The Edge of  Evolution The Edge of  Evolution Animality, Inhumanity, and The Island of Doctor Moreau RONALD EDWARDS 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–0–19–021209–4 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan, USA CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgments xv PART I NOT MEANT TO KNOW 1. The Paw 5 TAKING EXCEPTION 7 SCIENCE AND FICTION 9 SCIENCE FICTION 20 2. The -ism That Wasn’t 36 IT DOES NOT PLEASE YOU 38 DARWIN IN THE MIDDLE 44 TWO WINDOWS 50 3. Don’t Meddle 59 MOVIES AND MOREAU 61 SORCERY 66 LIFE SCIENCE 72 PART II THE THING IS AN ABOMINATION 4. The House of Pain 83 NO PAIN, NO GAIN 84 MOREAU 1, PRENDICK 0 92 PAIN IS REAL 100 v vi Contents 5. Into the Lab and Onto the Slab 112 HOW 114 BUT WHY 129 PART III POOR BRUTES 6. All the Difference 139 MOREAU’S MAN 141 PRENDICK’S GAZE 150 “NO!” 152 THE VIRAGO 157 7. To the Beasts You May Go 165 NO THRESHOLD 167 SELECTION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 174 THE VALLEY 181 PART IV NO ESCAPE 8. That Is the Law 197 WHOSE LAW? 199 HELL IS REAL 205 THE JESUS MOMENT 209 THE REBEL 215 9. Beast Monsters 223 THE TASTE OF BLOOD 224 THE STUBBORN BEAST FLESH 238 THE HORROR 242 10. Big Thinks 249 SUFFERING AND PHILOSOPHY 250 SCIENCE AND HUMANITY 253 Glossary 261 Index 269 PREFACE I’ve taught many different university courses, first as a biology graduate student, then as a professor: freshmen and capstone, majors and non-majors, focused and general, biology and interdisciplinary. Pound for pound, it was the non-majors general biology classes that taught me the most about what people “out there” know, how they think the world works, and what order and type of informa- tion opens up the discussion. I loved these classes, because the students were unswervingly honest: screw up some ideas, or give an unfair or poorly conceived test, and you found out about it in no uncertain terms, and not months later in an evaluation, either. But if you show that you’re exacting but fair, and bring the biol- ogy into their lives—not as spectacle, but as a genuine issue—then they show up early, arrive waving something they’ve looked up, stay late, make friends with one another, and study diligently. They also taught me the most about the limitations of my course material: what parts were hand waving, or seemed like it, and what gaps were obvious to them although invisible to me and my colleagues. I made it my professional business to keep refining the presentation and the content for maximum clarity, to keep reorganizing the material for maximum impact, and to keep redesigning the test- ing methods for maximum reward for learning. I also tried many ways to open the course—what exercise or project should kick it off, and what to say. My operating principle, the most successful as it turned out, was brutal honesty to set up a real social contract: The administrators call this a “requirement.” I do not actually know if they laugh about the tuition they’re getting from you, but they do wear tassel loafers and have much nicer offices than anyone I know at this school. I can tell you, they are not my people, and I do not work for them. I work for one guy down the hall, the department head. I teach this class because I think it’s important. I don’t think the tuition is “extra” or a scam, and I’ll tell you why, or I hope to show you why as we go along. vii viii Preface But I know I can’t ask you to believe that, not right now. Professors tell you all kinds of things on the first day and unless something has changed, well, I don’t remember a lot of my old profs really making good on it. I’m saying that you are right to ask, how is this worth my time? Why do I have to do this? I’m also saying that I can’t answer it unless you meet me—let’s say, a third of the way. Attend class, do some stuff, and see what makes sense—talk about what doesn’t, ask some questions, and in a few weeks, see what you think. Really be here, though, don’t wander in with your head somewhere else. I’ll be doing the same, because although I do have a schedule of topics, there’s some flexibility, and I’ll always say it exactly as I think you, no one else, right here this term, will get the most out of it based on what’s happened so far. Here are some mechanics to help us both with this. • I don’t assign discussion points, subjective points, whatever you want to call them. Your grade comes right out of your scores. That’s because I don’t trust myself, or anyone, not to abuse those points for students I like. This way, you can raise questions, you can be wrong, you can disagree with me, or you can simply keep to yourself if you want, and there’s not a thing I can do to you in terms of your grade. It keeps that safe. • I don’t take attendance or apply it to your grade. You’re all grown-ups. I know most of you work, like I did in college. You have to decide how to trade off your time and your obligations. So you know, we’ll have graded work almost every day, and I don’t do “ten percent off” or make-ups. If something truly medical or outrageous is involved, it’s pro-rated, and that’s all. Miss one without one of those situations listed in your syllabus, and it’s a zero—but the good news is, no extra points are coming off. At about this point, the students are surprised, and I can see them thinking, “This guy might actually be all right.” That’s when I tell them something biologi- cally amazing, not just a cool detail from a nature special, but a point they never dreamed of, which makes them think back on their experience and sense their own bodies differently. It could be any of a dozen things, from the blood pooling in their circulatory system because they’re been sitting too long, to what in the world is actually in that cup of legal psychoactive drug I’m drinking in front of them and what it’s doing to my brain, or anything else immediate, experiential, and familiar. Halfway through the explanation, I ask, “Do you want to know?” And the tigerish enthusiasm that responds lets me know, this term, this class, we’re going to make it. Preface ix Author’s Voice I’ve written this book in the language I developed in these classes. It’s still a professor voice, although I hope only the good parts: intellectual ruthlessness, attention to the listener’s starting position, and the biologist’s typical and pos- sibly charming social shortcomings. But it’s also a fellow learner’s voice, ready to be surprised by what the other humans might say. I tell every classroom of stu- dents at the beginning of a course that they are not intellectual subordinates, that although they may well be informed and provoked in a good way, they don’t have to agree with me in order to pass, or to make me feel important. I learned as a stu- dent myself—and carried it into my teaching—that instruction is not about rank, it’s about showing you can add value and about building trust. Here, I’d like to reduce the implicit authority of writing a book as far as I can. My own history—teacher, evolutionary biologist, reader of speculative fiction, political activist, animal care committee member, small-press game publisher, father and husband, and more—produce a certain lived expertise, perhaps a good one for this project. I entered my studies in an exciting period for evolutionary thinking, and in retrospective, had remarkable luck in meeting and working with some notable individuals. Instead of a single mentor and specialty, I learned tech- niques from the fragments of DNA—back when gel kits were built in the lab—to hands-on work with both living and dead animals, to the hectares of open fields full of unsympathetic plants and creatures who bite. I had also been lucky to be trained in a broad range of liberal arts, with an eye toward history and toward the multiple ways a problem or idea is expressed in a historical moment; science to me is never merely testing a hypothesis, it’s a powerful debate in which this one study flares up briefly, and that debate neither came from nowhere nor exists in isolation from anywhere in society. Two things stood out for me, beyond the technical science. The first was the role that we as scientists found, or made, toward those animals we held power over, and who would be so surprised as me to find myself in a position of author- ity toward other scientists as well—some pretty scary smart ones, too, with many thousands of animals in the picture. The second was teaching, which I love, the job that never goes sour or old, the wonderful blend of the familiar and reliable, combined with the new things I’d decided to bring to it this time and the new statements and thoughts a new room of students may bring. It’s added up: his- tory, evolutionary theory, animal care, and the demand and excitement of finding whether it makes sense in the meeting of minds. One might say I’ve been training all my life to be able to talk about this single novel. I’ve written from that expertise, as how could I not, but my point about the author’s voice stands: I do not assume the privilege to inflict the technical infor- mation upon a captive audience, or to use it to baffle others into silence. I do not