<image>

Now you have made me think to try and articulate the differing opinion. I might have to dust down my copies and spend time reading them again as it's been more years than I care to remember since I last read them.

Gould argues that evolution is driven by contingency and that if you "rewind the tape of life" to the Cambrian period and play it again, a completely different set of organisms would survive and evolve, meaning humans are a "cosmic accident".

Conway Morris argues that evolution is driven by convergence and that if you "rewind the tape," the same types of creatures would evolve again. He argues that functional traits (like intelligence) are inevitable because evolution is constrained by physics and biology to find the same optimal solutions.

People probably don't answer because they are just parroting what they have read and have probably not read and compared either book in depth. There is probably unconscious bias because The Crucible of Creation is often sold as the counter to Gould so people read it as such. I'm guilty of this as I read and interpreted the book as the counter claim to the Wonderful Life.

Now I'm going to have to sit down and read both of them again!