Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (4 page)

1.4. Progress in the evolution of the human brain as illustrated by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1915.

1.5. A personally embarrassing illustration of our allegiance to the iconography of the march of progress. My books are dedicated to debunking this picture of evolution, but I have no control over jacket designs for foreign translations. Four translations of my books have used the “march of human progress” as a jacket illustration. This is from the Dutch translation of
Ever Since Darwin
.

Nor have we abandoned this iconography in our generation. Consider figure 1.5, from a Dutch translation of one of my own books! The march of progress, single file, could not be more graphic. Lest we think that only Western culture promotes this conceit, I present one example of its spread (figure 1.6) purchased at the bazaar of Agra in 1985.

1.6. I bought this children’s science magazine in the bazaar of Agra, in India. The false iconography of the march of progress now has cross-cultural acceptance.

The march of progress is
the
canonical representation of evolution—the one picture immediately grasped and viscerally understood by all. This may best be appreciated by its prominent use in humor and in advertising. These professions provide our best test of public perceptions. Jokes and ads must click in the fleeting second that our attention grants them. Consider figure 1.7, a cartoon drawn by Larry Johnson for the
Boston Globe
before a Patriots–Raiders football game. Or figure 1.8, by the cartoonist Szep, on the proper place of terrorism. Or figure 1.9, by Bill Day, on “scientific creationism.” Or figure 1.10, by my friend Mike Peters, on the social possibilities traditionally open to men and to women. For advertising, consider the evolution of Guinness stout (figure 1.11) and of rental television (figure 1.12).
*

1.7. A cartoonist can put the iconography of the ladder to good use. This example by Larry Johnson appeared in the
Boston Globe
before a Patriots–Raiders game.

The straitjacket of linear advance goes beyond iconography to the definition of evolution: the word itself becomes a synonym for
progress
. The makers of Doral cigarettes once presented a linear sequence of “improved” products through the years, under the heading “Doral’s theory of evolution.”
†
(Perhaps they are now embarrassed by this misguided claim, since they refused me permission to reprint the ad.) Or consider an episode from the comic strip
Andy Capp
(figure 1.13). Flo has no problem in accepting evolution, but she defines it as progress, and views Andy’s quadrupedal homecoming as quite the reverse.

1.8. World terrorism parachutes into its appropriate place in the march of progress. By Szep, in the
Boston Globe
.

1.9. A “scientific creationist” takes his appropriate place in the march of progress. By Bill Day, in the
Detroit Free Press
.

1.10. More mileage from the iconography of the ladder. By Mike Peters, in the
Dayton Daily News
. (Reprinted by permission of UFS, Inc.)

1.11. The highest stage of human advance as photographed from an English billboard.

Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. Most people may know this as a phrase to be uttered, but not as a concept brought into the deep interior of understanding. Hence we continually make errors inspired by unconscious allegiance to the ladder of progress, even when we explicitly deny such a superannuated view of life. For example, consider two errors, the second providing a key to our conventional misunderstanding of the Burgess Shale.

First, in an error that I call “life’s little joke” (Gould, 1987a), we are virtually compelled to the stunning mistake of citing unsuccessful lineages as classic “textbook cases” of “evolution.” We do this because we try to extract a single line of advance from the true topology of copious branching. In this misguided effort, we are inevitably drawn to bushes so near the brink of total annihilation that they retain only one surviving twig. We then view this twig as the acme of upward achievement, rather than the probable last gasp of a richer ancestry.

1.12. The march of progress as portrayed in another advertisement.

1.13. The vernacular equation of evolution with progress. Andy’s quadrupedal posture is interpreted as evolution in reverse. (By permission of © M.G.N. 1989, Syndication International/North America Syndicate, Inc.)

Consider the great warhorse of tradition—the evolutionary ladder of horses themselves (figure 1.14). To be sure, an unbroken evolutionary connection does link
Hyracotherium
(formerly called
Eohippus
) to modern
Equus
. And, yes again, modern horses are bigger, with fewer toes and higher crowned teeth. But
Hyracotherium-Equus
is not a ladder, or even a central lineage. This sequence is but one labyrinthine pathway among thousands on a complex bush. This particular route has achieved prominence for just one ironic reason—because all other twigs are extinct.
Equus
is the only twig left, and hence the tip of a ladder in our false iconography. Horses have become the classic example of progressive evolution because their bush has been so unsuccessful. We never grant proper acclaim to the real triumphs of mammalian evolution. Who ever hears a story about the evolution of bats, antelopes, or rodents—the current champions of mammalian life? We tell no such tales because we cannot linearize the bounteous success of these creatures into our favored ladder. They present us with thousands of twigs on a vigorous bush.