Posted on 06/02/2003 1:46:54 PM PDT by Heartlander
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Blinded by Science |
| Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, by Matt Ridley HarperCollins, 336 pp., $25.95) This is a very strange book, and I am not quite sure what the author is attempting to achieve. At the very least it appears that he wants to shore up genetic determinism as the key factor in understanding human nature and individual behavior. Genetic determinism is rational materialism's substitute for the religious notion of predestination; taking the place of God as puppet master are the genes, whose actions and interactions control who we are, what we think, and how we act. This reductionist view received a body blow recently when the mappers of the human genome found that we have only about 30,000 genes. Because of their understanding of human complexity, the scientists were expecting at least 100,000 -- and that means there are probably too few genes for strict genetic determinism to be true. Ridley, a science writer and former U.S. editor of The Economist, tries to ride to the rescue. In doing so, he adds a twist that he hopes will overcome our apparent genetic paucity: Yes, he says, our genes decide who we are, what we do and think, and even with whom we fall in love. But, he posits, our molecular masters are not rigidly preset when we are born. Rather, they change continually in reaction to our biological and emotional experiences. Hence, 30,000 are more than enough for a soft genetic determinism to be true -- which means that the battle between those who believe we are the product of our biology (nature) versus those who believe we are the result of our environment (nurture) can now end in a truce in which both sides win. We are indeed controlled by our genes, but they in turn are influenced by our experiences. Ridley says that the mapping of the genome "has indeed changed everything, not by closing the argument or winning the [nature versus nurture] battle for one side or the other, but by enriching it from both ends till they meet in the middle." To Ridley, the core of our true selves isn't soul, mind, or even body in the macro sense; we are, in essence, merely the expression of our genes at any given moment. If this is true, then my perception of Nature via Nurture as so much nonsense was the only reaction I could have had, given my original genetic programming, as later modified by my every experience and emotion from my conception, through the womb, childhood, high school, college, practicing law, the death of my father, indeed up to and including the reading of this book. If that is so – if I was forced by my gene expression of the moment to perceive this book as I have -- what have we really learned that can be of any benefit to humankind? We are all slaves to chemistry and there is no escape. Even aside from such broader issues, Ridley does not make a persuasive case. Maybe it is my legal training, but I found his evidence very thin. He doesn't present proofs so much as resort to wild leaps of logic predicated on questionably relevant social science and facile analogies based on a few animal studies. These are simply not strong enough to be the sturdy weight-supporting pillars that his thesis requires to be credible. Let's look at just one example. He cites studies of monogamous prairie voles to suggest that humans only think they fall in love, when, in reality, what we call love is merely the expression of genes resulting in the release of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin. Claiming that he is not going to "start extrapolating anthropomorphically from pair-bonding in voles to love in people," he proceeds to do just that. Citing the vole studies and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- in which a love potion makes Titania fall in love with a man with a donkey's head – Ridley writes: Who would now wager against me that I could not do something like this to a modern Titania? Admittedly, a drop on the eyelids would not suffice. I would have to give her a general anesthetic while I cannulated her medial amygdala and injected oxytocin into it. I doubt even then that I could make her love a donkey. But I might stand a fair chance of making her feel attracted to the first man she sees upon waking. Would you bet against me? But shouldn't it take far more than measuring the physical effects of oxytocin on prairie voles to prove that something as complex, maddening, unpredictable, and wonderfully and uniquely human as romantic love can, in reality, be reduced to the mere expression of genes leading to chemical secretions? Not, apparently, to Ridley. "Blindly, automatically, and untaught, we bond with whoever is standing nearest when oxytocin receptors in the medial amygdala get tingled." Gee, if he'd known that, Bill Clinton could have purchased fewer copies of Leaves of Grass. The most fascinating thing about this book is that Ridley inadvertently makes a splendid argument for intelligent design. At this point, I am sure Ridley's "I am utterly appalled" genes are expressing wildly. He is, after all, a scientific materialist in good standing. Yet, throughout the book, in order to make his arguments understandable, he resorts explicitly to the imagery of the guiding hand. He even gives it a name: the "Genome Organizing Device," or "G.O.D." Ridley claims that the G.O.D is "a skillful chef, whose job is to build a souffle," consisting of the various parts of us and all other life on the planet. Note the language of intentionality in his description of the evolution of the human brain: To build a brain with instinctive abilities, the Genome Organizing Device lays down separate circuits with suitable internal patterns that allow them to carry out suitable computations, then links them with appropriate inputs from the senses. . . . In the case of the human mind, almost all such instinctive modules are designed to be modified by experience. Some adapt continuously throughout life, some change rapidly with experience then set like cement. A few just develop to their own timetable. But according to my lay understanding, this violates the theory and philosophy of evolution. The hypothesis of natural selection holds that species origination and change are promoted by genetic mutations. Those mutations that change the organism to make it more likely than its unchanged peers to survive long enough to reproduce are likely to be passed down the generations. Eventually, these genetic alterations spread among the entire species and become universal within its genome. It is through this dynamic evolutionary process of modification, the theory holds, that life fills all available niches in nature. It is also the process, although the details are not known, by which the primates now known as homo sapiens became conscious. The philosophy of Darwinism posits that this evolutionary process is aimless, unintentional, purposeless, and without rhyme or reason. This means it has no biological goal: It just is. Hence, G.O.D. would not want to "build a brain," develop nature via nurture in species, or do any other thing. Yet, throughout the book, Ridley seems able only to describe what he thinks is going on using the language of intention. Could this be because Ridley's theories would require interactions that are so complex and unlikely that they would seem laughable if described as having come together haphazardly, by mere chance? So what are we to learn from his insights? In terms of how we live our lives, not much beyond what common sense already tells us: Parents matter and should engage with their children; human teenagers enjoy doing what they are good at, and dislike doing what they are bad at; and so on. That much is harmless; but Ridley's deeper point is subversive of human freedom and individual accountability. He denies the existence of free will: Our actions are not causes but effects, "prespecified by, and run by, genes." Indeed, he claims unequivocally, "There is no 'me' inside my brain, there is only an ever-changing set of brain states, a distillation of history, emotion, instinct, experience, and the influence of other people -- not to mention chance." Ridley asserts this as if it would be a good thing to learn that the complexity and richness of human experience could accurately be reduced to merely the acts of so many slaves obeying the lash of chemical overseers acting under the direction of our experience-influenced gene owners. "Nature versus nurture is dead," Ridley concludes triumphantly. "Long live nature via nurture." Sorry. Maybe it's my genes, but I just don't buy it. |
Evolution only studies, describes and theorizes on the processes of biological change that occurs, by natural phenomenon. It's not technically correct to interject that it serves anything other than to knowledge and understanding of the process itself. The survival of the fittest is only an outcome of the natural process that is driven by fixed and inviolable natural laws.
""Luck" explicitly stands in the place of "Mind"
There is no mind involved in evolution. Mind can and has arisen from an evolutionary process, but does not partake in the process itself. At least not until recently. There are fixed materials and fixed laws, that can not be broken, that govern their interaction. The idea of randomness only refers to whether, or not some condition, or other material is present at the time an interaction would occur. The actual distribution that governs the the presence of those conditions, or materials, is not always random though, and can follow any pattern, period or distribution. There is also the fact that randomness is involved in any isolated interaction, but that is trivial and does not cause any net change.
It is a fact that some folks deliberately pervert scientific fields such as biology and it's specialty of evolution with irrelevant and false claims and reductions like Ridley has done here. It's become widespread and tolerated. I've even encountered opinions on income distributions, health care and government policy objectives in the middle of an advanced electrochem text! It doesn't belong there. There is no fundamental and universal purpose in either the field of electrochemistry, or the field of biology, other than to gain knowledge of a finite set of pertinent observables regarding electrochem, or life. All other purposes are external to that and involve choice.
All of biology is and should be restricted to the mechanical. That is, to the mechanics of what is. Not to the esthetics, or purpose of life. To so just corrupts it into something else, that will always contain falsehoods, contradictions that violate the fundamental and universal purpose of it, which is to gain knowlege regarding the mechanics of life.
The only statements that biology can make about mind regards it's mechanics and that it processes inputs and makes decisions. The content, color and form of those are not the proper study for biology. Biology can cover the mechanics of the mind, but can say nothing about the forces that drive it, except for autonomic drives. They are fixed like gravity. Ridely is claiming in his book, that the mind of man is autonomic. That's not so. The mind of man can scientifically be shown to be composed of consciousness with the capacity for reason, free will, and emotion. None of these are autonomic, because anyone can come up with an example that discloses to the casual observer that there is no fixed autonomic response to any paticular stimuli to these features of consciousness. The response depends on how the individual sets up the machine, not how the machine sets up the individual. That's what Ridley is trying to con folks into believing-That the machine sets up the individual.
What biology says is that the machine has the capacity for consciousness, emotion and free will. It can only, and must to be truthful, declare that free will is a natural law. Biology can address proper working order and provide info for repair, but only for the machine, not it's capacities. The capacities are to be covered by other fields of study.
In other light, or the foundation for his con, Ridley makes the mistake that the mind is an extention of the body. It's not, the body is an extension of the mind. The most prevalent reason that people make this invalid claim of fundamental extension is to eventually deny the sovereignty of will, from it's rightful owner.
Near the end of the Middle Ages, a few theologians (the "scientists" of that time) persuaded a king of France to give them permission for an experiment that had been forbidden by the Church. They were allowed to weigh the soul of a criminal by measuring him both before and after his hanging. As usually happens with academics, they came up with a definite result: the soul weighed about an ounce and a half. We laugh at such things of course...We ought at least consider the possibility that a few centuries hence people may laugh at the pretensions of some of our scientists, as well as at our gullibility at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first....
My argument is not simply that is it is not given to human beings to explain or know everything, including the universe. When human beings recognize that they cannot create everything and cannot see everything and cannot define everything, such limitations do not impoverish but enrich the human mind...p 113
At the End of an Age, John Lukacs
Ah. As I recall, Theophilus had little use for Plato, though...
I have given you the definition of creationism. Obviously, there is no Christianity without creationism by its broad definition, since Christ is Creator. With that definition in mind, you have chosen to continue to contradict yourself, yet you call those who believe in creationism "whackos." I don't pretend to be someone who is your savior here, so it may just be that you have made a good decision in not responding to me. In fact, that may be your best alternative, overall. :-`
I'm a firm believer in that the supernatural does not exist, by definition, because if it existed it would be natural and observable.
"However, I think that if a supernatural realm exists and it interacts with our natural world then we can at least in principle use scientific methods to analyze it."
I'll go to the suspected possibility of something elusive, instead of supernatural. The most powerful scientific tools are observation, reason and a sincere drive twords the truth. If it exists, these tools are sufficient to disclose it's presence as a natural thing, or at least of its essence.
general_re has mentioned utility. So, let's get specific. Has anyone noticed any value, heuristic or otherwise, coming out of Darwinist dogma specifically (not to be confused with open minded research into life sciences and origins)?
I haven't noticed any value which the Evolution/Materialism mentality has added to our culture, not in matters technical, nor in matters of the humanities. (I have noticed the harm of course, in Marxism, Naziism, and other applications of Social Darwinism, as is begrudginly admitted by some but with scorn of those who mention the tens of millions of murders that have occured, even if we don't count the abortions, imprisonments, and sundry persecutions.)
Then there is the wonderful impact upon schoolchildren, by telling them repeatedly that they are animals and forget about an afterlife. That's sure helped: "You are an animal until you die, then you are nothing. Here is your condom. Please don't use your father's firearms."
So, although I keep an eye out for what I may learn, I confess I'm not as studious as many on this thread -- can anyone show me the upside here?
If they believed that, they would not be able to live their sinfilled lives without fear of consequences, and really...that's what evolution is all about, living a life without accountability for right & wrong.
Maybe it's a phase I'm going through. Pretty soon though, it'll be time to circulate petitions for candidates....
Need some help with those petitions?
I'd say fire is too simple to be considered alive. Similarly prions and an automobile assembly line. IBM, otoh, is starting to get up there in complexity.
Laugh hearty, cherry bombo. What you boys imagine you chase, is in reality gaining on you.
It's called rationality.
Well....I'm not a *boy*, or even a man...lol...I'm a woman, that's the way God created me, and I love being a woman. :o)
Can you rationalize EVERYTHING? I suppose you could, then you don't have to worry about it....but, ya know, when it comes to rationalizing with God, well, that just won't work. :o)
On that note, I'm going to say my prayers and go nite nite b/c I need sleep, funny...no matter how far we've "evolved" we still can't seem to go without that. Hmmmmm
I have often said the same. Evolutionists cannot point to any benefit to mankind from their theory. However, there have been many benefits derived from ignoring evolution. For example, if we had believed that it takes a mutation for an organism to be able to fend off illnesses we would not have immunization which in essense teaches the body how to fight disease. Another example, evolution claiming that genes are the only working part of our bodies has delayed the finding of a cure for cancer for decades. Only when scientists threw out evolutionist premises did they find that there is not a 'cancer' gene, but that cancer is caused by the misworking of the DNA which controls cell reproduction.
No, he had just about as many living species as we have know to examine and to learn from. That he chose to ignore life and postulate his theory on dead things which cannot reproduce shows quite well how far he had to go to be able to justify his silly theory.
Evolution certainly does, it says that the destruction wrought by natural selection creates new species. This of course is total nonsense. Creation is the opposite of destruction and what evolution needs in order to get from a bacteria to a human is a lot of creation. Since the only means which evolution proposes for such creation is natural selection, evolution is certainly asserting that lack of fitness creates something new.
I am glad that you agree with me that such a claim is totally ridiculous. However, you need to realize that since natural selection could not be the engine of evolution, it leaves the theory an empty, meaningless shell which just says 'change happens'. Not much of a theory is it?
Yes indeed. Reason is quite simple, if one believes that God is the Creator, then the only way in which the changes in species could have occurred without divine intervention at various points in time is if all the species were DESIGNED ahead of time to change themselves. Once you say that changes in species are due to random material forces you are taking out God completely out of the equation and denying his being the Creator.
DNA cannot corroborate fossil relationships for the simple reason that we do not have DNA from fossils (except very recent ones - less than 50,000 years old or so).
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