杏吧原创

At first glance, science might seem to drain the world of its mystique, replacing the lovely unknown with mundane explanation. Peer deeper, though, and you will find that the appreciation of mystery is the foundation of science, and that science reveals to us a world far more profound and beautiful than common sense or superstition can behold.

In , James Le Fanu doesn鈥檛 get that far. 鈥溞影稍�创s,鈥� he laments, 鈥渄o not 鈥榙o鈥� wonder.鈥�

This paradoxical sentiment pervades the book, as Le Fanu tries his best to argue against evolution. 鈥淭he great drawback of Darwin鈥檚 simple, all-encompassing evolutionary theory has always been that it robs the living world of its unknowable profundity,鈥� he writes.

Le Fanu鈥檚 thesis is that both the and neuroimaging technologies have failed to explain what makes us human, and therefore that science itself will never be able to do so.

Instead, he advocates dualism, the existence of an immaterial 鈥渓ife force鈥�, and a paradigm shift in which science will give way to 鈥渁 renewed interest in and sympathy for religion.鈥� This conclusion comes after Le Fanu has knocked down several straw men based in a na茂ve reading of both genetics and neuroscience.

He suggests that scientists mapping out the human genome expected to find a straightforward prescription for human anatomy and behaviour 鈥� 鈥渨hat it is in our genes that makes us, 鈥榰s'鈥�, 鈥渙ur physical characteristics, personality, intelligence鈥� 鈥� when in fact biologists understood from the start that the interplay between genetics, epigenetics and environment is highly complex, and that the road from gene to phenotype, from proteins to personality traits, is a torturous one. That is, no one expected to find genes for 鈥渃ourage and determination鈥�, though Le Fanu eagerly points out that such genes have not been found.

Likewise, he chastises neuroscience for failing to find consciousness, our 鈥渦nique subjective experience鈥�, in an MRI machine, when neuroscientists were long aware that all they would see in an MRI were consciousness鈥檚 physical correlates.

I am all for a good mystery, but there is an important difference between revelling in the excitement of the unknown and turning away from knowledge because you simply don鈥檛 like the facts.

See everything in our pick of the Darwin 200 books