Some months ago, the National Council of Educational Research and Training, or NCERT, was in the news for having taken the decision to drop Darwin’s theory of evolution from Class 10 science textbook. As expected, this generated some debate. The scientists who were supporting the move failed to mention the now well-known and also quite well-argued opinion of a growing body of scientists — several of whom are very distinguished — that there are some serious problems with Darwin’s theory.
However, lest I be misunderstood, I wish to state categorically that the rest of this article is an attempt to bring into focus some of the genuine issues that affect Darwin’s theory, and I am not trying to support Intelligent Design. All I wish is to ensure that some of the issues and concerns about Darwinism are brought to the attention of all and sundry because they do seem to carry weight.
Neo-Darwinism has benefitted greatly in the second half of the last century from advances in Mendelian genetics and molecular biology. The edifice thus constructed has for various reasons seemed solid and unassailable to a large part of the scientific community, and the Western world has been the fountainhead of this belief. Yet in many parts of the West, there is a growing number of well–regarded scientists and intellectuals who have raised some very strong and well-thought-out arguments about the lacunae that perforate the fabric of neo-Darwinism.
‘A religious sect’
Unfortunately, in my land, there has been a lamb-like and dogmatic acceptance of neo-Darwinism, and I hope to balance that a little with some sensible arguments espoused by the other side. For those who hold neo-Darwinism as sacrosanct, any criticism of Darwin is an attempt to slip in creationism. I wish to once again reassure the reader that such is not my intention. As much as I can see the writing on the wall, in the last few decades there has emerged a body of dissent from a variety of serious and very credible evolutionary scientists, mathematicians, molecular biologists, and others. To be sure, they do not propose an alternative theory so much as share the view that the assumptions of neo-Darwinism do not withstand empirical scrutiny and are unsound from a logical perspective.
I propose to recount the arguments and reasoning put forth by some distinguished scientists and thinkers. The name that springs first and foremost in my scheme of alibis is that of the late and very distinguished scientist Lynn Margulis. Her credentials as an evolutionary biologist are beyond question. She was a fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences and had been awarded the National Medal of Science, which is an honour that the US president accords to its greatest scientists.
Margulis argued against the dogmatic belief of the all-important role played by mutation, natural selection, and Darwinian gradualism in the process of evolution. Instead, she emphasised — presenting hard evidence — that the highly innovative predominant mechanism of large-scale evolutionary novelty is not mutation and selection but symbiosis and the merging of genomes. She established that this occurs when one organism engulfs another leading to the formation of a new kind of cell. This is a fundamentally different logic from Darwinian gradualism. Margulis has had her share of critics, but her stature and her findings did eventually withstand much of the criticism.
Margulis remained very forthright in her views and she went so far as to state that neo-Darwinism was a “minor twentieth-century religious sect”. She also asserted that the proponents of neo-Darwinism had all along been unable to provide a single, straight, and clear example of a novel species having been created through the piling up of a series of mutations. To sum up, Margulis was not batting for creationism. In fact, she had a deep faith in evolution, but of the sort where things like horizontal gene transfer and symbiotic merger play a very important role.
Any discourse on the gaps and inadequacies of neo-Darwinism must include the views of Denis Noble, Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University and a fellow of The Royal Society. His thesis of objections revolves around his disagreement with the view of neo-Darwinism that believes that all biological causation stems from the gene. As is well known, this gene-centric view of evolution owes much of its popularity to Richard Dawkins and his highly popular book The Selfish Gene. Noble says that this is based on a flawed use of an empirical approach.
In his 2016 book Dance to the Tune of Life and in several research papers, Noble argues by directly challenging the view of neo-Darwinists for whom the gene is central to the evolutionary process and it drives the organism, which is just a vehicle for genes. Noble states — based on published research — that genes are read, regulated, silenced, and expressed in ways determined by the cell, the tissue, the organism, and the environment. The genome does not “contain” a blueprint for the organism; it is more like a database that the organism reads, edits, and interprets.
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Arguments and objections
One very disturbing aspect of any face-to-face debate between the proponents of Darwinism and its sceptics is that often they descend into slanging matches. However, I wish to name two very distinguished dissenters of neo-Darwinism who are the epitome of a very civilised form of dissent. I speak of David Galernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, and mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. Their views are somewhat convergent. They are both looking at the mathematics behind evolutionary processes at the molecular level.
Let me preface the discussion with some general knowledge about the role of amino acids and proteins in the evolutionary process. Proteins are absolutely central to evolution. They are the primary molecules that execute cellular functions, which means that changes in proteins directly impact an organism’s traits. Evolutionary change is often driven by genetic mutations. When these mutations alter the amino acid sequence of a protein, they can potentially create new functions or modify existing ones. This variability provides the raw material for natural selection, allowing organisms to adapt to changing environments and evolve. For Gelernter, a protein is not a “building block” — instead, he sees it as software.
In his much–discussed essay, Giving Up Darwin, published in the Claremont Review of Books in 2019, he argued that the odds of stumbling onto a functional protein made from a combination of amino acids in a sequence through a process that is random are astronomical. In other words, the probability of such a functional protein being assembled is near zero.
Berlinski, in his books The Deniable Darwin (2009) and Science After Babel (2023), essentially has the same objections as Gelernter. The other serious objection that these two raise relates to the ‘Cambrian explosion’ that happened 540 million years ago when, in a very short span of time on the evolutionary clock, the fossils of nearly all animals appeared suddenly. To Berlinski, the Cambrian explosion isn’t just a fossil mystery; it’s a massive “data dump” that the Darwinian hard drive simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to explain. Berlinski, it must be noted, is best described as an agnostic. The debatable point being made by Berlinski and Gelernter is that neo-Darwinism is a 19th-century construct that is hopelessly out of sync with the molecular biology of today. The important thing is that they are raising questions that do not seem to have clear answers.
I have listed the views of a very small fraction of dissenters purely as a representative sample of a large and growing body. Incidentally, eminent dissenters from the realm of hard science have been around always. For instance, Nobel laureate Ernst Chain, who transformed Penicillin into a very potent, safe, and easy-to-use drug, was a vehement objector of neo-Darwinism. His arguments too were reliant on the advances made by molecular biology. The list of dissenters is steadily growing in spite of them being often ostracised or even cancelled.
The international dissent — as of now — is crystallising in the form of a list known as the Dissent From Darwin. That this list is essentially maintained by the Discovery Institute, which propounds the Creationist view of life, should not detract from the fact that it includes some very distinguished scientists who do not believe in Intelligent Design. Many of these signatories are simply calling for the same level of scepticism and “show your work” rigour that is generally applied to every other field of science. The list includes researchers from MIT, the Smithsonian, the National Academy of Sciences in the US, and the Russian Academy of Sciences, along with members from several other parts of the world. Another notable shift is happening from within, as reflected by The Third Way of Evolution.
This is a group of serious and well-regarded evolutionary biologists like Denis Noble, Eva Jablonka, and James Shapiro. They aren’t questioning the idea that we all share common ancestors; they’re questioning whether the old-school “Modern Synthesis” can actually explain how it all happened. Even the highly regarded institution of science, The Royal Society, held a major meeting in 2016 specifically to ask if it’s time for a new theory. That alone tells you the debate is far from over. My own concern stems from the fact that in my land there is a complete absence of a true and balanced scientific debate on the issues as raised above.
Dinesh Singh is the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Delhi and adjunct professor of mathematics at the University of Houston, Texas, USA. He tweets @DineshSinghEDU. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)