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
I knew you were going to do that.....
Parallax can be measured quite accurately for some distance. A second of star movement (in the degrees/minutes/seconds system) over the measuring time (something like half a year) equals 3.26 light years.
~RWP
These lenses—technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses—optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any lens ever conceived.
~Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History
Yeah, if I want the final word on lens technology, I ask a palaeontologist.
Got an actual checkable citation for that quote, BTW?
I thought that the creationists who touted the "300 scientists" list said that Project Steve didn't count for reasons that I can't quite recall but I suspect ultimately boil down to "I don't like them".
Heh! Funny.
Agreed, paleo's aren't usually experts on lens technology and should probably stick to providing the props for the evolutionist's just-so stories. Eldredge, on the other hand, apparantly devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye.
I got the quote from here (the link I provided earlier):
Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History (and a scientist who devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye), remarked:
These lenses—technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses—optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any lens ever conceived. We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on Earth, hit upon the best possible lens design that optical physics has ever been able to formulate (as quoted in Ellis, 2001, p. 49, emp. added).
Nope never said that! In fact I'm not too sure they both can't be believed. Too much evidence for both. I'm not about to guess how God was able to do it, but it's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that both are true in ways far beyond my ability to comprehend.
I was simply agreeing with the poster who said we literally choose what we want to believe. It's as simple as that----a matter of choice. I mean when it comes down to it there are really only 3 choices----Creationism, Evolution or somehow a combination of the two. Maybe I'm missing a fourth choice, but don't know what it would be. If it's out there I'm sure someone will mention it.
As I pointed out before, you live in an either-or world; we get more of a range of stimulus-response when dealing with simple organisms...
A requisite to visual measurement of parallax would be an eyepiece that not only has an adjustable micrometer, but also one that does not distort angular position depending on the star's location in the field of view. Perhaps the first eyepiece of this type is the "Orthoscopic" design ....
"The design of the original Orthoscopic eyepiece dates back to the 1800s [sic -- should be 1880's] when Ernst Abbe first designed them to be used for accurate measurements of linear distance on microscope slides. The term "orthoscopic" denotes an eyepiece that introduces no barrel or pincushion distortion, so that an object will have the same size when observed anywhere in the field of view. The Abbe design employs a triplet field lens and a singlet eyelens."
That pretty much takes accurate visual parallax measurement out of the game (unless you have a very accurate measuring system on the telescope Right Ascension and Declination axes, and then use a simple fixed reticle eyepiece) until well after the advent of photography.
People ought to be careful about superlatives, particularly when they're talking about stuff outside their field. Any amateur astronomer knows enough about lenses to be able to contradict Eldridge's statement, assuming he made it.
And there's no excuse for McIntosh; he should know enough to consult the primary literature, and not rely on websites, particularly those with a point of view.
There was a young lady named Bright,
Who transcribed much faster than light,
She'd write it all day,
In a relative way,
And have it the previous night.
"Lighten up a little, you'll live longer and prosper."
Not a very Vulcan idea.
I'm not sure if Fair Witnesses have much levity either. I'll check the small print.
At least you found it "interesting." :)
I have to run, Prof. Thanks for the information and discussion.
Enjoy the Memorial Day holiday - I'm off to the desert.
I love the desert. Enjoy.
Yeah. It means we can no longer calculate the speed of light using parallax. Back to the microwave & chocolate method.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.