explanations for the diversity of life. But for Michael Behe, and one suspects many biologists, Darwinism is simply a series of propositions. These are 1) common descent of life, 2) natural selection (sometimes termed "survival of the fittest") and 3) random mutation at the cellular level driving the changes. The difference between Behe, an advocate of intelligent design, and Miller is simply one of the degree to which each thinks these propositions are applicable in describing life as we observe it. (Readers should note that Behe fully accepts common descent and natural selection. It is the random mutation mechanism that he has difficulty with.) In this book Behe strikes off in a new direction from his previous work, 'Darwin's Black Box.' Rather than simply explore cellular mechanisms that seem unlikely to arise from chance, Behe instead considers all the areas where evolution seems to function very well. For example, the rise of resistance among certain diseases, notably malaria, to synthetic drugs. Remarkable evolutionary pressures are at work in the struggle between humans and deadly pathogens. Humans who develop an immunity to maleria have a strong evolutionary advantage over those who don't. Similarly, protozoan parasites which can avoid the drugs we use to combat them also have an evolutionary advantage. Indeed, this is common knowledge among all biologists and most of the literate public. Germ resistance of all kinds to drug treatments is the star example of evolution at work. But what is not so commonly known is that random mutation has severe limits in how effectively it can cope with evolutionary pressure. Indeed, what Behe demonstrates in precise detail is that evolutionary mechanisms are for the most part destructive: a part of the DNA stand is destroyed or replaced with a less efficient coding and the result is a weaker organism, though one which can survive the "trench warfare" of survival with hostile organisms. Thus, for example, humans have developed sickle cell anemia to cope with malaria. This is hardly beneficial, in and of itself, but compared to malarial death, it is a very helpful mutation. Similarly, malaria can rapidly evolve resistance to some drugs, slowly to others (more changes are required, and hence far fewer resistant copies of the cell are likely) but the mutated genes that come from this battle for survival are not optimal. Indeed, like sickle cell anemia, they rapidly die out of the malarial population if not subjected to the pressure of deadly (for the parasite) toxins in t