Professor Joseph L Graves Jr. - A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems

W HEN THE PRIESTS AND L EVITES FROM J ERUSALEM CAME to John the Baptist, they asked him who he was. John replied in the words of the prophet Isaiah: I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, Make straight the way for the Lord. In Western culture Johns ministry and martyrdom have taken on a significance wider than its association with the Christian Gospels. It has been a metaphor for any perspective of great importance and truth that has been silenced to maintain the status quo.

I am a voice in the wilderness. I wasnt always that. This book is about how I came to be that, what my voice has to say, and why evolutionary science is of such great importance to the time we find ourselves in. Somehow, as I was growing up, the people closest to me knew I would become such a voice. My mother couldnt understand why I spent so much time reading. She lamented the amount of time I spent with my funny books (mostly the Marvel Comics of Stan Lee). My father couldnt understand why I spent so much time and money competing in chess tournaments. My high school friend Mark Pintos mother, who was definitely psychic, looked at me one day and out of the blue said, Your life is going to be filled with struggle. People are going to always say that you are wrong, but in the end they will all know that you were right. Proof of her prophetic abilities came a few days later, when she asked me whether I knew anyone who drove a yellow Volkswagen, adding, For some reason I see you spending a lot of time in a yellow Volkswagen this summer. I told her I didnt. But the next day at a party I met a girl who became my first serious girlfriend. She drove a yellow Volkswagen. Mrs. Pintos words stuck with me my entire life.

They echoed in the back of my mind when I became the first African American to earn a PhD in evolutionary biology. It wasnt that long ago; my dissertation was delivered in 1988. However, I do not think or act the way you might think a biologist should. I am a voice like John. I am still alive, but my path to become a scientist and my subsequent career have been tortuous. These experiences cost me a great deal, and I have no doubt that if I had opted for some other line of work, it would have been easier, and I would be healthier (mentally and physically) at this point of my life. Over the course of my life I have developed a serious critique of how we humans live and why that way of living is not sustainable. We live in societies hierarchically structured by class, gender, and race. We consume the nonrenewable raw materials of this planet and pollute the very environment that makes our lives possible. Ever-growing numbers of people are exposed to infectious disease as urban sprawl expands across the planet. Anthropogenic climate change is causing glaciers to calve; this results in rising sea levels and surface-water temperatures worldwide. These changes are threatening to disrupt the currents that control our weather. Some argue that all these changes, though not desirable, are good, because they are the inevitable result of raising economic prosperity across the globe. I disagree. I believe that we can and must devise a better way to live in harmony as people and as part of the biosphere. To achieve that, however, requires a better understanding of how biological systems (including we ourselves) work. Thus, in this work I argue that the discipline of evolutionary biology is a perspective we dare not ignore. We must apply its dictums to the way we are living. The cost of ignoring evolutionary science may be the extinction of the human species. In addition, evolutionary science will not only help us survive the existential crises facing us but can also help us improve the human condition.

We dont have much time to make these changes. American society in the twenty-first century is experiencing a massive contradiction. Science and technology play crucial roles in virtually every aspect of peoples lives, yet at the same time there has been an alarming growth of widespread scientific illiteracy and anti-intellectualismwitness the success of the QAnon conspiracy and the ease with which millions of Americans were convinced that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election. Despite the wildfires raging all over the Northern Hemisphere, significant sectors of America doubt the reality of anthropogenic climate change. A large number of people deny the efficacy of vaccination, a process that has saved more lives than any public health innovation other than clean water. The scientific method and the fundamental facts it reveals are under assault.

Yet of all the facts of science, organic evolution remains the most misunderstood and despised. The assaults against it are being initiated by people on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum. The Right despises evolution because it lays bare the falseness and hypocrisy of most of their core beliefs: the special creation of all organisms, including human beings; the equivalence of biological sex and gender; the innate genetic superiority of persons of European descent; innate racial differences in intelligence and personality; the necessity of private ownership of industry; and individual initiative as the sole source of success in society. Some on the Left despise evolution because they dont accept the scientific method. They claim that science has no special place in the discussion of knowledge. They also claim that science, and particularly evolution, is Eurocentric and sexist and has been used to justify the oppression of the racially subordinated, women, and gay/transgender people.