Web of Life, Schmeb of Life

I finished Capra’s “Web of Life”, wherein a physicist waxes rhapsodically about “systems thinking” in biology. He claims that “systems thinking” establishes that life is inherently creative and that this inherent creativity is the principal force in evolution. I can buy that symbiogenesis, for example, where different life forms have merged, shows that evolution is more complex than previously believed, but I am not ready to accept that life has an inner drive to become more complex. Maybe it does, but how could you ever establish it? Capra rehashes some Creationist critiques of the theory of evolution, like how eyeballs could never emerge via mutation and natural selection. Instead of God, however, he attributes evolution to a mysterious force. This book could have been written by Obi Wan Kenobi himself!

Evolutionary theory is more complicated than it is often presented as being. Sexual selection, arms races, coevolution, interaction among genes, symbiogenesis, the complexities of gene expression, and the like make evolutionary theory more interesting all the time. Sure, it’s complicated, but it isn’t necessary to posit some kind of supernatural or natural but mysterious and ineffable force to explain it. It’s wonderful and awesome and beautiful even without “inherent creativity”. Isn’t the mutability of DNA itself a sufficient basis for creativity? If it weren’t mutable, there would be no mutations and no adaptation. Only replicators that are somewhat mutable evolve.