Future Evolution: An Illuminated History of Life to Come [Hardcover]

The odd thing about this book is that one of the major premises of "Future Evolution" is that humans will not become extinct, and that there will be no radiation of existing, smaller species to fill old niches and create new ones, as they did after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the end of the Permian, and several smaller extinctions. Fair enough - but the illustrations in the book seem to go completely against Ward's thesis. The alternative trees of life created by Rockman have no place in Ward's vision of the future. I saw the original exhibit at the Henry (at UW) a while back, and the tone of the background information was completely different. Someone really should have noticed this in editing.

My major criticism, however, is in with Ward's vision of the future. Ward in his introduction notes the consensus that humanity will become extinct, and asks whether it is more of an ideological bias than a valid point. But as the time frame goes into the future, Ward's own bias becomes stronger and stronger. He offers no convincing reason that humanity will inevitably survive a billion years, other than faith. He offers no reason why humans would not themselves speciate or exploit technology to become different, and assumes that it is impossible to go anywhere in space and live there, even in our own solar system. Again, no reasons given. He offers no reason why small animals who survive the current extinction would not evolve in similar manner as they always have before - even mentioning that mammals have high rates of evolutionary change. He offhandedly states that this time, they will not evolve - no descendents of mice replacing elephants, for example - but gives no reason, actually contradicting the evidence he shows us paragraphs beforehand.

In his narration of a "Time Traveler", the Traveler visits Seattle 1000 years from now, and finds that nothing has changed. Not only do the people speak easily recognizable English, but the racial/ethnic composition is the same, the University of Washington looks the same, and politically, nothing at all seems to have changed. This, I submit, is highly unlikely - it betrays Ward's own bias, excluding the entire history of human society. The underlying assumption - that things will continue as they are indefinitely, everything is the way it is because that was the only way it could have worked out, and that anything that isn't known now will never be known and cannot exist because it is not known now - colors Ward's work and the "Rare Earth" hypothesis, not to mention the bulk of evolutionary biology and quite a few political and economic positions. Determinism is always popular in nations that are on top of the heap as a legitimizing ideology - it was very popular in Britain during the Empire - but it is always proven wrong. The tone of the book, dismissing any disagreement or speculation such as in Dougal Dixon's "After Man" or his own Zepplinoids as mere fantasy, doesn't really help. Merely dismissing something does not make the dismissal valid without reason and argument.

To sum it up - cool book, cool ideas, very iffy overall tone and basic assumptions. A must for any geek who loves to imagine ecologies that don't exist, but don't read without a skeptical eye...

Future Evolution is a beautiful book visually, making the hardback a must and worth the price. Paintings by Alexis Rockman compliment and illuminate the text by Ward. Future Evolution is a thought provoking book. Even though the book is grounded in our extensive knowledge of evolution and mass extinctions, any book about the future must extrapolate from the data of the past and this is dangerous in the historical sciences. Future Evolution is not a cheery book. Folks who want to hear that humans will save the Earth from themselves [or that humans will go extinct and leave the Earth to continue happily without us] wiil probably not be supportive of many of Ward's conclusions. For readers who want to THINK about evolution, Future Evolution is a must.

I highly recommend Future Evolution to any reader of good books on science and especially to people interested in evolution, mass extinctions, conservation, and the future of life on the Earth.

Ward's vision, however, is not pretty. He is not looking at planet earth after humans have gone extinct as some other books on future evolution have done. He sees us as surviving for another 500 million years so that the fauna and flora that do evolve will do so with humans as probably the most significant part of their environment. Consequently there will not be any large mammals, and the most numerous creatures will be small and "weedy." They will be mostly nocturnal animals that have learned to tolerate humans, rats and insects and "escapes" from our farms and genetic engineering labs.

Ward is very good at producing striking word portraits. One is the "brown mountain" he observed flying into Mexico City (the polluted air rising above the city), and another is his fanciful creatures of the future, the "Zeppeliniods," who have learned how to create hydrogen-filled air sacks so they can float in the air. In a particularly dystopian vision on pages 135-137, Ward's time traveler visits a garbage dump 10-million years in the future crawling with "cockroach-sized insects...[and] mammals, a few as large as cats but most rat-, mouse-, or even shrew-sized." These creatures have evolved adaptations for exploiting the garbage dump: "some with long tapered heads, others with thin ribbonlike tongues, others with blunt heads and large knoblike teeth, still other with huge batlike eyes." A pig-like creature with rats "like hairy lampreys with greedy sucking mouths" hanging from its sides appears. Overhead large crows "with brilliant plumage" dive bomb the traveler with knifelike barbs on their feet, driving him bleeding toward a tree where a hungry flock of these clever and hungry crows await. Ward also sees a great increase in the number of snakes, some with unusual adaptations to feed on the garbage eaters.

This "dyspeptic" vision, like some of the other visions in the book, is calculated to shock and revolt the reader, but just how likely is it to come to pass? On the one hand it would seem, not very, since we are already recycling away from garbage dumps in many places in the world. On the other hand, if we consider that we, as domesticated creatures ourselves, may be getting dumber, this scenario might seem more likely. (See page 105 where Ward references neurologist Terry Deacon as noting that "all domesticated animals appear to have undergone a loss of intelligence compared with their wild ancestors.") My feeling, however is, that should we by some wild happenstance still be around ten million years from now (average life span of a mammalian species is about two million years) I would expect us to have used our technology to better effect. More likely of course (and Ward addresses this possibility, but dismisses it) is that we will be replaced by the products of our technology long before then. Whether "they" will think it worthwhile to continue "living" is a very interesting question.

Clearly this is a popular book, almost a "coffee table" book, aimed at a popular readership, but that doesn't mean it's simplistic or dumbed down. True, Ward is biased toward a long-lived humanity which he thinks is likely the only intelligent creature in the cosmos (see Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), which he wrote with Donald Brownlee), but Rockman's paintings really are first rate, and although the speculations are no more than that, they are interesting in themselves. Additionally there is a wealth of information in the text about evolution. Ward points out for example that it is not likely that we are going to undergo much Darwinian-type evolution in the future unless some humans become isolated. This can happen, he speculates, if an elite population isolates itself reproductively from the masses, or if we establish far-flung colonies in space. Another nice tidbit is Ward's observation that the average human I.Q. is not going to change much because whatever is measured on I.Q. tests is subject to the actions of numerous genes and any short term anomalies will be flooded by the mass of genetic humanity.

This book is a bit pricey because it is printed on expensive, glossy paper for the reproduction of the paintings. It's an attractive and entertaining book.