The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on Science and What Makes Us Human (Hardcover)

Tattersall begins with an excellent summary of why we study science. Too many people still equate the search for "facts" with a quest for "truth." The author makes a valiant attempt to explain why these ideas must be kept separate. Since he must rely on the reader to understand this division, his success in the endeavour can only be guessed. The quest for "facts," as he ably states, often leads to a new quest for new facts. Science, then, is an ongoing and highly cooperative effort. Many "facts" unveil the need to seek further in an unrelated field of interest. He describes "science" as a "corporate" endeavour by many people to organize and relate the facts revealed.

From science in general, Tattersall moves to the more specific area of the study of evolution. After a brief presentation on Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in development of the concept of "natural selection," he goes on to deal with "adaptation." How life changes is the core of evolution and he describes the travails of early thinkers after Darwin dealt with the processes. He describes the merging of Darwin's natural selection and the later knowledge of genetics as the "Evolutionary Synthesis," which he then castigates as "hardening into dogma." This rather dark pink herring is his way of easing into a challenge of gradual change typifying evolution. He states that "speciation remains poorly understood." Speciation may be poorly defined, but it's well understood. By claiming speciation is "poorly understood," Tattersall is free to introduce the worn-out concept of Punctuated Equilibrium, variously described as "punk eek" or "evolution by jerks." While he endeavours to build a case for the concept, it falls rather flat under his touch. Adding to the reader's confusion, he offers the Gouldian term "exaptation" to fog the image of adaptation as the mechanism of species change. The logic of substituting Gould's arcane term isn't presented.

Evolution, to most readers, is only important to humans. Tattersall expounds on diversity, environment, cladistics [grouped traits] as his lead-in to human evolution. At this point, however, we seem to leave the whole process of evolution behind. Tattersall is keen to show that behaviour patterns, while deceptively common among ape-like species, branch off into something altogether different in humans. Apes can't talk. Apes can't learn. Apes don't walk upright, or, according to Tattersall, have any reasoning power. He attributes "an unprecedented leap in body structure" to make modern humans ["punk eek", again]. From this, he derives the notion that this structure, powered by the new, improved brain, took us off the evolutionary path.

The key agent, according to Tattersall, is the implementation of "symbolism." Describing early hominid brains as "exaptations" awaiting fulfillment, he informs us that the fulfillment was "culture." He attributes "symbolic processes" in the brain as experience being converted to discrete symbols. We manipulate those symbols in ways other animals cannot, and the manipulation is accomplished through speech. To Tattersall, the innovation of "cultural symbolism" widens the gap between humans and the remainder of the animal kingdom. Animal behaviour has no relation to human behaviour, and any attempt to establish that link underlies what he terms the "arrogant pseudo-science of 'evolutionary psychology' ." His penultimate chapter is a denunciation of relating behaviour to genetics [although his memory gene fails him when he attributes to Shakespeare a quote of Thomas Hobbes'] which is sprinkled with reproachful buzzwords, distortion and use of newspaper headlines instead of serious research results. His sweeping accusations make one wonder if Tattersall has read any scientific publication of the past
generation.

The essay format may be forgiven many sins. It's not an academic treatise nor peer-reviewed scientific collection. Indexing, for example, while useful, would be onerous in so short a book. The lack of any further reading references, however, is inexcusable. Given the number of people and disciplines that he maligns so vigorously, it would have been a decided service to the reader to give us some reference to his targets. Tattersall hauls Steven Mithen up on the Gouldian charge of telling "just-so" stories, but fails to indicate where to read them. You may enjoy reading this type of presentation, but it's doubtful you'll learn anything from it.