Column

Biology

Creed

17 May 2023

7 min read

Not just red in tooth and claw: biology's big debates

In the second of a series, biologist and priest, Andrew Davison, examines why it’s important to keep up with biology’s big debates.

Andrew Davison

Andrew works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. He is Canon and Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford.

An osprey, in flight, holds a fish in its claws.

‘Wherever there’s water or air to navigate, the laws of fluid dynamics are bound to throw up wings, and bodies shaped like fish.’

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash.

There’s hardly been a livelier time for evolutionary science than today; indeed, passions can run high. It’s not that Darwin’s vision of evolution is fundamentally in doubt: species adapt by natural selection, there’s variation between individuals, and those better adapted for their environment survive more often, passing on their genes to their children. In that, the theory of evolution stands, but many other parts of the evolutionary picture from the second half of the twentieth century are coming under criticism. That includes the following maxims:

‘the only significant form of inheritance involves genetic code’,

‘nothing that happens to an organism during its lifetime is passed on to its progeny’,

‘we agree what we mean by “species”’,

‘genes pass down the branches of the tree of life, not between them’,

and ‘evolution is fundamentally all about competition, not cooperation’.

Among the excellent crop of writers on these themes, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb stand out for their elegant prose, and a gift for communicating complex ideas clearly. As they recognise, the standard mid-twentieth century model of evolution might be worth criticising, but it’s also landed all sorts of important basic points. (They list ten.) The shortfall of the earlier, dominant theory was in being too narrow, with each insight too quickly eclipsing others.

Here are two examples. First, the classic twentieth century picture saw inheritance in terms of DNA and genes, passed on by ‘germline’ cells, such sperm and pollen. That’s all true, but it shouldn’t restrict our wider view of inheritance to that. Today, writers such as Jablonka and Lamb stress that organisms inherit from their parents (or parent) in all sorts of ways.

A second plank of the twentieth century picture is that evolution involves descent from a common ancestor. Again, that says something vital, even central, accepted by evolutionist old and new. The twentieth century position, however, added a restriction: that’s all that’s important on this score. The newer perspective recognises that while genes are – of course – central, and passed on from parent to child, organisms also swap genes between themselves (between branches of the tree of life, not just along those branches), even between very different species.

If we’re not careful, what’s written and taught (not least by theologians), even with the best will in the world, will be thirty or even fifty years out of date.

There’s a lot of excitement around these sorts of claims (and, remember, Jablonka and Lamb make eight more), and that can get quite noisy. Defenders of the older, narrower picture typically say that the newer themes are simply fuss over minor points. Advocates of the newer perspective disagree, saying that the twentieth century picture risks missing some important features of biology, which are now coming into better focus.

Why such debates matters

Why might this ferment among biologists matter for a site like this one, and for theologians, and discussions of religious matters? Well, for one thing, as I pointed out in my previous article, nothing quite dissolves the supposed animosity between science and religion (which is, after all, a relatively recent invention) like theologians and religious people getting excited about biology. It’s also important that any humanities scholar, the theologian among them, who’s engaging with science should keep up to date. If we’re not careful, what’s written and taught (not least by theologians), even with the best will in the world, will be thirty or even fifty years out of date.

But there’s more at stake. As we have seen, the twentieth century picture, for all it brought an admirable clarity to evolutionary thought, was reductionistic. We see that in Jablonka and Lamb’s exhortation to scientists: ‘yes, stress x, but don’t think that means you have to deny y.’ A religious vision tends to be an expansive one. It wants to recognise the reality and value of all sorts of things. Yes, there’s matter, atoms, molecules, and genes, but there’s also organisms, agents, cultures, groups, economies, hopes, loves. They’re all real. We can’t reduce one to the other: not organisms to genes, or agents to economies. A turn from reduction is welcome.

More than that, almost everything in the emerging twenty-first century view of evolution is fascinating from a theological perspective.

Take convergence, for instance. It turns out that evolution isn’t just driven by randomness, or by the demands of the surroundings. Also important are various features of physics, or mathematics – the contours of reality – that throw up elegant solutions to evolutionary problems, which are adopted by evolution time and again. Wherever you need to sturdy and space-efficient packing of cells (as in a honey comb, or a a wasp’s nest), the hexagon is ready and waiting. Wherever there’s water or air to navigate, the laws of fluid dynamics are bound to throw up wings, and bodies shaped like fish, dolphins, and penguins (which are all quite similar in shape).

How do we know this? Because evolution has converged on wings and that body shape independently, many times, as also on eyes, and everything else that Simon Conway Morris lists in the nine closely printed columns of convergences in the index to his book Life’s Solution. Evolution certainly involves randomness and need, but alongside them is something more like Plato’s forms: timeless realities, there to be discovered and put to work. Among the more theological of these eternal verities, covered in Conway Morris’s book, are perception, intelligence, community, communication, cooperation, altruism, farming, or construction

Exceeding a zero-sum game

Then there’s cooperation. Ever since Darwin’s Origin was published, and, even more, ever since Tennyson wrote about nature ‘red in tooth and claw’, theologians have been embarrassed about the place of cooperation in their vision of the world. Now, however, it turns out, competition isn’t the only force at work in biology or evolution after all. One of the features of reality that evolution discovers and puts to work again and again is cooperation, and ways to exceed a ‘zero-sum’ game. We see that in cooperation within a species, but also in cooperation between species, which is ubiquitous in nature: called mutualism, it’s found everywhere. As a rule, once two species stick around in proximity for the long run, down many generations, their relationship will turn to mutual benefit.

Ethicists are often wary of the suggestion that we can look at the way things are, and read a moral code there (getting an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’), but it’s an unusual person whose vision of right and wrong isn’t shaped, to some degree, by a sense of what the world is like. Well, it turns out that nature bears witness to the enduring worth of cooperation, and not only to competition.

In the first of these articles on biology, I pointed out the significance of ethics in thinking about biology, and about evolution in particular. For better or worse, and often for worse, thinking about evolution has been an ethical, social, political story. The evolutionary has been put to work for immoral, ends. It turns out to be wrong twice over to suppose evolution commends only competition. It’s wrong, first of all, because we are rational creatures, who can aspire to an understanding of good and evil that transcends the realm of nature. But also, as we now see, it’s wrong even to suppose the nature is only red in tooth and claw. There’s competition, but there’s also a lot of cooperation.

Suggested further reading

Archibald, John. 2014. One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Evolution of Complex Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. An accessible introduction to biological mutualism, with an emphasis on the role of hybrid organisms (one living inside another) in major evolutionary transitions.

Bronstein, Judith L., ed. 2015. Mutualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The new standard treatment of biological mutualism.

Morris, Simon Conway. 2008. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A comprehensive discussion of convergence in evolution.

Day, Troy, and Russell Bonduriansky. 2018. Extended Heredity: A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. An engaging introduction to a broadened picture of inheritance.

Davison, Andrew. 2020a. Biological Mutualism: A Scientific Survey. Theology and Science 18 (2): 190–210. An accessible survey of some of the science of biological mutualism.

———. 2020b. Christian Doctrine and Biological Mutualism: Some Explorations in Systematic and Philosophical Theology. Theology and Science 18 (2): 258–78. A foray into some of the significance of mutualism for Christian theology.

Jablonka, Eva, and Marion Lamb. 2020. Inheritance Systems and the Extended Synthesis. Cambridge University Press. A short discussion of many of the more expansive aspects proposed for contemporary evolutionary thought.

Jablonka, Eva, Marion J. Lamb, and Anna Zeligowski. 2014. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. One of the most substantial discussions of the new perspective.

Laland, Kevin, Tobias Uller, arc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka, et al. 2014. Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink? Nature 514 (7521): 161–64. MA short two-sided piece, asking whether a transformation in evolutionary thinking is under way.

Article

Christmas culture

Creed

Middle East

Royalty

13 December 2024

6 min read

Magi: where did the wise men come from?

The origin story of the Middle East's ancient king makers.

Mark Gilbert

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

An arts and crafts image of the three kings adoring the new born Christ.

The Adoration of the Magi.

Edward Burne-Jones, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve probably heard they weren’t really kings, but the wise men or magi had some impressive royal connections. Far from being one-off royal visitors to the infant Jesus, the magi had a long history of involvement with monarchy, crossing paths with illustrious kings including Cyrus the Great of Persia, Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Nero.

Originally a tribe of the Medes who lived in Northern Iran 600 years before Jesus’ birth, the Persian magi were hereditary priests. Writing around 425BCE, Greek historian Herodotus tells us how these magi became known throughout the ancient Middle East for their ability to interpret dreams and knowledge of the stars. They were followers of the Zoroastrian religion, and were responsible for the holy fires central to Zoroastrian worship.

To the Greeks, the Zoroastrians and the magi were exotic objects of fascination. Many later Greek written philosophical and occult works claimed Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) as their author. Much like some twentieth century Western conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Greek and Roman conceptions of Persian religion often had only a passing resemblance to the original. This may have included the "mystery cult" of Mithras that would become popular throughout the Roman Empire in the first century. This also means that references to 'magi' may not refer to the Persian magi, but to other astrologers or dream interpreters who lived to the east of the Mediterranean.

A hundred years before Herodotus, we find the first mention of magi in the bible, in the Book of Daniel. This was the period of Jewish exile and captivity in Babylon. Jehoikim, King of Judea and descendent of Kings David and Solomon, was defeated in battle and killed by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and many Judean nobles were taken as prisoners. Daniel was one of these hostages and is taken to the Babylonian court, where God gives him the ability to interpret the king’s dreams. Impressed by his abilities, Nebuchadnezzar puts Daniel in charge over all his wise men. It’s unclear what relationship these Babylonian ‘magi’ had with the Medean ones, but strong Medean influence on the Babylonian court suggests that the Babylonian wise men could well have included Zoroastrian magi.

Daniel remained in the Babylonian court, until the Babylonians were invaded by Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return from exile and to begin restoring Jerusalem.

Cyrus' Persian Empire lasted for two hundred years, until it was invaded by Alexander the Great and his army in 331BCE. Alexander sought the advice of magi, but had many of them violently killed and extinguished their holy fires when he razed the Persian capital, Persepolis in revenge for the Persian destruction of the Acropolis by Xerxes 150 years earlier. Alexander’s Greek successors were characterised by bloody rivalries and in-fighting and were later overthrown by the Parthian empire, which would become Rome’s most formidable rival to the east. The magi consolidated their king-making reputation during the Parthian period, with a council of magi (the Megistanes) responsible for choosing Parthian kings.

The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too.

By Jesus' day, there were ‘magi’ throughout the Middle East, and it was in this context that Roman historian Pliny the Elder records the journey of Armenian magi to visit Emperor Nero in 66CE. By this time Parthia and Rome were a century into their protracted struggle and had just fought a five-year war over the Armenian succession. Despite suffering a humiliating defeat, Rome saved some face through a very one-sided treaty that had Parthia choose the next Armenian king, but with the Roman Emperor getting to place the crown on his head! Nero turned this to his advantage by having the new King Tridates I come to Rome to receive his crown. Tridates, who was a Zoroastrian priest as well as a king, came with a huge retinue including other magi and thousands of horsemen to receive his crown. The huge procession culminated in the magi king bowing before the emperor and acknowledging him as his god.

The visit of the Armenian magi has clear resonances with the familiar account of magi visiting the infant Jesus found in Matthew’s gospel. Given the many embellishments added to the magi story over the centuries, it's hardly surprising that some have suggested that the magi story was a fabrication and a remixed version of King Tridates’ visit to Emperor Nero. It’s a compelling theory, but I’m not convinced by this. If magi were stock characters in the ancient near east, and were also really interested in monarchs (who were often also treated as gods), then it wouldn’t be that surprising that there’d be more than one royal magi visit with emotionally charged religious overtones. What makes a fabricated magi story less likely to me is what the gospel writer Matthew’s Jewish audience would have thought of the magi. Although the Greeks and Romans were enthusiastic about foreign gods and exotic wisdom, first century Jews were not. To them and to early Christians, the magi would have been charlatans and followers of a false foreign god. A visit from some foreign astrologers would have been an embarrassment rather than the type of story you'd choose to make up.

So, who were the magi in Matthew's gospel? The two dominant theories have been that they were either Persian or else they were a later fiction. More fanciful theories include origins in India, China and even Mongolia. Another perhaps more realistic possibility, convincingly argued by Fr Dwight Longernecker in The Mystery of the Magi is that the magi were from the Arabian kingdom of Nabatea. The Nabateans were known for using irrigation to farm the desert and for controlling the trade routes across the Arabian desert. Two cash crops in which Nabatea dominated trade were frankincense and myrrh. The wealth generated from this lucrative trade was used to build Petra, the world-famous valley city of rock-face monuments. The Nabateans had close connections with Israel and may have been familiar with the prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah. They would also have been interested in the Judean monarchy and would have been natural visitors to the paranoid king Herod. Herod's mother was a Nabatean princess and the Nabatean king Aretas IV needed to shore up favour with Herod so the Nabateans would have had an interest in any new King of the Jews.

Barring some improbable Indiana Jones style archaeological discoveries, we’ll never know for sure who the wise men from the east were. But to me there’s something deeply fascinating about these mysterious visitors to the infant Jesus. Partly they seem to represent higher things – with their wisdom and wealth correctly put in divine service. It can seem as though their excellent learning and astronomical skills have cracked a cosmic puzzle, with the magi following the star and dodging a despot to find the baby at the end of the treasure hunt. This doesn’t hold up - the magi’s knowledge isn’t the object of wonder. The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too. But God uses the foolish things to confound the wise, and inside the crackpot mess of horoscopes and divination, God leaves the magi an invitation. To accept the invitation is to take a risk – to risk the long journey, the wrath of Herod and even to risk being wrong. But as they accept this invitation, they realise its an invitation to meet God Himself.