16 Michael Ruse
THE CONSILIENCEConvincing himself that he had done enough in this respect, Darwin now moved
on to the rest of theOrigin— about three fifths of the total. Here he set about
showing that natural selection is a true cause in the rationalist sense — that is,
he set about providing a consilience of inductions with natural selection as the
unifying causal core. And this he did in fine fashion, as he moved in succession
through instinct, paleontology, biogeographical distribution, anatomy, embryology,
systematics and more. All of these areas are illuminated and explained by natural
selection and in turn they make the truth of selection more secure. And remember,
throughout the discussion, the emphasis is not merely on evolution alone, but
evolution in the direction of adaptive advantage.
Take by example the honey bee and its hive building. The cells made from wax
are perfect hexagons. Why should this be? Because this is the most efficient way
of building cells and economizing on wax — a relatively scarce resource and one
that requires much labor. Could it be that natural selection is at work here? “We
hear from mathematicians that bees have practically solved a recondite problem,
and have made their cells of the proper shape to hold the greatest possible amount
of honey, with the least possible consumption of precious wax in their construction.
It has been remarked that a skilful workman with fitting tools and measures, would
find it very difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is effected
by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive. Grant whatever instincts you please, it
seems as first quite inconceivable how they can make all the necessary angles and
planes, or even perceive when they are correctly made” (224). However, showed
Darwin in great detail, not only is this possible, it is positively probable. It is all
a question of basic instincts and following a few simple rules. The bees are not
thinking, they are merrily following the actions as it were preprogrammed into
them. Those groups of bees that had the best building patterns survived and
reproduced and those that did not did not.
It seems at first to add to the difficulty of understanding how the cells
are made, that a multitude of bees all work together; one bee after
working a short time at one cell going to another, so that, as Huber
has stated, a score of individuals work even at the commencement of
the first cell. I was able practically to show this fact, by covering the
edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, or the extreme margin
of the circumferential rim of a growing comb, with an extremely thin
layer of melted vermilion wax; and I invariably found that the colour
was most delicately diffused by the bees — as delicately as a painter
could have done it with his brush — by atoms of the coloured wax
having been taken from the spot on which it had been placed, and
worked into the growing edges of the cells all round. The work of
construction seems to be a sort of balance struck between many bees,
all instinctively standing at the same relative distance from each other,
all trying to sweep equal spheres, and then building up, or leaving