Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom

Subtitle: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom
Wallace Arthur's kicking off point is a hypothetical space expedition from Mars to Earth. No Martians on board, just a space probe (similar to what we have sent to Mars), that safely lands on a beach somewhere on Earth. As the breathless Martian scientists wait for the first image beamed back from Earth, they see a...sandcastle. Let's say it's after all the tourists have gone home for the night, and the image the Martians get back is devoid of any direct pictures of any living thing.

We can still expect, that the Martian NASA would go crazy with excitement, the sandcastle being a direct form of evidence for human life. Why is that? It's just a sand structure, no more complex than many naturally occurring ones, and the Martians may not have any real castles to compare it to, in order to see that it must have been made by life. This leads one into the question of what animals are, what they do, and what makes that special. That leads one into quite a lot of big topics.

One that Arthur mostly avoids, is the topic of God. He mentions in the preface that he's going to take evolution as a demonstrated feature of reality, and otherwise doesn't spend much time discussing whether or not it exists. Some may think this is a defect, but I consider it a virtue; it gives us time to investigate a lot more interesting topics.

For example, the contrasting (contesting?) ideas that all life is equally important and interesting, and the idea that some forms of life are more complex, and as a consequence more worthy of investigation. This is one which even the best scientists have a hard time addressing dispassionately.

Another topic (or series of topics) which he analyzes is, given that things evolve, what are the mechanisms? Why are more limbs a boon to genetic innovation? Why are some genes more likely to mutate than others? Why are some mutations more likely than others?

Any writer on the topic of evolution (and many others who write on topics which it impinges on) ends up in either the Gould camp or the Dawkins camp, whether they will or no. Arthur gives due credit to Dawkins, but he's clearly in the Gould camp. One Gould metaphor he discusses is the idea of "replaying the tape of life". In other words, if we did it all again, would it (Nietzsche-style) recur just the same? Or would it turn out looking fundamentally different? In other words, how much does chance impact the way life looks? If we think about the asteroid impact that appears to have triggered the mass extinction which killed off the dinosaurs, it seems that it could look quite different. If we look at the many examples of convergent evolution (the eyeball, the wing, and other adaptations have arisen several times, and they always look rather similar), it seems like it was destined to look something like it does now. It's not a topic on which a contemporary thinker should be expected to deliver a definitive answer, but Arthur does a good job of guiding us through the issues.

Thus far, evolution by natural selection has been primarily a theory, not a tool. There appear to be some potential for using it as a method of design or a tool in epidemiology, if we can get better at discussing not whether or not it happens, but how it happens. For example; viruses, infectious bacteria, and pest insects all have demonstrated the ability to rapidly evolve to have immunity to our countermeasures. If we understood well enough how evolution happens, we should be able to nudge it in the directions we want (lower virulence, for example). The generation of thinkers who can do that is probably not here yet, but for them to arrive, we will need more writers and scientists like Arthur, telling us how the patterns of evolution recur across different timescales and species. Here is a field of thought waiting for those subtle enough to ponder its intricacies and implications, with a reassuring and readable guidebook. Recommended.

I wanted to like this book but it just read like a survey of work done by other people with very little new stuff added by the author. I feel bad for writing that because I’m pretty sure this guy has forgotten more than I’ve ever learned about evolution. I just wasn’t held by it and, while I enjoyed all the original ideas and theses brought up, this did not happen very often.

I really enjoyed this book, up to a point, and then it disappointed me. The first half is a bit dull--the author slowly walks the reader through the basics of what constitutes a living organism, how development works and evolves, etc., until it really takes off when he gets to the main point, which is the evolution of physical and behavioral complexity. I found this part (pretty much the middle of the book up until the very last chapter) exceedingly interesting, and I encourage anyone who reads this book to stick out the beginning, because I feel like this section redeems it.

The last chapter kills this book. The description on the back of the book dedicates a short paragraph to addressing the error in ID theory, and how this book refutes it. I assumed that a good chunk of the book would be dedicated to this. However, absolutely no mention is made of ID until the very last chapter, which the author uses to contrast the differences between a scientific and religious worldview, and ultimately makes the case for agnosticism. This has absolutely NO connection with the rest of the book, is totally random, and was tremendously frustrating to me as someone who had actually been enjoying it. I wish I hadn't read it, otherwise I would hold this book in much higher regard.

for something as cool as the evolution of complexity, this book stinks. it's terribly repetitive and never gets into any depth about anything. bleh.

I was excited to read this book. I also believe that we are "creatures of accident." The author failed at his goal to "demonstrate... that the rise of complex creatures can be explained with ease.” 

This book failed because the author did not maintain his point of view. His thoughts turned into a litany of digressions. It was difficult to get a concise idea of what he wanted to relate.



The first chapter titled "Hand Luggage Only" directed the reader to leave bias and preconceived notions behind and to read the book with an open mind. I'm not sure he made a point in the first chapter that set the course of the book or gave good reason to have an open mind.

He continued the discussion with an explanation of life's lawn and life's ladder. The discourse was confusing. After getting through it, I had to consider whether it was worth reading the next chapter.

I found the last chapter on "Big Questions" most interesting. It showed that the author had his own baggage. Unfortunately, he failed to check it before attempting to explain a subject as intriguing and enlightening as evolution. 

At the books conclusion, he states that atheism constitutes a system of faith. He expressed his anger at religion. He went on to explain his biased views. It seemed to me, Arthur did not like any opinion not his own. I think his dogmatic views did constitute a belief system. Any philosophy that mandates, itself as the one way is dogmatic. 

The tone of this book was degrading and negative. The author wrote in a conversation like style. At times, he blathered, and lost track of the subject. This book did not add to my understanding or appreciation of evolution, it revealed nothing.

I don’t disagree with a single word of it, but it’s just bleh. I don’t know what it is about it. It just doesn’t hold you.

This book is boring, very.

There is the germ of a good book here, but as it is, Creatures of Accident is plodding and haphazard. If the arguments presented in the central chapters, from eleven through fourteen, were distilled into an introduction and then expanded upon with clear and germane examples, then this would be a classic. These chapters describe the process of genetic and cellular duplication and how these accidental redundancies in a creature can later develop into a novel adaptation leading again to greater complexity in organisms and eventual speciation.

Thematically, the book jumps frustratingly around, leaving behind rough diamonds in a mire of asides and anecdotes.

Stylistically, Wallace Arthur seems to talk down to the reader. His writing is littered with parenthetical asides and extraneous phrases, such as "indeed," "of course," and (most egregious) "surely." Scanning though my copy, I am hard pressed to find a page that does not have a sentence beginning with the words "so," "and," or "but." These stylistic choices make this an extremely annoying book to muddle through.

The second star is for the ideas in the four chapters mentioned above, otherwise I would only give one star to this book.