CHAPTER 1

THE DISSENT OF MAN

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give upevery preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whateverabysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

—Thomas H. Huxley, letter of reply toCharles Kingsley (September 23, 1860)

When you stop to think about it, the enormous body of knowledgethat we humans have come to appreciate in our brief stint onthis planet is really quite remarkable. Our species, Homo sapiens,having branched from our hominid lineage a mere two thousand centuries ago,has far outstripped the cognitive capacity of every other earthly life form that hasever existed. We alone have come to understand the immensity of the universe,the workings of the stars and planets, and the forces that drive the seasons andturn night into day. Only humankind has managed to grasp the nature of theelements, the unity of matter and energy, the activities of the cell, and the functionof the heart. These and countless other insights have, through the power ofobservation and reason, all become the exclusive province of the human mind.

Even more impressive is the stunning rapidity with which so many of nature'ssecrets have yielded to the ceaseless probings of humanity. Cave paintings andarchaeological artifacts aside, the whole of recorded human history spans a surprisinglyshort period of time—fewer than five thousand years. And yet thevast majority of human knowledge has accumulated over an era much brieferstill; a nascent epoch measured in mere centuries. Indeed, practically everythingwe've come to know about the natural world can be traced to the Renaissanceand the formal adoption of what is now known as the scientific method. Thisobjective approach to scientific inquiry, freed from the age-old compulsion toreconcile observation with preconceived worldviews, led quickly to the dissolutionof numerous long-established and firmly entrenched beliefs that had effectivelystymied scientific progress for nearly two thousand years. Chief amongthese doctrines were the geocentric astronomical system of Ptolemy and theAristotelian conception of gravity and motion. Once these tenacious tenetswere finally dispatched in the sixteenth century by the likes of Copernicus,Kepler, and Galileo, the flood gates were opened. As suddenly as the droppingof Sir Isaac's apple, the modern era of free scientific inquiry and technologicaladvancement had begun, promising to elevate humankind to heights scarcelyimagined—perhaps even to know the mind of God.

As one discovery led inexorably to the next, however, the underlyingassumptions that had buttressed our ancestors' views of creation since timeimmemorial came increasingly into doubt, creating a surge of societal angst thatlingers to this day. Being plucked from our celebrated position at the center ofthe universe was bad enough, but then to suffer the indignity of evolution! Theirony was piercing. It seemed the more enlightened we became, the more sanctifiedby intellect and reason, the further our status as unique, eternal beingswas undermined. Could it be that man, in truth, was simply the latest in a longline of ephemeral animal species culled from the primordial seas by the forcesof natural selection? Was it really possible that human beings, who had cometo dominate the Earth and its creatures so completely, were actually related tothese beasts?

To most people of the Victorian era this notion seemed perfectly absurdand, as such, was summarily dismissed as the idle ruminations of the academicfringe. To the scientific community, however, the body of evidence unearthed bythe diggings of one Charles Darwin was not so easily ignored. Indeed, the voluminousobservations that Darwin amassed in his 1859 opus The Origin of Specieshad clearly provided the best evidence to date that life in all its complexity hadevolved from simpler forms and that the forces of change were still at work. Butthat was the least of it. What really caused scientists to sit up and take notice wasthat Darwin had for the first time tied the evolutionary process to a scientificallyviable mechanism of biological adaptation—something he called "descent withmodification."

DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA

Though the implications of Darwin's thesis were both provocative and farreaching, The Origin of Species might have emerged largely unnoticed beyondthe cloistered walls of academia had its author not already published a populartome on his Journal of Researches some two decades earlier. As it was, word thatDarwin was finally ready to publish his "big book on species" created somethingof a stir among the English book-buying public ... so much so, in fact, that theoriginal printing of 1,250 copies sold out to booksellers in a single day. Despiteits...