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
These are your definitions, not mine.
Probability of deterministic mechanisms yielding complexity = 0.00.
Probablity of random mechanisms yielding complexity = 1.00.
Dropping a pin on parallels is a random mechanism. What does it yield that is complex? The square root of two? /sarcasm
No comment(other than this)
Interestingly, right after the profound paragraph you quoted, he seems to reject what he has just said:
Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog-days, but only if we have it in winter. If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due to nature even the champions of the theory which is before us would agree. Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.Aristotle seems to have been beguiled by a teleological bias. He coulda been a contender. Moving along, however, he seems to recognize the existence of what we call mutations, but later on attributes them to a failed purpose:Further, where a series has a completion, all the preceding steps are for the sake of that. Now surely as in intelligent action, so in nature; and as in nature, so it is in each action, if nothing interferes. Now intelligent action is for the sake of an end; therefore the nature of things also is so. Thus if a house, e.g. had been a thing made by nature, it would have been made in the same way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature were made also by art, they would come to be in the same way as by nature. Each step then in the series is for the sake of the next; and generally art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and partly imitates her. If, therefore, artificial products are for the sake of an end, so clearly also are natural products. The relation of the later to the earlier terms of the series is the same in both. ...
Now mistakes come to pass even in the operations of art: the grammarian makes a mistake in writing and the doctor pours out the wrong dose. Hence clearly mistakes are possible in the operations of nature also. If then in art there are cases in which what is rightly produced serves a purpose, and if where mistakes occur there was a purpose in what was attempted, only it was not attained, so must it be also in natural products, and monstrosities will be failures in the purposive effort. Thus in the original combinations the ‘ox-progeny’ if they failed to reach a determinate end must have arisen through the corruption of some principle corresponding to what is now the seed.
I know, but I can't find an appropriate article.
As, for example, when a dogmatic evolutionist rejects ID out of hand and declares it unworthy of discussion in a classroom before studying and comprehending all it entails.
He came THAT close...
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The needle problem was not setup to generate complex numbers. It was setup as a question. What is the probability of the needle landing on a line? The analysis of that question yields pi.
I didn't read that far. Interesting. (Darwin does have this passage in one of his books, probably an introduction.)
I did find another translation where Aristotle did ascribe rain to Zeus. I don't know what the Greek version says (or if there are several.)
Aristotle is better at question than answers (a quality of being early.) He also thought the brain was designed to cool the blood but others though it was the seat of thought. In many cases, Aristotle was right.
Your capacity for misleading and distracting interpretation remains unparalleled. The elementary science classroom is not the place for "free thought", it is a place for learning what science is about...just as the English classroom is place for diagramming sentences and learning to spell, not for free debate over the value of eubonics and street slang.
You have demonstrated well that being patronizing and snotty is one possible tactic . . .
I tend to reply with the same tone in which I am addressed.
From my experience of you so far, you highly overestimate your capacity for constraint and temperance. As what directly follows should suggest:
You and your ilk have been "patronizing and snotty" from the get go, pal. I do not foresee any change in that regard. There is, however, substance behind the suggestion that you refrain from professional science and teaching unless you offer a qualifier or six. The philosophy room is down the hall to the left.
Touting for freedom of speech in an elementary science classroom suggests to me that you are underqualified to judge my teaching skills.
He also thought the brain was designed to cool the blood but others though it was the seat of thought. In many cases, Aristotle was right.When debating creationists my brain often have to cool down the blood my heart has heated to boiling.
Yes. This is from the introduction to the 6th (final) edition of Origin of Species:
I WILL here give a brief sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin of Species. Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created. This view has been ably maintained by many authors. Some few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo modification, and that the existing forms of life are the descendants by true generation of pre-existing forms. Passing over allusions to the subject in the classical writers* the first author who in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon.That asterisk leads to a footnote, as follows:
Aristotle, in his 'Physicae Auscultationes' (lib. 2, cap. 8, s. 2), after remarking that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same argument to organization: and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who first pointed out the passage to me), "So what hinders the different parts [of the body] from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to the other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity, and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished, and still perish. We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth.
Science is about keeping an open mind to all possibilities where the universe has not been explained. Furthermore one cannot do science without an orderly universe, and an orderly universe is fairly significant evidence that intelligent design was involved in bringing it about.
. . . you are underqualified to judge my teaching skills.
Where science is concerned you appear underqualified to teach insofar as you appear all-too-willing to cut off free inquiry. Where philosophy is concerned, I'll leave it an open question.
Do you know why?
Why, yes I do. You can read about it here and I'll briefly summarize: the nature of earth's early atmosphere is hardly a settled issue--nor is the location of the site of early life's start. It might not have been in the atmosphere, it might have been at the mid-ocean vents--and even if it is reducing, that doesn't particularly obviate the main point of the Urey-Miller experiment: that it's not very hard to get some amino acids by giving a puddle of carbon sludge a good fierce jolt.
You started this discussion by calling the Urey-Miller experiment fraudulant. Offhand, I'd call that intemperate slander.
Science is handling that just fine without mandated supervision from incompetent non-scientists with painfully obvious axes to grind.
Furthermore one cannot do science without an orderly universe, and an orderly universe is fairly significant evidence that intelligent design was involved in bringing it about.
I am not aware that this is a well-respected fundamental scientific principle such as to suggest it must be taught in a science class alongside, say, the theory of gravitation.
One can only hope public educational institutions do not base their cirricula upon what you are personally aware, or unaware, of. It stands as an observable fact that evolutionists wield power over public school cirricla in manner like that of the Roman Cardinals in Galileo's day. It is more than annoying to see free inquiry squelched in the name of the limited "awareness" of this or that group of people.
Please donh, I didn't think even you would bring up the silly vent origins hypothesis. Oy'
In other words: "The design of living things is evidence for a designer, whose existence is sufficient to conclude that living things are designed."
This conversation looks familiar. I'll bet you a beer it ends like this.
Courtesy ping only.
Curtsey placemarker.
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