Gould Strikes Back At Creationists

Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great evolutionary biologists of our time, will publish his "magnum opus", this month, in which he lambasts creationists for deliberately distorting his theories to undermine the teaching of Darwinism in schools.

Professor Gould accuses creationists of having exploited the sometimes bitter dispute between him and his fellow Darwinists to promulgate the myth that the theory of evolution is riven with doubts and is, therefore, just as valid as biblical explanations for life on Earth.

The distinguished professor of zoology at Harvard University, whose 1,400-page book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, has been 10 years in the writing, was intimately involved with the fight against creationist teaching during the 1970s and 1980s in the American Deep South.

The arguments have resurfaced in Britain after the news that a school in Gateshead has been teaching creationism alongside evolution, arguing both are equal valid viewpoints.

Creationists still use Professor Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" – which argues for the sudden appearance of new species – to support their view that Darwinism is being challenged by some of the leading thinkers in biology.

Although Professor Gould never disputed the central tenet of Darwinism, natural selection, his explanation for how new species might rapidly arise is often presented by creationists as a direct challenge to the scientific orthodoxy at the heart of Darwinism.

Evangelical creationists in particular have argued the universally accepted gaps in the fossil record and the frequent absence of intermediate forms between fossilised species are evidence that evolution cannot fully account for the diversity of life on Earth.

They have used Professor Gould's theory – which proposes long periods of stable "equilibrium" punctuated by sudden changes that are not captured as fossils – as proof that Darwinist "gradualism" was wrong and it should therefore be taught, at the very minimum, alongside creationism in schools.

Stephen Layfield, a science teacher at Emmanuel College in Gateshead, which is at the centre of the row, used the lack of intermediate fossils between ancestral species and their descendants to question Darwinist evolution.

Professor Gould says creationists have unwittingly misinterpreted or deliberately misquoted his work in a manner that would otherwise be laughable, were it not for the impact it can have on the teaching of science in schools.

"Such inane and basically harmless perorations may boil the blood but creationist attempts to use punctuated equilibrium in their campaigns for suppressing the teaching of evolution raise genuine worries," Professor Gould said.

Fundamentalist teaching reached its height in the United States in the early 1920s and culminated in the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in Tennessee in 1925 when John Scopes, a biology teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution in contravention of state law.

A second creationist surge occurred in the US during the 1970s, which led to the "equal time" laws for the teaching of creationism and evolution in the state schools of Arkansas and Louisiana. The rule was overturned in two court cases in 1982 and 1987.

At the same time, Professor Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium was being debated among scientists. With the fellow Darwinist, Niles Eldredge, who cited the unchanging nature of Trilobite fossils in support of the idea, Professor Gould presented the theory at a scientific conference in 1971. A seminal scientific paper followed a year later.

"But I had no premonition about the hubbub that punctuated equilibrium would generate," Professor Gould said. Some "absurdly-hyped popular accounts" proclaimed the death of Darwinism, with punctuated equilibrium as the primary assassin, he says.

"Our theory became the public symbol and stalking horse for all debate within evolutionary theory. Moreover, since popular impression now falsely linked the supposed 'trouble' within evolutionary theory to the rise of creationism, some intemperate colleagues began to blame Eldredge and me for the growing strength of creationism.

"Thus, we stood falsely accused by some colleagues both for dishonestly exaggerating our theory to proclaim the death of Darwin (presumably for our own cynical quest for fame), and for unwittingly fostering the scourge of creationism as well," he said.

Not every scientist, however, would agree that Professor Gould was innocent in the dispute, which was exploited by evangelical creationists.

What was essentially an arcane argument between consenting academics soon became a public schism between Gould and his Darwinist rivals, whose position was best articulated by the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins.

At its most simplistic, the idea of punctuated equilibrium was presented as an alternative to the "gradualism" of traditional Darwinism. Rather than species evolving gradually, mutation by mutation, over a long period of time, Professor Gould argued they arose within a period of tens of thousands rather than tens of millions of years – a blink of the eye in geological terms.

Professor Dawkins savaged the Gould-Eldredge idea, arguing gaps in the fossil record could be explained by evolutionary change occurring in a different place from where most fossils were found. In any case, Dawkins said, we would need an extraordinarily rich fossil record to track evolutionary change.

Gould and Eldredge could have made that point themselves, he said. "But no, instead they chose, especially in their later writings, in which they were eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian synthesis," Dawkins writes in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker.

"They did this by emphasising the 'gradualism' of the Darwinian view of evolution as opposed to the sudden 'jerky', sporadic 'punctuationism' of their own ... The fact is that, in the fullest and most serious sense, Eldredge and Gould are really just as gradualist as Darwin or any of his followers," Professor Dawkins wrote.

The subtleties of the dispute were, however, lost on commentators outside the rarefied field of evolutionary theory.

It was certainly lost on many creationists who just revelled in the vitriolic spat between the leading Darwinists. (The dispute was so vitriolic it became personal – in his book, Gould relegates his critics to a section titled "The Wages of Jealousy".)

Richard Fortey, the Collier Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Bristol University, says Professors Gould and Dawkins are closer than many people realise.

With some of Britain's leading scientists and theologians writing to the Prime Minister to voice their concerns about the teaching of creationism, the issue has come to the fore.

"It's absurd we are now facing this creationist threat," Professor Fortey said. "It's a debate that belongs to the 1840s. Evolution is not just a theory, it's as much of a fact as the existence of the solar system."

Gould is by far the most interesting evolutionary biologist currently active, just as the most interesting folk criticizing core Darwinism from outside are the heavily information-theoretic ID crowd.

If it weren't for the fact that the stock gradualist Darwinian account of biological diversity has come to function sociologically as an atheistic creation myth, I think we would already be seeing a very fruitful interplay between the information theoretic approach of the ID crowd and the chaotic dynamics approach of Gould. An interplay which just might come up with a really satisfying scientific theory instead of the unfalsifiable template for generating just-so stories Darwinism has become. (Yes, I know there is the occasional "186,000 mps, it's not just a good idea, it't the law" bumper-stickers, but I've never seen car ornaments in support of supersymmetry, the Standard Model of Particle Physics or heliocentrism. The anti-fundamentalist Darwin-fish-with-feet are a very preculiar phenomenon if Darwinism were merely a scientific theory).

I guess I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I fully expect the final theory of the origin of biological diversity to involve a notion of stochastic search of some sort of phase space of ecological niches, with an actual non-tautological definition of fitness. (Sorry, but "it's more fit because more survive" doesn't do-- a notion of fitness should explain survival, not be deduced from it.)

I also suspect that neither the hard-core creationists who want everything purposeful (who will go on hating the stochastic element) nor the crowd who want Darwinism as a creation myth with which to bash theists (who need philosophical randomness, not Brownian motion in a law-governed environment, to make their atheistic argument-from-no-design fly and will consequently be distressed by the beautiful order in the laws governing "fitness" and the mathematical structure of the phase space) will like the result.

As I study this program, the more ID that I remove, the better it has been able to solve the problem.

Interesting. As a fellow programmer (databases using C++ and C#) I am intrigued and I have a good idea. How about removing all the ID and see what happens. Once all ID is removed we can be completely sure of objectivity.

Here is what you can do. Simply take your existing code (which already reflects pre-existing ID, but I will even let this remain) and debug your program by entering any new code with random keyboard entries. Just peck away and see if you get anything that locks up your program up tighter than Windows XP trying to run on a Vic 20. Reality will soon prove that you will have a few :) too many lethal entries for every good one you ever get a chance to pass on more than once.

Every time you get a good random entry it will not do much good because all your bad entries that follow on it's heels will overwhelm it in future generations of random code. Your program will head downward, choke a few times and then it will die with a few possible short-lived exceptions along the way.

What exactly was happening a billion years ago, and how did you find out about it? Where is it documented? Who was around to see it and document it? And how did you know that life has been been on this planet for 3.5 billion years? Thanks.

About a billion years ago a few of the single-celled critters began living and working together in what is known as endosymbiosis, though the fossil record is very spotty for this time period. The first truly organized multi-cellulars were common by 600 million years ago (Prehistoric Life, 1994, David Norman, pg. 29). It should be noted the vaunted Cambrian Explosion took place 540 million years ago -- 60 million years after the first traces of multi-cellular life.

"The oldest known fossils are the stromatolites, and a few other remains of micro-organisms, which have been found at Warrawoona in Australia and have been dated at 3,500 million years." (Prehistoric Life, pg. 24).

Here is a short site on the dating methods used to determine the age of rocks (note, it has nothing to do with the type of fossils found therein).

I'm sorry if I seemed sarcastic. It was not intended. My defense of Gould was a defense of evolutionary biology in general. I have always been impressed by Gould who seemingly went about the business of presenting not only his data but supporting certain data of other workers in the field and upholding most Darwinian tenets without being unduly confrontational toward creationists. The fact that he believes they have misrepresented not just his work, but cast in doubt the validity of biological evolution was enough for me to add my two cents.

I am at work in a law office, so I don't have the time nor the resources to sit down and discuss "punctuated equilibrium" versus gradual evolution over time. Even if I did have the time, I am not equipped to discuss it at the same intellectual level as you probably expect I would.(or as he could)
I did graduate level work in the field of Primatology, but was not able to complete the Masters thesis due to personal demands- - -raising a two-year-old by myself and working full-time. My work was concerned with environmental and nutritional deficits and stresses on Hamadryas baboon populations in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. I worked with Clifford Jolly at NY University and examined hair samples he collected from these populations to detect the effects of stress in the samples divided by age and gender.
In any event, I am better able to discuss comparative primate anatomical/morphological development than to try to elucidate the inner workings of the mind of Stephen Jay Gould for which I have the utmost respect ( and envy.)

...using your knowledge of devine creation and how it works, PLEASE tell me how I may alter my software to produce a faster result.

I have a better idea. Why don't you use the theory of evolution to improve your software? [See your words below.]

Believe me, this problem has been extremely frustrating to solve, and I have attemped every method that I know of.

If your ideas have a practical application, I will be the very first to applaud your wisdom. Please help, I am open to all suggestions on how to make this software work faster.

I have no ax to grind or loyalty to any scientist or theory. I just use what works to accomplish tasks that I am assigned.

The theory of evolution has helped me today and has a practical application.

Once again, if you have a better idea that can be applied, I will be the very first to applaud you.

Here's an experiment that will test your idea by providing an evolutionary simulation that should, if you are correct, improve the functionality of your software. It employs an evolutionary mechanism.

I got the idea from your statement, "Oh, and I obviously messed up with the step numbering when I was typing the algorithm, but the error should be apparent."

1. Insert that error into the actual code of your alogrithm.
2. Note result.
3. Repeat with different typographical errors, as often as necessary.
4. Get back to me.

Cordially,

The fact that he believes they have misrepresented not just his work, but cast in doubt the validity of biological evolution was enough for me to add my two cents.

It really bothers me when people call others names because they quote what they had previously said. The Clintonites would do that all the time. Of course Orwell also pointed out the evils of such practices. Essentially calling people names for quoting them is a dictatorial practice. Well, calling people names by itself is totally uncivilized behavior in the first place. It is a form of avoiding discussion in a very dishonest way. Let's see one often quoted statement of Gould's 'hijacked' by the opponents of evolution:
STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." Natural History, V.86."
Now what's the problem with quoting the above? No one argues that he did not say it. Are they arguing that he did not mean it? If he did not mean it, then why did he say it? It cannot be said that the above is not in accordance with his beliefs and his subsequent theories since clearly the lack of intermediate fossils which he talks about there, the lack of fossils prior to the whole Cambrian explosion in fact, is the reason why he broke with the Darwinists and made up the theory of punctuated equilibrium. So why should one not quote what he said there?

The real question that must be asked of Gould, is whether he was lying then or is he lying now, or perhaps is he lying all the time and he wishes to have his previous words put into the Orwellian memory hole so that he can keep on lying tomorrow.

Please give an example of someone forced to "profess allegiance to evolution."

Glad you asked! Here's a good example, published in several supposedly "mainstream" places. If these people are not prostituting themselves then the word has no meaning.

PALEONTOLOGICAL FRAUD

A great example of paleontological fraud is Eosimias. Eosimias was trumpeted by evos, by so called scientists and by the press 'the missing link of human evolution'. Here's Eosimias:

Time Magazine's Eosimias illustration
The Evolutionary tree showing Eosimias's place in it

This must be quite a find indeed! The whole history of man, the missing link, finally found! A great new specimen found!

There are many links to the pictures above, however you will have to look for a long time for the pictures of the bones showing this fantastic find. I found a site which showed the bones and guess what, they were from those totally unscientific folk called creationists. Imagine the nerve, the total gall of these people of showing the evidence, the bones, upon which those gorgeous drawings were made! How unscientific can they get?:

Alas! Here's the picture! The proof of macro-evolution, the proof that Darwin was right! The proof that God does not exist!

From:Evolution in the News - September 2000
In case you missed it, the "evidence" is in the case being held by the man, the bones are two, just above the white ruler.

However, this is not the only evidence for Eosimias of course, Here's the story of the lower jaw of Eosimias:
In a separate article in the journal Nature, the group reported on more fossils from a previously discovered third primate called Eosimias centennicus. They had discovered its teeth and jaws in the mid 1990s. Now they’ve got ankle bones, which they say backs up their controversial claim that Eosimias is an early ancestor of humans.
from:A Shrew Size Primate

Note that the jaw bones had been found some 10 years earlier in a part of China hundreds of miles away from the ankle bone find. One may ask how the jaw bones and the ankle bones were determined to be of the same creature? What scientific explanation could there be for such a determination?

No doubt they were genetically linked through evo supermollecular retro-dna analysis (a wonderful new invention which can trace non-existing DNA back hundreds of millions of generations) to each other. From this awesome evidence they made the drawings, the articles, the missing links and a whole new family tree for mankind! And the best part about all this is that your taxes paid for this wonderful discovery!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who 'hijacked' his theory for their own ends

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

09 April 2002