[In the following review, Gonzales argues that Wonderful Life acts as an example of how postmodernism may have infiltrated the biology and paleontology disciplines.]

Nothing seems to annoy scientists more than the suggestion that their work is dependent on or influenced by something outside of science. The paradigmatic image of a dogmatic Cardinal Bellarmino coercing Galileo into recanting his discovery of Jupiter's moons has terminally discredited any attempt to judge scientific claims within any allegedly higher extra-scientific tribunal, be it theological, metaphysical or political. Yet scientific research remains an entirely human undertaking and, as such, subject to the vicissitudes of history and other extra-scientific constraints. As R. G. Collingwood concluded, “Natural science as a form of thought exists and always has existed in a context of history, and depends on historical thought for its existence … no one can understand natural science unless he understands history.”¹ After all, Newton was not the first unlucky person ever to be hit over the head by over-ripe apples and the excogitation of the concept of gravity was certainly not the mere result of such an unfortunate accident. Clearly, cultural and historical developments such as the rise of capitalism and the discovery of the Americas—developments which contributed to rendering the old Aristotelean worldview untenable—also had something to do with it.

At any rate, historians and philosophers of science, from Alexandre Koyré to N. R. Hanson, have dispelled the Enlightenment myth of scientists struggling singlehandedly against superstition and dogma with no weapons other than their extraordinary power of intellection. Creativity, sheer genius or even unrelenting hard work are necessary, but not sufficient to explain scientific advancements and breakthroughs; cultural conditions are also essential. Thus, as Hanson has shown, Galileo's pioneering efforts in formulating a law of falling bodies would not have succeeded had he not already managed to internalize much of Giordano Bruno's ontology privileging space over time. Had Galileo followed predominant medieval customs and Aristotelean practices he would have attempted to differentiate through space rather than, as he in fact did successfully, through time—something that requires mathematical tools such as calculus, which at that time had not yet been invented—thus heading into a series of blind alleys.²

Although Bellarmino may have been right in smelling something theologically suspect behind Galileo's transformational equations, this does not mean that the autonomy of science is in question. By now even the most entrenched multiculturalists and feminists, who occasionally indict Western science as a “Eurocentric white male ideology,” must have learned their lessons from disastrous experiences such as the Soviet sanctioning of Lysenko's genetics as the only “politically correct” approach. Over the centuries modern science has managed to establish a formidable record for self-correction thus discouraging any external interference. However, such a process is neither very rapid nor immediately obvious—at least not to the scientists involved in the particular controversies. As Kuhn has indicated, it usually takes a generation or more before what subsequently appear as immediately obvious refutations become widely acknowledged in the scientific community.³ Furthermore, for every instance of a successful refutation or self-correction, there are always scores of failures whose just reward is subsequent oblivion. This is why it is useful, while the debate is far from closed, to point out possible hidden cultural interferences contributing to questionable conclusions.

Stephen Jay Gould's reconstruction of evolutionary theory in his wonderful book, Wonderful Life, suggests interesting analogies to current academic fashions such as postmodernism. In fact, the cul de sac that Gould works himself into at the end of the book turns out to be surprisingly reminiscent of similar problems encountered by most versions of postmodernism. More specifically, the problems Gould runs into in postulating radical contingency with his theory of punctuated equilibria are exactly the same problems postmodernity generates with its vindication of a radical relativism against the universalism and one-dimensionality of modernity. Coincidentally, the problem with Gould's book turns out to be exactly the same as Jimmy Stewart's in Frank Capra's 1947 movie It's a Wonderful Life, which Gould took as the model for the title. The point is to emphasize, as in the movie, that little things do count and can have surprisingly momentous consequences. Thus, in the reconstruction of human evolution, the survival of an organism as seemingly irrelevant as the Pikaia provides a good example of this. Without it evolution, as it has in fact taken place, would not have been possible (he is careful enough to point out, however, that the demise of the Pikaia would not necessarily have meant that there would have been no chordate future and, consequently, no subsequent evolution). But Gould apparently did not study the film too closely, probably as a result of having seen it as a child and not having paid very careful attention to the actual structure of the plot. While it is true that one of the film's main subplots is to emphasize to what an unexpected extent the hero's actions have important consequences, the drama of It's a Wonderful Life is orchestrated from above by a heavenly bureaucracy determined to make sure things ultimately do not stray too far from the pre-ordained plan. In other words, the alternative scenario, constructed as the result of a particularly wrong choice by Clarence, the angel dispatched to see that George Bailey does not do anything stupid, such as committing suicide, is presented as ultimately artificial and, when all is said and done, nothing more than a pedagogical device meant to insure that things keep moving along the right predetermined path. The movie's main plot, rather than Gould's unwarranted privileging of one of its main subplots, contradicts precisely what Gould proposes as the main thesis of Wonderful Life, i.e., that all we have is “just history”—a process going nowhere and insensitive to whatever catastrophes, ruptures and discontinuities may take place in the process. It's a Wonderful Life operates entirely within a heavenly teleological framework all too reminiscent of an interpretation of the New Deal as a benevolent Washington bureaucracy intent on keeping small town America running along its entrepreneurial capitalist tracks.

Wonderful Life seeks to debunk whatever is left in popular consciousness of gradualist and progressivist readings of an evolutionary theory well managed by the hidden hand of natural selection. Worse yet, the arguments presented in Gould's book do not really make a very convincing case for the utterly contingent character of evolution. When all is said and done, its plot is actually much closer to that of It's a Wonderful Life than Gould may care to admit. As Robert Wright has pointed out in a careful and detailed review,⁴ Gould's theory of punctuated equilibria postulates such a strong concept of contingency and adaptability that, when combined with three other widely accepted features of evolutionary theory Gould never questions (but which are essential to reject if he is to demonstrate his thesis), renders the eventual development of intelligence very likely. The three enthymemes in question are the claim that evolution exhibits a tendency towards 1) growing organic complexity, 2) growing complexity of organic information processing capacity, and 3) that all evolution is characterized by a tremendous inventiveness.

Even if one were to grant that the Pikaia did bite the dust during the Burgess upheaval, or that the dinosaurs had not died out to clear the way for mammals to develop, or that several of what have been essential links in the evolution of Homo Sapiens never made it, it remains highly probable that some intelligent form of life, not necessarily the one that in fact did develop, would have evolved. After all, it only took a few hundred million years to go from single-cell organisms to us, and Homo Sapiens have been around only some 250,000 years—a short span by Gould's own estimate of 5 billion years as the Earth's probable life-span. During all that time other evolutionary routes very likely would have been found in case the actual one had been cut off. Asian Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, etc. may very well have made it. After all, extremely complex features such as wings and eyeballs were developed several times independently. Why rule out a similar fate for intelligence?

Gould's argument that these species were actually cut off and that only Homo Sapiens did in fact evolve only once also overlooks that the evolution of one species within the same evolutionary niche often entails the demise of competing ones. Thus it may very well be that the reason other evolutionary branches did end up being cut off was precisely that the one that did eventually make it did so at their expense. Here one need not postulate any transcendental force or similarly intractable metaphysical processes to see that intelligent life, while not absolutely inevitable, was at least very likely to develop under the given conditions.

For the purposes of the present discussion, all these considerations concerning possible merits and shortcomings of Gould's account, while interesting, are actually secondary. What is more significant is that Gould has in fact shifted his position from the 1970s when, as a Marxist engaged with groups such as “Science for the People,” he deployed his theory of punctuated equilibria to debunk conformist interpretations of evolutionary theory as a gradualist progression to perfection—subtle or not so subtle apologies for the status quo characterized by a capitalism predicated on competition as the mechanism paving the way to the perfect society. By vindicating the discontinuous character of evolution, Gould could vindicate the Marxist theory of revolution as qualitative upheavals exploding after relatively unproblematic periods of quantitative development. In Wonderful Life, however, the emphasis is now on the radically contingent character of the existing evolutionary result.

Why is this suddenly a significant issue? It is easy to understand a shift away from the need to vindicate evolutionary discontinuities as the functional equivalent of social revolution. In the age of post-communism and of the systematic collapse of revolutionary ideologies, revolution is decidedly out of fashion. But why bother to show the contingency of intelligent life? Although creationism has been making a comeback in some of the more backward states, it does not seem to be having much of an impact anywhere but in some rural high school biology courses in what used to be called the Bible Belt. Questions concerning the status of any possible transcendent Being presumably behind the evolutionary process or as an alternative explanation for the origins of life are similarly no longer considered all that interesting and have not been raised too often in relation to discussions concerning evolutionary theory. The answer lies elsewhere. And here is where an examination of postmodernism may help shed some light on this puzzling new Fragestellung. If postmodernism has had an impact in just about every other scholarly field during the last couple of decades, it is not unreasonable to expect that, overtly or covertly, it may also have made some inroads into the seemingly remote disciplines of biology and paleontology.

This suspicion is not entirely unfounded. In fact, one of the main thrusts of postmodernism has been to insist on the contingency of Western civilization and its “arbitrary” character in order to challenge not only its implicit claims to universality but its very foundations—“Western metaphysics.” The inability of modernist ideologies to deal effectively with what have recently become the most burning social issues of the day (racism, sexism, ecology, etc.)—issues which only a couple of decades ago were safely subsumed and exorcised by ideologies such as Marxism under the general rubric of an exploitation readily remediable by means of a particular resolution of the traditional class struggle—has raised doubts concerning the entire edifice of Western civilization now accused of being logocentric, phallocratic, patriarchial, inextricably racist etc.

Historically, of course, many of these ideas are much older, going back to the pre-WWII reflections of thinkers such as Heidegger and Wittgenstein, who sought recourse to Being or the primacy of Lebensformen in order to go to the roots of what have only more recently exploded as major social issues. With Heidegger, the main problem was to find a solution to the crisis of Europe which exploded at the turn of the century with the collapse of what Carl Schmitt called the jus publicum Europœum and the earlier redefinition of international relations by the American Monroe Doctrine.⁵ Rather than analyzing the problem historically, in terms of the displacement of a Eurocentric perspective, Heidegger blamed it all on technology and its roots in Western civilization. He went back to a Being logically and historically prior to Western civilization in order to reground thinking itself on more stable foundations—foundations not susceptible to technological involutions. The resulting relativism, of course, delegitimated all traditional values in favor of an undetermined will whose radical freedom would allow it to go in all possible directions—including Nazism.

Wittgenstein's crisis was a more personal one. His homosexuality could in no way be reconciled with the predominant bourgeois, Judeo-Christian values which he proceeded to relativize in terms of a plurality of qualitatively different Lebensformen, all equally valid within their own contexts and irreducible to any hypostatized higher system.⁶ The result was roughly equivalent to Heidegger's: all norms are contingent and contextual, and no particular set can be deployed to judge or overshadow another. Once again, seemingly irresolvable problems of Western civilization were solved by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

This is obviously not the place for any extensive critique of some of the more influential philosophies of the 20th century, especially since the only point here is to trace, grosso modo, the shifting character of socio-political agendas in the 1970s and 1980s, in order to offer a possible explanation for both the focus and theoretical quandaries of Gould's book. Yet, it is important to locate the historical and philosophical roots of a postmodernism which, after the demise of the New Left, has become generalized as a major cultural phenomenon affecting almost all scholarly disciplines as well as the latest configuration of “radical chic” politics. Why postmodernism has become so popular may have to do with the problems generated, but not yet resolved, by recent social changes precipitated by advanced industrial societies' rapid pace of rationalization. Only the three most significant disruptions need be mentioned here, without, however, elaborating on their extensive implications in any great detail: 1) the industrialization of the household and the resulting obsolescence of the primary traditional role of women as housewives; 2) the new negative demographic dynamics in advanced industrial societies, generated in part by the obsolescence of women's traditional roles, the technologization of the reproductive functions by means of new contraceptive technologies, and the integration of women in the previously predominant male workforce; and 3) the ecological crisis brought about by a greatly intensified exploitation of nature without fully knowing or taking account of its possible consequences.

Clearly, the traditional counterculture of modernism—Marxism—was not up to the new challenges since it tended to reduce all these problems to class conflicts and, consequently, was equally insensitive to the urgency of their solution—at least not sufficiently sensitive for those forced to bear the consequences of these momentous disruptions.⁷ Furthermore, given the new demographic dynamics, to the extent that much of the new labor power was now imported, class conflicts tended to translate into minority and racial problems not readily susceptible to traditional Marxist solutions. Thus, like modernity, Marxism had also become terminally obsolete.

Impatience with modernity's seeming inability to even adequately conceptualize these problems paved the way for the postmodernist alternative. But this alternative was peculiarly reminiscent of what it opposed, at least in the sense that it ontologized, in a paradigmatically Western way, the problems of Western civilization, to which it contraposed a radical relativism whose very formulation was possible only from the very same Western perspective it was meant to displace.⁸

Gould's theory of punctuated equilibria suffers a similar fate. Most of its alleged innovative features are not all that new since, as many commentators have repeatedly pointed out, they can be readily found in most of the illustrious predecessors he proceeds to attack and his genuine innovation, the positing of the radical contingency of the evolution of intelligent life is rather questionable. He does, however, manage to write highly entertaining accounts of evolutionary theory which tend to be all the more popular to the extent that they fall fully in step with predominant radical trends.

Notes

1. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), p. 177.

2. Cf. N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 37-49.

3. Cf. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964). Even more relevant is the work of Karl Popper and Paul K. Feyerabend.

4. Robert Wright, “The Intelligence Test,” in The New Republic (January 29, 1990), pp. 28-36.

5. Cf. Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der rde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europœum (1950) Second Edition (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970).

6. See Albert W. Levi, “The Sources of Wittgenstein's Ethics,” in Telos 38 (Winter 1978-79), pp. 63-76.

7. Cf. Zygmunt Bauman, “The Left as the Counter-Culture of Modernity,” in Telos 70 (Winter 1986-87), pp. 81-93.

8. Cf. Gérard Raulet, “From Modernity as One-Way Street to Postmodernity as Dead End,” in New German Critique 33 (Fall 1984), pp. 155-178.