Posted on 06/03/2009 8:42:23 PM PDT by gobucks
Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution is common knowledge but Darwin the person is barely known. Even on his 200th birth anniversary this year — he was born in England on Feb. 12, 1809 — much has been said about his works but little about his inner life of contrasts.
Darwin loved the natural world from childhood. He roamed the wilderness to study insects while neglecting Greek and Latin, the essential subjects. He said of his schooling, “I was considered by all my masters and by my Father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.”
Sent to medical school at age 16, he quit after seeing an operation on a child. Anesthesia was not yet introduced, and frightened patients stayed awake while surgeons sawed through their legs. His father was upset with him for leaving medicine, as fathers are when their offspring disappoint them. Charles was warned that he would be a disgrace.
He then went to Cambridge University to be a minister. There he found a mentor who would change his life, the Rev. John Henslow, a botanist. He and a geology professor taught Darwin how to observe and interpret nature’s ways.
After Cambridge, while Darwin was pondering entering the ministry, Henslow recommended him as a naturalist for a British survey ship, HMS Beagle, which planned an around-the-globe voyage. Darwin’s father was opposed, calling it a waste of time, but Charles prevailed with the help of his maternal uncle.
After four years, in 1835, the Beagle landed in the Galapagos Archipelago in the Pacific. What Darwin saw there changed our concept of biology. For millions of years, the animals and birds in these isolated islands had evolved in their unique way to survive and propagate. And they had no fear of humans. How and why did these creatures become the way they did? These questions germinated the idea of evolution in Darwin’s mind.
At 29, Darwin married Emma Wedgwood, his first cousin. The marriage saved his life. Emma was 30. An educated woman, she spoke French, German and Italian. And despite their differences in belief — she was a devoted Christian while he turned agnostic — she read Darwin’s papers before they were sent out. Emma, however, is not given the recognition she deserves for supporting her husband’s works, and accepting the demands of his almost constant illness. Moreover, she bore 10 children; the last one, born when she was 48, had Down syndrome.
Darwin’s favorite child, Annie, died of tuberculosis when she was 10. His anguish expresses a father’s loss and his deep love for a child: “Her face now rises before me ... her whole form radiant with the pleasure of giving pleasure ... her dear face bright all the time, with sweetest smiles. ... We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age.” This loss, some say, turned him into an agnostic.
Darwin’s radical idea — evolution of species over millions of years — starkly contradicted the doctrine on creation. Fearing the church’s hostile reactions, he waited about 20 years before publishing his seminal book, “The Origin of Species,” in 1859. The book transformed science and human thought forever.
Though zealots impede teaching evolution in school, some churches now believe that evolution is compatible with faith. Zealotry diminishes both religion and science.
Why is Darwin universally remembered while other original minds have remained obscure? It’s not just because of his big idea on evolution and change. After all, the idea was not his alone. Another naturalist, Alfred Wallace, came to the same conclusion as that of Darwin. Even philosopher Heraclitus said 2,500 years ago, “There is nothing permanent except change.”
What has kept Darwin alive is the power of his observations and his writings. He has integrated diverse fields of knowledge — including geology, zoology, botany, marine biology, horticulture, animal husbandry and history — to make compelling points for evolution.
We are part of nature, not above it. The poetic conclusion of “The Origin of Species” pictures our kinship to nature: “Contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and ... reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other ... have all been produced by laws acting around us.”
Really?
If you will, please provide any empirical example of a code, defined as a channel with an input alphabet A and an output alphabet B, where the origin of the code is known, that is the result of a natural (non-intelligent) process.
Cordially,
Yep. That's about the size of it GGG! Astutely and most concisely noted. Thank you!
My own view is the theory has a suspicious premise and is incomplete at best. And yet it seems to be the core ideology of biology today. Which puts it very much at odds with findings emerging from complexity and information sciences, and biosemiotics. At the very least, it is helpless to explain them.
Still, many cling to the faith. For as Francis Bacon, the founder of the modern scientific method, observed [Novum Organum]:
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former convictions may remain inviolate.Bacon indicates this sort of thing is an example of an "Idol of the Tribe." An "idol" is a "false notion." Bacon's classification of this one as "of the Tribe" means that it is innate or inherent "in the very nature of the intellect," thus "in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men." The danger it poses to human understanding is its "false mirror" quality, which, according to Bacon, "receiv[es] rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it."
We may think we're "objective observers." But if we can't get around that idol, we aren't justified in thinking of ourselves as truly "objective."
Bacon suggests that the only cure for this universal human phenomenon is,
...let every student of nature take this as a rule — that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with particular satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken in dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear.In sum, science ought to be about Nature, not partisanship.
Surely you're not referring to Darwin?
And despite their differences in belief — she was a devoted Christian while he turned agnostic — she read Darwin’s papers before they were sent out.
If one is a Christian, it's not likely that one would turn their back on God.
If one turned their back on God, then likely he wasn't a Christian to begin with.
How convenient indeed. That allows evos to claim anything happened.
Hey, I'm still working on the concept that if a star can collapse into a black hole which has a gravitational pull so strong that everything gets sucked into it and nothing can escape, how could the whole mass of the universe, (which is zillions of times more massive than any star) escape its own gravitational attraction, which is infinity stronger than any black hole?
I've been waiting for some scientist to give me a naturalistic, no intelligence allowed explanation.
No, it isn't.
It's merely wished to be true beyond the shadow of a doubt by the evos.
Well, why don't you just take a gander over to Darwin Central and get a lesson in extreme hyperbole, arrogance, vanity.
They've been working on it for some time now. All you have to do is look at their latest bash FR thread.
Waiting with bated breath.....
Thanks BB :o) Excellent F. Bacon quote btw. I have never run across it before, but I find him spot-on. It seems more and more “science” these days is based on opinions that are agreeable to those who place their faith in materialist/Evo-religion. What really blows my mind is that the Evos can’t see it. The actually believe their opinions are the same thing as settled science.
And yet many of them argue as if a favorite theory is set in stone.
As Karl Popper suggests the best scientific theories are not the generalizations with massive explanatory power but rather the ones with the highest information content, the greatest specificity and thereby, which can be falsified.
Frankly, the surest things we can say describing the physical world are mathematical, i.e. because of math "proofs." Beyond that, science is theory upon theory - subject to falling like a house of cards.
Sigh. Evidently not, GGG!
The irony is Francis Bacon, in writing of his Four Idols of the mind, was attempting to break the "choke-hold" of classical philosophy and religion on human knowledge so as to clear the decks for a new (i.e., inductive) approach to the conduct of science. Yet evidently he was right about the "universality" of the innate human tendency described in my last. It comes back to haunt scientists in our own time.
But few notice it — likely because of its "faithlike" nature. Few people bother to analyze their fundamental beliefs.
I'm so glad you liked the excerpt from Bacon. I'm finding him a marvelous read!
Thank you so much for writing, GGG!
Interesting words ... especially when attempting to comprehend infinite strrength.
Yes — but how does one "falsify" macroevolution theory? Or panspermia theory? It seems to me they are both unfalsifiable; so I don't understand how they get ranked as "scientific" theories to begin with.
Doesn't the scientific method require falsifiability — such that what is not falsifiable does not qualify as an object for science?
What is the "information content" and "specificity" of macroevolution theory? (Or panspermia? Or special creation?)
Questions, questions. Is there a Darwinist out there who can give me any answers?
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your excellent essay/post!
hmmm, or,..... “we see through a glass, darkly”..
Really nice post BB...didn’t know about these words of Bacon, btw.
>>Frankly, the surest things we can say describing the physical world are mathematical, i.e. because of math “proofs.” Beyond that, science is theory upon theory - subject to falling like a house of cards. <<
As happened with Newtonian science — yet, apples did not cease to fall from trees.
The point is that scientific theories are broad principles that describe natural phenomenon. TToE is one of many theories that are perhaps subject to being overridden. Say, if a modern human skeleton was found in a 100 million year strata. But, rather than undermining TToE, the more data we find the more the theory is clarified. There are certainly gaps and changes in individual threads (those ggg loves to tout as “eliminating TToE”) but the overall theory has never been challenged by any real data nor has an alternate theory been proposed.
We have seen TToE in action and put it to use in things like antibiotics. To just throw up our hands and say “well, everything is after all just a theory” is both inaccurate and inapplicable.
A Scientific Theory is the highest order in the hierarchy of science. It is the most significant tool in the scientist’s drawer and is why you can own and use a computer (as a practical and personal example of scientific theories in practice).
Darwin’s observations and chronicle thereof established a framework for the theory — one that has stood the test of time and data.
And as much as ggg would have it be otherwise this isn’t about Darwin, any more than physics is about Newton and Einstein or astronomy is about Copernicus. It is about understanding how real science works — across all disciplines.
The tendency to calcify thinking is a bane to all scientific disciplines and has no more nor less applicability to TToE than any other.
It was Einstein who said he didn’t need proof — that other scientists did (when he was proven correct about his theory).
If someone can bring real hard data and an alternate theory that explains all the data collected to date (billions of artifacts) that meets all criteria for a Scientific Theory, I am all ears and eyes.
btw, please do have a blessed day. I know you and AG’s hearts are pure on this topic. Sadly, you are the exceptions more often than not.
>>Yes — but how does one “falsify” macroevolution theory? Or panspermia theory? It seems to me they are both unfalsifiable; so I don’t understand how they get ranked as “scientific” theories to begin with<<
Easy. Find a modern human skeleton in the same strata as a dinosaur. Or even a modern horse.
I am not quite sure how panspermia applies — it is not a Scientific Theory.
That wouldn't work either.
If it wasn't dismissed as an outright fraud, the scientific community would declare *Human Evolution pushed back millions of years. Evidence now suggests that humans evolved earlier than previously thought* Or *Humans (or horses) now classified as a living fossil*.
Of one thing I have no doubt. They'd explain it away SOMEHOW rather than admit that the ToE was falsified, because they have nothing else to fall back on, and special creation is not an option.
Of what observation, hypothesis, and verified prediction are the following statements?
"What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful blundering, low and horribly cruel works of nature""If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."
"the fact that instincts are not always absolutely perfect and are liable to mistakes;—that no instinct can be shown to have been produced for the good of other animals, though animals take advantage of the instincts of others;—that the canon in natural history, of "Natura non facit saltum," is applicable to instincts as well as to corporeal structure, and is plainly explicable on the foregoing views, but is otherwise inexplicable,—all tend to corroborate the theory of natural selection."
"My theory agrees with unequal distances between species some fine & some wide which is strange if creator had so created them. — "
"When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."
"Did He (God) ordain that crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fan-tail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary, in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull, for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case; if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the results of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray, in his belief 'that variations have been led along certain beneficial lines, as a stream is led along useful lines of irrigation.'"
[The doctrine of everlasting punishment is] "a damnable doctrine"
"As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."
[Special creation is] "a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion"
"no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations... were intentionally and specially guided."
[With regard to General and Special Revelation] "the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect.... The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us"
"The believe that many structures have been created for the sake of beauty, to delight man or the Creator (but this latter point is beyond the scope of scientific discussion), or for the sake of mere variety, a view already discussed. Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory. "
Cordially,
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