Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" is a 1973 essay by the evolutionary biologist and Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky, criticising anti-evolution creationism and espousing theistic evolution. The essay was first published in the American Biology Teacher, volume 35, pages 125-129.

Dobzhansky first published the title statement in a 1964 article in American Zoologist, "Biology, Molecular and Organismic", to assert the importance of organismic biology in response to the challenge of the rising field of molecular biology.^[1]

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Overview

Dobzhansky starts with a reductio ad absurdum of the geocentrism of an Arab sheik (identical to or namesake of Shaikh Abdulaziz bin Baz, later the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia) who believes the Sun revolves around the Earth because scripture says so. Dobzhansky asserts his own belief that scripture and science do not contradict each other. He criticises creationists for implying that God is deceitful and asserts that this is blasphemous.

Dobzhansky then goes on to describe the diversity of life on Earth, and that the diversity of species cannot be best explained by creationism because of the ecological interactions between them. He uses examples of evidence for evolution: the genetic sequence of cytochrome C to show evidence for common descent; embryology; and his own work on fruit flies in Hawaii. Dobzhansky concludes that scripture and science are two different things: "It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology".

The central issue

The central issue of the essay is the need to teach biological evolution in the context of debate about creation and evolution in public education in the United States.^[2] The fact that evolution occurs explains the interrelatedness of the various facts of biology, and so makes biology make sense.^[3] The concept has become firmly established as a unifying idea in biology education.^[4]

The phrase

The notion of the "light of evolution" came originally from the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Dobzhansky much admired. In the last paragraph of the article, de Chardin is quoted as having written the following:

(Evolution) is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow — this is what evolution is.

The phrase "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" has come into common use by those opposing creationism or its variant called intelligent design.^[2][5] While the essay argues that Christianity and evolutionary biology are compatible, a position described as evolutionary creationism or theistic evolution, the phrase is also used by those who consider that "in biology" includes anthropology, and those who consider a creator to be unnecessary, such as Richard Dawkins who published The Selfish Gene just three years later.

Quotations

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

– Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (1973)

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. ...the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

– Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (1973)

References