Stephen Jay Gould has been one of the most vocal opponents of such icons because they imply a sense of direct linear progress from some primitive ancestor to a modern species when, in fact, the actual evolution involves branching trees with multiple lineages, most of which have gone extinct. In one of his most famous essays, Life's Little Joke (Gould, 1987, 1991), Gould explains why the evolution of horses is falsely depicted as a march of progress.
This is life's little joke. By imposing the model of the ladder upon the reality of bushes, we have guaranteed that our classic examples of evolutionary progress can only apply to unsuccessful lineages on the very brink of extermination—for we can linearize a bush only if it maintains but one surviving twig that we can falsely place at the summit of a ladder. I need hardly remind everybody that at least one other mammalian lineage, preeminent among all our attention and concern, shares with horses the sorry state of reduction from a formerly luxuriant bush to a single surviving twig—the very property of extreme tenuousness that permist us to build a ladder reaching only to the heart of our own folly and hubris.
In order to understand what he is saying, imagine a similar march of progress icon for bonobos, a close relative of chimpanzees. Where would you put chimps in such an image? And would it be fair to depict the entire lineage of ape evolution over the past 30 million years as culminating in bonobos? And, in the case of humans, where do Neanderthals and Denisovans fit into the march of progress icon?
Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. Most people may know this as a phrase to be uttered, but not a concept brought into the deep interior of understanding. Hence we continually make errors inspired by unconscious allegiance to the ladder of progress, even when we explicitly deny such a superannuated view of life. (p. 35)
I've discussed this before on Sandwalk, especially in 2008 when I complimented the Intelligent Design Creationist, Casey Luskin, for a comment he made about the cover of a book about the Dover trial. ["Monkey Girl" and False Icons] (See the cover below.) Luskin said,
Any book with an icon of evolution on its cover — in this case, the fanciful diagram of ape-like skeletons transitioning into a human skeleton — is bound to be unfriendly towards intelligent design (ID).
That brings me to the cover of Icons of Evolution shown at the top of the page. It's author, Jonathan Wells, died recently so the creationists are posting lots of eulogies on their websites. One of them praised the cover of the book and quoted the illustrator who drew the march of progress icon [Evolutionary Icons and an Iconic Cover]. Jody Sjogren writes,
Incidentally, I was thinking about the time back in the year 2000 when I was working on this ape-to-human drawing for Jonathan’s book. Having been trained as a medical illustrator, and having worked in that field for many years, I was accustomed to researching everything for scientific accuracy as I was constructing an illustration. This one was giving me fits, because I wasn’t sure what was “right and accurate” in the various figures that make up this metamorphosis. So, I called Jonathan and explained my dilemma. His response was “Oh Jody, just make something up. It’s just a figment of their imagination anyway.” So, that relieved me of the need for technical accuracy, and I went ahead and made up the ape figures and the “golden boy.” To my deep regret, I succeeded in creating such a piece of art that various evolution-friendly propagandists have found it useful, and have used it liberally without my permission (in violation of copyright, I might add). Later it occurred to me that the evolutionists have been propagating, as fact, ridiculous figments of an artist’s imagination, ever since the time of Darwin. In fact, all of the “icons of evolution” are just that — the work of an artist’s mind and hand! The Darwinists have used artists incredibly effectively to promote their theory, and they couldn’t have done so without those visual images — and the artists who created them. Jonathan’s great genius was in recognizing the power of these “icons of evolution.” And he called their bluff.
So let's see if I've got this straight. Jonathan Wells and Jody Sjogren agree with Stephen Jay Gould and other experts in evolutionary biology that such figures are misleading and shouldn't be used to illustrate evolution. They agree with Casey Luskin that such icons are fanciful and that putting one on the cover of a book is a bad idea. Nevertheless, they felt that it was perfectly acceptable to make up a march of progress icon to illustrate a book that is critical of evolution icons.
Wells reproduces the cover image in his book accompanied by the following figure legend on page 211.
Figure 11-1 The Ultimate Icon
Although it is widely used to show that we are just animals, and that our very existence is a mere accident, the ultimate icon goes far beyond the evidence. Such drawings are (in Stephen Jay Gould's words) "incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature."
First, the false icon does not show that "our very existence is a mere accident." That's the problem. Instead, it implies a march of progress that's much more compatible with the views of some creationists. Gould's point is that much of evolution more like an accident and that's why he opposes such icons. So, Wells knows very well that leading evolutionary biologists don't like the march of progress icon and he knowns that his illustrator just made it up but he still calls it the ultimate icon. That's weird.
Gould, S.J. (1991) "Life's Little Joke," in Bully for Brontosoraurus, W.W. Norton & Co. (1991) first published in Natural History in 1987.
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