that selection needed to be amplified, reformulated and invigorated by other,
noncontrary (and, at most, orthogonal) causes, not rejected as wrong, or scorned as
trivial (Chapters 8-12). The one long argument of this book holds that a synthesis
(still much in progress) has now sufficiently coagulated from this debate to
designate our best current understanding of the structure of evolutionary theory as
something rich and new, with a firmly retained basis in Darwinian logic—in other
words, and following the organizing and opening metaphor of this chapter, as a
validation of Falconer's, rather than Darwin's, concept of the historical growth and
change of Milan's cathedral.
Ariel's telling verse in Shakespeare's The Tempest proclaims in dense
metaphor:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
With the exception of one possible (and originally unintended) modern
reading of these images, this famous and haunting verse provides a beautiful
description of both the priceless worth and intriguing modern transformation of
Darwin's original theory. (For the exception, several connotations of deep burial in
the sea—full fathom five—might be viewed negatively, as in "deep sixing" or
going to Davy Jones's locker. But, for natural historians who read this book, and
coming from an invertebrate paleontologist as author, the seafloor could not
represent a more positive resting place or point of origin— and I intend to evoke
only these upbeat images in citing Ariel's lines.) Otherwise, Darwin's original
structure has only yielded greater treasure in cascading implications and
developments through the subsequent history of evolutionary thought—the
conversion of the bones of an original outline into precious coral and pearls of
current substance. Nothing of Darwin's central logic has faded or fully capsized,
but his theory has been transformed, along his original lines, into something far
different, far richer, and far more adequate to guide our understanding of nature.
The last three lines of Shakespeare's verse also appear on the tombstone of the
great poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (also the author of the preface to his wife's
novella, Frankenstein, which cites Erasmus Darwin in its first line of text). I
believe that these words would suit, and honor, Charles Darwin just as well and
just as rightly.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
A Time to Keep
The Preacher spoke ever so truly in writing his famous words (Ecclesiastes 3:1-7):
"For every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose ... A
Defining and Revising the Structure of Evolutionary Theory 25