DNA, C. S. Lewis and Chronological Snobbery
That Madison Avenue successfully entices us to purchase products by simply telling us that they are “new,” says something unflattering about human nature. Our attraction to fads, our desire to be seen as belonging to a popular group, to be accepted by the “cool” kids, explains why so many willingly go along with the latest fashions: sharing preferred pronouns, advocating new names for colonial-era species to advertise their woke bona fides, or preferring comparatively uninformative DNA barcodes over information-rich taxonomic revisions and monographs, as proof that they are hip to the latest thing. Others, of course, have more crassly pragmatic reasons to follow the crowd, cashing in on easy grant money that follows pop trends in science; a different, but profitable, source of betrayal of science.
C. S. Lewis. British author, literary scholar, and lay Anglican theologian taught at Oxford (1925-1954) and Cambridge (1954-1963) and wrote, among other works, The Chronicles of Narnia. The “chronological snobbery” he describes in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, applies to science, too, helping us explain the irrational preference for DNA barcodes over traditional, information-rich morphological and holomorphological data (Willi Hennig’s term for all relevant evidence).
The appeal to all things modern is a time-honored tool of the huckster. We are to believe that something is an obvious improvement over the status quo simply because it is new or modern by comparison. A Wikipedia discussion of this “appeal to novelty” states that “The fallacy may take two forms: overestimating the new and modern, prematurely and without investigation assuming it to be best-case, or underestimating status quo, prematurely and without investigation assuming it to be worst-case.”
Advocates of molecular-based taxonomy deceive us in two ways, both of which are obvious on examination. The first is based on an appeal to the latest technology, of convincing us that to use DNA is to approach taxonomy in a new, modern, and better way—and that this is self-evidently a good thing, without a critical assessment of the relative value to the goals of systematic biology. The second is based on the absurd implication that DNA data itself is “new.” Yes, the widespread and affordable access to technology that allows us to isolate and sequence DNA is relatively new, at least compared to access to morphological evidence, but for biologists to regard DNA data itself as new and, conversely, morphology as old, is simply bizarre.
“’What David [Lees] describes [about DNA data and two possible species] is the twenty-first century analysis to determine whether they are the same or different species,’ says Mark [Sterling]. ‘The next stage in satisfying yourself as to whether it is a new species is the rather more old-fashioned nineteenth and twentieth century analysis of looking at the morphology.” (italics mine) — from Natural History Museum, London, press release, 23 November 2023 “Moth found in west London by local resident is a new species to science from Australia”
A morphological character, and the genes coding for it, are necessarily of one and the same age. DNA data is no more “new” than a recently discovered morphological character; both have only just come to our attention; each are biological attributes with roots of the same depth in evolutionary time. To treat DNA as if it has some mystical or superior quality simply because it is only recently accessible is silly and wrongheaded. It is a manifestation of what C. S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. One need only read or listen to advocates of DNA barcoding to sense an ill-founded, arrogant snobbery reinforced by popularity, groupthink, and cornering the market on research grant money. Science has to do with discovering and testing timeless truths and knowledge, not popularity. The once widespread belief that maggots were spontaneously generated in rotting meat did not make it so.
“Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed forever two elements in my own thought. In the first place he made short work of what I have called my "chronological snobbery," the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”— C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (pp. 207-208)
DNA data is no better than morphology data—to the contrary, for certain important purposes it is decidedly inferior to morphology—yet few dare to attack its undeserved elevated position, and its disciples feel absolutely no need to defend its relative value to the advance of taxonomic knowledge… or their neglect of evidence from morphology. As E. O. Wilson once said to me at a meeting in Washington, quietly and offstage, molecular data does not get more grant money than morphology because it’s better, it’s assumed to be better because it gets more grant money. There is an ephemeral shine on molecular taxonomy derived from the impactful role of DNA in contemporary biomedicine and the rush of huge sums of money into molecular research, but this is an exaggerated measure of its value to taxonomy unworthy of the rich intellectual traditions and mission of taxonomy. In science, chronological snobbery and funding trends are inexorably intertwined.
It is time to reject the chronological snobbery associated with molecular data and get back to the business of systematic biology. Taxonomists are in pursuit of the same knowledge they have sought for centuries: to discover what species exist, understand what makes each unique, determine the significance of the amazing pattern of similarities and differences among them, and organize knowledge in a “natural,” what we today interpret to mean phylogenetic, classification. DNA is valuable evidence in this regard, of course, but no more so than morphology, fossils or developing embryos. And it sure as hell is no newer.
I conclude with another quote from C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy (p. 206):
“’Why—damn it—it’s medieval,’ I exclaimed; for I still had all the chronological snobbery of my period and used the names of the earlier periods as terms of abuse.”
Morphology, fossils and embryos are just as informative, relevant and exciting today as ever, in fact more so, in light of advances in phylogenetic theory and innovations in microscopy and digital technologies. There is no valid evidential, scientific or philosophical reason to prefer molecules over morphology—only chronological snobbery, the greedy pursuit of grant money, and yearning to be accepted by experimental biologists, even if it comes at the expense of the integrity and informativeness of systematics. Fashion be damned. We should honor, celebrate, revere, defend, and continue the comparative, descriptive and revisionary approach that characterized taxonomy of earlier periods, even as we integrate the latest theories, methods, and technologies into the process of discovering, describing and classifying species and clades.
References
Lewis, C.S. 1966. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Natural History Museum, London. Press Release: 23 November 2023. [retrieved 25 November 2023]
I think DNA barcodes are the taxonomic mark of the beast.