David Berlinski on Science, Scientists, and Darwinism

_{Gil Dodgen

February 5, 2008

Darwinism, Science}

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In this Denyse O’Leary UD thread I included a quote from David Berlinski’s infamous The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski video interview.

I thought UD readers might enjoy some of his other comments on various science and Dawinism topics.

On science as a self-critical enterprise:

The idea that science is a uniquely self-critical institution is of course preposterous. Scientists are no more self-critical than anyone else. They hate to be criticized… Look, these people are only human, they hate criticism — me too. The idea that scientists are absolutely eager to be beaten up is one of the myths put out by scientists, and it works splendidly so they can avoid criticism.

We’re asking for standards of behavior that would be wonderful to expect but that no serious man does expect. A hundred years of fraudulent drawings suggesting embryological affinities that don’t exist — that’s just what I would expect if biologists were struggling to maintain a position of power in a secular democratic society. Let’s be reasonable… the popular myth of science as a uniquely self-critical institution, and scientists as men who would rather be consumed at the stake rather than fudge their data, is okay for a PBS special, but that’s not the real world; that’s not what’s taking place…

On Darwinism and power:

One of the reasons that people embrace Darwinian orthodoxy with such an unholy zealousness, is just that it gives them access to power. It’s as simple as that: power over education, power over political decisions, power over funding, and power over the media.

On appraising Darwinian theory (in particular, incremental gradualism and random changes filtered by natural selection):

…appraising Darwinian theory in the context that realistically portrays it for what it is: a kind of amusing 19th century collection of anecdotes that is utterly unlike anything you see in the serious sciences… Yeah, biologists do agree that this is the correct theory for the origin and diversification of life — BUT, here are some points you should consider as well: 1) the theory doesn’t have any substance to it, 2) it’s preposterous, 3) it’s not supported by the evidence, 4) the fact that biologists are uniformly in agreement could as well be explained by some solid Marxist interpretation of their economic interests.

On the reaction of Darwinists to criticism:

When people haven’t been criticized in a long time they react with a great deal of indignation when they’re criticized for the first time. It’s human nature. Put yourself in the position of a Daniel Dennett or a Richard Dawkins who are used to being the regnant priests of a powerful orthodoxy, and for the first time in their lives someone says, “Hey, you guys are simply not credible.” Of course they’re going to react with outrage and indignation, hurl imprecations at others, resort to objurgations…

Comments

vjtorley: First of all, the Borges analogy is wonderful for its great literary atmosphere and irony, and very appropriate even at a literary level, because Borges was indeed the extraordinary poet of the destructive power of mechanical infinity and repetition, and showed in many of his wonderful works how a purely mechanical concept of random eternal cloning, including physical immortality, is the best way to cancel any human meaning in an ocean of meaningless totality. That said, I am still very interested in your discussion about the potential differences between language and function, but I have already tried to start some discussion about that in a previous thread (the last one about the Musgrave challenge). I don't know if you have read my post there, and in case I would be interested in your opinion. Here, I would like to state again that the information in a complex genome is probably much more similar to a novel than you think. Your examples are good (I refer here in particular to the origami one), but they don't take into account the many higher levels of interaction which are obviously present in biological information. The origami example could be partially valid if the problem were only to build a single functional protein (and even in that case, the fundamental problems of the almost infinite search space, even for a single protein, the "Dembski" problem, and of the non selectable nature of most single transformation steps in regard to function, the "Behe" problem, make a stunning difference). But if you have to build hundreds or thousands of proteins, each contributing not only to its own function, but to the creation of the context in which all the others work, plus all the code (at present unknown) controlling the specific transcription af each protein in each cell, and the infinite transcriptome variations in all cells of a multicellular organism, plus all the details of macroscopic form and structure, plus I don't know how many other infinitely structured levels of complexity and intelligent information, then the language and novel analogy seems much more appropriate.gpuccio_{February 6, 2008
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The thing the book copying analogy needs to make it a suitable match to mutation + natural selection is to add that in each "generation" of books that one billion (or trillion or some other huge number) of copies were produced, each with its own unique set of "mutations", and the new versions distributed to the world's population, who compared each copy's "readability" and "fecundity" to the previous version, and returned only those copies which improved things over the previous generation. The "winning" version was then duplicated and distributed to the "testers", ready for the next iteration. Of course, the downfall of this scheme is that even with billions, or trillions, or decillions of copies in each generation, the chance of producing any "better" version by introducing small, random changes in letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters or whatever still remains essentially zero. New information does not arise from introducing mistakes.SCheesman_{February 6, 2008
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I'm a Berlinski fan myself, but I have to say I don't think his novel-copying analogy is an apt one. What it neglects is the selection process. In the natural world, most copying mistakes (mutations) get winnowed out because the are deleterious; a few persist because they are (a)neutral, (b) only very slightly deleterious, or (c) in very rare cases, beneficial. Without a selection mechanism, the chances of one book "evolving" into another one are indeed infinitesimal. However, it would be an even more egregious blunder to try and correct the "Don Quixote" analogy by introducing a forward-looking selection mechanism, such as Dawkins' famous weasel program, in which "[t]he computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the 'progeny' of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL." (The quote is from chapter 3 of "The Blind Watchmaker.") As a legion of critics have pointed out, natural selection is a blind process; thus the weasel program proves nothing. A second problem with Berlinski's novel-copying analogy is that novels tell a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Genes encode highly specific instructions for making organisms, and some genes even act as switches during an organism's embryonic development. Still, a genome is really more like a recipe than a novel. It is far more plausible to imagine that by randomly varying the ingredients and/or instructions in a recipe, you might accidentally hit upon another dish that tasted good, than to imagine that by randomly varying the letters, words or even sentences in a novel, you might be able to generate another novel that told a different story. That really would be a miracle. Finally, I don't think it's fair to compare macroevolution to changes in the language of a novel - say, from Spanish to French - arising through random copying errors. At the level of DNA, the genome of each and every species of organism is encoded in the same language. So what would be a fairer analogy for evolution? I'd like to suggest one which is based on origami. I think that this is a good analogy, because there are instructions for making a paper crane, and the folds have to be in a specific sequence - rather like the steps in the development of an organism. Let's imagine a community of monks who are origami fanatics. They start with a paper crane, and they decide to play a game. Each monk is free to randomly vary one of the instructions for making the crane. However, each monk's experiment is immediately subjected to a harsh test: the new model has to by able to glide through the air for (say) 5 metres, when thrown. If it cannot, it is rejected. (Perhaps 5 metres is a bit optimistic. I don't know how far an origami paper crane can fly.) As you can imagine, most of the variations prove to be non-starters. However, a lucky few will be aerodynamically up to scratch. These "survivors" will then be subjected to another round of random variation. Now the question is: what is the likelihood that after a million generations of random variations, winnowed by the 5-metre test, we would end up with a paper model of a radically different kind of bird, with new body parts and a completely different design? Does anyone out there have the computing resources to simulate one million generations of random variations, culled by the the "5-metre test"? (Does anyone have an origami flight simulator program?) Now THAT would be a good test of the plausibility of NDE. Just curious.vjtorley_{February 6, 2008
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Berlinski is sublime. I owe him some of the best, and most intelligent, laughs in my recent experience. His words about the myth of self-criticism in science are pure gold.gpuccio_{February 6, 2008
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This is my favorite sampling of Berlinski's subtle and deliciously ironic work: I imagine this story being told to me by Jorge Luis Borges one evening in a Buenos Aires cafe. His voice dry and infinitely ironic, the aging, nearly blind literary master observes that "the Ulysses," mistakenly attributed to the Irishman James Joyce, is in fact derived from "the Quixote." I raise my eyebrows. Borges pauses to sip discreetly at the bitter coffee our waiter has placed in front of him, guiding his hands to the saucer. "The details of the remarkable series of events in question may be found at the University of Leiden," he says. "They were conveyed to me by the Freemason Alejandro Ferri in Montevideo." Borges wipes his thin lips with a linen handkerchief that he has withdrawn from his breast pocket. "As you know," he continues, "the original handwritten text of the Quixote was given to an order of French Cistercians in the autumn of 1576." I hold up my hand to signify to our waiter that no further service is needed. "Curiously enough, for none of the brothers could read Spanish, the Order was charged by the Papal Nuncio, Hoyo dos Monterrey (a man of great refinement and implacable will), with the responsibility for copying the Quixote, the printing press having then gained no currency in the wilderness of what is now known as the department of Auvergne. Unable to speak or read Spanish, a language they not unreasonably detested, the brothers copied the Quixote over and over again, re-creating the text but, of course, compromising it as well, and so inadvertently discovering the true nature of authorship. Thus they created Fernando Lor's Los Hombres d'Estado in 1585 by means of a singular series of copying errors, and then in 1654 Juan Luis Samorza's remarkable epistolary novel Por Favor by the same means, and then in 1685, the errors having accumulated sufficiently to change Spanish into French, Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, their copying continuous and indefatigable, the work handed down from generation to generation as a sacred but secret trust, so that in time the brothers of the monastery, known only to members of the Bourbon house and, rumor has it, the Englishman and psychic Conan Doyle, copied into creation Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and then as a result of a particularly significant series of errors, in which French changed into Russian, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina. Late in the last decade of the 19th century there suddenly emerged, in English, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and then the brothers, their numbers reduced by an infectious disease of mysterious origin, finally copied the Ulysses into creation in 1902, the manuscript lying neglected for almost thirteen years and then mysteriously making its way to Paris in 1915, just months before the British attack on the Somme, a circumstance whose significance remains to be determined." I sit there, amazed at what Borges has recounted. "Is it your understanding, then," I ask, "that every novel in the West was created in this way?" "Of course," replies Borges imperturbably. Then he adds: "Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote."Gerry Rzeppa_{February 5, 2008
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