The Evolution of Detours: Rules of Creativity in Life's Problem SolvingBook Review
Andreas Wagner [Author] / Hiroshi Wada [Translator]
Maruzen Publishing, published in November 2024, 3,500 yen (excluding tax)
The reason I really wanted to read this book is that I had previously read "Solving the Mystery of Evolution with Mathematics" (Bungeishunju, 2015) by the same author, and was deeply impressed by his profound knowledge and erudition regarding Neo-Darwinism (although I didn't know it, according to the translator's afterword, the author has another Japanese translation titled "Life Full of Paradoxes" [Seidosha, 2010]). Furthermore, this latest book apparently discusses genetic drift and the evolution of sex. For many years, I have studied the geographical differentiation of chromosome numbers commonly observed in harvestmen, and since genetic drift is an essential process for the fixation of new chromosomal rearrangements within a population, I am very familiar with this phenomenon. Also, since female-producing parthenogenesis was my specialty, the evolution of "sex" has been a long-standing interest of mine as well. Given all this, I simply had to read it.
The adaptive landscape frequently discussed in this book (referred to in the book as the "fitness landscape," so it will be noted as such hereafter) was devised in 1932 by Sewall Wright, one of the three founding fathers of population genetics, and is a familiar diagram in evolutionary biology textbooks. It is usually represented as a three-dimensional graph using the allele frequencies of two loci. The peaks on the landscape represent the genetic composition of populations with high mean fitness, and natural selection only acts to drive the mean fitness upward toward the peaks. This is the crucial point.
Up to Chapter 4, the authors introduce their research on the question of the routes by which enzyme proteins with new functions are acquired on the fitness landscape, while carefully explaining how evolution proceeds on it. Even if there are other higher peaks in the fitness landscape, natural selection only acts to drive the population up toward a single peak. Reaching another, even higher peak requires genetic drift. However, while descending from a peak is difficult if the fitness landscape is two-dimensional, as the dimensions increase to three or four, ridges connect like a spider's web, making it easier to leap to another peak. With chromosomal rearrangements, if the number of homologous chromosome pairs where this occurs increases, rather than ridges connecting, the slopes become increasingly steep, so I cannot shake the feeling of being tricked by this explanation. Yet, following the author's clever explanation, I am persuaded that such a thing might indeed be possible.
Genetic drift is extremely weak in bacteria with small bodies and large population sizes, but it becomes significant when bodies are large and population sizes are small. Therefore, it is said to become important in the evolution of large animals. For instantaneous shifting to another fitness peak, the mixing of genes through sexual reproduction, recombination, and the like work effectively. When written this way, it seems likely that some people might jump to the conclusion that sexual reproduction evolved for that purpose, but this author never says anything of the kind. The benefits of sexual reproduction that outweigh its twofold cost can hardly be explained by natural selection operating at the individual level. In this regard, it renewed my belief that this author is exceptionally trustworthy.
In stark contrast, Chapter 5 discusses the role that heat plays in the formation of diamonds and snowflakes—a process similar to genetic drift—while Chapter 6 addresses the routing problem in the transportation industry. Then, in the final chapters 7 through 9, numerous anecdotes are used to explain how processes akin to genetic drift are crucial in achieving original feats in science, art, literature, and other fields. Furthermore, citing a wealth of research materials, the book argues how vital it is for a society to value diversity, tolerate failure, and protect individual autonomy in order to produce original research and art. The tone is persuasive, making this a section that I feel should undoubtedly be read not only by many politicians and individuals involved in educational administration, but by anyone engaged in education.
This book covers a wide variety of topics across a broad range of fields, and I think no matter who reads it, they will find something somewhere that strikes a chord with their intellectual curiosity. For me, the most fascinating of these was the revelation that bdelloid rotifers—long known as the only example of a lineage that repeatedly undergoes speciation via the production of females through parthenogenesis—were found to possess over 3,000 foreign genes (page 96). It has long been known that speciation does not occur in lineages that reproduce via parthenogenesis, with bdelloid rotifers being the sole exception. Because of this, some suggested there might be some unknown mechanism like somatic recombination, but nothing further was known. However, even though the mechanism remained unclear, it seems it had actually been proven that their genome is diverse. That paper apparently appeared in the journal Nature in 2013, but carelessly, I had missed it.
Books of this kind translated by translators who are not biology specialists often tend to contain what I consider to be clear errors in terminology selection, but this book was translated by a qualified evolutionary biology specialist, allowing me to read on with peace of mind. According to the translator's afterword, "recombination" was translated selectively as "recombination" (kumikae), "exchange of genetic material," and "re-arrangement" (kumikae). Such attention to detail would likely have been difficult for a translator lacking sufficient knowledge of biology. I noticed only four minor typos (which pose no problem whatsoever for comprehension) on pages 91, 145, 195, and 216. Calculating this according to the author's favored style of expressing everything in numbers, the typo rate is a mere 0.0021%. This is surely remarkably low for a newly published first-edition book.
It is quite interesting and a good book that I would recommend to many people. I think this book will also be very useful as a self-help book for young researchers who aim to conduct original research.
Nobuhiro Tsurusaki (Professor Emeritus, Tottori University)
Review of The Evolution of Detours: Rules of Creativity Seen in Life's Problem Solving (PDF file)
