Chris Jaffe's Reviews > The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge

I was on page 10 when I first got the feeling that author Matt Ridley might be completely full of shit. And he never gave me any reason to go back on that impression. I plowed through the book anyway, because I'm into completing things, but can't say I liked it.

The part on page 10 that first set off my BS detector: Ridley writes about his discovery of Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius, Ridley fumes at his schoolmasters, "How could they have made me waste all those years at school plodding through the tedious platitudes and pedestrian prose of Jesus Christ or Julius Caesar, when they could have been telling me about Lucretius . . . . Had the Christians not suppressed Lucretius, we would surely have discovered Darwinism centuries before we did."

Well now, I could day several things about that. Some are ticky-tack things (both the Bible and Caesar actually are well-regarded as literature). But more importantly, does this strike anyone as overstating things by a lot? Not only is Lucretius important to him, but he could/should've made a huge difference to world society -- he even feels the need to throw in a SURELY to describe the obviousness of ... what's just his opinion. Also, this came right after Ridley went over the history of Lucretius - he'd been redisocovered in 1417. Does Ridley really thing the theory of evolution would've broken out in 1143 or something? Theories and ideas are nice, but the real problem was that Rome fell, taken over by semi-barbarian tribes that couldn't keep much in the way of civilization going. Things broke down and fell apart into internal warfare, trade suffered - and literacy fell was nearly completely lost. I mean, if we still have this guy's poems, that's all happening anyway. Finally, that leads to a final problem with the above quote: Christian suppression? His real problem was that civilization collapsed. Sure, churches didn't do much copying of his works, but -1) they focused more on copying church documents, which yeah - they were a church, and 2) they copied his poems down, too - which is how they survived. (Oh, and in a final bit of irony, later on in the book Ridley attacks the Great Man Theory of history -- but Lucretius by himself could've jumpstarted modern science by centuries. Surely).

Look, I just spent far too much time on that little piece. It's what first set off my BS detector, but more importantly is why the BS detector kept going off.

One major issue is the too broad definition he gives to evolution. It starts off fine, as he discusses actual evolution in the early chapters - Darwin's theory, and DNA, and the like. He then starts to make a series of analogies later on when discussing modern issues, like economics. There is some similarity there (but I'll get to my problems with that in a second). But later he keeps going on to anything that's change. For example, a chapter on education contains a detailed critique of current education systems. OK, fair enough. But how is that evolution? He wants several changes made, and concludes the chapter by stating, "Let education evolve." OK, so he's calling for specific, deliberate changes to be made with a clear end result in mind...... And that's evolution? As this book notes, evolution isn't steps made toward a clear, deliberate goal. They are just gradual changes over time acting spontaneously. But he's pushing an agenda here, and hiding behind the theory of evolution to push for specific steps to make.

And, frankly, even when analogies work better (such as when he talks about Adam Smith), there are still problems. For one, there is a clear sense pervading this book that evolution is good. That the change it brings in progress. Folks, evolution isn't about progression or regression. It's just change. To whit: the overwhelming majority of species that have evolved have gone extinct - including a huge number of ones that thrived for long times.

But there is an even bigger, deeper issue here. It doesn't make much sense at all for evolution to be used as an analogy for modern day social, political, and economic issues - not nearly to extent that Ridley does.

Evolution: it works incredibly gradually. There is no intent and thought in mind. It's just gradual changes and mutations that take place over centuries and millenniums that cause animals to change, stay the same, or cease to exist. It takes hundreds of generations for even the mildest of changes to become readily apparent. And as a result of the fact it takes hundreds or thousands of generations to result in gradual changes within a species ... we should start using Bitcoin. Wait - what? The theory of evolution means that environmentalism is an authoritian example of liberal fascism. Or we should enroll students in MOOCs. I mean - huh?

There is a spector haunting this book - that of Social Darwinism. That was a 19th century movement that, like Ridley, wanted to use the principles of evolution to reorder society. In their minds, evolution could be used to justify laissez faire economics, imperialism and racism. It's all about survival of the fittest, don't you know. Ridley is NOT advocating racism or imperialism. But you could just as easily use evolution to justify those policies as the one Ridley likes. In both cases, you have to overlook how a theory of biological/genetic changes that take centuries to play out really don't relate too well to modern social issues. Ridley barely mentions Social Darwinism at all. He mostly seems to oppose it because the agenda it pushes is more state-centric, where Ridley is fully in the libertarian camp.

There is also some irony at work at the edges of this book. He denigrates religious beliefs, stating that all movements based on faith have a centrality of a single "skyhook" - by which he means a central single, perfect answer that explains all. He even includes Marxism as one example of a faith that suffers from this flaw. He has a point there - but seems completely blind to that this same argument can be used against him. Christians can look to the Bible for their One True Faith. Marxists can look to Das Capital. And Ridley has his libertarian brand of social Darwinism. It's the One Truth Faith that is never wrong and can explain all things.

Some parts make good points - like when he discusses the vacancy of the Great Man theory of history. Also, the book by Tom Holland on early Islam he mentions is really good. But far too often Ridley makes a serious of bad analogies, overstates his case, hand-waives away any info that goes against his One True Faith, and, well - is basically full of shit.