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Review
of Bernard d’Abrera, The Concise Atlas of Butterflies of the World
(London: Hill House, 2001), 353 pages. Available online at http://www.biobooks.com/clearance_items.htm.
This review originally appeared on Metanexus (http://www.metanexus.net).
Bernard d’Abrera’s concise atlas of the world’s butterflies is a beautifully
produced book with the most stunning photographs of butterflies that I’ve
ever seen. Though not intended as a coffee-table book, it could eminently
serve that purpose. D’Abrera himself is a world-renowned butterfly and moth
expert at the British Museum (Natural History) in London. Over the years he
has produced books on the lepidoptera indigenous to various regions of the
world. This book provides a synopsis of his life’s work.
Although this book is in many ways a standard work of taxonomy, with numerous
plates and catalogues, the first hundred pages are quite different from what
one expects in a typical taxonomic atlas. To be sure, these pages comprise
general introductory material. Thus readers are treated to a description of
the life cycle, habits, and peculiarities of butterflies. But the entire
discussion in these introductory chapters (before we get to the catalogues
and plates) is framed as a critique of Darwinism.
Not only is this unusual, but the critique itself is not the sort one typically
finds. Most critiques of Darwinism point to supposed problems with the theory
(like gaps in the fossil record or unwarranted extrapolations from micro- to
macroevolution). Some of this finds its way into d’Abrera’s book. But the
bulk of his critique focuses on exposing the facile ways in which Darwinism
is used to underwrite claims about butterflies when the theory is either
irrelevant or downright contradicted.
For strict Darwinists, the opening chapters of this book will be
disconcerting. But for critics like myself, d’Abrera’s introductory chapters
are supremely refreshing. Yes, there is some colorful prose here. But it is
in the service of realigning our sensibilities. Perhaps more so than other
areas in biology, taxonomy has felt the constricting hand Darwin. When
Theodosius Dobzhansky remarked that nothing in biology makes sense apart from
[Darwinian] evolution, he meant it not just as a statement of fact but as
regulative principle to be enforced as Darwinian orthodoxy.
The overwhelming sense one gets in reading the introductory chapters of
d’Abrera’s book is of a man who has seen himself, his colleagues, and their
work pushed around long enough and who will not stand for it any longer.
D’Abrera casts Darwinism as a suffocating ideology and its purveyors as
bullies. Consider the following passages from his text:
“Any person wishing to acquire a university degree of any altitude has only
to place the word ‘Evolution’ in cunning juxtaposition with the lesser words,
‘Phylogenetics’, ‘Molecular Biology’, ‘Genetics’ or ‘Biodiversity’ in their
abstract (or synopsis), and hey presto, they suddenly find themselves
copiously funded!” (6)
“Some may ask why I have included my arguments against the several theories
of evolution of species in a popular work such as this. I answer that I do so
because ... those who support any or all of such theories do so relentlessly
and unopposed in every literary, visual and spoken vehicle that exists - be
it base, popular or exalted highbrow. They are totally in control of every
scientific journal or book in print and have no intention of having their
hegemony threatened....” (53)
“No field worker who studies insects, may now freely gaze upon his
discoveries of insect morphology, biology or behaviour, without the taint of
speculative Darwinism compelling him to colour his conclusions. No more is
such a worker allowed to make direct, uncomplicated observations about
objective facts about butterflies or moths.... Instead he is now compelled
through the pressure of insidious programming by the overlords of the
scientific establishment, to subject everything he has objectively observed
to the tyranny of subjectivist and useless speculation about butterflies and
their hypothetical origins. He must do so for no other reason than being able
to collect his grant and acquire his PhD or some other doubtful honour of
mutual respectability amongst his peers. The really dangerous part of this
global pseudo-scientific cultism is that our worker has unconsciously been
made to pass from the intellectual liberty provided within the legitimate
realms of distinterested hypothesis, into the cul-de-sac of totalitarian
absolutism of unprovable dogma.... Evolutionists thus become roped into the
bondage of their own theory. They postulate it as holy writ and then labour
ceaselessly to find the ‘evidence’ to fit it. Such tendentious labours only
bestow the opprobrium of ‘contrivance’ upon the evidence so gleaned.” (64)
In western academic culture, critics of Darwinism often face stiff penalties
- slowed academic advancement, censorship, vilification, ostracism, and loss
of employment. Whether d’Abrera’s specific criticisms of Darwinism all hit
the mark is not the important thing about this book (though I give the book
high marks here as well). What is important about this book is its public
call to allow informed dissent of Darwinism.
D’Abrera is as good as they get when it comes to naturalists expert in some
particular species. D’Abrera has been studying butterflies since the age of
three. He knows this creature as well as anybody, and he has found Darwin’s
theory completely unconvincing as a vehicle for gaining insights into
butterflies. That in itself should give one pause. Too often critics of
Darwinism are dismissed as religious nuts who can’t stomach Darwinism because
of the threat Darwinism is said to pose to their religion. D’Abrera shows
that the dogmatism and intolerance is in fact on the other foot, and that it
is the dogmatic supporters of Darwinism who need to learn tolerance.
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