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Darwin’s Cathedral
Australia - On Line Opinion ^ | 23 Feb 06 | Hiram Caton

Posted on 02/22/2006 7:01:15 PM PST by gobucks

On Charles Darwin’s passing in 1882, influential friends intervened to thwart his wish to be buried in a humble coffin in his parish. Such an interment, they felt, would deprive England of the privilege of honouring one of its great men. So it was that the professed agnostic was buried with high ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Canon Frederic Farrar’s eulogy assured his countrymen that the views of the deceased did not menace the Crown with the boisterous materialism promoted in the free thought press. Darwin’s life-long service to his parish, and his occasional acknowledgement of the Creator, proved his loyalty to Britain’s noble values.

This adroit evasion was not the beginning of the Darwin legend, but it was a landmark in his sanctification as the presiding spirit of scientific enlightenment. Signs abound that the celebration of his bicentennial will reverberate with new hymns and hosannas. Indeed, it has already begun with the opening of the lavish Darwin Exhibition at New York’s American Museum of Natural History in November last year. In June the exhibition will move successively to Boston, Chicago, and Toronto before finally opening in the London Natural History Museum in time for the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth on February 12, 2009. A quality online version of the exhibition is accessible at www.amnh.org.

The print media are also in the stream. In conjunction with the exhibition opening, leading science publisher W.W. Norton issued two beautifully produced volumes. One is by the exhibition’s curator and innovative evolution scientist, Niles Eldredge, Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. The second is the issue of four of Darwin’s publications under a single cover. This massive tome, From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin, is beautifully done with no cost spared on typography, layout, and graphics. Norton recruited the world’s most honored naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, to serve as editor and to write glosses on the “four great books of Charles Darwin”.

The hosannas of these distinguished scientists provoke awe and adulation. We learn that the Origin is the “greatest scientific book of all time” that “fully explained” the struggle for existence (Wilson). The Voyage of the Beagle “is today regarded as intellectually the most important travel book of all time” (Wilson). Darwin “demonstrated without a shadow of doubt that life evolved”; “no idea in science has shaken society so much as evolution”; “Darwin did more to secularise the Western world than any other single thinker” (Eldredge).

The sanctification continues: Darwin revolutionised the biology of his day; he fashioned a new concept of humankind; he challenged basic philosophical and religious ideas about the nature and meaning of life; so profound was his insight that his thought remains relevant to contemporary biology. These surpassing achievements brought a “revolution” equal in importance to the Copernican revolution. Smitten with reverence, my eye falls on the dust jacket to contemplate the photo of the dignified aged Darwin: yes, he looks like a prophet!

As is wont with preaching, no evidence for this litany is offered: evidence implies evaluation and critical scrutiny. But outside the cathedral, old habits disturb my rapture. What grading system ranks Origin as the greatest book in science? What titles were runners-up? What were those signal discoveries that transformed the biological sciences of his day? What was his new concept of humankind? Did it support the actively canvassed universal suffrage and gender equality? What was the secularising element of Darwin’s thought, and how did it relate to the well-established influence of irreligion, industrialisation, engineering marvels, the free press, socialism, positivism, and the notorious laissez-faire doctrine of survival of the fittest?

These questions are not asked because answering them requires returning Darwin to his context, where the Legend’s claims are readily seen to be baseless. Darwin’s secularising influence is said to stem from his rebuttal of the creationist explanation in natural history. But the refutation was largely redundant. Secularisation was deeply entrenched before his birth (his grandfather Erasmus Darwin was an energetic secularist, as were utilitarians, free thinkers, and socialists): by 1860 it had achieved a massive base, including important elements of the Anglican clergy.

As for the sciences, they had been purged of non-mechanical causality long before. Only Darwin’s fellow naturalists, many of whom were clergy, continued to invoke divine causality. The voyage of the Beagle was one among many explorations. It isn’t obviously superior to those that came before or after. The Challenger expedition of 1880, for example, was an oceanographic survey whose results were published in 50 volumes, including, incidentally, a refutation of Darwin’s theory of the origin of coral reefs.

The most grotesque distortion is the claim that Darwin’s discoveries reformed the biological sciences of his day. The reality: Darwin’s science was in the amateur mode of the naturalist, whereas the physical and biological sciences had shifted into the precision instrument mode of the modern laboratory. This difference was well established in the public mind.

Real science was the sort of thing that Lord Kelvin, the maestro of the transatlantic cable and of the physics of the steam engine, did. In the biological sciences, the hero was Louis Pasteur, the conqueror of infectious agents and epidemics. The focus of those sciences was cellular biology, microbiology, biochemistry, and neurology, using constantly innovating experimental equipment and processes. They poured forth a stream of practical and profitable innovations, the most celebrated being vaccination, which was made legally obligatory in most European countries.

Darwin the country gentleman was in complete disconnect with this world. His measuring tool was a seven-foot ruler calibrated by the village carpenter, and his microscope was an ancient Smith and Beck model of low resolution. He had no instruments for measuring speed or for reducing tissue to smallest parts. He felt no need to acquire up-to-date equipment, whose cost he reproached, despite his great wealth.

The contrast might be put this way. Darwin made no discovery of Nobel Prize caliber, whereas Louis Pasteur made two such discoveries. Or more tellingly perhaps, when Darwin’s son Francis wished to pursue advanced botanical research, he migrated to a high-tech institute in Germany. There he learned first hand that his father’s science was amateur.

The legend-credulous express dismay when challenged to produce just one instance of a Darwin discovery that was taken over by experimental biologists. “How can you doubt what everyone knows?” goes the response. Darwin, after all, proved evolution! So they say in fulsome certainty, but what are we to make of his failure to make the discovery central to his theory? I mean the science of heredity. He lavished attention on domestication, conducting many plant and animal breeding experiments, because he believed that such induced changes were evolution in miniature.

The lead chapter of the Origin argues this case. But, in a singular demonstration of the limits of even great minds, he didn’t notice that domestication evidence massively contradicted his theory. It disproved his key premise that continuous selection of a single trait would evolve a population of better adapted organisms. Domestication shows on the contrary that selection for a single trait results in changes in numerous traits - changes that are usually maladaptive.

Domestication also provided abundant documentation of events that Darwin stoutly declared cannot happen: single generation “leaps”, such as the two-headed calf and other “sports of nature”, that disprove his “gradualist” theory of organic change. The correct conception of inheritance was published in 1866 by Gregor Mendel. His carefully controlled experiments on hybrid garden peas (Pisum savtivum) enabled him to formulate the laws of segregation and independent assortment, which explain why the variations of pea traits (round and wrinkled, yellow and green) occurred in the ratios that he experimentally observed.

These trait variations are “leaps” that Darwin’s theory denies. It was the beginning of genetics and the first discovery of a quantitative biological law. Mendel believed that his discovery disproved Darwin’s theory. He was right.

Mendel’s publication enjoyed none of the braggadocio of “revolutionary” enlightenment. Indeed, it had no uptake whatever during his time. Yet eventually biologists rediscovered his work and embarked on a course leading to the discovery of chromosomes, genes, alleles, and sexual replication. It is a lesson worth repeating that Darwinians of the day recoiled in horror from these splendid discoveries. They proudly declared their “faith” in the master while hurling themselves vehemently at the new science. One, the brilliant Karl Pearson, persisted in dogged opposition to genetics until his death in 1936! So much for evidence.

The Darwin Exhibition doesn’t mention Mendel and Pasteur. Bringing them into the picture would spoil the halo over Darwin’s head and cast doubt on his singularity. Nor does it mention that the introduction of genetics, today considered the experimental core of any possible evolutionary theory, was accomplished over the bodies of true Darwinians. This silence about fundamental history of science underscores the regrettable faith-based orientation of the Darwin bicentenary, together with the implication that science is based on authority.

Creationists, alas, will probably conclude that the exhibition’s symphony to the legend confirms their conviction that to refute evolution one need but refute Darwin. This nonsense may be cast out by discarding the legend, which in any case has no business in science.

Hiram Caton is a former professor of politics and history at Griffith University in Queensland and an associate of the US National Centre for Science Education. He is working on a book titled Evolution in the Century of Progress. He can be contacted at hcaton2@bigpond.net.au.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: crevolist; darwin; evolution; ignoranceisstrength; jealousy; science
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To: webstersII
Thanks for earlier proving my point, though: you will call people liars when what is really happening is a disagreement.

Quoting you from post number 38.

Funny how Magic Johnson and some other high-profile types are still healthy without taking any of that stuff.

There is no disagreement that Magic took 'that stuff'. Your statement was categorically false.

61 posted on 02/23/2006 10:31:15 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Varda
Did Mendel ever mention Darwin? I've never read that he did. Mendel's work shows that he thought he was working on a different mechanism for evolution.

Actually, if you travel to the monastery where Mendel lived, and ask the monks very nicely, they may show you their original copy of Origin, with what are believed to be Mendel's handwritten notes in the margins. In fact, Mendel recognized that his own work supported Darwin, and sent papers to Darwin explaining his own work and how it related to that of Darwin. There is, however, no evidence that Darwin received or read Mendel's letter, or if he did, that it had an impact on him, as he never mentioned it. So, Mendel clearly knew about Darwin, and far from believing he had disproved it, saw instantly how his work reinforced it.

62 posted on 02/23/2006 10:31:39 AM PST by Senator Bedfellow
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To: Varda; gobucks; PatrickHenry
This is a very long but interesting article on the legend of Mendel that was written in 1990.

It includes some history of the struggles over evolutionary biology beginning in the 20th century and into the modern era (1990 anyway). It should be in the list o' links.

Given that Mendel published so rarely, it's difficult to know what he really thought of Darwin's work.

63 posted on 02/23/2006 10:35:01 AM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Right Wing Professor

"There is no disagreement that Magic took 'that stuff'. Your statement was categorically false."

Oops! You are correct.

I should have said:
Funny how Magic Johnson and some other high-profile types were healthy without taking any of that stuff (i.e., they were healthy BEFORE they took any of that stuff).

I made a slight error in what I said but it still doesn't change the basic premise I stated.


64 posted on 02/23/2006 10:36:13 AM PST by webstersII
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To: presently no screen name
1) Magic takes AIDS drugs.
2) Viral levels go down.
3) Doctors are pleased with the results
4) Magic and his wife have no idea how to judge if the antiviral drugs are working. I'll take the doctor's opinion on this.
5) The AIDS wackjobs are out in force this morning, not just the ID wackjobs.
65 posted on 02/23/2006 10:38:19 AM PST by blowfish
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To: blowfish

"1) Magic takes AIDS drugs."

Duh.

As stated, he had no symptoms of ARC when he started taking the drugs.

Of course the anti-virals work against the HIV virus. That's not the issue.


66 posted on 02/23/2006 10:41:17 AM PST by webstersII
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To: blowfish

I just realized that your post was not to me (haste makes waste!).

Please disregard my previous post.


67 posted on 02/23/2006 10:43:37 AM PST by webstersII
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To: Dark Knight
Ah the old "insult somebody, then say it's all in good fun" routine.

Let me try: "Your tendency to drift off into meaningless analogies (Foghat??) shows you have nothing useful to bring to the conversation."

"All in good fun."

68 posted on 02/23/2006 10:44:01 AM PST by blowfish
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To: Dark Knight

I guess the RWP is still a legend in his own mind.

But then again RWP denies the importance of knowing how he could know anything. Maybe that is the difference between a Nobel Laureate and a second tier scientist.

Thoughts perfessor?

DK


69 posted on 02/23/2006 10:45:45 AM PST by Dark Knight
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To: Right Wing Professor
If I had to waste my time with the AIDS kooks, the zero-point energy kooks, the toxins-in-our-diet kooks, the alien abduction kooks, and all the others, I'd never get anything done.

Couldn't you at least make time for the contrails and cattle mutilations kooks?

70 posted on 02/23/2006 10:48:56 AM PST by RogueIsland (.)
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To: blowfish

Every thing I said would happen, happened. If you have a better track record, put it up.

Crappy anologies, crappy logic.

Have fun, in your images.

DK


71 posted on 02/23/2006 10:52:04 AM PST by Dark Knight
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To: RogueIsland

" Couldn't you at least make time for the contrails and cattle mutilations kooks?

Hey, I'll be offended if they don't also include the umbrella organization for all kooks: Keepers Of Odd Knowledge Society (K.O.O.K.S.)


72 posted on 02/23/2006 10:52:11 AM PST by webstersII
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To: webstersII

"hard-core" scientists



Indeed. Their closed mind, 'cage-like' thinking results in only accepting answers from science. And refusing to accept the power of The Almighty who created every living thing and knows how He created it and His purpose of what He created. Because they don't understand it, they don't accept it. It's a bothersome thing for some to accept there is Someone much much higher than them in Intelligence. Intelligence Envy! LOL

Magic Johnson understands, he experienced it and they refute his own experience. A man can't even have his own experience - what control freaks. It's science or it's not true blah, blah, blah.


73 posted on 02/23/2006 10:52:35 AM PST by presently no screen name
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To: ClearCase_guy
Nowadays, it is the proponents of the Theory of Evolution Creationism who dogmatically stick to their pet theory like glue. Nothing will make them begin to question its validity! My, how times have changed.
74 posted on 02/23/2006 10:53:45 AM PST by Tokra (I think I'll retire to Bedlam.)
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To: Stultis
Can the appearance of holocaust deniers in a CREVO thread be far behind?

This is not a holocaust denial, but I'll leave it to the reader to decide what it is...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1582069/posts?page=1428#1428

75 posted on 02/23/2006 10:55:21 AM PST by Ken H
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To: RogueIsland
Couldn't you at least make time for the contrails and cattle mutilations kooks?

Sigh!

So many kooks, so little time....

76 posted on 02/23/2006 10:58:28 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: kittymyrib

I'm curious whether calling people monkey-men is as serious an offence as calling someone a liar.

I think I'll hold my breath until a creationist compalins about this.


77 posted on 02/23/2006 11:02:30 AM PST by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Tokra

Creationism isn't a theory.


78 posted on 02/23/2006 11:05:11 AM PST by webstersII
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To: JCEccles
That's a lot of pomp and ceremony to celebrate the life of a man whose admirers, in the main, are only too pleased to assure everyone that life is undirected, random, meaningless, pointless, and that man is bereft of free will.

....and just how do you figure that? I am a firm believer in evolution and also believe that evolution was created, planned and orchestrated by God. I do NOT believe that life is "undirected, meaningless or pointless". I don't understand how a belief in the process of evolving life would mean all the things you think it means.

79 posted on 02/23/2006 11:07:02 AM PST by Tokra (I think I'll retire to Bedlam.)
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To: Tokra

I really don't care about ID.

But if you think genetics and DNA is more important to biology than Darwinism you have a mental problem.

RWP has that problem, but it is more Freudian and size mattered as he has already shown.

DK


80 posted on 02/23/2006 11:07:32 AM PST by Dark Knight
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