Posted on 05/25/2005 3:41:22 AM PDT by billorites
Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: “Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.” Science mines ignorance. Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.
Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name.
It isn’t even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt as a rhetorical device before going on to dispel it.
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” You will find this sentence of Charles Darwin quoted again and again by creationists. They never quote what follows. Darwin immediately went on to confound his initial incredulity. Others have built on his foundation, and the eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount Improbable is called “The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment” in honour of the fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom.
The distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is widely quoted as saying that organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed”. Again, this was a rhetorical preliminary to explaining how the powerful illusion of design actually comes about by natural selection. The isolated quotation strips out the implied emphasis on “appear to”, leaving exactly what a simple-mindedly pious audience — in Kansas, for instance — wants to hear.
The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors. But such Telling Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist Ian Plimer) is not the most serious problem. There is a more important point to be made, and it goes right to the philosophical heart of creationism.
The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”
Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: “Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.” No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: “Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.”
I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: “It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.” Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore “gaps” in the fossil record.
Many evolutionary transitions are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of changing intermediate fossils. Some are not, and these are the famous “gaps”. Michael Shermer has wittily pointed out that if a new fossil discovery neatly bisects a “gap”, the creationist will declare that there are now two gaps! Note yet again the use of a default. If there are no fossils to document a postulated evolutionary transition, the assumption is that there was no evolutionary transition: God must have intervened.
The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.
Richard Dawkins, FRS, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, at Oxford University. His latest book is The Ancestor’s Tale
On the contrary, you cannot assert human science extends beyond what humans have been able to observe first hand and report. Where assumptions are made regarding past or future events, the human mind is all there is, and the human mind according to the story of evolution, wasn't around 4.5 billion years ago.
Please, spare us that satanic macro-math.
What's your point? You want to call me a dumbass? Feel free. Science will be forever ingratiated for your insight in that regard.
Existence as a single, human, observer. Are you something more?
Yeah? Well why don't you throw out a fishing line and see if you can reel in a few prime numbers for us all to look at? Might as well fish for something objective while your fishing for a 4.5 billion year old earth.
Which would reduce the claim that the Earth was just cooling from its accretion 4.5 billion years ago to the status of "some kind of guess or speculation." This is a very uninformed position. To disallow the inference of the Hadean Earth, you have to throw out astronomy, nuclear chemistry, and various other multiple lines of evidence that the whole solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago (versus 14 or so billion years for the universe as a whole).
To go there, you have to really want a Young Earth. It means that the laws of physics we observe now are a fluke of recent times, or just an illusion. You have disallowed any sort of forensic reconstruction of past events from present evidence. YECs happily accept the bargain. None of that stuff is important.
I thoutht you had argued elsewhere that the laws of nature are intelligently designed. I don't see any factual errors in the outline, but it is just an outline. It's pretty hard to put the sum of human knowledge in an outline.
I maintain that the laws of nature are evidence of intelligent design. I do so because the things humans design are intended, for the most part, to remain constant.
It's pretty hard to put the sum of human knowledge in an outline.
Yes it is. I would hardly expect a biology textbook to lay it all out, let alone an outline. At the same time I would hope either one could do better than suggest abiogenesis and leave it at that.
What the heck? I'm only disallowing inferences. Ha!
No. I don't want to be cavalier in disallowing inferences, but inferences are inferences. Furthermore, I should not be expected by law to be taught and graded on other peoples inferences. As a single observer I should be able to take the evidence that is presented to my eyes and ears and evaluate it critically and come to my own conclusions.
You say all those disciplines have evidence to support an old earth. Fine. Why should I take any more stock in what you say than what the Bible says? You say the earth revolves around the sun, yet all your life you've seen the sun rise in the east. Why should you take any more stock in what your eyes tell you than what Galileo said?
That is my point and I have achieved it many times. Unfortunately, you have self-achieved it, without realizing it, even more times than I have. But, then again, that is the nature of the unabashed, ultraignorant, unrepentant dumbass.
Far be it from me to disallow human reason the capacity to observe, record, and interpret evidence of past events. When I find my wallet where I last left it I can be reasonably certain a.) I was the one who last put it there, and b.) only Ichneumon could be responsible for the $100.00 that is missing.
(As if I can afford to keep that kind of cash on hand! donh still owes some rent.)
As you well know, this is not a scientific question. One can ask for evidence (for or against) a scientific theory, but never proof. Are you parodying creationists and their constant bellowing for "proof," i.e. certainty?
Can you show me how the theory of gravity can be used to calculate which slit a bucky ball will fall through in the slit experment?
According to Newton, it will fall through the one it's above. According to Einstein it will fall through the one that intersects the geodesic it will follow. Is this a trick question?
"Fully Deterministic" could be a pretty bold claim--is it in this case?,
Yes, both are fully deterministic. Surely you're familiar with the claim that a complete knowledge of the positions and velocities of all particles completely determines both past and future in Newton's physics.
... can you tell me how the orbital velocities of the electrons were measured?
A web search found this. Maybe you could follow up on your own. It's just something I read about some time ago.
F=mA is just symbols in a row without some philosophy attached to it.
Maybe now we're getting to the issue. I'd say that they are just symbols in a row without some interpretation attached to them. In mathematics they call the interpretation a model of a theory although usually it simply relates the symbols to something in another mathematical theory. You seem to agree with this meaning given your next sentence. Are you calling an interpretation or model a philosophy?
I'm curious what elegant criteria you have discovered that tells you that some things that seem to be highly abstract statements about the way the universe is organized are philosophy, and some are not?
It's not so elegant. If it is a statement subject to falsification then it is not a philosophy. On the other hand, a statement about the form a scientific theory should take is philosophical.
A theory is not a material entity; it is not a tangible force; it is not an part of a formal mathematical proof
In fact, a scientific theory is a mathematical theory plus a physical interpretation of the theory's undefined terms. It is applied by making deductions from the mathematical theory and relating them to the world through the interpretation.
Do you think the parable of the cave is not philosophy?
I'm only passingly familiar with it, but I would say that, as I understand it, it is at least not a scientific claim. For it to be so it would have to say something about what is not possible to observe. So if it must be either scientific or philosophical or both, I'd have to conclude that it is philosophical.
I note that you are avoiding answering my questions so that you can be pinned down as to what, exactly, consititutes "first hand observation".
I think you can rest assured that many fossils have been recovered "first hand" by archaeologists, and that their chronological placement in the fossil record due to their morphological configuration has been achieved by first-hand observation of relative congruities between forms, as well.
How does this differ from investigating conjectures about how semi-conductor configurations behave, using oscilloscope signals in the nanosecond range? Can you detect signals that occurs in a few nanoseconds with your eyes, or your bear hands? Your perceptions basically don't exist in the nanosecond range so you can only read an oscilloscope signal long after what it measured actually occured. How can you claim to be making "first hand" observations when you read a high speed oscilloscope?
Or do you now contend that anything I read off a high speed oscilloscope can't be science?
I guess. It goes through both slits simultaneously--a determinist might conceivably find this a tad annoying.
It seems that the author isn't being discriminated against. Perhaps the rejected article isn't up to his usual standards. Note that self-organizing systems are closely related to chaotic systems. Absent a chaotic component, self-organizing systems are often unstable.
What is the mathematical theory at the heart of evolutionary biology?
Those who accept that 1 + 1 = 0 do tend to drift into computer design, though.
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