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
Or maybe the brews are just wearing off and he'll return to normal as soon as he makes a run to the store. ;-) Heck, I could use a drink myself, come to think of it.
There are two FOG indices.
FOG1 is the number of syllables divided by the number of words. Scientists have high FOG1 indices. Your average schmuck like me loves Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. What could be more clear than: "He died. His throat was cut." Real brutal and real clear? It is possible to converse using only monosyllables. Gets tricky at times, but....
FOG2 is the number or words divided by the number of significant things said. Scientists have very low FOG2 indices. Deans are much higher and politicians' FOG2 indices approach infinity.
Okay.
(...damn!)
Who made you thread monitor?
So does Dawkins in quoting his friend:
“Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.”
You too proud and too chicken to admit your own ignorance. Stay away from the schools for which I pay taxes. I hope you don't get paid to teach.
This is incorrect. For example, almost all phylogenic reconstructions based on molecular analysis (usually of DNA) involve probability calculations.
Who made you thread monitor?
And by what arrogance (or delusions of mindreading ability) does he divine that such concerns are "faux"?
Yeah, well my car had some unintelligent design elements added later, but the insurance company reimbursed me for the efforts of the budding neo-Darwinist's "random" mutations. The mutations did not survive to be passed on.
Thank you for posting that. I've seen references to FOG indexes and grasped the main point, but I've never seen them explained.
Man, I should have been Mark Twain. Instead I'm Rufus Hergemeyer.
Does that mean the longer they are, the more valid, as a rule? If so, I don't like the rule.
Sounds more like "neo-lysenkoist" to me.
I hope you don't teach chemistry at a famous Ivy league university... You don't! Whew! ;^)
Gone for the evening. Nobody touch my primes!
Montana: Where the Men are Men and the Sheep are Worried.
Montana: Where the Men are Men and the Sheep are Worried.
Actually I picked on Montana because they raise sheep there, I've never been there and I don't know any Montana freepers. But you can put any state in it. I've seen Utah and Wyoming.
Now there's a more ribald joke that goes with it.....
1100? As if that matters ...
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