Posted on 03/09/2005 12:36:05 PM PST by Heartlander
Darwinian Doubts
By: David Berlinski
March 9, 2005
Original Article
NOTE: The article below is the full version by Dr. Berlinski. The Wichita Eagle opted to shorten the piece to only 400 words.
The defense of Darwin’s theory of evolution has now fallen into the hands of biologists who believe in suppressing criticism when possible and ignoring it when not. It is not a strategy calculated in induce confidence in the scientific method. A paper published recently in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington concluded that the events taking place during the Cambrian era could best be understood in terms of an intelligent design – hardly a position unknown in the history of western science. The paper was, of course, peer-reviewed by three prominent evolutionary biologists. Wise men attend to the publication of every one of the Proceeding’s papers, but in the case of Steven Meyer’s "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," the Board of Editors was at once given to understand that they had done a bad thing. Their indecent capitulation followed at once.
Publication of the paper, they confessed, was a mistake. It would never happen again. It had barely happened at all. And peer review?
The hell with it.
“If scientists do not oppose antievolutionism,” Eugenie Scott, the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, remarked, “it will reach more people with the mistaken idea that evolution is scientifically weak.” Scott’s understanding of ‘opposition’ had nothing to do with reasoned discussion. It had nothing to do with reason at all. Discussing the issue was out of the question. Her advice to her colleagues was considerably more to the point: "Avoid debates."
Everyone else had better shut up.
In this country, at least, no one is ever going to shut up, the more so since the case against Darwin’s theory retains an almost lunatic vitality.
Look – The suggestion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences – quantum electrodynamics, say – is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen unyielding decimal places. Darwin’s theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.
Look – Field studies attempting to measure natural selection inevitably report weak to non-existent selection effects.
Look – Darwin’s theory is open at one end since there are no plausible account for the origins of life.
Look – The astonishing and irreducible complexity of various cellular structures has not yet successfully been described, let alone explained.
Look – A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors and depart for Valhalla leaving no obvious descendents.
Look – Where attempts to replicate Darwinian evolution on the computer have been successful, they have not used classical Darwinian principles, and where they have used such principles, they have not been successful.
Look – Tens of thousands of fruit flies have come and gone in laboratory experiments, and every last one of them has remained a fruit fly to the end, all efforts to see the miracle of speciation unavailing.
Look – The remarkable similarity in the genome of a great many organisms suggests that there is at bottom only one living system; but how then to account for the astonishing differences between human beings and their near relatives – differences that remain obvious to anyone who has visited a zoo?
But look again – If the differences between organisms are scientifically more interesting than their genomic similarities, of what use is Darwin’s theory since it’s otherwise mysterious operations take place by genetic variations?
These are hardly trivial questions. Each suggests a dozen others. These are hardly circumstances that do much to support the view that there are “no valid criticisms of Darwin’s theory,” as so many recent editorials have suggested.
Serious biologists quite understand all this. They rather regard Darwin’s theory as an elderly uncle invited to a family dinner. The old boy has no hair, he has no teeth, he is hard of hearing, and he often drools. Addressing even senior members at table as Sonny, he is inordinately eager to tell the same story over and over again.
But he’s family. What can you do?
David Berlinski holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is the author of On Systems Analysis, A Tour of the Calculus, The Advent of the Algorithm, Newton’s Gift, The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky, and, most recently, Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics. He is a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
"The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky" is a book promoting astrology. Check my link to Amazon.
monkey worship bump
"ID predicts consciousness does not come from mindlessness."
The argument that intelligence requires a creator doesn't wash, if that were true then something had to create the creator, and so on ad infinitum
So, he's a secular Jew who believes in astrology-- at least he's not one of those evil Christians!
I'm sorry, but probably everyone has one or more unproven beliefs, even beliefs that most others would consider whacked. It doesn't invalidate their opinions in other areas or their cognitive abilities . I believe in God (which belief many consider un-proven, although I don't) and I'm also very good at math, and I believe that conservative political views and positions are best for the country. One does not invalidate the others.
Heh, heh, bump.
>> this is wrong. They have gotten fruit flies to live longer.<<
Were they still fruit flies?
are you going to read all the posts or just ignore those as well?
No, they were "lived-longer" fruit flies, a new species !!!
Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the "Mars effect" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it.
Berlinsky's books on calculus and algorithms were rather poor. I read both. Neither was competently written.
As I understand ID, all of them actually.
Creationism on the other hand allows all to go extinct except for man
thank you...Berlinski is terrific
More misinformation from the anti-science crowd. QED doesn't work at all in a strong gravitational field. They still can't solve multibody problems. Plus they certainly can't measure anything to 13 decimal places. They're still working on 3.
Early experimental work indicated that the magnetic moment of the electron has a slight deviation of approximately 0.1% from the value expected from QED. This deviation is known as the anomalous magnetic moment and the size of this deviation between theoretical and experimental values establishes a strong bound on the validity of QED.
But if someone wants to, they can do some homework here.
please list the 10 'species' between ape and Man
From a Mathematical Reviews comment about another of Berlinski's books (Newton's gift): "But what is said of Newton's mathematics has only a weak connection with Newton's texts."
If intelligent design is true, and God really did create all of the species, shouldn't conservatives act to preserve every last one of them? I mean, every insignificant corpse-maggot or jungle-spider was put here on Earth BY GOD, LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF, as an act of divine love & design & whatnot.
Me, I'm comfortable with a little extinction here and there.
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