Time to Pull the Plug on Heritage

If you work for Heritage, and ever want to be taken seriously again, quit today. This is your last chance.

Kevin Drum reports:

The Washington Monthly: "A WEE ASSIGNMENT FROM THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION....From the description of a Heritage Foundation event to be held April 19:

A growing number of scientists around the world no longer believe that natural selection or chemistry, alone, can explain the origins of life. Instead, they think that the microscopic world of the cell provides evidence of purpose and design in nature — a theory based upon compelling biochemical evidence. Join us as Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a key design theorist and philosopher of science, explains this powerful and controversial concept on the mysteries of life.

Comments

[Matthew Saroff]

Integrity and the Heritage Foundation.

Outside of Norm Orenstein on a good day, who does that leave?

[Saroff Again]

D'oh!!!

Me Bad. He's AEI.

FWIW, I know someone who was fired from Heritage for getting Cancer.

[Carol]

The fact that most scientists privately believe that there is a God does not mean that God can be used as an edescription of physical and biological processes.

In fact, all the scientists I have worked with in graduate school were believers in God, but none of them used intelligent design as an explanation. This is simply because it cannot be quantified, measured, proven or disproven. Hence it falls outside the purview of scientific inquiry. It reminds me of a cartoon where a scientist had written a long equation, in the middle of which it said "then a miracle occurs". Miracles may be real but they are not explicative (you cannot disprove that miracles occur, but you can't use them as an explanation for natural processes).

On the side of evolution, pure Darwinism fails the test repeatedly too. It is time to sit down and teach students how to think. Lack of ability to reason, analyse and examine issues is the biggest impediment to our progress as a society. Very few people can review and evaluate a paradigm and see it as a useful tool. Which is why so many extremely pro-Darwinian scientists become unhinged when someone mentions intelligent design, instead of pointing out rationally why it cannot be used as a tool for scientific inquiry. They use the paradigm as a philosophy instead of a tool, and react as do other extremists when confronted with something that threatens their world view (as do creationists etc).

[Derelict]

No need to be taken seriously ever again when you have untold amounts of Sciafe money funneled into your pockets for as long as you're willing to espouse the Foundation's ridiculous agenda.

I'll be interested to see this anti-science revolution move forward. Fifty years from now, after all the little children have been given proper "christian" educations, America will be reduced to a worse-than-stone age existance.

Worse than the stone age? Sure, since the Bible teaches that the value of Pi is 3.0, we won't even have wheels. After all, a true circle incorporates the actual value of Pi, and thus is unchristian and must be condemned as an illusion inspired by Satan. This is going to make tenth-century Europe look like an advanced alien civilzation.

[ken melvin]

Intelligent design was when man invented god.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/science/29comm.html?pagewanted=all&position=

When Sentiment and Fear Trump Reason and Reality
By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

I have recently begun to wonder whether I am completely out of touch with the mainstream, and if so, what that implies.

When I was a young student it became clear to me that the remarkable success of the scientific method, which changed the world beyond belief in the four centuries since Galileo, made the power and efficacy of that method evident. Moreover, scientific ideas are not only powerful but so beautiful that they are on par with the most spectacular legacies of civilization in art, architecture, literature, music and philosophy.

This is what makes the current times so disconcerting. We like to think that spectacular intellectual developments bring progress, so that future generations may benefit from what has come before. But this is often an illusion....

The point here, which should be obvious, is that science and religion are separate entities: science is a predictive discipline based on empirically falsifiable facts; religion is a hopeful discipline based on inner faith.

Theologians as ancient as St. Augustine and Moses Maimonides recognized that science, not religion, was the appropriate and reliable method to try to understand the physical world. Yet it is precisely this ancient wisdom that is now under attack.

Foes of evolution and the Big Bang in this country do not operate with the direct and brutal actions of the Taliban. They have marketing skills. Openly condemning evolution as blasphemous might play well to the fundamentalist true believers, but it wouldn't play well in the heartland, which is the real target. Thus the spurious argument is created that evolution isn't good science.

This "fact" is established by fiat. The Discovery Institute in Seattle supports the work of several Ph.D.'s who then write books (and op-ed articles) decrying the fallacy of evolution. They don't write scientific articles, however, because the claims they make - either that cellular structures are too complex to have evolved or that evolution itself is improbable - have either failed to stand up to detailed scrutiny or involve no falsifiable predictions.

What is being obscured in this manufactured debate is that the underlying intent has little to do with evolution, or the age of the earth. The fundamentalist attack is on the basic premise that physical phenomena have physical causes that can be revealed by use of the scientific method.

Because science does not explicitly incorporate a deity in its considerations, some fundamentalists believe that it undermines our moral order, just as the Buddha statues presented a threat to the fundamentalist Islamic moral order.

The pillar of our humanity that is most under attack is our remarkable ability to understand nature. We claim that in places like Afghanistan the enemies of truth are the enemies of freedom and democracy. If the scientific method is out of the mainstream in our country it is time to take a stronger stand against the effort to undermine empirical reality in favor of dogma.

[kharris]

Apologies, Carol, but I must disagree with your explation of scientists' reaction to creationists. We cannot argue that we ought to work harder at reasoning, analyzing and examining, then assert that we can know what is going on inside scientists heads when they react to creationist arguments. We can't. Such efforts are no more than a guess. There may be scientists who have swallowed Darwinism whole, rather than employing it as a paradigm, but we can't know which ones or how many.

[anne]

Evolution as the explanatory base of biology has stood through 150 years of observation, and experiment and testing. The theory of evolution and Charles Darwin's work is as well established methodologically as that the heart is a blood pump which we have know since 1578 and the work of William Harvey.

Intelligent design is a religious supposition of some that has nothing whatever to do with science or the method of science.

[Joe S.]

Heritage was never taken seriously; it was always a whorehouse. The AEI used to be the serious outfit. But now, with the exception of a few Orensteins, it too is a whorehouse. I think that Cato is still serious--or at least honest.

[anne]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html

ERNST MAYR: WHAT EVOLUTION IS

EDGE: To what extent has the study of evolutionary biology been the study of ideas about evolutionary biology? Is evolution the evolution of ideas, or is it a fact?

ERNST MAYR: That's a very good question. Because of the historically entrenched resistance to the thought of evolution, documented by modern-day creationism, evolutionists have been forced into defending evolution and trying to prove that it is a fact and not a theory. Certainly the explanation of evolution and the search for its underlying ideas has been somewhat neglected, and my new book, the title of which is What Evolution Is, is precisely attempting to rectify that situation. It attempts to explain evolution. As I say in the first section of the book, I don't need to prove it again, evolution is so clearly a fact that you need to be committed to something like a belief in the supernatural if you are at all in disagreement with evolution. It is a fact and we don't need to prove it anymore. Nonetheless we must explain why it happened and how it happens.

One of the surprising things that I discovered in my work on the philosophy of biology is that when it comes to the physical sciences, any new theory is based on a law, on a natural law. Yet as several leading philosophers have stated, and I agree with them, there are no laws in biology like those of physics. Biologists often use the word law, but for something to be a law, it has to have no exceptions. A law must be beyond space and time, and therefore it cannot be specific. Every general truth in biology though is specific. Biological "laws" are restricted to certain parts of the living world, or certain localized situations, and they are restricted in time. So we can say that their are no laws in biology, except in functional biology which, as I claim, is much closer to the physical sciences, than the historical science of evolution.

[anne]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html

ERNST MAYR: Anyhow the question is, if scientific theories are based on laws and there aren't any laws in biology, well then how can you say you have theories, and how do you know that your theories are any good? That's a perfectly legitimate question. Of course our theories are based on something solid, which are concepts. If you go through the theories of evolutionary biology you find that they are all based on concepts such as natural selection, competition, the struggle for existence, female choice, male dominance, etc. There are hundreds of such concepts. In fact, ecology consists almost entirely of such basic concepts. Once again you can ask, how do you know they're true? The answer is that you can know this only provisionally by continuous testing and you have to go back to historical narratives and other non-physicalist methods to determine whether your concept and the consequences that arise from it can be confirmed.

[anne]

KHarris

Nice, as always :)

[Movie Guy]

"If you work for Heritage, and ever want to be taken seriously again, quit today. This is your last chance."

Very funny.

It's too late...

[anne]

What are we about when teachers are afraid to teach biology as a science? Here is the science of life, of who we happen to be. There is no teaching theoretical constructs in biology unless evolution is everywhere considered and taught. How has evolution and biology come to be the proving ground for cultural acceptance as though the Inquisition might be upon us again?

Imagine walking through a lovely zoo, as I did a short while ago, and finding discussions of exhibits everywhere but strikingly empty of explanation. Never was the word evolution used in an exhibit. Here are the finches; how nice the finches; see the finch colors; go on.

Classes, zoos, science museums, yes museums, with never a mention of life's grounding.

[Bruce Garrett]

"The fact that most scientists privately believe that there is a God does not mean..."

You know...you really need to be careful what you hear, when you hear a scientist (or an artist) use that word. Einstein used to talk about knowing God's thoughts, and that God does not play dice, and so forth. But was he using that word in the sense that, say, George Bush uses that word, or Pat Robertson, or Rick Santorum? I don't think so.

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said "I believe in God, but I spell it Nature." I'm sure quite a few folks who accept evolution as being the best available description for how life as we know it came to be, would tell you that they believe in God. But you need to be careful when you hear people use that word.

[anne]

KHarris
Movie Guy

The battle over evolution is a battle of lunacy, but we really must not give this over.

[sm]

Don't knock 10th century Europe -- it at least was on the way up.

[kharris]

Anne,

You've probably notice the recent drift here, and in some other good web logs, toward worry over the prevailing political attitude toward science, thought, reason. It's not just a few of us who are worried. Evolution is the poster child for this worry, but the worry is far, far broader. I would hate to have my children grow up not exposed to the elegance of the Darwinian explanation (so they'll be exposed), but it is not just the content of the Darwinian explanation that makes this debate urgent. It is the attitude and the pattern of thought that allows unfounded attacks on evolution (a good example of which is presented here) that worries me. We know already that that attitude, in some version, has already been adopted in the Kyoto debate, in the mercury debate, in the Star Wars debate, in the stem cell debate. There are more.

Anne, you are right about our future. Next year's economy will require more brains than this years, and so on forever. Willfully crippling our brains to fit into dogma is a losing proposition.

[jimmiraybob]

A growing number of scientists around the world, based on peer-reviewed scientific endeavors, do believe that natural selection and chemistry, without divine intervention, can explain the origins of life. They may, although it isn't known, also think that the microscopic worldview of the AEI staff thinkers & doers provides evidence of lost potential, by design, in nature — a "theory" I advance based upon a compelling written body of evidence. Join me in the questioning of this alleged powerful and certainly controversial concept on the mysteries of life and those who live it.

[Carol]

I inadvertently edited out the qualifier "most scientists that I have known" which changes the meaning of what I said considerably.

My graduate course on evolution was a hoot, and that was before fundies got a stranglehold on public discourse regarding evolution. They certainly got all bent out of shape during the class, which made one wonder why they were in the field if they wanted to have science reinforce their worldview. Personally, I was offended by the textbooks available, all of which basically said that religion was foolish and anti-scientific. This is confusing the philosophy of religious teachings with the dogma of the followers. Science can no more make religion foolish than religion can make science invalid. Either should be a search for truth.

The problem with evolutionary theory as it stands now is that it has become a just so story. Everything becomes a question of fitting observations into the paradigm, which can lead to incorrect observations. Just as an example, in the "male dominance" subset of the paradigm, many scientists observing chimpanzees accepted that the dominant male in the "tribe" had to be the strongest etc., and failed to notice the dominant male wasn't the biggest or the strongest, (which would be a reinforcement of Darwinism), but, instead, was the son of the dominant female...If you study biology, you find all sorts of instances of this sort of fitting observations into paradigms.

Which is why a scientist needs to be skeptical of all paradigms, and use them as the tools they are, ady to be changed when reality points out that "it just ain't so".

A good book on the confusion of paradigm with realities is R.C. Lewontin's "Biology as Ideology."

Of course, evolution should be taught in schools. So should skepticism, rational thought etc. My argument is that K-12 education does not teach rational thought etc etc. I taught a class in reasoning to junior high schol students, and their resistance was almost impossible to overcome. They could not distinguish between feelings, opinions and facts, something any 7 year old should understand even if he/she cannot apply it well yet. So I agree with the op-ed by Kruass. Should youngsters learn how to think, the forces of irrationality would have a harder time controlling them.

Of course, this all requires that our society agree that edication isn't merely to prepare one to work on a computer in a cubicle.

[anne]

Right, I have not taken the general sneering about what scientists may know to proper account. Where we can be increasingly advanced in science based inquiry, there is political interest and obfuscation.

[Keith]

Though I am a agnostic, I would have no problem teaching Creationism and Darwinism side by side. It would give students a chance to see the difference between faith-based thinking and science-based thinking, and young people could decide for themselves what to believe. I do not fear for Science as it has triumphed over far stronger social enemies.

Alot of conservative Christians believe that our society is threatened by gay marriage. Alot of liberals believe that our society is threatened by religion in the public square. Both overstate the danger to the citadel.

[wkwillis]

I love it when Republicans talk about the Martian Hypothesis, that we were created by some greater power. It rocks! It also makes people think they are nuts, which doesn't hurt. But mostly I think it's funny.

[anne]

Carol

There is a developmental element you have touched on that is worth considering. Obviously children can learn all sorts of idea forms early on. They do learn grammar with astonishing facility. But, patterns of reasoning are learned only gradually. Piaget was right about this, and ought to be better understood. A bright child can be taught what is on the side of a mountain on a table shaded from her view, but before a certain age the child will not be able to reproduce the other side of the mountain no matter how much you might explain symmetry. Critical reasoning is tricky for the brightest of children till they are ready for any step in advance.

[lise]

Carol

"Personally, I was offended by the textbooks available, all of which basically said that religion was foolish and anti-scientific."

I can not imagine any science textbook dealing with religion.

Keith

There is no science in creationism, and I would not wish a child to be taught creationism by any science teacher. Science is painstaking enough to learn; I want science in science classes, not religion.

[lise]

KHarris, thank you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/science/29comm.html?pagewanted=all&position=

When Sentiment and Fear Trump Reason and Reality
By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

I have recently begun to wonder whether I am completely out of touch with the mainstream, and if so, what that implies.

When I was a young student it became clear to me that the remarkable success of the scientific method, which changed the world beyond belief in the four centuries since Galileo, made the power and efficacy of that method evident. Moreover, scientific ideas are not only powerful but so beautiful that they are on par with the most spectacular legacies of civilization in art, architecture, literature, music and philosophy....

The pillar of our humanity that is most under attack is our remarkable ability to understand nature.... If the scientific method is out of the mainstream in our country it is time to take a stronger stand against the effort to undermine empirical reality in favor of dogma.

Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss is chairman of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University.

[lise]

This was an excerpt from Anne's initial post.

[Keith]

Lise wrote,
"I would not wish a child to be taught creationism by any science teacher."

OK, if that's so then what's your alternative? To teach Creationism in a different class? Or are you saying that you don't want it at all? What's the point of avoiding the issue in the classroom? Faith is an alternative to reason and you gain nothing by failing to address the issue.

Science does not stand on its own, but is one of many structures atop the principles of rational thought. I think I can change more minds by presenting alternatives in a rational way than I can by avoiding discussions. I believe in Science and will take it against all comers.

[Uber]

Not to be offensive but I think Carol may be clueless.

'The fact that most scientists privately believe that there is a God does not mean that God can be used as an edescription of physical and biological processes. '

A God, which God, your God, my God, whose God. Funny in a poll of the National academy of science, the elite, 90% denied belief in a personal God not that denies belief in a general God.

'Personally, I was offended by the textbooks available, all of which basically said that religion was foolish and anti-scientific'

It is anti-scientific but that is beside the point. Please give us the science books that said religion was foolish and antiscientific.

'The problem with evolutionary theory as it stands now is that it has become a just so story. Everything becomes a question of fitting observations into the paradigm, which can lead to incorrect observations. '

That is so freaking stupid to be hilarious. Do you think a scientist who had information to create a new theory would hide it. How ridiculous. Give us an example of an incorrect observation based on the findings of evolution.

'Just as an example, in the "male dominance" subset of the paradigm, many scientists observing chimpanzees accepted that the dominant male in the "tribe" had to be the strongest etc., and failed to notice the dominant male wasn't the biggest or the strongest, (which would be a reinforcement of Darwinism), but, instead, was the son of the dominant female...If you study biology, you find all sorts of instances of this sort of fitting observations into paradigms.'

This is not an evolutionary paradigm. Evolution doesn't say the biggest or strongest survive--but the best adapted. Only those ignorant of evolutionary theory go around stating such. In this case a society that benefits from such a scenario would produce more offsping that survive to pass genes on than one who didn't have said advantage.

'...If you study biology, you find all sorts of instances of this sort of fitting observations into paradigms. '

Evolution is not a paradigm. It is a theory based on strong evidence. You will rarely find the theory contradicted in nature, and the more we search the more it is confirmed.

'Which is why a scientist needs to be skeptical of all paradigms, and use them as the tools they are, ady to be changed when reality points out that "it just ain't so".'

That I agree with. If evidence would show evolution incorrect, it would be changed. As it stands evolution has done nothing but be reinforcd again and again.

[Uber]

'OK, if that's so then what's your alternative? To teach Creationism in a different class? Or are you saying that you don't want it at all?'

yes, it should never be taught at all in a science class. It is not science in any way, shape, or form.

'What's the point of avoiding the issue in the classroom? '

You can discuss it in philosophy or comparative religion, but not in a science class. It's not science.

'Faith is an alternative to reason and you gain nothing by failing to address the issue. '

An alternative? Why would you want an alternative to reason? Whats wrong with reason and logic?

'Science does not stand on its own, but is one of many structures atop the principles of rational thought. '

No, it is supported by things such as falsification and evidence.

'I think I can change more minds by presenting alternatives in a rational way than I can by avoiding discussions. I believe in Science and will take it against all comers.'

You do nothing to help anyone by pushing false alternatives and faulty ideas. Produce evidence and go from there. The minds need to be changed based on reasons and evidence not by presenting wacky ideas as legitimate alternatives.

[lise]

Keith

Social studies, history, philosophy if offered, history of religion if offered, religion in a private school. Creationism is expressly meant to attack evolution as a "theory." Evolution is testable and is a fact, while reationist teaching is not testable.

[Auros]

Carol, having a brother who is working on a Bio PhD and specializes in Entomological Ecology and Evolution; and having dated a woman working on Bioinformatics, I have to say that this quote -- "The problem with evolutionary theory as it stands now is that it has become a just so story." -- makes me think you're not worth taking seriously. Yes, the original casting of Darwinism, in the late 19th century, is not by itself sufficient, and it's probably taught at too basic a level in high schools, maybe even some colleges. But then, so is history, and just about everything else.

None of this means that actual working evolutionary scientists are sticks-in-the-mud, incapable of thinking originally. Ev-bio is still revealing nifty new stuff. Take the Purdue folks who recently found that some plants seem to be stashing "backups" of their genes somewhere:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/science/23gene.html

A scientist who believed in evolution the way you claim, wouldn't last six months in a department doing serious research.

[Keith]

Lise wrote:
"Evolution is testable and is a fact"

Auros wrote:
"Yes, the original casting of Darwinism, in the late 19th century, is not by itself sufficient, and it's probably taught at too basic a level in high schools, maybe even some colleges... None of this means that actual working evolutionary scientists are sticks-in-the-mud, incapable of thinking originally. Ev-bio is still revealing nifty new stuff."

[Keith M Ellis]

Carol is (influenced and probably confused) by Lewontin and Gould's attacks on contemporary evolutionary theory. For those not in the know, Gould played the very odd (and sorry) role of defending evolution in the popular sphere from the creationists while becoming more and more out of touch with contemporary evolutionists and providing the creationists with various ammunition to use against evolution.

Evolutionary theory in general does not suffer from "just so" stories as Gould famously claimed. Some portions of it, some subdisciplines (evolutionary psychology) may be fairly accused of this. Even then, the accusation is usually ideologically motivated (in my opinion).

[Pawlr]

Science, civilization, and secular humanism, much like any higher biota, are anti-entropic forces which are constantly at risk from faith-based mobs, magical thinkers, brutal man-on-man violence, and the final solutions of the "red state" rabble. There's nothing natural or teleological about progress - if the flat earth freaks run the government we'll be trying to solve our debt crisis by spinning straw into gold..

[Aunt Deb]

I am beginning to think the White House is standing on chicken legs, Pawlr...

[anne]

https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/8557b855913a46f985256ef7001686f5?OpenDocument

KIPLING'S UNINTENDED LEGACY Twenty-five years ago, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and biologist Richard Lewontin criticized the so-called adaptationist program, charging that overeager biologists labeled some organisms' traits adaptations without real evidence. Many traits, they said, were actually byproducts, associated with adaptations, but not the result of natural selection. The bridge of one's nose will hold up one's glasses, but it's not an adaptation for such.

This so-called science, argued Gould and Lewontin, boiled down to little more than just-so stories--referring to Rudyard Kipling's century-old children's fables that offered imaginative explanations for certain animals' distinctive qualities.

"That was just a foolish paper," says [Edward O.] Wilson. "All scientists deal in hypotheses and in scenarios. That's how they formulate and identify the problem that they hope to solve. [Gould and Lewontin] confused hypothesis formation with what they thought was just empty story-telling."

But as evolutionary psychologists address more complex cultural features, justly or unjustly, they haven't escaped the just-so criticism. Nevertheless, the field has become more accepted. Hires of evolutionary psychologists at psychology and anthropology departments are more common, says psychology professor Martin Daly, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, editor-in-chief of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, a major forum for EP studies.

[anne]

Keith Ellis

Thank you for so clear and cogent a comment. I fully agree, but wish to add that as Gould and Lewontin and Wilson understood it was Ernst Mayr who prepared a philosophical approach to the study of biology that though thoroughly accepted has been like "Origen of Species" too little read.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html

ERNST MAYR: WHAT EVOLUTION IS

[enfant terrible]

Keith

"Alot of conservative Christians believe that our society is threatened by gay marriage. Alot of liberals believe that our society is threatened by religion in the public square. Both overstate the danger to the citadel."

Neither side overstates anything. THEIR (theocratic) society IS threatened by gay marriage. OUR (reality-based) society IS threatened by religion in the policy-making process. ("Public square" is another framing trick by the Right.)

[anne]

KHarris and Keith Ellis

Forgive the repitition, but I think this passage by Ernst Mayr is of critical importance:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html

One of the surprising things that I discovered in my work on the philosophy of biology is that when it comes to the physical sciences, any new theory is based on a law, on a natural law. Yet as several leading philosophers have stated, and I agree with them, there are no laws in biology like those of physics. Biologists often use the word law, but for something to be a law, it has to have no exceptions. A law must be beyond space and time, and therefore it cannot be specific. Every general truth in biology though is specific. Biological "laws" are restricted to certain parts of the living world, or certain localized situations, and they are restricted in time. So we can say that their are no laws in biology, except in functional biology which, as I claim, is much closer to the physical sciences, than the historical science of evolution.

[enfant terrible]

Keith

"OK, if that's so then what's your alternative? To teach Creationism in a different class? Or are you saying that you don't want it at all? What's the point of avoiding the issue in the classroom?"

Then how about teaching palm reading, astrology, or levitation?

[enfant terrible]

Uber

"Not to be offensive but I think Carol may be clueless."

I completely agree, as I do with the rest of your post.

[anne]

There are laws, universals, in physics and chemistry. Newton's laws may be subsumed by Einstein but Newtonian physics holds universally on objects in space. Einstein's laws hold through space. Biology has no such law except in physiology, and physiology is actually chemistry. Biology deals with contingencies, with specifics, with theories and concepts and endless data to confirm the concepts. Biology is really a different science.

[Keith M Ellis]

Well, as someone with some expertise in the history and philosophy of science, I think that it's a bit of an overstatement to give physics and chemistry such an exalted status. But, in relation to biology, it's a good point (about both physics and biology).

Being a complex systems type of a person myself, I like to say that physics and its close relations are actually the *easy* sciences. That's not saying they're actually easy, it's just pointing out that many other disciplines deal with very complex, very messy systems that defy the relatively easy anaylsis involved in physics. Of course there are complex physical systems. But the beauty of physics is that the idealized stuff that physics deals with is idealized yet still very useful. And maybe that's because there's not such a huge gap between the ideal and the actual. In other sciences, certainly biology, there is a very large gap between idealized, simple models and the actual. Even so, we've accomplished quite a bit in all these areas. But we don't understand things in the first principles, reductionist, bottom-to-top way that we understand many things in physics. Common people tend to think about science as being very much like what we're saying physics is—they expect that things are much more "known" and "certain" than they actually are. When they find a lack of the kind of certainty we have in Newton's Laws, they thikn that's a failing of the science. But it's not, really. Because, as said by other more eloquently than me, there's a whole heck of a lot of things we can know short of establishing something like Newton's Laws. Still, we're mostly in the dark, I think.

[anne]

What a lovely comment.
I am thinking :)

[anne]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html

MAYR: One of my themes is that Darwin changed the foundations of Western thought. He challenged certain ideas that had been accepted by everyone, and we now agree that he was right and his contemporaries were wrong. Let me just illuminate some of them. One such idea goes back to Plato who claimed that there were a limited number of classes of objects and each class of objects had a fixed definition. Any variation between entities in the same class was only accidental and the reality was an underlying realm of absolutes.

EDGE: How does that pertain to Darwin?

MAYR: Well Darwin showed that such essentialist typology was absolutely wrong. Darwin, though he didn't realize it at the time, invented the concept of biopopulation, which is the idea that the living organisms in any assemblage are populations in which every individual is uniquely different, which is the exact opposite of such a typological concept as racism. Darwin applied this populational idea quite consistently in the discovery of new adaptations though not when explaining the origin of new species.

[anne]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html

Darwin showed very clearly that you don't need Aristotle's teleology because natural selection applied to bio-populations of unique phenomena can explain all the puzzling phenomena for which previously the mysterious process of teleology had been invoked.

The late philosopher, Willard Van Orman Quine, who was for many years probably America's most distinguished philosopher — you know him, he died last year — told me about a year before his death that as far as he was concerned, Darwin's greatest achievement was that he showed that Aristotle's idea of teleology, the so-called fourth cause, does not exist.

[anne]

Where the beauty of physics is the vast sense of symmetry we gain in understanding it, the beauty of biology is in the contingency the distinctness the individuality the changeability of life. Imagine why philosophers took so long to accept Charles Darwin's ideas, far far longer than biologists. Where are Plato's essential forms, where Aristotle's essential ends when it comes to creatures such as we are? The contingency and local truths of biology of ecology can be threatening when absolutes are wished.

[anne]

But, why should we be afraid of life? We are not stars and planets and rocks and sand or even mere chemicals, but rather more. We are singular yet related beings, and we need a philosophy of science based on our distinctness and relatedness.

[anne]

Keith Ellis

You must explain why physics is more contingent than I understand, or than beyond the aspects of probability in quantum mechanics. Have you in mind complex systems such as weather flow?

[anne]

Then, I must think and ask more about system analysis in the physical sciences.

[Keith]

enfant terrible wrote:
"Then how about teaching palm reading, astrology, or levitation?"

If people are strongly against any mention of creationism in science class, then I am starting to cotton to the idea that there should be some type of comparative "belief" class that teaches the fundamental differences between faith-based and reason-based belief systems. It's good for young people to be exposed to such things in a rational setting. Including palm reading or astrology would be fine, especially astrology since its so common. I don't know of any belief system that is based on levitation so this seems to be a different thing.

[anne]

The problem with creationism is only that it is not science. However would we begin to teach it fairly in a science class? As a cultural phenomenom it is another matter.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/science/22rabbi.html?ex=1112850000&en=ba73ddd99df71317&ei=5070

Religion and Natural History Clash Among the Ultra-Orthodox
By ALEX MINDLIN

It was early January when the posters went up in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's largest ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, and they signaled the start of a bad year for Rabbi Nosson Slifkin.

Twenty-three ultra-Orthodox rabbis had signed an open letter denouncing the books of Rabbi Slifkin, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli scholar and science writer. The letter read, in part: "He believes that the world is millions of years old - all nonsense! - and many other things that should not be heard and certainly not believed. His books must be kept at a distance and may not be possessed or distributed." Rabbi Slifkin, the letter-writers continued, should "burn all his writings."

Fundamentalist Christians have long championed a literal reading of the Bible that suggests the planet is thousands of years old, rather than millions. But the denunciation of Rabbi Slifkin has publicized a parallel strain of thought among ultra-Orthodox Jews, a subset of the Orthodox Jewish community that is deeply skeptical of modern culture, avoiding television and the Web and often disdaining college education.

Rabbi Slifkin has made a career of reconciling Jewish Scripture with modern natural history. He teaches a course in biblical and talmudic zoology at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah, near Jerusalem, and gives frequent lectures, sometimes wearing a boa constrictor along with his black hat and jacket. With nine books to his name at age 29, he is a young up-and-comer in the sober world of Jewish scholarship.

The controversy surrounding him has pitted Jews who are skeptical of science against their more cosmopolitan brethren, who may follow ultra-Orthodox traditions but hold jobs as doctors or teachers. "My sense is there are literally tens of thousands of people who are upset about the ban," said Dr. Andrew Klafter, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, who is ultra-Orthodox. "I'm very, very puzzled by it." ...

[Jennifer]

These comments and posts are terrific, and I will use them. I am beginning to understand how to distinguish between the physical sciences, and will follow this up. Terrific stuff Keith Ellis and K Harris and Anne.

[Jennifer]

Keith

There is room for courses on culture everywhere, but creationism is being used as a club against biology and that we must resist.

[Dubblblind]

Just to jump in, somewhat late to the party, as a contrarian:

"It reminds me of a cartoon where a scientist had written a long equation, in the middle of which it said "then a miracle occurs"."

For evolutionists the miracle is moved to the beginning of the equation when life emerges from non-life. For them the very first step in the process, that this emergence happened on it's own and will be explained scientifically one day, is in itself a belief.

To further stir the pot: Evolution itself could be considered an intelligent design. After all, it's pretty interesting that a single cell organism, freshly minted, as it were, would have already imprinted in it the propensity and wherewithall to work against entropy and march forward with the production of life forms and biological interdependencies of ever increasing complexity.

Don't flame out on me, I'm just throwing this stuff out for the sake of discussion.

[anne]

Dubblblind

What we do not know, as what we provisionally know, is important to distinguish and should not be troublesome. Conjectures to various imaginative and logical degrees do not in the least trouble me.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/science/22rabbi.html?ei=5070&en=ba73ddd99df71317&ex=1112850000&pagewanted=all&position=

Rabbi [Nosson] Slifkin's books seek to reconcile, rather than to contrast, sacred texts with modern knowledge of the natural world.

But in the process, he has sometimes cast a critical eye on those texts. In "Mysterious Creatures," Rabbi Slifkin discussed fantastic animals mentioned in the Torah and the Talmud - among them, the unicorn and the phoenix - and suggested that, in reporting their existence, Jewish sages might have relied on the erroneous writings of ancient naturalists.

He gently debunked the claim, found in a medieval text, that geese grow on trees, explaining that it was "based on the peculiar anatomy of a certain seashell." ...

In "The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax," Rabbi Slifkin examined the difficult separation of animals into kosher and nonkosher, and discussed apparent exceptions and contradictions to the claims of Jewish law. (The aardvark and the rhinoceros, for example, meet one test for being kosher but not another.)

And in "The Science of Torah," he took a scientist's eye to the Torah. Evolution, he wrote, did not disprove God's existence and was consistent with Jewish thought. He suggested that the Big Bang theory paralleled the account of the universe's creation given by the medieval Spanish-Jewish sage Ramban. And Rabbi Slifkin wrote, to quote his own later paraphrase, that "tree-ring chronology, ice layers and sediment layers in riverbeds all show clear proof to the naked eye that the world is much more than 5,765 years old."

The latter statement was particularly galling to the rabbi's critics, who support a literal reading of Genesis that they say puts the earth's age at 5,765....

[lise]

Sorry, but I have to draw a line somewhere, even if a rhinoceros were properly kosher, I would not eat one. An aardvark, maybe.

[Big Al]

The real argument against Intelligent Design, is that it isn't.If you have seen pictures of Centaurs, there is intelligent design. Hands, big brain, and four legs to be able to move really fast while hunting.

[Dan]

The Heritage Foundation lecture is depressing but hardly surprising. A few years ago, there was an article in Reason Magazine on neocons and Darwin. It seems that some of the secular neocons support attacks on evolution because it both bolsters their alliance with the Religious Right and because neocons think that religion is good for society (even if it is untrue).

http://www.reason.com/9707/fe.bailey.shtml

[Jon H]

Keith writes: "To teach Creationism in a different class? Or are you saying that you don't want it at all? What's the point of avoiding the issue in the classroom?"

Um, the point is that not everyone believes in Creationism.

If some parents want their children to be indoctrinated with the idea that the Grand Canyon was created during the Flood, they're free to do so in the copious time they have with their children. They can drill their kids five nights a week and all day Saturday and Sunday, if they so desire.

I gather they would rather use their time for more fruitful endeavors. Therefore, it is clear that it really isn't that important to them that their kids learn Creationism.

What is important to them is the indoctrination of other people's kids, and the casting of doubt on the validity science.

Ideally, they really want Creationism to be taught in place of science, so that their kids can't learn to think critically, which might lead them to question their Biblical Literalist training.

[anne]

Well, I'm really not sure. Would a "properly kosher rhinoceros" be preferrable to an Aardvard :) ? We need a recipe to know.

[Charleycarp]

And the trouble with the idea of having comparative belief classes, is that you completely miss the point of the creationists: they want their myth taught as fact. They are not interested in having it taught as one of many myths of historical and cultural significance, and they don't want other myths to be taught to their children as facts.

Only a science class validates the factual nature of their myth. Thus, it must be done in science classes.

[Rob Sperry]

Hey I say we run with this intelligent design theory and see where it takes us. Lets start with kids and spiting up. What kind of wacky person makes feeding little babies a round the clock endeavor only to have them spit the food back out?

Next we need to talk about teeth. What kind of designer says... "hmm got a problem here I want to end up with a bunch of sharp enamel sticking in their mouths so they can bite stuff. Oh oh I know... just when they are about 6 months old and still breast feeding I'll shove the sharp enamel through their gums so they can bit their moms while trying to feed! But I wont do this all at once, I'll spread them out over months and months! I should make sure this really screws up their schedule and makes them wake up screaming in the middle of the night."

Conclusion: we were intelligently designed by Loki!

So I say bring it on, lets have a public debate. Lets get the theories talked about in the open.

This adaptation of the argument from trickster has been brought to you by the association for the reaffirmation of Norse Gods.

[jm]

The reason the know-nothings are taking over is that intelligent people are having too few children to maintain their position in a democratic society. It is truly bizarre that so many intellectuals worry so loudly about the future of civilization, but fail to do the most basic thing required to defend it: Go forth and multiply.

[Jim]

Geez…all this hot air. You need the same perspective that Sen. William Frist and I have…the wonderful vista of The Mall gives us both clarity of thought and improves our scientific powers of observation. The Senator, for example, can study a video tape of Terri Schiavo from the comfort of his spacious office on Capital Hill and pronounce her, if not quite ready for a serious game of backgammon, at least semi-conscious. Similarly, I walked across The Mall yesterday on my way home from work and upon viewing the western horizon noticed it to be quite level. Based upon my observation of this phenomenon, and my total devotion to scientific observations of The Capital Gang, I can only conclude that the earth is indeed flat. I continued on my walk past the Cato Institute on Massachusetts Avenue and was suddenly comforted by my new idea on devolution. I am further comforted by the absolute assurance that if I move to Akron, put a flower pot on my head, switch to heavy dark rimmed glasses and open the Devolution Institute, the bucks will come rolling in. Get with the program guys.

[Monte Davis]

dubblblind writes: "After all, it's pretty interesting that a single cell organism, freshly minted, as it were, would have already imprinted in it the propensity and wherewithall to work against entropy and march forward with the production of life forms and biological interdependencies of ever increasing complexity."

No across-the-board "propensity" required. No doubt uncounted trillions of such hypothetical organisms *didn't* have the "wherewithal." All that was needed was for a few to have any slight, reproducible (literally) leaning in that direction.

[Dubblblind]

OK, let me just state for the record that evolution is a well documented fact. I do think, however that the whole discussion has been misframed. Evolution, in itself, does nothing to address the more difficult issue of how life got started in the first place. Monte Davis's assertion, while valid, would suggest that there would be some, or even many, parallel DNA structures out there with different characteristics but lacking the ability to advance in complexity. In other words they would be stuck at the simplist level of development having achieved the ability to reproduce and would, therefore, still be around for observation.

[Jamisia]

I believe Simon Conway Morris wrapped it all nice up in a recent book of his about convergence; how the theory of how life got started still hasn't much progressed beyond the original experiments by Miller in the 50s.

ps. i believe any evil plastic surgeon can make a mermaid, so why not a centaur? replace legs with four prostheses. voilà.

[Keith]

Dubbleblind wrote:
"OK, let me just state for the record that evolution is a well documented fact. I do think, however that the whole discussion has been misframed. Evolution, in itself, does nothing to address the more difficult issue of how life got started in the first place."

You are partly correct in that evolution doesn't have a good way to explain how life originally started. However, you are not correct in indicating that evolution is a fact. It is a theory at best by any definition. Let's be more specific:

There is a fossil record which indicates transitory life forms. Scientists attempt to explain this, and do so with the theory of evolution. Evolution itself has two parts. The first part suggests that DNA randomly mutates in a fairly consistent way, and that this mutation gives rise to offspring that are different from the parent. This first part is testable. The second part of evolutionary theory says that the mutated offspring will compete with non-mutated offspring, and the better adapted DNA will survive. This second part is also testable.

So these two parts taken together may explain the fossil record, but the problem is that it's not testable that the two forces actually acted together as we believe. Its possible, or even likely, that these two parts will be re-thought in the future. There very well may be third pieces that we don't understand yet. We might even discover something which casts a whole new light on evolution altogether--we are just scrathing the surface on understanding genes.

So until, someone can test whether the fossil record was created by our current view of evolution, evolution will properly be called a theory.

I won't even get started on the "big bang".

[seamus]

The Raelians believe in Intelligent Design:
http://www.rael.org/int/press_site/english/pages/press-releases/140205b.html

TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!

[Jon H]

Keith writes: "So until, someone can test whether the fossil record was created by our current view of evolution, evolution will properly be called a theory."

It tests it to the extent that fossils that are found do not contradict the theory. Fossils are found that cause revisions in the more speculative theories about the development of particular species, for example, the relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

If fossils were found arranged in strata in a way which is incompatible with evolution, that would be a test of evolution. That doesn't seem to have happened yet.