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Mr. Darwin Can’t Get a Break
It can’t be easy to be Charles Darwin right now. (I mean, for reasons beyond the obvious.) A meticulous researcher and a serious and deeply respectful man, Mr. Darwin spent years carefully documenting and refining his seminal* theory of evolution through natural selection, delaying its presentation until similar discoveries by fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace prompted him to go public and secure his claim as the father of evolutionary theory.
(And what is it with our British cousins, that they should produce simultaneously two men of such insight?)
Imagine for a moment if Galileo, whose encounter with the Catholic Church has been described in this fine piece by our own @Roderic, was today the target of pseudo-scientific sniping for Galileo’s enthusiastic support of the heliocentric model, and that a cottage industry of questionable academic rigor persisted in attempting to tear that theory down. Ponder a world in which the work of Isaac Newton (another big name in British science) was deemed risible by a gaggle of modern critics, despite his having discovered much of classical physics and — oh, yes — co-invented the calculus because plain old math wasn’t quite up to his needs.
Think about that, because that’s what Mr. Darwin has to put up with every single day.
Okay, there’s nothing wrong with questioning science. In fact, to do science is to question science: that’s what science is all about. But while doing science always entails questioning science, the act of questioning science is not always doing science (if that makes sense: it’s one of those p implies q does not imply that not-p implies not-q situations).
A couple of days ago the British newspaper The Telegraph ran a story about a criticism of Darwin mounted by the woke folks at Sheffield University in the UK. That story is paywalled at The Telegraph, but Breitbart is covering it here. The gist of the story is that the school deems evolutionary biology the stuff of white supremacy. The Telegraph quotes the school as writing “It is clear that science cannot be objective and apolitical…. [T]he curriculum we teach must acknowledge how colonialism has shaped the field of evolutionary biology and how evolutionary biologists think today,” and as calling for the “whiteness and Eurocentrism of our science” to be deconstructed.
It’s bad enough that Darwin’s work is attacked via pseudo-science from the right, as I mentioned recently in this piece (paywalled behind Ricochet) about the work of Stephen Meyer. Now the great naturalist is in the left’s crosshairs as well.
What caught my eye about the Breitbart piece (which was linked indirectly by Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit) was, first, that it is about Darwin, a man I admire and with whom I share a birthday, but also that it mentioned Sheffield University. That august institution came up here recently in this piece I wrote about a quack woke geophysics lecturer at Sheffield calling for an end to the structural racism of the geoscience field. Or something.
* I have read that “seminal” is no longer considered appropriate, when discussing contributions in science. I can’t imagine why not.
Published in Science & Technology
Has anyone argued otherwise?
Yes! And well said.
(If you’d only said “falsifiable,” you’d be siding with Popper. I’d be friendly, but maybe not able to agree as such.)
Indeed!
I think this is also correct, although no doubt HR can speak for himself.
I think I might be able to find one or two poorly phrased overstatements, but . . . I think this is what HR was getting at. I don’t even have an objection to the conclusion. (Do I look like I got the time to sort out Karl Popper?)
Has anyone argued that it is science? I don’t believe anyone around here has. Stephen Meyer may have. (I am friendly enough to the proposition myself, but I would have to start by figuring out what philosophy of science I actually hold to! And do I look like I have that kind of time?)
Several I have heard.
*Counts words spent in this thread.* Apparently.
More like shifting attention off the lack of science in evolution on to ID. I don’t claim ID is science. But I also don’t think humans from micro organisms is either.
All, thanks for participating. I’m happy to continue the discussion, but even I eventually say pretty much everything I have to say and find myself repeating thoughts in different words. I intended my summary a couple of pages back, here, as my own conclusion.
All I’d add to that is that the leap to unscientific/anti-scientific theorizing represented by intelligent design wouldn’t bother me as much if I didn’t suspect that those with a scientific background who engage in it, men like Meyer and Behe, probably really do know better, and are breaking the rules of science without telling their readers that that’s what they’re doing. That strikes me as not entirely honest, and I think that harms people on both sides of the debate.
Anyway, please feel free to continue. I’ll keep reading, and may jump back in. ;)
Of course you don’t. You’re emoting, not thinking.
That’s not emoting. Humans from micro organisms is not observable: no one has observed humans evolving from micro organisms. It is not testable: we can not form a test to show that micro organisms can evolve into humans. It is not repeatable: there has been no observation of a repeat and its lack of test ability makes unrepeatable a tautology. It is not falsifiable. No humans were present at the time of evolution (or creation) (the only supposed case of evolution of micro organisms into humans that exists) able to observe for or against evolution from micro organisms.
Ergo – not science. Reason, not emoting. At best, it is an untested hypothesis that evolution of micro organisms can result in anything more complex than a bacterium.
It’s not like you to be condescending, Arahant. And I didn’t take you to be an evolutionary theorist, either.
Not directly.
Getting really fuzzy with the science if we assume micro organisms evolving into micro organisms can eventually get us to fish and alligators without data of such actually happening, isn’t it?
Science is much more fuzzy than most people think.
But I think it counts as science if it makes predictions that can be tested, whether or not the theory as such can be directly tested.
But if you want to object to macroevolution on these grounds, try this: If macroevolution is indeed nothing but a whole lotta microevolution, have we ever observed a new species to emerge through microevolution?
We don’t exactly have Popperian evidence of that. That’s true. It seems like there are traces of that sort of thing in our DNA and in the fossil evidence. It’s conjecture but it seems to fit and we don’t have a good explanation of anything else and it’s not too much of a stretch to interpret what data we have to believe that species develop over time.
It’s an interpretation but it’s an interpretation with physical evidence.
Forgive me for being a skeptic. I’m sure you can understand why I might not accept this as sufficient to convince me that macro evolution occurs.
You don’t accept it right away. You maintain your skepticism. You just find more and more evidence of macroevolution and then you you make the logical leap to believe in something with strong if imperfect evidence.
It’s not skepticism that leads to doubt with regard to macroevolution.
So you don’t think it has to be falsifiable to be science. Well, well.
Well. Popper never was the only game in town.
But it’s the science!
There was nothing that came from nowhere and it exploded. Then Chance and Improbability got together and created order and complex organic molecules, and created Life. And then they created intelligence, and then they created minds that could reason and figure out the very meanest rudiments of reality. And then worship the gods named Chance and Improbability.
I anthropomorphize too much.
I’m not being condescending. I call ’em like I see ’em. You are now implying that having emotions or being swayed by emotions is bad. (Okay, the Bible does say that the reasoning nature should be in charge, so I suppose we could say that, but let’s leave that aside for now.) We should not deny our emotional responses, nor should we hide from them. We all have them. I have a very strong emotional response to the bastardization of science. The use of “climate science” to promulgate communist/Marxist/socialist policies? I’m against it, and with a very emotional response.
Similarly, calling it like I see it, most of the folks pushing ID seem to have very little faith in God to me. Going back to one of Henry R.’s early points, they confuse the How with the Who. We ask, “How did this happen?” And they say, “God did it.” Now, I am in the theistic category. I can say, “Okay, God did it, but the question was not ‘Who?,’ it was ‘How did God make it happen?'” When science got started, most of the people involved were religious people. They were all willing to concede the “Who.” The question kept coming back to “How?” As far as I’m concerned, that hasn’t changed. Are the ID proponents afraid to get a further peek behind the curtain? Why?
In a court of law, there are standards of evidence. In a civil trial, the standard is the “preponderance of the evidence.” In a criminal trial, it is “evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.” Science also has standards of evidence, more on the order of a civil trial, but it also has goals. One goal is to understand the world as best we can for now. Another is to try to be able to predict what will happen in the future. With a scientific theory, it is constantly tested and refined. If it fails tests by predictions not showing when reality comes along, the theory must be refined or scrapped for a new one. We still use Newton’s Laws of Motion. They are good enough for much of what happens at the human scale. But there were variances from prediction in certain circumstances. These were noted over time. Eventually, someone named Einstein came up with a new hypothesis that would not only explain those variances, but would predict others, since confirmed. One of my religious forebears was famous for saying, “I reserve the right to change my mind.” So does science. Science has done so before. Going back to standards of evidence, are you asking for a civil trail, a criminal trial, or a miracle trial for Natural Selection based on Variation?
(To be continued…)
Darwin’s idea of Speciation through Variation and Natural Selection replaced earlier theories. And since then, it has been refined and added to, such as with DNA when this method of heritability was discovered. It has also been added to with the geographic speciation hypothesis and then the Punctuated Equilibria hypothesis.Why were these add-ons made? Because there were perceived holes in the original theory. Science has moved on. More knowledge has been gained. There is a huge amount of evidence supporting that variation and natural selection are at play, including in humans and every other form of life. Epigenetics is another idea that has been propounded to add to heritability along with DNA.
Does this mean the current version of the theory is perfect? No. But it seems to explain things pretty well, and predictions have been made and verified. It has survived tests.
The way that science works is that if a current explanatory theory and model is not working, then someone comes up with and tests a new hypothesis. Until then, the gaps may be identified. Fine, if they are truly gaps. But we keep using the best explanatory theory and model we have until a better one comes along, just as we kept using (and still use) Newton’s Laws of Motion. We did not throw Newton away at the first variance. We will not throw the current model away because of a small variance unless someone comes up with a better explanatory hypothesis that can be tested and survive to displace the current version. That’s how science works. We don’t say, “There’s a variance, so we don’t know anything! Throw it all aside!” We say, “This is the best we have for now, and it is working pretty well except at these margins. Have you got something better?”
So, what is your scientific hypothesis as to how we got here? If you answer, “God did it,” fine. But how did God do it? Did he get out his CRISPR genetic engineering kit and assemble us from scratch? If not, what’s your hypothesis? If it isn’t better than what we have now, if it doesn’t match current evidence better, then what else have you got?
By the way, “evolution” was not used by Darwin. It was a label by his enemies, sort of like Karl Marx used “capitalism” instead of “free markets.”
Skepticism is healthy. What seems important to me is the manner in which people respond to their skepticism. Do they conclude that the best approach — the one most likely to eventually bring us closer to the truth — is to press on using the best tools we have for understanding the natural world, which are the tools of science? Or do they decide to stop doing that and make a leap to a supernatural answer, thus abandoning the rules of scientific inquiry?
Either answer is fine. But I don’t want to confuse the two, and I don’t want people to think that science wasn’t abandoned in favor of metaphysics when people choose the metaphysical route.
Amen, brother. Preach it!
Now, going back to the ID proponents. I seem to see a lot of, “God didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t do it this way!” And that’s where I see a lack of faith. They don’t have a better scientific hypothesis. All they have is “the miracle happens here!” I don’t insist that God did or didn’t do things (or shouldn’t have or wouldn’t have or would have, etc.) in any given way. I’m willing to explore to try to find out how God created the universe, life, and humanity.
I have an emotional response to the ID types, not only because they are bastardizing science, but also because I see them as lacking faith. They need God to conform to their beliefs in how God did things. Who the (expletive) are they to tell God how He did things or what He can or can’t do? They build these castles in the air, the God of the Gaps, and every time science marches forward and plugs one of the gaps with new information, their God of the Gaps fails them.
I had rather have an honest person who says, “I believe man was created as my Bible says, just as God wrote it himself in King James’ English,” than someone who says they are a scientist or scientific philosopher and throws science aside to try to immanentize the eschaton or whatever their goals are.
That’s been my position for a long time. I would rather people of faith didn’t lower their faith to the level of materialism by feeling a need to rationalize it with science. Rather, creationists should, in my opinion, simply smile and say “yes, I know science tells you that. Science is wrong, but it will probably appear self-consistent to you because God seems to want it that way. I’m okay with that.”
The alternatives, such as the pseudo-scientific nonsense the young earth creationists attempt to sell, or the more sophisticated seeming propositions put up by the irreducible complexity crowd, invite the question: and if we show you to be wrong on the science, will that diminish your faith? They’ll say no, but lots of people who found the arguments persuasive will, I think, have their confidence shaken unnecessarily. And that’s unfortunate.
What are you talking about here? What way?
Amen.
Exactly. Pernicious is the word I would use.
“Not that way!” The next lines you quoted explain it pretty well, I think.