Darwin and the Descent of Morality

An important part of the current controversy over the theoretical status of evolutionary theory concerns its moral implications. Does evolutionary theory undermine traditional morality, or does it support it? Does it suggest that infanticide is natural (as Steven Pinker asserts) or is it a bulwark against liberal relativism (as Francis Fukuyama argues)? Does it rest on a universe devoid of good and evil (as Richard Dawkins has bluntly stated) or can it be used to provide a new foundation for natural law reasoning (as Larry Arnhart contends)?

The obvious place to go in the debate is to the source. Darwin himself considered morality of whatever stripe to be a byproduct of evolution, one more effect of natural selection working upon the raw material of variations in the individual. Nature did not “intend” to create any particular type of morality, any more than nature intended to create one certain length of finch beak. Nor does nature “judge” any particular type of morality as long as it does not violate the principle of natural selection. That, as we shall see, allows for such moral leeway that it creates insuperable problems for conservatives who might solicit Darwin’s help in their cause.

We find Darwin’s account of morality in his Descent of Man, a work published after his more famous Origin of Species. As should be no surprise, the arguments of the Origin provided the theoretical foundations for his natural history of morality in the Descent.

True to his naturalist bent, Darwin’s natural history of morality (or more properly, moralities) assumed evolution to be true and sought to explain how the existing moral varieties could have evolved in the same way that natural selection had brought about the great variety of existing species.

For Darwin the “moral faculties of man” were not original and inherent, but evolved from “social qualities” acquired “through natural selection, aided by inherited habit.” Just as life came from the nonliving, so also the moral came from the nonmoral.

From the beginning, then, Darwin rejected the Christian natural law argument, according to which human beings are moral by nature. Instead, he followed the pattern of the modern natural right reasoning of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which assumed that human beings were naturally asocial and amoral, and only became social and moral historically. That is why Darwin called his account a natural history of morality.

For Darwin, in order to become moral we first had to become social. “In order that primeval men, or the ape-like progenitors of man, should have become social,” Darwin reasoned, “they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings which impel other animals to live in a body.” As with all animal instincts, the “social instincts” of man were the result of variations bringing some benefit for survival.

What we call “conscience” was also the result of natural selection. Darwin described it as a “feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct.” Since the “ever-enduring social instincts” were more primitive and hence stronger than instincts developed later, the social instincts were the sources of our feelings of unease when some action of ours violated them. Such feelings of unease, Darwin explained, we now call “conscience.”

It might seem that Darwin’s arguments for human sociability and the moral conscience could be marshaled to support a conservative moral position. Yet mere “sociality,” even with a conscience grounded in evolutionary imperatives, does not at all mean that nature has created a definite moral standard, such as natural law. Quite the reverse. At bottom, everything is variable. As Darwin writes:

If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless the bee, or any other social animal, would in our supposed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling of right and wrong, or a conscience. . . . In this case an inward monitor would tell the animal that it would have been better to have followed one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought to have been followed: the one would have been right and the other wrong.

The same variability holds as well within the natural history of human moralities as they actually evolved. So, for example, the “murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has met with no reproach.” Indeed, “infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious.” As for suicide, in “former times” it was “not generally considered as a crime, but rather from the courage displayed as an honorable act. . . . For the loss to a nation of a single individual is not felt.” Neither did infanticide or suicide cause the “feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results . . . from any unsatisfied instinct.” Monogamy, too, Darwin informed the reader, was a fairly recent evolutionary phenomenon.

Yet Darwin balked at embracing the relativism he created, and insisted on ranking evolved moral traits. The unhappy result, however, was his espousal of views we would today call racist, and his justification of a program of eugenics. Ranking evolved moral traits meant ranking the races accordingly. Thus Darwin cheerfully asserted that the “western nations of Europe immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors and stand at the summit of civilization.” As a member of the favored race, Darwin embraced a typically nineteenth-century view of moral progress. “Looking to future generations,” he wrote, “there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance . . . [so that] virtue will be triumphant.”

But the engine of evolution, even moral evolution, is natural selection. Therefore, Darwin believed that the evolution of morality would require the extermination of “less fit” races and individuals—a process that could be helped along by artificial selection, or eugenics. This unsavory conclusion was derived directly from the principles of evolution. We see in animals that, “in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good temper, etc., are certainly transmitted. With man we see similar facts.” Since different races, like different breeds of dogs or horses, develop different capacities, it followed that distinct gradations in moral capacities would be found among human races.

Whereas St. Thomas’ natural law account began from the assumption that all human beings belonged to the same species (and were therefore all subject to the same moral demands), Darwin tried to determine whether human races should be considered distinct species. In the end, he was unsure whether to rank the races “as species or sub-species” but finally asserted that “the latter term appears the most appropriate.”

Whether races are species or sub-species, it is easy to see how such reasoning allowed Darwin to rank the races on an evolutionary scale. Because natural selection must be the cause of the existence of different races, Darwin argued that the various races would necessarily have varying intellectual and moral capacities. So that, for example, the “American aborigines, Negroes, and Europeans differ as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named.” As we have seen, the Europeans came out on top.

Darwin argued further that the different races created by natural selection were necessarily and beneficially locked in the severest struggle for survival. As he put it in the Origin, "It is the most closely allied forms . . . which, from having nearly the same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the severest competition with each other; consequently, each new variety of species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them."

This argument translated directly to his assessment of the evolutionary history of human races, and the necessary and beneficial extinction of the less favored races.

"The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope . . . the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."

The European race will inevitably emerge as the distinct species "human being," and all the transitional forms—such as the gorilla, the Negro, and so on—will be extinct. Furthermore, natural selection functions not only between races, but also among individuals within races. Here, oddly enough, Darwin maintained that savage man has an advantage over civilized man. In savage man, the intellectual and moral qualities are not as developed, but such lack actually works to weed out the unfit: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health.”

Unfortunately, the very development of human compassion which serves to mark the Europeans as more civilized also works against the principle of survival of the fittest.

"We civilized men . . . do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. . . . Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

What could be done to prevent the European race from devolving under the influence of the weak and the sick? Let the principles of natural selection be applied without obstruction. “Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence,” Darwin reminded the reader, “and if he is to advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle.” Turning to the wisdom of animal breeders, Darwin proclaimed that “there should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.” The worst, of course, should not be allowed to breed at all.

How forcefully ought this program to be carried out? Darwin was vague, but ended with the remark: “All do good service who aid toward this end.” What may we gather from Darwin’s evolutionary account of morality? To begin with, Darwin rightly understood that bare sociality allowed for a startling variety of moralities. In contrast to the very determinate list of requisite virtues, definite commands, and established ends in the traditional natural law account, evolution brings forth many different modes of group survival. Just as male lions, when taking over a pride, kill the young that were fathered by the ousted dominant male, so also human societies have flourished quite well with the murder of rivals to regal authority. And just as many female animals will let the runt of the litter die by refusing it nourishment, so also many human societies have survived for hundreds of years by exposing their unwanted and deformed babies. Merely having “social instincts” includes so much that it excludes almost nothing considered morally reprehensible.

Although many today would shudder at Darwin’s racism, we must concede that Darwin’s conclusions were correctly drawn from his evolutionary principles. If evolution is true, and the races themselves are the result of the struggle to survive, then how could intellectual and moral qualities not be diversely acquired by different races?

As for the survival of the fittest, contemporary liberals have attempted to separate Darwin from Social Darwinism, but Darwin’s own words advocating severe struggle show us quite clearly that he was the first Social Darwinist. Conservatives (who are often early modern liberals in outlook and temperament) sometimes look fondly at the purifying effects of “severe struggle,” substituting economic for natural battle. Such fondness is not rooted in the natural law of Aquinas, but, as Leo Strauss argued, in the modern natural right theory of John Locke (as filtered through Adam Smith). But modern natural right theory has led to the world according to Pinker and Dawkins.

Larry Arnhart, in particular, seems to have blurred this fundamental distinction, for he quotes Aquinas (“Conservatives, Darwin & Design: An Exchange,” FT, November 2000) as saying that “natural right [emphasis added] is that which nature has taught all animals,” when Thomas actually said that “those things are said to belong to the natural law [lex naturalis] which nature has taught to all animals.” In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas does not mean to say that natural law is shared by all animals including human beings—the natural law, as the “participation of the eternal law in the rational creature,” pertains only to human beings (I-II, 91.2)—but that natural law includes natural inclinations shared by other animals, “such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring, and so forth.” But for Darwin, we don’t just share some aspects of our nature with animals. We are ultimately indistinguishable from other animals, and therefore subject to th e very same laws of evolution.

The effort of Arnhart and others to affirm the premises of evolution, and to affirm at the same time a morality grounded in natural law, inevitably fails. Natural law doctrine only makes sense in a universe governed by a benevolent Creator. Nor will it do to affirm both Darwinian evolution and a vague theism, for the engine of such evolution is, on principle, incompatible with any design or direction from above—and that includes moral design and direction. The Darwinism of Pinker and Dawkins, one must conclude, is much more coherent than that of Fukuyama and Arnhart.

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That's basically a bunch of BS coming from people with a lot of ego capital invested in standard theories. Respect for Arp appears to rise with competence in the field. Tom Van Flandern, for instance, is a former director of the Naval Observatory. Here's what he has to say about Arp:

DON'T READ THIS BOOK. For if you should decide after reading this review to disregard this advice, you will need to prepare to have your universe turned upside-down. Should you then make your way through this small print, 306-page tour de force, you will very likely come away doubting what you thought you knew of the large-scale structure of the universe. The cosmological interpretation of redshift for quasars and active galaxy nuclei has been challenged often before, although never so successfully. But one seldom sees serious suggestions that even the redshift-distance relation for ordinary galaxies may be wrong, as you will see here. And as if the implied revolution in cosmology were not enough, your view of the professionalism of scientists and academics in general, and of astronomers in particular, will be another casualty of your reading.

One can consume this book to different degrees. For example, a short summary of the evidence and implications appears on pp. 239-241. If the writing proves too technical in places even with the aid of the extensive glossary, one can get the essence of the evidence by just scanning the plates (8 pages in color), figures, and captions that appear on almost every page. For example, it's not difficult to look at the picture of the x-ray filaments in Markarian 205, featured also on the book cover, and to grasp the deep implications of that image. For if a low-redshift Seyfert galaxy is physically connected to and interacting with two high-redshift quasars, one on either side, then redshift can be neither a distance nor a velocity indicator. And that single picture then disproves the Big Bang and most of mainstream cosmology in its present form.

Arp knows the extragalactic sky perhaps better than any other living astronomer. He builds his case against the customary interpretation of redshift methodically. The earliest hints of problems with redshift came in 1911 with the discovery that the bright, blue stars in our own Milky Way galaxy have systematically higher redshifts than the rest of the stars by about 10 km/s. Later observations showed that the O-stars in clusters within our galaxy are redshifted with respect to the B-stars by another 10 km/s or so -- something called the "K-effect" and still disputed because it has no accepted theoretical explanation. However, doubts about the validity of the data were undercut and the K-effect confirmed by more recent measures of the redshifts of supergiant stars in the two Magellanic Clouds, nearby companion galaxies of the Milky Way. These too are redshifted by about 30 km/s with respect to other stars in those small galaxies. Yet no one suspects that all supergiant stars in our galaxy or in our immediate neighbors are fleeing away symmetrically from our own location well out toward one edge of the Milky Way.

Companion galaxies in general seem to have net redshifts that exceed that of their parents. All eleven companion galaxies in the Local Group have redshifts with respect to their parent, the Andromeda galaxy in the center of the group. Likewise, all eleven companion galaxies of the neighboring M81 group have redshifts relative to M81. Yet, if these companions were orbiting their parent galaxy, roughly 50% of them ought to have been blue-shifted. Although the evidence for companion redshifts is less definitive for more distant galaxy groups, it is still statistically significant. Excess redshifts over blueshifts for companion galaxies relative to their parents is apparently a verifiable feature of the local universe. And that means the redshift must have some cause other than velocity.

We begin to get some clues about what may be happening when Arp reminds us of basic facts about radio galaxies. These were discovered long ago to have giant, usually double, radio lobes to either side, presumably the result of explosions and ejections of material from the parent galaxy. Higher resolution radio telescopes have found filaments connecting these lobes to the central galaxy. And the ejected radio pairs are now known to correspond closely with x-ray pairs across the same galaxy.

That brings us to the keys to unlocking the whole puzzle -- the quasars -- because quasars also often correspond with x-ray sources. High and low redshift quasars are associated far more often than reasonable chance allows. These sometimes display interactions and connections and often form pairs across low-redshift objects, which unrelated objects would not do.

Working entirely from the observational data, Arp shows us that ejections from active galactic nuclei at speeds up to 10% of the speed of light lead to escape. But ejections at slower speeds may not, especially since all ejections apparently decelerate on the way out. Slower objects end up captured at about 400 kpc from their parent galaxy. But both captured and escaped quasars end up with quite small peculiar velocities. Moreover, the closest and therefore most recent ejections have the highest relative redshifts, and the lowest intrinsic luminosities. This leads Arp to suggest that the redshift of matter is an inverse function of the age of that matter. As much as one wishes to resist this conclusion, Arp shows case after case that conforms to it, many found well after this hypothesis was in print, each with odds of thousands to one against chance. Moreover, these apparently ejected quasars with redshifts ordered inversely with distance from their parent also tend to line up along the minor axis of the parent galaxy.

The generality of these startling conclusions is shown by repeated examples, such as the Arp/Hazard pair of similar triplet quasars, having discordant redshifts and a Seyfert galaxy between them. Many other good examples were discovered by mainstream astronomers. However, even when looking in depth at single examples, Arp makes a compelling case against coincidence. A survey of all bright quasars showed that these have a concentration around the Virgo cluster at the center of the Local Supercluster, despite having redshifts that should place them far out into the universe in that direction and make them unrelated to one another. The most conspicuous quasar in the sky is 3C273, one member of a pair of quasars almost exactly aligned across the brightest galaxy in the Virgo cluster center. A peculiar hydrogen cloud known to be in the Virgo cluster near the coordinates of 3C273 has a long, narrow shape pointing back toward the quasar, which itself has a jet pointing toward the hydrogen cloud. An x-ray radiation map (see Figure 5-16) also shows connections between the cluster to the quasar. Yet the quasar is supposed to be 54 times farther away than the cluster, according to its redshift. As Arp says, over 30 years ago, the field of astronomy took a gamble against odds of a million to one that this situation was an accident. The newer x-ray and hydrogen cloud evidence have confirmed that this was a bad gamble, although the field is not yet ready to accept its losses and move on.

Because redshift is not a good distance indicator, Arp points out that apparent brightness often is. Quasars near M49 appear relatively random on a sky map until just the brighter ones in a half-magnitude range are plotted. Then magically, there appears a line of quasars emerging from M49 with redshifts decreasing with distance, just as the observation-driven model predicts.

Whenever secondary distance indicators are available, they support this picture. In some cases, Faraday rotation caused by traversing a magnetized plasma can be measured for quasars. So the amount of such rotation ought to be a distance indicator. But it was then discovered that quasars with redshifts of about 2 had only 1/3 as much Faraday rotation as quasars with redshifts of about 1, when they ought to have had twice as much rotation. By contrast, this is in accord with Arp's model because the redshift z = 2 quasars are intrinsically fainter, and therefore generally seen only at closer distances, than those with z = 1.

Arp concludes that quasars are initially faint, point-like objects of high redshift that transform into lower-redshift, compact objects surrounded by a fuzz as they evolve. These develop into small, high-surface-brightness galaxies with more material around them. Ultimately these mature into normal, quiescent galaxies.

In this new view of relationships among astrophysical objects, Seyfert galaxies and their close cousins, BL Lac objects, are short-lived evolutionary stages associated with quasar ejection from active galaxy nuclei. In effect, Seyferts are quasar factories. Strong quasar number-counts are associated with a nearly complete sample of bright Seyferts, as compared with non-Seyfert control fields. Some of these associations have laughable explanations in mainstream journal articles. Quasar GC0248+430 is described as a "possibly microlensed quasar behind a tidal arm of a merging galaxy", which just happens to be a Seyfert.

Indeed, quasars look to astronomers like small portions of active (Seyfert-like) galactic nuclei. Their pairing across such nuclei, their alignment with radio emission pairings, the correspondences of x-ray maps, and the data from optical emission lines all strongly support the ejection interpretation. If nature has not already provided enough hints, an apparent magnitude vs. redshift (Hubble) diagram shows that Seyfert galaxies have too much redshift at fainter magnitudes and do not follow the same relationship as normal galaxies. Indeed, the Hubble diagram for Seyferts trends toward that for quasars, which likewise do not show a normal Hubble relationship between brightness and redshift. One wonders how many different ways nature must repeat this message about redshift not corresponding to distance before it sinks in with the astronomers.

Other astrophysical objects are in accord with this message. Water maser emissions are also seen in pairs roughly aligned with quasars. X-ray filaments or jets emerge from Seyfert galaxies and end at quasars, often in pairs of similar redshift on opposite sides of the minor axis of the galaxy between. And high-luminosity spiral galaxies have excess redshifts compared to normal spirals, as judged by the Tully-Fisher method of judging distances from rotation rates (which is independent of redshift).

One might well wonder what galaxy clusters have so say about this, since these are clearly physically associated groupings of galaxies. The supporting evidence they provide is truly extensive. Classically, whole galaxy clusters obey a Hubble diagram relation between redshift and brightness with a dispersion of just a few tenths of a magnitude. But 14 clusters north of Cen A have a much larger dispersion with a maximum range of 4 magnitudes. Such clusters have no relationship of the type claimed for ordinary galaxies, and call into question that the classical Hubble relationship can have the meaning usually attributed to it -- that redshift indicates distance -- for anything. We may simply have been fooled by both luminosity and redshift being functions of mass, which would lead to an apparent Hubble relationship despite no true distance dependence.

Some of the cluster examples are certainly head-turners. Abell clusters of galaxies with higher redshifts are distributed right down the spines of both the Virgo cluster and its southern-hemisphere twin, the Fornax cluster. A complete sample over a large region of the southern sky showed that the strongest x-ray cluster concentration had the two brightest galaxies (M83 and Cen A) at its center, despite much larger redshift for the x-ray clusters. In general, x-ray clusters appear more commonly with redshifts of about 0.06 than chance allows, which in Arp's interpretation marks them as young and intrinsically redshifted.

Supporting data includes cooling flow measures, which indicate that at least 100 solar masses per year are being lost from these clusters. This implies 100 billion solar masses in a billion years. Where is it going? The obvious possibilities can all be ruled out. BL Lac objects, at redshifts intermediate between quasars and cluster galaxies, are apparently progenitors of clusters of galaxies. Normal galaxies within certain redshift ranges tend to align on the sky in strings, with the lowest redshift galaxy near the center. For example, 13 of the 14 brightest northern hemisphere spiral galaxies in uncrowded fields fall on well-marked lines of galaxies that have concentrations of fainter, higher-redshift galaxies. And there are anomalous faint, blue, often active galaxies that fill out clusters in the redshift range between 0.2 and 0.4. These apparently evolve into the higher luminosity, lower redshift objects seen at 0.02 < z < 0.2. Finally, below redshifts of about 0.02 we find strings of galaxies aligned through the brightest nearby spiral galaxies, presumably representing the last evolutionary stage of protogalaxies before becoming the slightly higher redshift companions of the original ejecting galaxies. We are so accustomed to thinking of this sequence as a time evolution that it takes some effort to re-think the whole picture as a mass-luminosity-redshift evolution at a nearly fixed time.

So the young-appearing objects with the highest redshifts are aligned on either side of eruptive objects, which implies the ejection of protogalaxies and the association of redshift with youth. Increasing distance from parent leads to brighter, lower redshift objects, so this is the direction of evolution with age. At redshifts of about 0.3 and distances of about 400 kpc from the parent, quasars become very bright at optical wavelengths and in x-rays, and evolve into BL Lac-type objects -- a short-lived stage because there are few of them. Finally, these evolve into clusters of galaxies, which are seen to appear at comparable distances to the BL Lac objects, implying that clusters may originate from the breakup of BL Lac objects.

There is more. Tight multiple-quasars-image groupings were originally dismissed as observational errors until the gravitational lens theory was invoked. Then many more examples were quickly found. G2237+0305 was essentially a high-redshift quasar in the nucleus of a low-redshift galaxy. Lensing was the only way out for cosmologists. The four quasar images were all within one arc second of the galaxy nucleus. But Hoyle computed the probability of such a lensing event as two in a million. Moreover, instead of being arcs as lensing theory predicted, the quasar images are extended back toward the central galaxy. Real arc images don’t look much like the predicted arcs either, but rather like part of an expanded shell. This alternative is in better agreement with the existence of radial arcs, jet arcs, dog-leg arcs, and ejected jets that end in transverse arcs.

The last main observational area deals with the quantization of redshifts. In essence, redshifts do not take on all values with equal ease, as they must if they are caused mainly by the velocities of the observed objects. For example, redshifts near 0.061, 0.3, 0.6, 0.91, 1.41, 1.96, etc. occur more frequently than chance permits. Smaller redshifts too occur at preferred periodic intervals, as Tifft has shown in a study confirmed in an independent sample by Guthrie and Napier. The existence of preferred values for redshifts proves that either we are at the center of a series of expanding shells, or redshift does not indicate velocity. Arp cautions that faint quasars with high redshifts do not continue to show this effect, perhaps because the form of the relationship changes at great distances from us (as faintness would suggest). Also, much of the spread that exists around these preferred redshift values is apparently due to the speed of ejection, which can be up to 0.1 c. The average redshift of a quasar pair generally falls closer to a preferred redshift value than does either individual redshift. BL Lac objects show the same quantization, but to a less pronounced degree, as befits their relationship to quasars. Figure 8-16 shows a striking set of bands and gaps for galaxy redshifts in the x-ray cluster Abell 85 that illustrates the redshift quantization effect at a glance.

Arp's strength is observational extragalactic astronomy. With theory he is less proficient, but has enlisted the aid of Narlikar, Hoyle and others. The concept of mass increasing with age has no adjustable parameters (the characteristic age being given by the measured age of our own galaxy), yet allows prediction of intrinsic redshifts for objects from K-effect stars to quasars, with results better than an order of magnitude. The Big Bang with many adjustable parameters cannot do as well. Redshift, then, indicates youth. And the slope of the Hubble diagram comes directly from our own galaxy's age. Since luminosity evolves with mass squared, the apparent brightness-redshift relationship is coincidental, and not an indicator of distance. I am no doubt biased here by seeing simpler theoretical explanations for Arp's observational constraints than his variable-mass theory can provide. But Arp concedes in places that theories need to evolve with discoveries, something that the Big Bang stopped doing at a fundamental level a generation ago.

Some of the most entertaining reading in this book is provided by Arp's interactions with his colleagues and with referees and journal editors. Arp spices up these exchanges with a bit of his own philosophy. Despite its pessimism, I wonder how any of us could have evolved a philosophy much more optimistic if we had been in Arp's shoes. Anonymous referees frequently use abusive language such as "ludicrous", or unwarranted generalizations such as "bizarre conclusions based on an extreme bias of the authors wishing to find non-cosmological redshifts". It was not infrequent to find referees suggesting that the implications should have been used to prove the observations wrong! A Nobel laureate and former teacher is quoted as saying "Arp did not get anything right in my course. I should have flunked him but I could not bear to have him repeat the course with me."

We see in the anecdotes frequent occurrences of "sniping", unbacked claims that something is true or false for some reason that is not presented to the author for rebuttal. One example: "Oh those claims have been completely disproved." Arp introduces a few names for some of these battle tactics himself. The "Pleiades maneuver" is one such: Measure so much background that the statistical significance of the obvious foreground (such as the Pleiades cluster) is reduced to insignificance. Reaction to the x-ray map showing the connection of the Virgo cluster and quasar 3C273 produced five arrogant and patronizing referee rejections at two journals, and were viewed even by some colleagues "like a grisly auto accident along the highway".

Sadly, the mainstream is well adapted for survival. So when Arp succeeds in running the minefield and getting his results published despite the referees, an unwritten understanding is that no discussion or citations will follow so the embarrassing result will soon be forgotten. Arp suggests that a sampling of referee reports, showing "manipulative, sly, insulting, arrogant, and above all angry" referees, ought to be published because it would allow people to evaluate the objectivity of the information they are being allowed to read.

Here are some brief quotes outlining what Arp has learned from these exchanges.

"When presented with two possibilities, scientists tend to choose the wrong one."
The stronger the evidence, the more attitudes harden.
"The game here is to lump all the previous observations into one 'hypothesis' and then claim there is no second, confirming observation."
"No matter how many times something has been observed, it cannot be believed until it has been observed again."
"If you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality.
"When looking at this picture no amount of advanced academic education can substitute for good judgment; in fact it would undoubtedly be an impediment."
Local organizing committees give in to imperialistic pressures to keep rival research off programs
"It is the primary responsibility of a scientist to face, and resolve, discrepant observations."
Science is failing to self-correct. We must understand why in order to fix it.

The book has many more like these.

As with any work of such length and depth, a few errors turned up along with a few points that are of dubious merit. None of us can be experts in everything, and we are always pushing the limits of our knowledge and training. Worth a comment are these points:

Arp's arguments against tired light models (p. 97) make a common invalid assumption that quantum particles must be responsible for the energy loss. But there is good reason to suspect that quantum particles are by no means fundamental.
Arp's proposal (p. 219) that even planetary and satellite masses may be quantized uses an invalid statistical argument when bridging large ranges of mass. But he may well be right for small mass differences. Origin in twin pairs by fission usually creates masses in the approximate ratio of 5:4, which may partly explain Arp's planet statistics. It might also explain his magical 1.23 redshift quantization ratio if a similar fission process is responsible for the twin ejections in galaxies.
On p. 234, Arp cites the surface brightness test, which must vary as (1+z)⁴ in the Big Bang. He applies that to his own model on the assumption that observations support it. However, the observed dependence goes as (1+z)². Evolution of galaxies is said to be responsible for the difference in the Big Bang, but that argument would not apply to Arp's model.
On p. 237, Arp incorrectly states that the cosmic microwave radiation must come from a thin shell, saying this has not been explained. But that radiation is supposed to have flooded the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and been cooling ever since. So every point in the universe is today receiving cooled radiation, and there is no shell anywhere. Arp correctly goes on to provide more probable explanations for the radiation than a fireball residue.
Arp's use of statistics cries out for him to explain the difference between a priori and a posteriori probabilities, if only to assure us that he understands the difference and its importance.
It was disappointing to see no mention of the role of giant elliptical galaxies in the evolutionary scheme of things.

Arp correctly points out that one side in this meaning-of-redshift debate must be completely and catastrophically wrong. This leads him to wonder how many other uncertain assumptions might exist in other areas affecting our daily lives about which we are innocently overconfident. That is perhaps the most sobering thought of all.

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