Most people, when they contemplate the living world, conclude that it is a designed place. So it is jarring when biologists come along and say this is all wrong. What most people see as design, they say—purposeful, directed, even intelligent—is only an illusion, something cooked up in a mind that is eager to see purpose where none exists. In these days of increasingly assertive challenges to Darwinism, the question becomes acute: is our perception of design simply a mental figment, or is there something deeper at work?
Physiologist Scott Turner argues eloquently and convincingly that the apparent design we see in the living world only makes sense when we add to Darwin's towering achievement the dimension that much modern molecular biology has left on the gene-splicing floor: the dynamic interaction between living organisms and their environment. Only when we add environmental physiology to natural selection can we begin to understand the beautiful fit between the form life takes and how life works.
In The Tinkerer's Accomplice, Scott Turner takes up the question of design as a very real problem in biology; his solution poses challenges to all sides in this critical debate.
J. Scott Turner is Associate Professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse.
Table of Contents
Prologue
1. Cleanthes' Dilemma
2. Bernard Machines
3. The Joy of Socks
4. Blood River
5. Knowledgeable Bones
6. Embr yonic Origami
7. A Gut Feeling
8. An Intentional Aside
9. Points of Light
10. Pygmalion's Gift
11. Biology's Bright Lines
Notes
References
Acknowledgments
Index
What People are Saying About This
Turner reminds us that, to have a coherent science of biology, we must begin by considering how life functions at the level of the organism. Genes matter, but in the end they play only an indirect role. Physiologists have too rarely viewed their subject in a wider evolutionary and environmental context, an omission Turner does much to remedy. An active investigator of long experience, he illuminates concepts with examples from the experimental trenches, from cellular systems to data from organisms in the field. Whether or not one agrees with him, his case for the necessity of such a synthesis remains persuasive.
Geerat Vermeij
Physiologists have traditionally had little to say about evolution, but in this important book, Scott Turner brings his deep understanding of the workings of termite mounds, circulatory systems, brains, and other complex internal environments to bear on the role of design in evolution. Anyone interested in arguments about intelligent design should read this book, in which Turner shows that what appears to us as intentionality exists and evolves in the absence of a brain or an intelligent creator. — Geerat Vermeij, University of California at Davis
Steven Vogel
Turner reminds us that, to have a coherent science of biology, we must begin by considering how life functions at the level of the organism. Genes matter, but in the end they play only an indirect role. Physiologists have too rarely viewed their subject in a wider evolutionary and environmental context, an omission Turner does much to remedy. An active investigator of long experience, he illuminates concepts with examples from the experimental trenches, from cellular systems to data from organisms in the field. Whether or not one agrees with him, his case for the necessity of such a synthesis remains persuasive. — Steven Vogel, Duke University, author of Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World
