The Beak of the Finch

by

Jonathan Weiner

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Evolution, the Modern Era, and Nature’s “Resistance Movement” Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Natural Selection and Evolution as Ongoing Processes  Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
Evolution, the Modern Era, and Nature’s “Resistance Movement” Theme Icon
The Interconnectedness of Species and Ecosystems Theme Icon
Hybridization and Specialization Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beak of the Finch, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Evolution, the Modern Era, and Nature’s “Resistance Movement” Theme Icon

“Wherever we aim at a species point-blank, for whatever reason, we drive its evolution, often in the opposite direction from what we ourselves desire,” writes Jonathan Weiner in The Beak of the Finch. The book, written in the early 1990s, calls attention to how humanity’s impact on the globe impacts evolution of the planet’s animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses, but often in ways that are problematic for humanity itself. The book shows through multiple examples how humanity has tried to assert its dominance over nature, and yet nature, through a series of evolutionary processes, continues to resist the modern era’s innovations. By highlighting how the processes of evolution naturally work to resist human dominance, the book suggests that, in fact, human dominance is not as clear as it might seem at first glance: nature is still able to resist the modern era’s technological, entrepreneurial, biological, and medical innovations.

The book explores how the “resistance” of many life forms to human attempts at control is, in and of itself, a form of evolution at work. In one example, author Jonathan Weiner discusses how bacteria are developing increasing resistance to the antibiotics that human have developed to kill them off. The bacteria that survive a dose of antibiotics are, naturally, those that carry the most resistance to the drug. Those surviving bacteria then pass that resistance to their offspring, and those offspring multiply rapidly because they face no competition since the non-resistant bacteria have all been killed off. In this way, colonies of bacteria can rapidly gain resistance to the drugs designed to control them, because the drugs themselves act as a selection pressure for bacterial resistance. In another example, the book explores how insects like moths that feed on cotton crops have developed resistance to pesticides like DDT. The moths that survived initial encounters with these pesticides passed their genes along to their offspring—and in each subsequent generation, the moths have, through pressurized selection, developed hereditary resistance to a huge variety of pesticides. The farmers spraying their crops with harmful insect repellents, then, drive natural selection in a way that produces insects immune to the farmer’s efforts to control them. Evolution is a powerful force—powerful enough, it turns out, to thwart humanity’s attempts to best nature.

Because many different species are evolving to resist humanity’s direct (or inadvertent) targeting of them, the book suggests that humanity is better off conceiving of itself as being a part of nature rather than transcending and dominating it. Charles Darwin himself wrote of how “man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work”. In reality, Darwin supposed that humanity’s capacity for consciousness was simply a random, yet miraculous evolutionary trait that evolved just as his finches’ beaks did. Humanity’s “admiration of ourselves,” Darwin cryptically predicted, would be humanity’s downfall. Humanity occupies its current position of power, the book suggests, because our capacity for heightened consciousness has allowed us to “carve out more adapted niches more rapidly than any other species on the planet.” But the book posits that there is just “one degree” of difference between humanity and other species. For instance, blue tits—small birds found throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and some northern parts of Africa—have learned to peck holes in the lids of milk bottles left out on people’s doorsteps overnight. Ornithologists have observed the phenomenon of blue tits teaching others of their kind how to copy their behavior. And a young female macaque monkey named Imo, native to an island of Japan, learned to wash her food before eating it—and, like the blue tits, taught others of her kind to do the same.

Ultimately, The Beak of the Finch is not interested in trying to diminish what makes humanity unique. The book is clear that the leap to consciousness in humanity is the most profound evolutionary change in the history of the planet. But the book does make the case that humanity, like every other living thing on the planet, lives in relationship with every other living thing. And that arrogant or unheeding efforts by humanity to control nature are likely to end up with unintended, and perhaps disastrous, consequences.

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Evolution, the Modern Era, and Nature’s “Resistance Movement” Quotes in The Beak of the Finch

Below you will find the important quotes in The Beak of the Finch related to the theme of Evolution, the Modern Era, and Nature’s “Resistance Movement”.
Chapter 4 Quotes

Where there are many finches, each mericarp has fewer seeds, but it has longer and more numerous spines. In the steep, rugged, protected place, the mericarps have more seeds and fewer, shorter spines. Peter [Grant] suspects that the caltrop is evolving in response to the finches. Where the struggle for existence is fierce, the caltrop that is likeliest to succeed is the plant that puts more energy into spines and less into seeds; but in the safer, more secluded spot, the fittest plants are the ones that put more energy into making seeds and less energy into protecting them. The finches may be driving the evolution of caltrop while caltrop is driving the evolution of the finches.

Related Characters: Jonathan Weiner (speaker), Peter and Rosemary Grant
Page Number: 64-65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

In times of stress, when the temperature shoots up or down, for instance, or the environment goes suddenly more wet or dry colonies of bacterial cells in a Petri dish will begin to mutate wildly. This is known as the SOS response, for the international distress signal Save Our Souls, Save Our Ship. It increases the chance that at least a few of the cells in the Petri dish will survive the disaster of the new conditions.

The SOS response has been observed in the DNA of maize when it is shocked by hot or cold temperatures. Recently it has been discovered in yeast. Apparently many different kinds of living cells can switch up their mutation rate under stress and relax it again when the stress dies down.

Related Characters: Jonathan Weiner (speaker)
Page Number: 221-222
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

A pesticide applies selection pressure as surely as a drought or flood. The poison selects against traits that make a species vulnerable to it, because the individuals that are most vulnerable are the ones that die first. The poison selects for any trait that makes the species less vulnerable, because the least vulnerable are the ones that survive longest and leave the most offspring. In this way the invention of pesticides in the twentieth century has driven waves of evolution in insects all over the planet.

Related Characters: Jonathan Weiner (speaker), Martin Taylor
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:

In the world's oceans, Norwegian cod, chinook salmon, Atlantic salmon, red snapper, and red porgy are getting smaller, very likely through the selection pressures of the net. Fishermen are not happy with the trend toward small fish, any more than elephant poachers are pleased with the trend toward tusklessness. But both resistance movements are direct results of Darwinian law.

Related Characters: Jonathan Weiner (speaker)
Page Number: 264
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

The black mutants swept up through the mort populations wherever the air was black with the soot of the industrial revolution. Their numbers did not rise in rural parts of Cornwall, Scotland, and Wales. In rural Kent, Darwin's adopted county the black form of the moth was not recorded during his lifetime; but by the middle of this century, nine out of ten Biston betularia were black in Bromley, and seven out of ten in Maidstone.

Manchester, of course, was one of the grimy hubs of the industrial revolution.

Related Characters: Jonathan Weiner (speaker)
Page Number: 272
Explanation and Analysis: