From Mary Midgley
The ingenuity of biologists can always find an evolutionary function for any
trait, however slight and unpromising
(2 February, p 26).
This ingenuity has therefore made the general creed that there must always be
such a function irrefutable and, accordingly, meaningless.
Like the earlier belief in God’s all-justifying providence, this creed
persists simply as a matter of piety, producing empty speculation. Why shouldn’t
many traits have no significant evolutionary effect at all? This would be much
more compatible with the—now widely accepted—belief in punctuated
equilibrium, with long quiet periods between disasters. Neo-providentialism is a
superstition that should be dropped.
Newcastle upon Tyne
