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
I stand corrected, but would assert that his observations abd calculations were more direct than that of most people.
Good point. And ironic when you consider Dawkins is considered the opponent of Lewontin and Gould since he frequently held the anti-marxist position (good luck explaining that to jwalsh though).
That's the funny thing; they lump all evos into the same group, without being aware that Gould+Lewontin+Rose vs. Dawkins+Wilson+most of the rest of biology was one of the great knock-down, drag-out, 15-round battles of the 20th century.
Science NEVER makes statements of absolute certainty, so I'm not sure what your point is.
That science must operate on the basis of faith, just like any other discipline.
Nor does it, I might add, affect the lack of validity of the original argument. Even if Dawkins actually IS a Marxist, the original argument is logically invalid.
I would pose this question to you. Scenario A: all the diversity of life formed via a process of unguided mutations followed by natural selection. Scenario B: all the diversity of life formed by a process of natural selection of mutations that are identical to those found in scenario A, but were caused by some guiding intelligence. What observable difference would there be between scenario A and scenario B? If there's no observable difference, then the question is not a scientific one. There is no way to test whether scenario A or B is the correct one. I would contend that there is no such test, and therefore that ID is not a scientific theory, at least the form of ID that does not deny that the primary mechanism leading to biodiversity is mutation and natural selection.
I’ve suggested we assign properties to the term and asserted decision-making, awareness and intent for my contribution. But there is another aspect of intelligence which may beg the question if we don’t clear it up now:
Some believe intelligence is fractal while some believe it is emergent. Others believe it is a combination.
I do not wish our definition of the intelligent design hypothesis to be prejudiced for lack of specificity as it would clearly beg the question when we get to the end (which I'm thinking will be your presenting a syllogism with an undistributed middle).
IOW, it shouldn't matter in any self-organizing complexity model whether intelligence is perceived as fractal or emergent. This would affect all the hypotheses: intelligent design, collective consciousness, panspermia/cosmic ancestry, or self-organizing complexity within the framework of methodological naturalism.
Fractal - Term coined by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1975, referring to objects built using recursion, where some aspect of the limiting object is infinite and another is finite, and where at any iteration, some piece of the object is a scaled down version of the previous iteration.
Fractal Property - The structural property of an object that consists of self-similar parts. In other words, the parts are smaller copies of the object. So are the parts of the parts, and so forth ad infinitum.
A fractal is a geometric object which is rough or irregular on all scales of length, and so which appears to be 'broken up' in a radical way. Some of the best examples can be divided into parts, each of which is similar to the original object. Fractals are said to possess infinite detail, and they may actually have a self-similar structure that occurs at different levels of magnification. In many cases, a fractal can be generated by a repeating pattern, in a typically recursive or iterative process. The term fractal was coined in 1975 by Benoît Mandelbrot, from the Latin fractus or "broken". Before Mandelbrot coined his term, the common name for such structures (the Koch snowflake, for example) was monster curve.
Emergent - Emergence is the process of complex pattern formation from simpler rules. This can be a dynamic process (occurring over time), such as the evolution of the human brain over thousands of successive generations; or emergence can happen over disparate size scales, such as the interactions between a macroscopic number of neurons producing a human brain capable of thought (even though the constituent neurons are not themselves conscious). For a phenomenon to be termed emergent it should generally be unexpected and unpredictable from a lower level description. Usually the phenomenon does not exist at all or only in trace amounts at the very lowest level.
Emergent Property - The phenomenon that the whole may be more than the sum of its parts ('1+1>2'). For example, flight is an emergent property of all the mechanical parts of an airplane: None of the parts can fly, but the whole of the parts can. Applying this concept to 'intelligence' one may claim that intelligence is an emergent property: ....the level of cell intelligence emerges from the intelligence of cell compartments.The level of organism intelligence emerges from intelligent cells. The level of intelligence displayed by entire populations emerges from intelligent organisms. The level of intelligence of an ecology emerges from the intelligence of its populations... and so forth.
I think if you step back far enough to view the motions of the sun and planets relative to the center of the galaxy, you will note that none of the moons or planets travels in a circle (or elipse).
If you are looking for more, please let me know!
It is an interesting concept that life could participate in its own design. We, of course, are participating in the design of future humans, but I have seen no evidence that variation exhibits any characteristics of intelligence.
I would think that at a minimum, there would be some correlation between variation and adaptation. More targeted mutations and less malthusian wastage.
It's called feedback. Individuals are part of their own environment. For example, if your parents didn't have any children, it's quite likely that you won't.
Too many liberal judges not enforcing this rule.
But as I said it would be a spectacle seeing you squashed flat.
Hey, I have an idea. Email him with your preposterous lies and, when he responds, post your email and his response on the thread. You could post a whole email exchange. That way you get it all done in public which was your only objection to an email exchange, right? And it's hardly any effort at all.
You know what, if you're too lazy, I'll even do the work. You tell me exactly what you want him to respond to, I'll email it and then post his response. Just make sure your post is exactly what you want sent. You know, about how he's a Marxist and wants to ban religion.
Intelligence is a general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn.
That works fine as far as I'm concerned.
In fact it is the opposite. The Ptolemaic theory is very direct and the Copernican theory (which Galileo supported) was substantially more subtle (but also much better of course). The former assumed a central fact - the earth is not moving - based on direct sensory evidence. The motion of the sun, moon and planets is also directly apparent. So the the theory applied the simplest possible motion to them, this is pretty darn direct. When deviation from observation was found, they added another layer but this is also direct. More deviations found, add another lay on top. It is brute force programming.
In contrast, Copernicus begins by denying the obvious fact that the earth is not moving. I don't recall that he or Galileo had an explanation for how the earth could be moving but we not feel it.
It is interesting that, about the same time as Galileo, Tycho simplified the Ptolemaic scheme by having the sun and moon revolve around the earth but the planets revolve around the sun. At the limit of observational capability of the time, I don't think Tycho's scheme could have been distinguished from Copernicus' which also used circular orbits. Even a Keplerian system with elliptical orbits cannot be distinguished from a Tychonian system that does also. I think the reason the geocentric view lost out is that it cannot account for the seasons unless the earth's axis moves. Once you let the earth move, why not go all the way for the simpler (but more subtle) scheme?
I don't think self-organization is equivalent to self-design. As I understand it, the former is when a dynamic process is able to maintain or reduce its local entropy at the expense of its environment. The latter implies intent and choice.
In contrast, Copernicus begins by denying the obvious fact that the earth is not moving.
Do you think Copernicus began with a new assumption, or first saw evidence that in turn made him question the orthodoxy of his day?
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