Science Icon Fires Broadside At Creationists

London Times vis The Statesman (India) ^ | 04 July 2004 | Times of London Editorial

[PatrickHenry]

Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.

The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.

Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.

His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.

The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.

Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.

Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.

It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.

Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.

[tortoise]

if it exists soemwhere, it must be able to exist with us as well. the idea that we all originated from a single point would lead me to assume here is as good as there.

This made no sense.

[MacDorcha]

i was stating that if a closed system was at all possible, there is no reason we cant reproduce it.

[Ichneumon]

What Doctor Stochastic calls being “active” and what Ichneumon calls “operating” is what I have been reading as “information”, i.e. “successful communication”.

Information is distinct from communication, just as electrons are distinct from electricity. It doesn't help to blur the distinctions between the two, it only muddies the issue.

Both of you have prejudiced your verb choice with biochemical causation. But it seems to me that suggesting cause is circular reasoning and thus should not be a factor in answering the question,

Have you not "prejudiced your verb choice" with information? And is this thus circular reasoning?

especially since both the live and dead cells have the same basic chemical composition and DNA.

But not the same chemical *activity*, which is why we indicated that the activity was the key. In stating that "information" is the crux, you're on less solid ground since the "same basic chemical composition and DNA" indicates a similarity in information content.

"Activity" or "operation" are fairly close to "information"

I quite disagree.

but IMHO fall short in that you could shake a dead skin cell like a martini and it would still not be alive.

Vibration is not the same as "operating machinery". Shake an auto junkyard and the junked cars will not begin to run again.

IOW, such activity or operation must be also be autonomous and meaningful. Therefore, I prefer the word I see used most often to describe it: information (successful communication).

So a computer network is alive?

The dead skin cell has ceased to communicate.

I think you need to tighten up your definition here. With what does a tree "communicate"? Or a single-celled photosynthesizing algae?

And what is the distinction between "communication" and "exchange"? Is a decomposing cow corpse alive because it exchanges tissues and gases with the bacteria consuming it, and the surrounding environment? Is a dead whithering plant alive when it "communicates" its water content to the atmosphere?

[MacDorcha]

well, according to the Bible, Man simply lived and died as he walked with God.

this may be a way to explain Man's first Sin. thought outside of nature (clothing, cultivation, anything "ciivlized") God walked with Man until Man made civilization and said "we're ok now, we dont need God"

keep in mind, this is simply me thinking about how this could fit with what we know now.

God walking with Man could simply mean "we were all buck naked, and happy to be here"

then we got wise (prefrontal lobe?) and started to reason.

and God showed us where we went wrong, and set us back on course with having the Jewish Nation founded.

[tortoise]

i was stating that if a closed system was at all possible, there is no reason we cant reproduce it.

Well, that's the problem: we can't reproduce it.

Which was my whole point. Universal Turing Machines can't be produced either yet most of theoretical computer science is predicated on it. Many well-educated but otherwise foolish people forget that UTMs don't exist and are qualitatively different than what we can produce. A similar story exists with respect to closed systems and thermodynamics. Engineering often assumes closed systems for its equations when no such thing exists -- the errors get buried in engineering fudge factor.

It is dangerous to assume that just because an assumption is pervasive that it has a real existence in our universe. Pervasive myths in many fields of endeavour exist because they have utility, NOT because they are factual in any given instance. For many purposes myth is cheaper than fact, and if there is no harm there is no foul.

You need to learn what is "fact" (to the extent that such things exist) and what is "pervasive myths treated as fact because they have utility". Just because a concept is useful does not imply that it is a real thing in our universe. This may not affect most people in their day to day lives too often, but if you want to get down to brass tacks you have to know the difference.

[Ichneumon]

[Is an anthrax spore alive?]

Yes. It is in a dormant state (like a stand by mode)

How is "dormant" different from "dead" (or "alive" for that matter)? I don't think that's going to be an easy one to answer without begging the question of the definition of "alive".

but still communicates with itself and the environment,

Not exactly, and that's where things get fuzzy. The anthrax spore does not "communicate with itself" unless triggered. Its internal processes have ceased. It exchanges nothing with the outside environment (which is exactly why it can survive conditions that would otherwise kill, starve, suffocate, or poison it to death). It performs no enzymatic activity or macromolecular synthesis or metabolic processes. It requires no source of energy, because it is completely inactive. It can remain in this state for thousands of years -- or hundreds of millions of years. There is, in short, no activity, no "exchange of information" during the dormant state.

Absent the appropriate trigger(s), it's as dead and inactive as an insect in amber.

So by what measure is it alive?

when a food supply exists (like in a human lung) - it comes out of the dormant state.

Only because chemically, it's "set" like a mousetrap, and can *begin* to operate again if its "locks" are tickled open by the appropriate chemical "keys", setting things into motion again. But it's incorrect to say that it "exchanges" information during its dormancy, as if it's constantly "testing" and "evaluating" conditions. It's not. It's no more communicating than is a music box motionlessly awaiting its lid to be raised.

So -- is an anthrax spore alive?

[Sola Veritas]

Thank you so very much for the link you provided to:

Marcel-Paul Schützenberger:
The Miracles of Darwinism

Just read it and was astonded. Do you have any other goodies like that one?

[Ichneumon]

Which was my whole point. Universal Turing Machines can't be produced either yet most of theoretical computer science is predicated on it. Many well-educated but otherwise foolish people forget that UTMs don't exist and are qualitatively different than what we can produce.

Well... The processing mechanism is straightforward to produce, but that infinite tape is the real b**ch.

But for a real tour de force, check out this Turing Machine built using Conway's game of Life. (Short background on Conway's game of Life can be found here.) Who would have believed that a grid operating under such a simple ruleset (originally conceived as just an idle amusement) would contain enough richness of behavior to enable the existence and operation of a full Universal Turing Machine? And who would have thought that a handful of subatomic particles would contain enough richness of behavior as to enable the existence of biological life?

[Ichneumon]

Just read it and was astonded.

What did you find astounding about it? I found it to be an ordinary collection of the fallacy of the argument from ignorance, unsupported assertions, "God of the gaps", etc.

[Sola Veritas]

Ichthumon wrote - Is an anthrax spore alive?

Alamo Girl repied - Yes. It is in a dormant state (like a stand by mode) but still communicates with itself and the environment, when a food supply exists (like in a human lung) - it comes out of the dormant state.

As a microbiologist I would say that Alamo Girl got it exactly right. I would like to hear her take on viruses. Personally, I don't consider them to be life - but instead the code of life run amuck. Calling a computer virus a virus is very apt. It is code designed to take over or disrupt and then just replicate itself.

[Sola Veritas]

"What did you find astounding about it? I found it to be an ordinary collection of the fallacy of the argument from ignorance, unsupported assertions, "God of the gaps", etc."

First of all, the man is not a creationist and is unbiased in that regard. Secondly, his understanding of evolutionary theory is sound - you are not the only person here with a bio science background. Thirdly, he shows where it just can't be as presented by its proponents - something is missing.

"Arguments from ignorance?" Hardly, he makes the hard core evolutionists look ignorant. Probability and mathematics are much easier to test via the scientific method than evolution.

[Ichneumon]

First of all, the man is not a creationist and is unbiased in that regard.

Please provide some support for this statement.

Secondly, his understanding of evolutionary theory is sound - you are not the only person here with a bio science background.

His understanding of evolutionary theory is frequently off base (as he himself admits, "Biology is, of course, not my specialty.") For one example, he says of Gould's work, "The saltationist view, revived by Stephen Jay Gould, in the end represents an idea due to Richard Goldschmidt." Horse manure. As Gould himself writes:

"In particular, and most offensive to me, the urban legend rests on the false belief that radical, "middle-period" punctuated equilibrium became a saltational theory wedded to Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters as a mechanism. I have labored to refute this nonsensical charge from the day I first heard it."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Punctuated Equilibrium's Threefold History"

Thirdly, he shows where it just can't be as presented by its proponents - something is missing.

That's how he invokes the "God of the gaps" -- the age-old declaration that lurking in the gaps (however small) in our current knowledge, there is Something Big And Significant. The fallacy here is that by definition, if we don't know it, one can't jump to conclusions about whether it's going to eventually be found to fit within existing theory and expectations, or not. But that's precisely what Schützenberger tries to do when he asserts his belief that the unanswered questions are flatly unanswerable within current theory.

Ironically he almost addresses this issue himself when he writes, "These cascading interactions, with their feedback loops, express an organization whose complexity we do not know how to analyze". As he himself makes clear in this passage (but seems to fail to grasp the implications), many of the unanswered questions are unanswered *NOT* because current theory has been shown lacking, but because the systems themselves are "messy" enough that it will take a while before we are able to fully describe them and their interactions (which is the first step to performing a full analysis on what can or cannot have been responsible for their formation).

"Arguments from ignorance?" Hardly, he makes the hard core evolutionists look ignorant.

Where, exactly? The few places he attempted to snottily describe evolutionists as too simplistic in their approaches, the real case was that evolutionists had long been studying the very "complications" that Schützenberger arrogantly (and ignorantly) falsely accuses them of overlooking.

For example, "The idea that causes may interact with one another is now standard in mathematical physics; it is a point that has had difficulty in penetrating the carapace of biological thought." This is a completely specious charge. The evolutionary literature is replete with countless examinations of the implications of "the idea that causes may interact with one another".

For a direct example of Schützenberger's arrogant ignorance, he flatly states, "A typographical change in a computer program does not change it just a little. It wipes the program out, purely and simply." Well, "simple" things for simple minds -- but in reality "typographical changes" in computer programs are one of the many fruitful methods by which real results are produced in the field of genetic programming, which harness the power of EVOLUTION to do exactly that which Schützenberger here declares impossible, "pure and simple". The field of genetic programming had exploded long before this 1996 interview --what was Schützenberger's excuse for such ignorance?

Finally, the "argument from ignorance" doesn't mean someone's making an ignorant argument -- it means that they are invoking the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. Schützenberger employs this again and again, generally in the form, "I can't conceive that evolution could produce such complexity, thus it clearly couldn't have".

Probability and mathematics are much easier to test via the scientific method than evolution.

Whenever a biological issue is understood well enough to allow a valid mathematical or probabilistic analysis, evolution has passed it with flying colors.

[Ichneumon]

As a microbiologist I would say that Alamo Girl got it exactly right.

Read #726 and get back to me.

[tallhappy]

Smart children keep their ears and eyes open and their mouths shut.

And true to this you certainly have opened your big mouth.

[tallhappy]

To what do you attribute your ignorance? Did you not read widely enough?

Don't let these sad sack wannabe bullies bother you. They have never held a pipette in their lives but obsess over their quasi religion in the delusion they actually know anything about biology or evolution.

They are very defensive about their religious beliefs and anger easily if proper respect is not paid to their icons -- and moreso if the blasphemer actually knows more than they about the field they ostensibly venerate.

They actually fear and resent your honesty and lack of pretension.

Perhaps these fellows can apply for a position at a pharmaceutical company or the like. As for their experience and skills they can say, "no I don't know how to subclone, transfect, do PCR, run a mass spec or do an elisa or radioligand binding assay, but I sure have heard of Ernst Mayer."

[tallhappy]

To me, when a biologist uses it in discussions about DNA, he's talking about the arrangement of the molecules, which determines their function.

This is gibberish.

What "molecules" and what "arrangement" are you talking about?

Again, the sentence I quote above from you is gibberish and utterly meaningless.

I know you will not respond to clarify what you mean because you do understand that you do not know or understand what you are trying to talk about and think that by avoiding any elaboration or discussion that fact can be hidden.

I do know what you are trying, and fail utterly, to say. Yet you are more mistaken than correct in your point.

[tallhappy]

His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.

For some reason I don't think pointing out the widespread acceptance of evolution in the days preceding the establishment of Nazi Germany contributes well to his thesis.

[laredo44]

You: if science is so perfect at explaining away things, why is it not ok to kill another man in cold blood?

Me: Because no one chooses the part on the one being killed. Same thing with stealing. No one chooses to be the one whose stuff gets taken.

You: that isnt science, thats morals and philosphy.

You don't know it isn't science. An instinct for self preservation has long been asserted not only for man but for other animal life as well. The tuna does not volunteer to be the shark's dinner. A notion that it is all right to murder in cold blood just does not fit the facts as observed by science.

Same thing with stealing. Animals fight all the time to protect what's theirs whether it be territory, a kill, or a mate. How many National Geographic specials do you have to watch where male horses or lions or wolves battle to see which will be the "alpha?" Once it is their herd or their pride or their pack they won't give it up without a fight.

[PatrickHenry]

But Patrick, I don't have to allege that the information is a "message" coming from "somewhere" when -- so to speak -- the "medium is the message." I will repeat again: I don't have to put God on the stage here in order for the natural world to explain itself. If we would but listen. Why is this point so elusive, so difficult for you?

The point is "so elusive" because I still don't see any persuasive evidence to support the point, or any evidence at all, other than the biological material which you say is evidence not only of itself, but also of more than itself. I admit the possibility that I may be suffering from what's known around here as OJ juror syndrome (or creationist's block), that is, the psychological refusal to recognize evidence when it's right in front of me. So help me out: show me the evidence.

But enough about your point. Let's return to mine, which (to be fair and balanced) seems elusive for you. I still think that your use of the word "information" is being improperly imbued with enough subtle characteristics to load the dice in favor of a conclusion that something more than chemistry is going on. It is that "something more" for which evidence is lacking. In my always humble opinion.

[Junior]

Okay, now explain why it's gibberish.

You see, this is the difference between evolutionists and creationists. When an evolutionist says something is gibberish, he then goes on to explain, sometimes in excruciating detail, why this is so.

Creationists, on the other hand, either leave their statements hanging on the supposition that anything they say has to be The Truth© and needs no explanation. If pressed on the matter, they will attempt to change the subject by asking lawyerly questions. The latter have the added benefits of making the creationist look smarter than he actually is, and hopefully tripping up the less technically-inclined among the evolutionists.

I foresee, in response to this post, that instead of explaining why PatrickHenry's post was gibberish, you will ask me something like why I do not think it is gibberish. This will, of course, move the spotlight from you (who really has no answer) to me (and I'll admit I have no answer; it didn't seem like gibberish to me which is why I'm curious as to why you think it is). Conversely, you will simply ignore this post.

I'm laying money on the lawyerly question.