Cosmic Religionexoskeletons are made, and the evolutionary adaptation of its
parts. But might one not also ask why the microscopic ridges of
chitin on a butterfl y wing, for example, refract light to produce
colours that we spontaneously and admiringly call iridescent?
Or why the chitin of the cicada produces a noise that we say
can sing? Is it going too far to suggest that it is because they
are not only wonderful to the human imagination but, in some
unimaginable sense, aesthetically attractive to an insect mate?
Just what that might mean is impossible to fi x. It is an example
of a natural mystery within biology. A strictly evolutionary
‘explanation’ that the wing and the song are sexually selected
implicitly dismisses the wonder. But capturing a sense of it is
surely part of the reason that Attenborough and Traherne’s por-
traits of invertebrates are so compelling.
Some biologists are going a step further. Simon Conway
Morris, a leading paleontologist who is also a Christian, is
one thinker to speculate on. He is known for his convergence
theory of evolution. It argues that many times the evidence
shows that evolution has come up with the same solution to
biological problems via different paths of Darwinian processes.
One of the better known examples is that sabre-toothed cats
arose on at least three different occasions from different ances-
tors. Or there’s the evolution of camera eyes, which we share
with octopuses, though they evolved quite independently.
Conway Morris has tracked dozens of examples across a wide
variety of biological phenomena. Even divergent solutions to
the same problem show such convergence, since the divergent
solutions themselves repeat themselves. It’s a bit like an equa-
tion that admits of more than one solution: evolution fi nds
them all.
The implication of this is that if you rerun the ‘tape of life’, in
Stephen Jay Gould’s phrase, life would turn out quite like it does
now – not very differently as Gould had insisted. Moreover,
Conway Morris believes that in terms of biological engineering,
evolution has arrived at pretty much the best solutions possi-
ble. Such conclusions offend neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, which