Yet Still Another One of Pollack's Problems

Great Biological Tree

"Tree Of Life"

The following is Pollack's first question and his musing on possible answers:

1) Where do people come from? How did we get here? . . . At some point . . . . a few billion years ago, self-replicating molecules appeared . . . . Once this process of self-replication began, the mechanism illuminated by Darwin's great insight began to operate . . . . these replicators became more complex, and differentiated forms found niches of various kinds . . . . [T]his gradual, iterative operation eventually resulted in the world we live in . . . . The continuity and unity of Earthly life seems clearer and clearer the more we learn, and perhaps the strongest argument for the evolutionary connectedness of the great biological tree is the weaknesses of many living forms, the little hack-jobs and jury-rigs made by repurposing existing parts . . . . That said, it's hard to look at the astonishing machinery of life — especially the micromachinery . . . . — and not have the feeling that there has to be something more at work here than the purposeless agitations of atoms and the void . . . , it's hard to look at the detail of it all — the incomparable engineering of it all — and not see it as being, somehow, miraculous. This wasn't a problem for me when I was twelve, or twenty-five, or even forty, but it is, I must confess, becoming rather a problem for me now.

Pollack easily sees evolution at work in "the little hack-jobs and jury-rigs made by repurposing existing parts" because that's what we would expect of a random process such as natural selection. However, "[t]he astonishing machinery of life - especially the micromachinery" - "the incomparable engineering of it all" - is "somehow, miraculous," something more like design.