From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life

Haig, a Harvard biology professor, debuts with an expansive, if sometimes impenetrable, exploration of deep questions about the meaning of life. His main goal “is to explain how a physical world of matter in motion, of material and efficient causes, gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning.” Along the way, he argues that meaning arises from interpretation of data, regardless of whether the data resides in DNA or a line of poetry, and that “an appreciation of this continuum of meaningful interpretation will help to reunite the humanities and sciences in a continuum of intellectual endeavor.” This conciliation depends upon his likely to be contentious assertion that biologists must “incorporate subjectivity into their objective understanding of living things.” To discuss biology, Haig focuses on research into natural selection and provides details of cutting-edge work—which, unfortunately, only specialists will fully understand. His discussions of philosophy and literature are similarly forbidding. Haig does evince, however, an inviting sense of wit in his writing (a footnote to his reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave reads simply “This is my footnote to Plato”). Nonetheless, the audience for a book of this breadth and depth will not be vast. (May)