Editor's Note:
Philip Skell's opinion highlights the proximate vs. ultimate causation dichotomy that's so familiar to biology students. One might conclude that the question is unfair in asking evolutionary theory to address proximate issues rather than those it is more appropriately concerned with – questions about why something is the way it is.
Philip Skell is ignoring the agent who "makes sense" in the famous Dobzhansky quote. Some experimental biologists don't "need" an understanding of the role the process they are investigating plays in evolution because they are so specialized and mentally narrow that they operate as technicians, however competent, not PhDs. Anyone can drive a car without understanding Newtonian ...
