Editor's Note

Last time, I said that Boston Review would be publishing more articles in and about contemporary science. I also said we would not be confining ourselves to evolutionary biology. This issue delivers on the first promise--though with nearly 20,000 words on evolution (pages 24-37), it may appear to violate the spirit of the second.

How did we get here? In our December-January issue, we published Allen Orr on Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, and Robert Berwick on Richard Dawkins's Climbing Mount Improbable. Behe's book claims that biochemistry has uncovered a Darwin-defying complexity inside the cell, and that this complexity reveals the hand of an intelligent designer. Orr responded that natural selection's own invisible hand suffices. Dawkins makes a case for the powers of selection to explain life's wonders. Berwick found exaggeration in that case, and explored alternatives to selection--though intelligent design was not among them.

We liked the articles, invited responses to them, and were hit with a flood. Some wrote to defend Behe, some to defend Dawkins. But many of the contributors used the occasion to raise large issues about evolution, science, and materialism, and to address Behe's question head-on: Is God in the biochemical details, or only Darwin? (Or neither, as James Shapiro argues in his contribution.) Written by distinguished microbiologists, evolutionary theorists, and biochemists, these essays show just how the answer to this important question turns on the details of scientific research.

This was exactly the kind of discussion we had hoped to provoke--one that disrespects the distinction between scientific and humanistic cultures by bringing serious science to bear on an issue of broad human interest. The passion, intensity, and intellectual quality, however, surpassed all expectations. So, with pleasure, we have allocated lots of space in this issue to the debate. But, acknowledging that there can be too much even of a good thing, we promise no more evolution for next time.

--Joshua Cohen