Teaching Darwin

Weekly Standars ^ | March 21, 2005 | Paul McHugh

[metacognative]

Teaching Darwin Why we're still fighting about biology textbook. by Paul McHugh 03/28/2005, Volume 010, Issue 26

EIGHTY YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER, the Scopes trial upheld the effort of the state of Tennessee to exclude the teaching of Darwinian evolution from Tennessee classrooms. The state claimed Darwinism contradicted orthodox religion. But times change, and recently a federal judge ruled that a three-sentence sticker stating that "evolution is a theory not a fact" must be removed from Georgia high school biology texts because it contradicts orthodox science and represents an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Both legal mandates--no Darwin yesterday, nothing but Darwin today--look less like science than exercises in thought control.

Everyone agrees that the Scopes trial (viciously caricatured in the play and movie Inherit the Wind) was a setback for the teaching of scientific reasoning. But the same is true of the Georgia ruling, Darwinism being quite obviously a biological theory and open to dispute. To claim otherwise is to be woefully misinformed.

Science, as high school students need to know, is a logically articulated structure of beliefs about nature that are justified by methods of reasoning one can evaluate. It is whether the methods pass muster that counts for or against a scientific opinion, not how the opinion fits our preconceptions.

Charles Darwin proposed that random variation within life forms, working together with natural selection ("the preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations") across the vast expanse of time since the earth was formed, explains "how the universe created intelligence," as Francis Bacon had stated the problem a few centuries before. To judge whether the matter is now closed to all criticism, such that Darwinism stands with scientific facts like "the earth is a planet of the sun" or "the blood circulates in the body," demands we consider Darwin's method of reasoning.

The leading Darwinist in America, Ernst Mayr, describes the method:

Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science--the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.

Darwin, Mayr goes on, "established a philosophy of biology . . . by showing that theories in evolutionary biology are based on concepts rather than laws."

After noting Mayr's fearless use of the words "tentative," "philosophy," and "theory," one surely is justified in responding: No wonder Darwinism, in contrast to other scientific theories, seems an argument without end! It's history--indeed, history captured by that creative-writing-class concept narrative. If historical narrative--and the "philosophy" it propounds--are what justify the Darwinian opinions, the textbook writers of Georgia can legitimately claim that Darwin's "tentative reconstruction" is not only a theory but a special kind of theory, one lacking the telling and persuasive power that theories built on hypothesis-generated experiment and public prediction can garner.

DARWIN HIMSELF UNDERSTOOD that questions raised about his narrative had substance. In Chapter IX of On the Origin of Species, he noted that the fossil record had failed to "reveal any . . . finely graduated organic chain" linking, as he proposed, existing species to predecessors. He called the record "imperfect" and went so far as to say, "This, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." Darwin presumed that the problem rested on the "poorness of our palaeontological collections" and would be answered when more of "the surface of the earth has been geologically explored."

In the same Chapter IX, Darwin also acknowledged that the fossil record does suggest the "sudden appearance of whole groups of allied species all at once." He noted that if this fact were to stand, and "numerous species belonging to the same genera or families have really started into life all at once, . . . [it] would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection." He forestalled that fatal blow to his theory by asking his readers not to "over-rate the perfection of the geological record."

Any sympathetic reader of Darwin's history would readily allow him the point--that earlier life forms might have all come and gone elsewhere than where later forms emerged and might have done so without leaving a fossil record to demonstrate the smooth gradation between species. But such a reader should admit, as Darwin did, that the absence of the record is a serious matter--especially when it persists to this day, nearly a century and a half after Darwin's book was published. This imperfection of the historical record was, after all, sufficiently embarrassing to provoke some evolutionary biologists nearly 100 years ago to try to improve on the record by manufacturing the counterfeit fossil Piltdown Man.

Even among committed Darwinists, the imperfection of the fossil record has been a source of huge argument. The Darwinian fundamentalist Richard Dawkins of Oxford believes in smooth and gradual evolutionary processes. He became a vicious antagonist to Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, who championed "punctuated equilibrium," with abrupt species generation after millennia of stability. Dawkins attacked Gould in large part because Gould's idea greatly shortened the time evolutionary processes had to generate species.

All the more reason, then, for our sympathetic reader to look for other means of supporting Darwin's narrative. Perhaps the demonstrable variations that occur in species living under altered circumstances might answer objections.

With this in mind, Darwin devotes the very first chapter of On the Origin of Species to describing variations in plants and domestic animals produced over time by methodical selective breeding by farmers and fanciers. Plainly their practice of permitting only the most choice individuals to reproduce and so "enhance the breed" demonstrates how hereditary modification of members of a given species is possible--indeed, it displays the process.

Darwin, however, then makes an extrapolation. Beginning with the reasonable presumption that the hereditary mechanisms involved in producing these enhancements in the barnyard must be available and randomly active in nature, he proposes that from such random variation can spring new species. Variation--repeated ad infinitum down the ages, with its products culled by natural selection rather than by artful human breeding--is the process by which Darwin links up all of biologic creation. This is the Darwinian narrative in its clearest form--history by extrapolation--and it is not problem-free.

MANY OF US were taught these Darwinian extrapolatory links to the evolutionary narrative in high school, usually with photographs of the European peppered moth (Biston betularia), which became darker with environmental pollution and thus less conspicuous to bird predators in industrial areas. The same idea springs up in discussions of the development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, or of the transformation of the beaks of finches under the pressure of drought. We were taught in high school that these observable biologic changes display evolution "in front of your eyes."

But not everyone agreed with this conclusion. Many criticized the Darwinists for extrapolating too far, and now the Darwinists confess that actual, observable variation--whether in the barnyard or in nature--demonstrates only the capacity of a species population to vary within limits. The original species picture reappears when either the farmer's selective enterprise or the natural environmental pressure on the species population stops and crossbreeding recurs. The finches' beaks never turn into pelican pouches but revert to their original shape when the rains arrive.

No farmer or experimental scientist has ever produced a new species by cultivating variations. The peppered moth didn't become a butterfly, and the closely and repeatedly studied fruit fly, despite gazillions of generations producing varieties in the laboratory, always remains a fruit fly. Again, Darwin himself was more honest than his followers have been. He knew the distinction between variations that could be observed and those posited according to the theoretical extrapolation that was key to his narrative. For this reason he repeatedly notes, as in Chapter IV of On the Origin of Species, that "natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long intervals of time, and generally on only a few of the inhabitants." In this way he puts the process of species generation outside the reach of experimental demonstration.

At this point, the sympathetic reader eager to secure Darwin's narrative might resort to searching the "biochemical record." Surely the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins contain the long-sought evidence. Again, though, molecular biology helps in some ways in that it shows commonalities across species--just as other aspects of anatomical structures show commonalities--but again it's the distinctions--and the means by which they are generated--rather than the similarities that must be explained to support the theory.

If one turns to DNA to show how Homo sapiens gradually emerged by small and random variations from predecessors, one faces an immediate problem. At the level of DNA, humans and chimpanzees differ by a mere 1 percent, yet the chimpanzee is not 99 percent human in body, brain, or mental faculties--far from it. We need something more than the DNA record to support a narrative linking chimps and men.

Perhaps it's enough for the friendly guardian of the Darwinian narrative to propose that the genes that control the switching on and off of other genes simply changed in some random way, allowing humans to branch off the primate line. And maybe they did. But again, notice, this is a molecular narrative, not a proposition demonstrable by experiment. It's a story that fits the facts--but so might another.

SURELY AT THIS POINT the friendly reader might agree that, like any historical account, the Darwinian narrative can fairly be challenged--not to say that it must be wrong, only that it needs more supportive evidence. Perhaps there are statistical proofs or engineering concepts that could be found, or something else that might emerge that would be subject to verification by the scientific method.

But our would-be friend to evolution will soon discover that any questioning of the Darwinian narrative, no matter how sympathetic, is shouted down. If mathematicians try to say that even with the immense span of geological time available for random genetic variations to act, there is not time enough to produce the human eye, the response--typical for historians, who routinely argue backward from observations to their causes--is, Since the eye exists the math must be wrong.

If Michael J. Behe, the cellular biochemist who wrote Darwin's Black Box, proposes that the complicated molecular mechanisms sustaining the integrity of the cell seem impossible to explain as the result of random variations, the president of the National Academy of Sciences counters by pronouncing, "Modern scientific views of the molecular organization of life are entirely consistent with spontaneous variation and natural selection driving a powerful evolutionary process." That is, he affirms the Darwinian narrative by restating it, not by offering compelling proof that it is true. Lots of views are consistent with the cell's complexity--including the view Behe explores, that an intelligent creator designed the cell to work. But cellular formation needs identified generative mechanisms, not simply a consistent narrative, to explain it--a problem both for those who call on Darwin and those who call on an "intelligent designer."

Official science is too much at ease with the Darwinian narrative--primarily because it can't come up with anything better. As a result, many scientists are driven by an ideological bias and by fear--the thought that any challenge to the narrative will plunge the republic back into some dark age. Richard Dawkins and his associate Niall Shanks predict that, as Shanks wrote, "discriminatory, conservative Christian values [will be imposed] on our educational, legal, social and political institutions" should the public schools permit any airing of questions about the Darwinian narrative. This fear is way over the top, but it's of long standing, and in the past has provoked some loss of judgment among scientists.

When the most distinguished biological scientist of the 20th century, Francis Crick, saw the same complications as Michael Behe, he also concluded that time on Earth and random variation were not adequate to produce the viable cell. Crick resolved the dilemma, in a fascinating book called Life Itself published in 1981, by suggesting that living cells arrived on an unmanned spaceship from another planet, perhaps sent by intelligent beings facing extinction. He called his concept "directed panspermia," and this strange concept (I prefer to call it "life from Krypton") received a respectful hearing from biologists. With this imaginative device Crick could keep the narrative alive. He explained life's cellular origins without worrying about time, kept the God he hated out of the picture, and preserved the possibility of random variation and natural selection working their magic from these "seedlings" from a "galaxy far far away."

BY NOW, it would seem that a sympathetic reader of Darwin, if honest, could conclude the following. Darwinism is an imperfect theory, based as it is on a historical narrative, and carrying as it does the remarkable capacity to explain anything and exclude nothing. It has great strengths, and it has great evidential lacunae that seem no closer to resolution than when Darwin himself called attention to them 146 years ago.

The biological evidence--life rests on the cellular organization of nucleotides and proteins--compels the conclusion that all the various forms of life on Earth derive from a common source, as Darwin emphasized. Life is not recreated with every new species--this is now undeniable. The Darwinian concept of descent with modification seems the most plausible way to relate life and its varieties. Modifications within species are often responses to environmental challenges, and they sustain a species with the variety of expressions necessary for it to survive these challenges.

But when one tries to grasp how the distinct species, as against varieties, are generated--by what mechanism they separate--a pause to reflect is warranted. Darwin's random variation and natural selection may well offer the best available narrative, the most compelling theory. Yet something seems missing--for example, any sense of what propels life's forms toward a progressive complexity, rather than toward a simplicity of design that would guarantee survival come what may.

The discipline of evolutionary biology today resembles astrophysics when Galileo was attempting to explain the planetary orbits and the oceanic tides but lacked the concept of the force of gravity. His observations were accurate enough, but explanations awaited an Isaac Newton.

Evolutionary biology awaits its Newton. And until such a thinker emerges--to provide a fuller conception of the history of life and especially the forces at play that explain how things happened as they did--those who would expel all challenges to the Darwinian narrative from the high school classroom are false to their mission of teaching the scientific method.

Scientists as they engage in dialogue with others should abhor attempts to close off the conversation by excessive claims for any privileged access to truth. Scientists should tell what they actually know and how they know it, as distinct from what they believe and are trying to advance. If all of us, scientists and non-scientists alike, accepted that guiding principle, the 80-year history of attempts to use law to stifle the teaching of science--stretching as it does from the courtrooms of Dayton, Tennessee, to those of Cobb County, Georgia--could perhaps finally be brought to a close.

Paul McHugh is a university distinguished service professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and former psychiatrist in chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

[Elsie]

...deliberate misstatement ...

See!!!

I TOLD you that them CREVOs were LIARS!!!!!

-- EvoGuy

[Elsie]

The Bible was written with an intention in mind, it was written by people who had no idea of the physical basis for their environment, but needed an explanation for events within that environment.

Yeah, take THAT!!!

OUR textbooks have NO agenda: no siree... not a one!

-- EvoGuy

[Elsie]

My God, no wonder our kids are behind the rest of the world.

See!! We've figgered it out!!!!

Even though "E" is taught in 99.95% of schools we STILL lag!!!

-- EvoGuy

<.>

<.>

<.>

(Wait... is that right???)

[Elsie]

You know, the reason I'm nit picking is because it is my contention that sloppy writing bespeaks sloppy thinking.

Time to 'mine' JUNIOR's replies, eh???

---

Watch out for what you ask for......

[Elsie]

Oh, and to be fair, athiest groups should be allowed to insist on a warning sticker regarding the unsubstantiated claims in the bible, at any public function where bibles are present, right?

Not to worry...

The guy with the red underwear does a REALLY good job of that already!

[Elsie]

...complete humans.

Less than a 100 percent, inadequate, lacking, unfinished = CREVO's!!!

-- EvoGuy

[js1138]

Are you suggesting that "favored races" to use the Victorian terminology, are not differentially preserved by natural selection?

[Elsie]

Generally, I guess my medical condition could be described as "alive".

 

 

But... have you passed from death unto life?????

 

---

 

-- King James
John 5:24  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

 

-- New International
John 5:24  "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.

 

---

 

Ephesians 2

 

 1.  As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,
 2.  in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
 3.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature  and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 
 4.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
 5.  made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.

[Elsie]

How about an IN CONTEXT one then??

 

---

---

 

John 3

 

 1.  Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.
 2.  He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."
 3.  In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. "
 4.  "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
 5.  Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
 6.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
 7.  You should not be surprised at my saying, `You  must be born again.'
 8.  The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
 9.  "How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
 10.  "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things?
 11.  I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.
 12.  I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
 13.  No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven--the Son of Man.
 14.  Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
 15.  that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
 16.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,  that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
 17.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
 18.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
 19.  This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
 20.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
 21.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
 22.  After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized.
 23.  Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized.
 24.  (This was before John was put in prison.)
 25.  An argument developed between some of John's disciples and a certain Jew  over the matter of ceremonial washing.
 26.  They came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan--the one you testified about--well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him."
 27.  To this John replied, "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.
 28.  You yourselves can testify that I said, `I am not the Christ  but am sent ahead of him.'
 29.  The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.
 30.  He must become greater; I must become less.
 31.  "The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.
 32.  He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.
 33.  The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful.
 34.  For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God  gives the Spirit without limit.
 35.  The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.
 36.  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

[js1138]

It surely isn't Natural selection...

Then please tell us what it is, if it isn't the Tooth Fairy.

[Elsie]

Well: I have no clue!

[furball4paws]

Elsie, it's not difficult. I was born alive and have continued alive until today. Tomorrow that may change. Some "tomorrow" that will change. 'Tis the nature of the BEAST.

[Elsie]

Please explain to me what I did to elicit this attack?

I don't remember attacking anyone, or their beliefs in this thread.

You didn't pray three times daily; as per the king's Edict!

---

Ref. book of Daniel

[Elsie]

I completed that goal except for a few chapers in the Old Testament.

In Numbers, I'll bet!

---

;^)

[Elsie]

I was homeschooled...

So THAT'S what's wrong with you!

-- EvoGuy

[PatrickHenry]

Notice of intention to abandon thread!

[hosepipe]

[ (This really upsets the Noah 'myth' doesn't it?) ]

Hmmm... maybe the Noah thingy wasn't a Myth at all, but instead was a Metaphor.. as was much metaphorical historical accounts since in the beginning nothing was written down. Its was all a verbal and remembered rote as stories buy the Rabbis.. Boys were originally tested at thirteen to see how much of the Torah they remembered by heart..

Even now Yiddish is given to metaphor, simile and dualistic stories.. As was Genesis Chap one by the way(metaphor).. and probably chaps two and three too.. I like metaphor but talking and writing that way did drive Nitche crazy as a moonbat..

Jesus pretty much used visual word pictures(metaphor) as a medium of conversation too.. Cool way to talk I think.. Humans ain't too smart.. You tell em "its raining cats and dogs", and many of them will run to the window to look for the rain of animals, others however, "get it"....

HUMANS... (Eddie Murphy laugh)..

[furball4paws]

I have a very well calibrated snide-o-meter. Mayor Edmund was picked up on this meter and we have had jocular exchanges. Snide doesn't hurt, from either side.

loosen up and at least you will enjoy your remaining biological life.

[Orca]

Teaching Darwin? The bottom line of all Darwinist teaching can be clearly seen today in the Terri Schiavo case.

Substitute Charles Darwin for Michael Schiavo and you have the essence of Darwinism. Cruel, brutal, ugly death. That is what Darwinism brings us. Thank you Charles Darwin, Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer, et al.

[OhioAttorney]

Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?