In the end, he wants us to believe that something very like human nature was bound to emerge sooner or later from the evolutionary process. This contrasts with Gould's position, which follows a materialist tradition pioneered by the founder of modern Darwinian paleontology, George Gaylord Simpson, who insisted that humans were a most unlikely product of so haphazard a process. Gould's Marxist leanings are well known, and we can see why he would favor a viewpoint that leaves the human race to figure out its own moral values with no hints provided by any transcendental source. Conway Morris's opposition to this is driven by a more traditional perception of the human situation. He tells us that our intelligence is a gift, that we shall be called into account and that the evils perpetrated by humanity make sense only if they can be redeemed.
Evolution is predetermined, but it has only happened once.
To a historian of science such as myself, the books by Gould and Conway Morris seem themselves like a rerunning of the tape of history, but in this case there is a loop that was first played in the late-19th century and is now repeating itself almost exactly. For all the new discoveries and the modern apparatus of cladistic analysis, the alternative visions of the nature of history are as clear today as they were to the biologists who tried to defend their belief in a purposeful universe against the assault of Darwin's Origin of Species . Peter Bowler writes and teaches at Queen's University of Belfast, where he is professor of history and philosophy of science.