8 Update TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution
1 January 2004
| Letters
Long-lived fellows
M. de L. Brooke, Victoria Copas, Rachel Gylee and Oliver Krüger
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, UK CB2 3EJ
In many parts of the world, Oxford and Cambridge
Universities epitomize privilege, and the life of an
Oxbridge College Fellow is viewed as being especially
congenial. Fellows dine off Georgian silver, live amid
world-class architecture, sit on their College’s Governing
Body which, inter alia, manages substantial endowments,
and teach some of the UK’s best students. We wondered
whether the life style is in fact so life enhancing that it
leads to longer life spans among Fellows than among
control cohorts. Such a longevity advantage, at least at
Cambridge, has been predicted in fiction [1].
Our sample of Fellows comprised 311 men who were born
between 1900 and 1920, elected to Fellowships by the 20
Cambridge Colleges founded before 1900, and who are now
deceased at an age of 60 or greater. Their ages at death are
recorded in the Cambridge University Reporter magazine.
We had two control groups. The first comprised 558 men, also
born between 1900 and 1920, who were undergraduates at
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and who had now
died at an age of 60 or greater. This College maintains
particularly thorough records of its alumni, and was chosen
simply for this reason. We assumed that this control group
closely matched the Fellows group for social background.
The second control group was the wider UK population,
whose life expectancy is recorded by the UK Office of
National Statistics (http://www.statistics.gov.uk). For this
second group, we noted the mean life expectation of further
life for 60-year-old males born in 1911 (the mid-point of our
1900–1920 birth era for Fellows and undergraduates). By
comparing the life expectancy of individuals who had
already reached 60 years of age, we aimed to minimize any
differences between groups that might have been due to
workplace accidents, car crashes and war.
At age 60, the median expectation offurther life of Fellows
was 19 years, significantly more than the undergraduates
Corresponding author: M. de L. Brooke (m.brooke@zoo.cam.ac.uk).
| Book Reviews
God and nature revisited
When Science and Christianity Meet edited by D.C. Lindberg and R.L. Numbers. University of Chicago Press, 2003 £20.50 hbk
(368 pages) ISBN 0226482146
Robert T. Pennock
Lyman Briggs School and Department of Philosophy, E-30 Holmes Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA
Corresponding author: Robert T. Pennock (pennock5@msu.edu).
http://tree.trends.com
Vol.19 No.
(16 years: Mann-Whitney U-test, W ¼ 150901, P , 0:001)
and the national males (mean 15.3 years: Wilcoxon
Z , 32473, P , 0:001). The undergraduates were not signifi-
cantly longer lived than the national population. Because a
few Fellows born between 1900 and 1920 are still alive, and at
least 83 years of age, the difference between the Fellows and
national group will eventually be slightly larger than reported
here. Within the Fellows group, a GLM analysis failed to
identify any of the following as significant predictors of
longevity: age at start of fellowship, subject (arts or science),
College age, College wealth or Fellowship category (such as
ordinary Fellow or Master of College). Data about the Fellows’
marital status and number of children were not available.
It seems unlikely that the enhanced longevity of
Fellows seems is due to childhood background, because
the undergraduates are no longer lived than the national
population. It could be due to the (assumed) greater
intelligence of Fellows, if there were a link between
intelligence and longevity, or it could be due to features of
the College lifestyle that enhance longevity. Such features
might include a secure job, accommodation and pension, a
supportive community and the esteem of one’s peers. They
are features shared with a monastic life style, and earlier
work has demonstrated enhanced life spans among monks
[2]. Whether this longevity advantage will also be enjoyed
by Fellows elected during the late 20th century remains to
be seen. Pass the port please.
References
1 Adams, D. (1988) Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Pan Books
2 DeGouw, H.W.F.M. et al. (1995) Decreased mortality among
contemplative monks in the Netherlands. Am. J. Epidemiol. 141,
771 – 775
0169-5347/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tree.2003.11.003
In 1981, David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers con-
vened a group of fellow historians to reconsider old
assessments of the relationship between science and
religion, and published the results in a scholarly
 Update TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution
anthology entitled God and Nature: Historical Essays
on the Encounter between Christianity and Science [1].
They recently assembled another group to revisit the
topic in a volume that aims to fill the need for a more
broadly accessible collection.
The new anthology, When Science and Christianity
Meet, covers a dozen important case studies, ranging
from the medieval views of Augustine and Roger Bacon
to the Galileo affair to John Tyndall’s 19th-century
proposal for a scientific test of intercessionary prayer.
The five chapters covering geology and evolution are of
particular interest.
Janet Browne describes how increasing knowledge of
natural history, such as of the number and distribution
of species of animals around the world, gradually
undermined the traditional account of Noah’s Ark, and
Mott Greene recounts how geological evidence led the
clergymen-scientists who were Darwin’s older contem-
poraries to give up their belief in a literal biblical
Deluge, although, in neither case did this mean giving
up Christian faith in general. David Livingstone,
drawing on material from his underappreciated book
Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders [2], charts the reaction of
evangelical scientists and theologians to the theory of
evolution. In what will be a surprise to many, he shows
that Darwin’s theory was substantially assimilated
among evangelical intellectuals throughout the 19th
and early 20th centuries.
In many ways, the anthology appears to be a
diplomatic intervention. In their introduction, the editors
explicitly reject both the views that science and Christianity
are necessarily in conflict or in harmony. They adopt what
John Hedley Brooke calls the ‘complexity thesis’. Most
chapters take the same approach, beginning with mention of
someone who speaks of the episode in question in terms of
conflict and then suggesting that the perspective is
misleading.
Adding nuance to an oversimplified view is all to the
good, and for the most part the contributors succeed in
revealing the complexities in a way that lets the reader
judge their import. However, sometimes, the effort at
diplomacy becomes strained. Some contributors con-
clude with an expression of reconciliation of science
and religion, even when the facts they presented more
reasonably indicate an accommodation or capitulation of the
latter. Occasionally, the effort to overturn a stereotype,
rather than increasing clarity, winds up muddying the
waters. Edward Larson, in his chapter about the Scopes
Trial, spends almost as much time recounting the dramatic
elements of the play Inherit the Wind as on the trial
itself. The point seems to be to highlight details where
it differs from what transpired in Dayton, Tennessee.
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Vol.19 No.1 January 2004 9
Unfortunately, the rather literal compare and contrast
discussion of the trial and the play shortchanges under-
standing of both.
For instance, Larson devotes a mere three sentences
to the trial discussions about the defense’s key
contention that the Tennessee anti-evolution law was
unconstitutional. He mentions the dramatic arguments
about individual freedom and majority rule, but
neither explains nor describes them. His discussion
also misses how the play, by departing from some
specifics of the trial, actually better captures the
McCarthyite ideological intolerance that the creation-
ism conflict exemplifies. True, unlike the defendant in
Inherit the Wind, Scopes’ own job and liberty were
never put at risk when he agreed to serve as a test
case. But, even today, legislators propose laws that
would fire a teacher for teaching evolution and many
fundamentalist schools require their science professors
to sign a statement professing faith in creation over
evolution as a condition of employment. And although
Clarence Darrow might not have been as cuddly as
Spencer Tracy, it hardly seems reasonable to endorse
an unfair characterization of him as ‘a vicious, godless
man’.
One finds a few similar problems in other chapters.
Thomas Broman, after describing the received analysis
of the Enlightenment as a confrontation between
science and religion that began a trend toward
disenchantment and secularization, says we must
reassess that view. He suggests that we might better
trace that trend to the moment in the Book of Genesis
when God gives Adam dominion over the earth. This
alternative thesis is unsupported and rather odd, to
say the least. Lindberg himself, in his chapter on
Galileo, goes rather too easy on the Inquisition and
almost winds up blaming the victim.
In spite of such occasional lapses, the book overall is
perfectly pitched for its intended audience and suc-
ceeds as no other has. For an undergraduate course on
science and religion, this should become the text of
choice.
References
1 Lindberg, D.C., Numbers, R.L. eds (1986) God and Nature: Historical
Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science University of
California Press
2 Livingstone, D.N. (1987) Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter
Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought, Scottish
Academy Press
0169-5347/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tree.2003.08.006