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 assume you meant "chromatic" aberration, not "spherical," as that's what achromatic (doublet) lenses do....
;-)
ref posts 666, 668, 685, 800 inter alia
notice of overdue rent
to be paid promptly
currency accepted: Ripostes.
penalties enforced after post 899.
There once was a man from Maclean,
Who invented a sex machine.
Concave or convex,
it would serve either sex
but oh; what a b@stard to clean!
;-)
Actually, I forgot to bring in the book. I'm trying to avoid speaking for more than I can at this point.
Shalom.
But in that way is the Church different from any other institution?
Even the "scientific community" is coming painfully close to creating a witch hunt every time someone wants to question evolutionary teaching. When people gain authority they hate to have it challenged.
However, this does not change the original statement that the science and faith mix, and mix well. Politics and challenges to authority don't.
Shalom.
"The results of [Galileo's experiments] shocked the sensibilities of contemporary scholars. Galileo's experimental methods were entirely foreign to scientists of his day and were regarded by most of his colleagues as undesirable if not dangerous innovations. Accordingly, the results derived in this fashion were also suspect.Today it's Behe's publications that shock the sensibilities of public education. The Darwinian approach to understanding how the universe ticks is on the wane. Wonder what Galileo would think of those who assert that man is the culmination of wholly natural processes lacking either intelligence or design."These studies which upset Aristotelian physicists, as well as Galileo's habit of getting into trouble with persons who did not agree with him, made Galileo far from popular with the faculty at Pisa. Either on this account or on account of his father's death in 1591, Galileo resigned his teaching post at the University several months before it was due to expire and returned to his mother's home in Florence."
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"Galileo . . . was prone to sharply criticize unsubstantiated statements and theories unsupported by observation."
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Carl J. Wenning, Coordinator
Physics Teacher Education Program
Illinois State University
RadioAstronomer playing hooky from FR placemarker.
(Will this affect my standing at Darwin Central?)
You have made a leap that I did not make. You moved from "place" to "requirement."
In fact, there must be a place for the supernatural in scientific inquiry because the supernatural exists. If scientists are forced not to recognize something that exists they are limited in their inquiry.
It is reasonable to say that the scientific method can neither prove nor disprove the supernatural, but there must be a place for it.
Shalom.
:-)
It's going back a long way, but isn't that the first step in proving a towel can exceed the speed of sound?
Yes. For the next hour, you'll be standing in the corner.
The scientific community hasn't typically ordered the murder, arrest, torture, excommunication, or burning at the stake of its philosophical disputants. It does not forbid the reading of their books, unlike the Catholic church, to this very day.
However, this does not change the original statement that the science and faith mix, and mix well. Politics and challenges to authority don't.
Be that as it may, that still does not make ID a science worthy of being taught in science classes.
By "scholar" one presumes, we are referring to the prelates of the inquisition, and their priestly fellow travelers. Galileo's book was immensely popular with intelligent laypeople of the rennaissance, and practicing scientists, such as there were of them. It is a little hard to understand how a book with previously almost unheard of circulation numbers should have been bought up by people repulsed by it.
Einstein was a socialist. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had anti-semitic views. Werner Heisenberg worked on the Nazi atomic bomb project. Do we question relativity because of Einstein's political beliefs? Of course not. Do we stop driving cars or using light bulbs because of Ford and Edison's political beliefs? Do we reject quantum mechanics because Heisenberg did not defect from Nazi Germany? Do we question the value of their scientific and technological achievements? No, of course not.
It is for these reasons I reject the relevancy of constantly bringing up Dawkin's political beliefs. As others have also noted, they are neither relevant to science in general, nor evolutionary biology in particular.
You are not "exposing Dawkins." His views are well known. The only purpose to bringing up Dawkins' political beliefs is to smear those people who support evolutionary biology must be lilly-livered Bush-having leftists. This is a cheap tactic of guilt by association.
Is it, really? Could you actually "choose" to believe that Santa Claus is real? If you did, would that be actual belief, or just pretending that you believed? Could you "choose" to stop believing in something that you currently believe in strongly?
I already tried that but the marshmallows were too gooey. However, I think a bra might work - two data points for the price of one.
Huh, how heineous. I guess that would make him, what? A scientist?
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Carl J. Wenning, Coordinator
Physics Teacher Education Program
Illinois State University
Oh, well, there's an authoratative source.
Today it's Behe's publications that shock the sensibilities of public education. The Darwinian approach to understanding how the universe ticks is on the wane.
Except, of course, amongst a small minority of the population called scientists.
Wonder what Galileo would think of those who assert that man is the culmination of wholly natural processes lacking either intelligence or design.
I wonder, apropos to the quote above, what Galileo would think of people who cling to marginal pseudo-scientific theories like ID "unsupported by observation" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that convinces hundreds of thousands of working scientists totally immersed in the philosophy of intensely critical observation.
His work was received by people both inside and outside of the church. "Immensely popular" is an overstatement.
No. How could you hope to grasp the glory of my discovery? Fool!
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