COMMUNIQUÉ by Martha Hutchens
My Life with Darwin
A Report on Evolution from the Laboratory Bench
When other Christians hear that I’m a biomedical scientist, they sometimes ask how I deal with evolution. This question could mean several things: First, do the evidential claims of “evolution” compel assent from someone who has studied biology as much as I have? Second, am I under any pressure from my colleagues and superiors to submit to its tenets? Third, does the “theory of evolution” constitute such a compelling and all-encompassing paradigm that I can’t address scientific questions without reference to it?
Now “evolution” may mean any of several things to the person asking the question. Sometimes it means natural selection acting upon random genetic variations to produce distinct traits in a population of a particular species, or what is sometimes called microevolution. When I hear the word “evolution,” the idea that comes to my mind, and I suspect also to that of many others, is that “all present species have arisen from a single common ancestor by descent with genetic modification.” This, however, is not the fullest, strictest, most “official” sense of the term. Darwin, whose theory became the basis for the modern paradigm, proposed that the mechanism by which present species came about was natural selection acting upon random, heritable variations (genetic variations, we would say now). It is with this classical “Darwinism” that I am concerned here.
So, if by “evolution” one means “Darwinism,” then my answer to the first question above is “No.” I am not convinced that natural selection as Darwin and his followers conceived it is sufficient to explain all the features of the biological world. I am skeptical of the sufficiency of one-chance-mutation-at-a-time steps to account for the variety and complexity of living creatures.
My answer to the second question is also “No,” mostly, I assume, because of the more technical and less theoretical nature of my training and research. I have never experienced a direct conflict with the reigning Darwinist paradigm. Nor have I ever been asked explicitly to assent to the common descent of all species, or to affirm natural selection as the creative force behind the diversity of life. The issue simply never comes up in that way. The assumption that Darwinian evolution is true, however, does permeate academic culture.
Multiple Meanings
In my field, that assumption presents itself in several ways, which brings me to the third question: Is it possible to live and think as a scientist and make scientific progress without dependence on Darwin’s theory? To answer this question, I will consider three ways in which the word “evolution” is used in the presentation of research, the meaning behind each use, and the relation of each use to Darwinism.
As an immunologist, my observations pertain to immunological research, which overlaps microbiology, cellular biology, molecular biology, physiology, pathology, and many other disciplines, so my observations pertain in part to them, too. They do not apply to genetics, evolutionary biology, or like disciplines that concern themselves specifically with origins and descent.
In the world of biomedical research, the term “evolution” is used frequently, but no distinction is made between its various meanings. For example, a debater or theorist may carefully distinguish “microevolution” from “macroevolution” or “Darwinism” from “theistic evolution.” But in the everyday usage of the biologist, “evolution” is not simply how mosquitoes acquire insecticide resistance and viruses become unrecognizable to the immune system; it is also the bestower of light upon fireflies; and it is the process by which mice and men and fruit flies all arose from a common ancestor—in other words, it is “all of the above.”
Evolution Means History
Martha Hutchens received her Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Michigan, where she studied the immune response to vaccinia virus. As an undergraduate, she did research at Michigan State University developing a test for infection by the oomycete pathogen Pythium insidiosum. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she studies intracellular signaling pathways controlling inflammation.
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