Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence
By Samuel T. Wilkinson.
Pegasus Books, 2024.
Hardcover, 352 pages, $29.95.
Reviewed by Gene Callahan.
Samuel T. Wilkinson, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, has written a fascinating, albeit flawed, book. It is one in a long line of attempts to show that science and religion are not in conflict. But, as we will conclude, this is an unnecessary effort: it is like demonstrating that line dancing is not in conflict with clay-oven cookery.
Wilkinson begins his book in Nashville, Tennessee, in January of 1925. The scene is the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, in which the ACLU had found a teacher (John Scopes) willing to test Tennessee’s new law forbidding the teaching of evolution. The trial drew two famous attorneys, William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow for the defense, thousands of spectators, and attention from newspapers nationwide. Both the public and many of the direct participants viewed the trial as not merely a matter of Tennessee law, but as part of the “argument of science versus religion.”
Wilkinson opens with this trial because he finds it emblematic of the supposed conflict between science and religion. Many people, and many scientists, have read the “meaning” of evolution to be that the existence of humans is a chance event, without any significance. As one scientist quoted by Wilkinson put it, “In the purely natural and inevitable march of evolution, life…is of profound unimportance…a mere eddy in the primeval slime.”
Wilkinson believes the alarming rise of “deaths of despair” in recent decades is at least partially due to the prevalence of this nihilistic view of life. However, he claims that “through a framework that brings together principles of evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, we can infer not only that there is a purpose to our existence, but what this purpose is.” It is this bold claim that makes the book noteworthy. Unfortunately, it is also the root of the ultimately unsatisfactory character of what might have been a sounder, if much more modest, work.
Wilkinson argues that evolutionary science presents us with two “dilemmas” (although these aren’t really dilemmas, but more unpleasant hypotheses):
- Many people interpret evolution as implying that our existence on earth is due to mere chance. And, if that is the case, it would seem human life could not have a purpose. After all, when we roll a pair of dice, we don’t ask what the purpose is of their coming up snake eyes.
- Many people interpret evolution as implying that our fundamental nature is self-centered and our basic relationship to others is one of conflict, perhaps veiled with a thin fabric of sociality.
Wilkinson enunciates five principles that he believes will help us to resolve these “dilemmas”:
- Evolution was not random.
- Nature seems to have created humans with competing dispositions, one selfish and one altruistic.
- Free will is a key aspect of human nature.
- Strong family relationships are crucial to the good life.
- Strong family relationships are crucial to the good society.
He goes on to make the point that accepting as fact the idea that humans evolved from non-human ancestors says nothing about whether we were created by a divine being. After all, no one listens to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and argues that, because it can be understood as a series of sound waves describable by physics, that means that Beethoven did not compose it. While Wilkinson gestures at this fact, he does not seem to grasp its full import: a description of some events or processes from the viewpoint of physical science says nothing about those same phenomena viewed as intelligent actions. These are not rival accounts of what was really occurring, but depictions of the same occurrences using different idioms.
Wilkinson places a good deal of emphasis on convergent evolution: similar biological features arising independently on two or more branches of the “tree of life.” He cites a number of examples of the phenomenon, such as wings evolving independently in bats, birds, and insects, the evolution of silken thread production in “at least twenty-three different types of animals,” and the independent evolution of similar eye structures “about half-a-dozen times.” He takes these instances as important evidence that while genetic mutations are random, the overall direction of evolution is guided by higher-order laws, which supports his case that evolution is purposive.
But the importance he gives to this conclusion seems misplaced: after all, he cites experts such as the atheist biologist Richard Dawkins in support of the non-random direction of evolution. Even the most reductionist materialists do not deny the fact that, however mysteriously, the elements of the universe seem to obey universal laws. Early giants of the scientific revolution, such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton, took the existence of these laws to be evidence of the wonderful workings of the mind of God. But later, many atheistic scientists have simply regarded them as brute facts. Why would the existence of universal laws constraining the process of evolution strike them as any different from, say, the law of gravity?
Wilkinson sees the evolution of human beings as having implanted in us two competing urges: one pulls us towards selfishness, sexual promiscuity, greed, and violence, while the other tugs us in the direction of altruism, monogamy, self-sacrifice, and cooperation. (Plato knew about these dual pulls two millennia before Darwin: see Phaedrus.)
Wilkinson notes that, while humans have an urge to experience sexual variety, we also have a strong pull towards monogamy. As he writes, “In fact, sexual jealousy is a leading cause of homicide and spousal abuse.” The evidence on this matter is a strong refutation of one of the silliest ideas currently circulating in our culture, the claim that sex is “merely a private matter.”
Sometimes Wilkinson falls into the error of talking about evolution or nature as if these things were themselves agents, rather than just abstract aspects of the world of experience. For instance, discussing the difficulty of having an infant with a large head pass through a woman’s birth canal, he asks, “What was nature’s solution?”
But “nature”, unless we embrace some form of pantheism, is not the sort of thing that can have problems that need to be solved. Why would it be a problem for “nature” if all hominids went extinct because the females of the species could not survive birth? In fact, it is estimated that roughly 99% of species that have ever existed are now extinct. If “nature” views this as a problem, apparently it does not view it as much of one. To be fair, Wilkinson is hardly alone in mistakenly assigning agency to an abstract concept like nature: many professional biologists commit the same error. (Just search the Internet for “Nature solves this problem” to find examples.)
Wilkinson devotes a chapter to examining whether science refutes the idea that we have free will. In this discussion, he relies heavily on the concept of “emergence,” which holds that a more complex level of a physical system may have properties that could not be predicted from its lower-level components. A simple example is the fact that the properties of water could not be deduced from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen studied in isolation: we could not predict water’s wetness, flow, or surface tension if we only knew of the isolated atoms. Wilkinson quotes Nobel laureate Philip W. Anderson, who wrote: “At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts.”
On this topic, Wilkinson writes, “Another one of the most remarkable examples of emergence is how the mind emerges from the brain.” However, the idea that the mind “emerges” from the brain is just an undefended assumption. And it is quite unlike the emergence of the properties of water from the union of hydrogen and oxygen: in the case of water, we are looking at new physical properties emerging from the physical nature of the parts of water. But in the case of mind, what we have is something non-physical supposedly “emerging” from something physical. (This is why some materialists have been anxious to contend that consciousness is “an illusion,” since they, to their credit, recognize the difficulty in positing that this metaphysical transformation could actually take place.)
In discussing free will, Wilkinson brings up the famous experiments by Benjamin Libet, which showed an increase in neural activity before an experimental subject was consciously aware of having made a choice. But simply showing that there is neural activity before a choice is consciously made does nothing to demonstrate that humans do not make genuine choices: that I deliberated about where to go on vacation before driving to New York does not imply that I did not actually decide to go there.
When Wilkinson comes to announce the purpose revealed by these competing pulls that evolution has graced us with, he writes, “This purpose is to choose between these competing natures.”
But what kind of purpose is that? Making some choice cannot be our ultimate purpose in life, since we can only make choices based upon some purpose we have beyond the choice itself. For instance, if I am driving from my home in South Carolina to New York, I have a choice between I-81 and I-95 as the main highway I will follow northward. If the purpose of my drive is to arrive as fast as possible in New York, I will choose I-95. But if my purpose is to enjoy wonderful scenery along the way, I will choose I-81.
A consistent nihilist will respond to Wilkinson’s choice by claiming, “It just doesn’t matter: choose whatever you want. In the end, it doesn’t amount to anything.” After all, if making this choice is my purpose in life, and I decide “OK, let me fulfill my basest, most selfish desires,” then, per Wilkinson, I have achieved that purpose: I made the choice. If he wants to contend that by doing so, I made the wrong choice, which I think he would contend, then he must criticize my choice based upon its failure to achieve some purpose beyond the choice itself.
My suspicion here is that Wilkinson, being a Christian, will consider it obvious that we should choose our better nature, since that is the path to salvation. And that is fine, except that then our ultimate purpose in life is not to make this choice, but to achieve salvation, and that is quite definitely not something for which biological science can offer evidence.
Wilkinson places great stress on the findings indicating that marriage, and other close relationships, make us happier. And he presents a case for why this was to our evolutionary advantage. But neither of those findings are in conflict with the idea that we are just biological machines, “programmed” to behave in certain ways by “evolution.” “So,” a hedonist materialist could respond, “evolution ‘wants’ me to be monogamous and to value relationships: why should I care about what this inhuman process wants from me?”
Wilkinson has done an admirable job surveying recent scientific work related to his topic. His aim is to show us that this work indicates, or at least offers support for, his contention that our life is meaningful and has a purpose. While I am on his side in the debate as to whether our lives have meaning, he is on a misguided venture. Science is not the sort of activity that can answer the question, “Does life have meaning?” To expect science to answer that question is like expecting your plumber to tell you whether installing fancier bathroom fixtures will make you happier.
Some nihilistic materialists have claimed that since they do not find a purpose for our existence anywhere in science, then there is no purpose, and that life is meaningless. Wilkinson wants to counter them by claiming that it is possible to find purpose and meaning there. While I appreciate the sentiment behind this effort, in doing so, he is making the same category error as are those whom he wishes to refute.
Science is an abstraction from the world of concrete experience, turning that world into a system of pure quantities related by mathematical formulas, devoid of any qualities. Of course, science aims at truth, but its truth is the consistency and applicability of its abstractions. The relationship of science to the concrete world is similar to the relationship of a blueprint to the actual building it represents. The blueprint can be very valuable, both in the construction of the building and in its maintenance and modifications later on. But it would be ridiculous to use a blueprint to show that the occupants of a building do not have any houseplants in their offices, since they do not appear in the blueprint. And just as one cannot use a blueprint to disprove or prove what is inside a building, one cannot use science to disprove or prove that life has meaning.
And once one grasps this point, any idea that there can be a conflict between science and religion dissolves, without the need to survey large amounts of scientific work to demonstrate that absence of conflict.
Gene Callahan is the author of Economics for Real People and Oakeshott on Rome and America, and co-editor of the books Tradition vs. Rationalism, Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism, and Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism Revisited. He has a PhD in political theory from Cardiff University and teaches at NYU.
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