Key point: I think the right way is to start with the sentence: “We do not have any hard evidence of the forces leading to the following evolutionary change.”

Key point: I think the right way is to start with the sentence: “We do not have any hard evidence of the forces leading to the following evolutionary change.” There has to be a prelude to the discussion of evolutionary change to make it clear that although the theory of natural selection is very important and happens lots, there are other forces, or other mechanisms, that lead to change and we are not obliged by being Darwinians and being evolutionists to invent adaptive explanations for all changes. I think that’s where you have to start. Then, as either a philosopher or biologist, ask in a particular case what is the direct evidence, besides the desire that we want to find something, that a particular story is true or not true. Most of the time we’re going to have to say that this happened in the Eocene or the Paleocene and we haven’t the foggiest notion of why it happened. I think the admission of necessary ignorance of historically remote things is the first rule of intellectual honesty in evolution. This was an interesting interview. The take-away, I think, is that speculating on origins and "just so stories" is a fine way to think about things, but it isn't science and should be prefaced by a frank admission that there is no evidence to support those speculations. When chin-stroking "what if..." theories, however interesting, become conflated in public discussion (and in scholarly circles) with evidence-based theories, science suffers.