Darwinism

I’ve long suspected that the carcass of Darwinism is finally getting dragged off the scene, and with any luck, the career atheists and the Christian Darwinists will be fighting over it full time, with few onlookers, and Templeton funding the whack. Have a look at this roundup of abstracts a friend sent me:

Forthcoming articles about Darwinism in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences:

1. The Mastodon in the room: how Darwinian is neo-Darwinism?

Daniel R. Brooks

Abstract Failing to acknowledge substantial differences between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism impedes evolutionary biology. Darwin described evolution as the outcome of interactions between the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions, each relatively autonomous but both historically and spatially intertwined. Furthermore, he postulated that the nature of the organism was more important than the nature of the conditions, leading to natural selection as an inevitable emergent product of biological systems. The neo-Darwinian tradition assumed a creative rather than selective view of natural selection, with the nature of the organism determined by the nature of the conditions, rendering the nature of the organism and temporal contingency unnecessary. Contemporary advances in biology, specifically the phylogenetics revolution and evo-devo, underscore the significance of history and the nature of the organism in biology. Darwinism explains more bio logy better, and better resolves apparent anomalies between living systems and more general natural laws, than does neo-Darwinism. The “extended” or “expanded” synthesis currently called for by neo-Darwinians is Darwinism.

Hmmm. No idea what he is talking about except that the “neo-Darwinians” (now the bad guys) made the mistake of assuming “a creative rather than selective view of natural selection”. In other words, they thought natural selection could create information and it can’t.

So, when the debts are called … Darwinism couldn’t create a small part of the hind end of a flea?

2. What was really synthesized during the evolutionary synthesis? a historiographic proposal

Richard G. Delisle

Abstract The 1920-1960 period saw the creation of the conditions for a unification of disciplines in the area of evolutionary biology under a limited number of theoretical prescriptions: the evolutionary synthesis. Whereas the sociological dimension of this synthesis was fairly successful, it was surprisingly loose when it came to the interpretation of the evolutionary mechanisms per se, and completely lacking at the level of the foundational epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Key figures such as Huxley, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and Rensch only paid lip service to the conceptual dimension of the evolutionary synthesis, as they eventually realized that a number of evolutionary phenomena could not be explained by its narrow theoretical corpus. Apparently, the evolutionary synthesis constituted a premature event in the development of evolutionary biology. Not only are the real achievements of the evolutionary synthesis in need of reevaluation, but this reassessment also has important implications for the historiography of Darwinism and the current debates about the darwinian movement.

So there isn’t really a grand synthesis that was supposed to shut up all critics already. Figures. The only synthesis I ever heard of was, “We all agree to keep our jobs fronting this nonsense. After all, the pop science press are all on our side, and everyone else is scared shiftless.”
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Phillip Johnson’s classic with a beautiful new foreword by Mike Behe is hot off the press: Amazon link to this book.

Tom Woodward, author of DOUBTS ABOUT DARWIN and DARWIN STRIKES BACK, interviewed Robert J. Marks about his work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. For the podcast, go here: “Darwin or Design?” (program starts at 5:08 | actual interview starts at 7:52)

Robin Lloyd explains in “Woman science bloggers discuss pros and cons of online exposure” (Jan 18, 2011),

Blogging and other Web activities have allowed members of many marginalized communities to open previously locked media doors. But women still rely more on back channels and ask for less help than men do in the digital realm. This tendency and other issues of concern for women bloggers were discussed Sunday at the ScienceOnline2011 conference in Durham, N.C., primarily in a session called “Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name.”

Huh?

Experiences varied among attendees on whether blogging under a real name did indeed present perils. Miriam Goldstein (@oystersgarter), a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and blogger at Deep-Sea News says she has never had a negative experience. But stories surfaced regarding inappropriate comments by male readers. And one attendee voiced concerns about being emailed by a reader who said he was near her campus and about to stop by her office. Christie Wilcox (@NerdyChristie), a doctoral student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa who blogs at Observations of Nerd, said she only received nasty comments when she blogged on the science of make-up—and the anger came from women. Tribalism takes many forms.

Well, if you have dealt with minor Darwinists, as I have, and are not one of their companions, you get to hear how some of them talk about women. But God or nature or the guardian angel of marriages – or somebody or other anyway – invented a back browser button and a delete key.

I guess the big time Darwinists approve of all that stuff. I’ve never heard of them telling those dudes to smarten up, or slide their keesters to the low class boozehole down the road. I once had a problem with a guy who professed support for ID who behaved like that, but I heard vaguely that he had his can kicked six ways to Sunday over it. Nothing to do with me.

Actually, we had a problem with Darwinmouth here in Canada, but Read More ›

Just received an email from the Templeton-funded Metanexus group. The big announcement is the unveiling of a new website: www.evolutionarychristianity.com You knew it was going to happen, and now it’s here. “Evolutionary Christianity” — a phrase that rolls off the tongue and inspires theological confidence. The gallery of people on the homepage features quite an assortment of thinkers making common cause — theological differences aside, the science of Darwinian evolution must be kept sacrosanct! It will be interesting to see whether this strategy to mainstream evolution among evangelicals succeeds. Granted, the Christian Colleges have by and large embraced “Evolutionary Christianity.” But “evolution” remains a dirty word among many evangelicals. Will the Templeton-inspired PR campaign that’s evident on this website succeed? Read More ›

At honest broker of media releases ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2011), we learn that “Catfish Study Reveals Multiplicity of Species” — Peer into any stream in a South American rainforest and you may well see a small shoal of similar-looking miniature catfish. But don’t be fooled into thinking that they are all the same species. Promise, I won’t be fooled. An extensive investigation of South American Corydoras catfish, reveals that catfish communities- although containing almost identically coloured and patterned fish, could actually contain three or more different species. Establishing for the first time that many species are mimetic; that is, they evolve to share the same colour patterns for mutual benefit- the research also established that each individual community of similar Read More ›

Given the economic problems lately, a lot of you have probably heard the term “Too Big To Fail” – the idea that, roughly, a given entity in the economy is so important, so vital, that they need special consideration from the government. It’s not that such an entity can’t fail – it’s that they won’t be allowed to fail, if it’s at all avoidable.

Think of it in smaller terms. Say your small town is hosting a beauty pageant. And let’s say one of the entries into this pageant is the daughter of a very wealthy out-of-town businessman, who is considering moving a factory to your town – a factory that will supply jobs the locals and the local economy very desperately needs. And let’s say she’s… not the most aesthetically gifted of all the contestants. If you can understand why chances are the businessman’s daughter shall somehow manage to win over the judges in the beauty contest – that the daughter is, in a way, too big to fail – you know enough about the too-big-to-fail concept. At least for the purposes of this post.

Well, there’s another area where a Too Big To Fail attitude shows up. And to see an interesting iteration of it, we only have to look back a few months to a paper on evolution which led to an interesting meltdown by an NCSE member.

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I was a big fan of Robert J. Ringer in the 1970s (author of the runaway bestseller WINNING THROUGH INTIMIDATION — which was not about learning to intimidate others but about preventing others from intimidating you — good information if you have to deal with Darwinists). In the 1980s Ringer became a champion of libertarianism, which he has continued to the present, especially through his blog. In the last few years I’ve corresponded with him and learned that he too is a Darwin doubter. At his request, I wrote a short piece for his blog titled “Saving Our Freedoms from Darwin”: [EXCERPT:] Paternalists have always been infatuated with Darwin. Yet, having embraced Darwinism as a tool for social control, they became loath to Read More ›

The opening of  the current version of the Wikipedia article, “Evolution as theory and fact,” (with links and references removed) reads: The statement “evolution is both a theory and a fact” is often seen in biological literature. Evolution is a “theory” in the scientific sense of the term “theory”; it is an established scientific model that explains observations and makes predictions through mechanisms such as natural selection. When scientists say “evolution is a fact”, they are using one of two meanings of the word “fact”. One meaning is empirical: evolution can be observed through changes in allele frequencies or traits of a population over successive generations. Another way “fact” is used is to refer to a certain kind of theory, Read More ›

In “Mind in the Mirror,” Raymond Tallis reflects on V.S. Ramachandran’s The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, “Neuroscience can explain many brain functions, but not the mystery of consciousness”:

The subtitle of V.S. Ramachandran’s latest book prompts a question: Why should “A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human” be of particular interest? The answer is obvious if you believe, as so many do, that humans are essentially their brains. When a brain scientist speaks, we should pay attention, for “What makes us human” then boils down to what makes our brains special, compared with those of other highly evolved creatures.

RaymondTallis

Dr. Ramachandran and many others, including prominent philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Patricia and Paul Churchland, promise that neuroscience will help us understand not only the mechanism of brain functions (such as those that coordinate movement or underpin speech) but also key features of human consciousness. As of yet, though, we have no neural explanation of even the most basic properties of consciousness, such as the unity of self, how it is rooted in an explicit past and explicit future, how experience is owned and referred to a self, and how we are, or feel that we are, voluntary agents. Neuroscience, in short, has no way of accommodating everyday first-person being.

No, and neuroscience is often invoked to explain things it doesn’t:

Here, as elsewhere, the intellectual audit trail connecting the neuroscience to the things he claims to explain is fragile. For a start, mirror neurons have been observed not just in monkeys and humans but also in swamp sparrows, enabling them to learn to sing the songs they hear. They are admirable birds, but their cultural achievements are modest. Moreover, the existence in humans of a distinct mirror neuron system with properties such as “mind-reading” is still contested. At any rate, the claim that mirror neurons are a “specialized circuitry for social cognition” in humans is a death-defying leap beyond the humble “Monkey see, Monkey do” function they were first observed to have.

Tallis describes himself, at his own site, as a humanist. Read More ›

We have all heard of the NCSE, but the National Science Teachers Association [of the US], NSTA, has proposed a new definition of the nature of science, in a declaration signed off by its Board of Directors, as long ago as July, 2000.  Excerpting: All those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science. Science is characterized by the systematic gathering of information through various forms of direct and indirect observations and the testing of this information by methods including, but not limited to, experimentation. The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts . . . . Read More ›

A friend asks a bunch of us if we are as incredulous of Darwinist attempts to explain away the Cambrian explosion as he is. Well, I always say, try me on some of the latest nonsense, and he did. It is conveniently here, in relation to the Dengying fossils in southern China (541 to 551 million years ago):

The first instance of biomineralization – i.e. the biologic use of minerals – was around 2 billion years ago when certain bacteria precipitated grains of magnetite to apparently help orient themselves in the Earth’s magnetic field. However, the first animal skeletons didn’t appear until right before the Cambrian explosion, at the end of the Ediacaran Period.These early shell-bearing creatures help to resolve Charles Darwin’s concern over the sudden appearance of so many new animal species during the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record gives the impression of a “Creation” event, but in reality, animals had evolved prior to the explosion. They just didn’t leave much for paleontologists to find until they developed the skeleton-making trait.

Reminded me of something:

The first time anyone wondered about thefts from the liquor store was on March 22, when a couple of guys appeared to be loitering with intent. However, the first theft of cash and cases of liquor didn’t occur until June 29, at the end of the subsequent accounting period.This reported theft helps to resolve management’s concern over the sudden disappearance of so much cash and so many cases during the night of June 29. The inventory record gives the impression of a major theft, but in reality, lots of cash and cases had gone missing prior to the reported heist. They just didn’t leave much for investigators to find because they weren’t logged into inventory in the first place.

Hardline Darwinists obviously fear the Cambrian explosion the way crooks fear an honest investigator. You can play their claim game yourself: Read More ›

It’s amazing what one can learn about the heroes of materialist science from their friends. In “Leftist Artists and Their Totalitarian Friends” ( c2c Journal: Canada’s Journal of Ideas , January 4, 2011) commentator Michael Coren quotes friends of the early twentieth century Darwin popularizer, sci-fi novelist H. G. Wells: In describing his fellow socialist and some-time friend, George Bernard Shaw wrote of Wells, “Multiply the total by ten; square the result. Raise it again to the millionth power and square it again; and you will still fall short of the truth about Wells – yet the worse he behaved the more he was indulged; and the more he was indulged the worse he behaved.” [ … ] At heart, Read More ›

Writer and philosopher Roger Scruton hasn’t much use for the lit crit fad known as “literary Darwinism”, popularized by the Denis Dutton. At Big Questions Online, he asks, “Only Adapt: Can science explain art, music and literature?” (December 9, 2010).

My sense is that a respectable science would not try, and the evolutionary psychology he quite properly deflates is not a science anyway, it is an artifact of a materialist culture and fully understandable as such. Scruton notes,

Over the last two decades, however, Darwinism has invaded the field of the humanities, in a way that Darwin himself would scarcely have predicted. Doubt and hesitation have given way to certainty, interpretation has been subsumed into explanation, and the whole realm of aesthetic experience and literary judgement has been brought to heel as an “adaptation,” a part of human biology which exists because of the benefit that it confers on our genes. No need now to puzzle over the meaning of music or the nature of beauty in art. The meaning of art and music reside in what they do for our genes. Once we see that these features of the human condition are “adaptations,” acquired perhaps many thousands of years ago, during the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we will be able to explain them. We will know what art and music essentially are by discovering what they do.


[ … ]


… the whole “adaptation” approach to human phenomena is topsy-turvy. It involves a mechanical application, case by case, of the theory of natural selection, as supplemented by modern genetics. It tells us that, if a trait is widespread across our species, then it has been “selected for.” But this means only that the trait is not maladaptive, that it is not something that would disappear under evolutionary pressure. And that is a trivial observation. Everything that exists could be said to be not dysfunctional. That tells us nothing about how the thing in question came to exist. Read More ›

Jonathan McLatchie tells it here.

It’s no surprise the Pope has gone on record as saying “God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident” (Philip Pullella, 2011 01 06):

God’s mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.

Nor is the pop media reaction. Most of the Yahoo article is the usual sludge (= Pope grudgingly accepts reality while retaining a tiny corner for dumb people to pray in).

Notice however that, to their credit, the Yahooligans couldn’t quite bring themselves to say “the Pope supports evolution”. Instead: Read More ›