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Past Scientists Who Dissent from Darwinism

William Dembski
August 2, 2006
Darwinism, Evolution
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I want to invite on this thread names of past scientists who thought Darwinism was B.S. along with evidence showing that they did indeed think this. Me first: Wolfgang Pauli. Check out pp27-28 at http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/paulijcs.pdf.

Comments
I find it appalling that Nobel laureates could deny the reality of organic evolution as documented by scordova in post number 17. A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." John A. Davison It is only the mechanism that has remained obscure and that for not much longer. To deny organic evolution is unthinkable.John A. Davison
August 5, 2006
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No I don't and I must admit it is hearsay. Dobzhansky published an enormous number of papers. Someone who is more competent than I can run that down. I am confident it will be found to be accurate. All his publications are archived in the Philadephia Academy of Sciences. They comprise several meters of shelf space.John A. Davison
August 4, 2006
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JAD: "The last serious test of selection was by Dobzhansky with Drosophila. He failed and admitted as much" Do you have a citation for this? Thanks, antgantg
August 4, 2006
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I offered a new hypothesis for evolution with the Semi-Meiotic Hypothesis (SMH)in 1984. It has yet to be acknowledged or tested by the scientific establishment, something I was unable to do for lack of suitable material. Until it is it remains viable. Even if new species are not produced it may still have been a factor in the past because evolution beyond the generation of varieties is no longer in progress. Like ontogeny, phylogeny has also been self-limiting with extinction being the counterpart of the death of the individual. The Darwinians no longer test their hypothesis as they grew tired of chronic failure. The last serious test of selection was by Dobzhansky with Drosophila. He failed and admitted as much, something the Darwinians conveniently ignore. They also steadfastly refused to test Darwin's finches even though finches are anong the easiest birds to domesticate. The canary is a finch. There is little doubt now that all of Darwin's finches are a single species producing genetically fit and fertile progeny through natural crossing. The Darwinian myth is without any foundation whatsoever. It is based on the unwarranted assumption that organic evolution resulted from external causes. No such causes have ever been disclosed for the simple reason that they never existed. Neither have such cases been disclosed for ontogeny and for exactly the same reason. "Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance." Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134 "Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control." Albert Einstein Therefore, The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." John A. DavisonJohn A. Davison
August 3, 2006
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LowenheimSkolem, let me point out the obvious. A scientist shouldn't spend much time ``deal[ing] (philosophically) with abstract objects.`` Example: complex numbers are abstract objects. I use them often but I don't ponder their philosophical significance. But we digress... :)olegt
August 3, 2006
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Pauli says, "In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness." The "empirical time scale" is very much in question at the moment. The "standard" Big Bang / expansion model has been challenged by the cyclic universe model of Steinhardt and Turok. According to the cyclic model, the universe has gone through a large number of "big bang, then big crunch" cycles. Each cycle lasts about a trillion years. The model entails all the successful predictions of the Big Bang model, and also explains why the cosmological constant is much smaller (by 120 orders of magnitude) than predicted by the Big Bang model. The cyclic model will be falsified if research currently underway succeeds in detecting gravitational waves. So how does one determine, in Bill Dembski's design inference framework, the probabilistic resources available to neo-Darwinian processes? Does one reject the cyclic model in favor of the Big Bang model? Why?Tom English
August 3, 2006
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olget: I'm having a hard time figuring out how your argument is supposed to run. You write: "Pauli’s dislike of natural selection through random mutations is a philosophical position. In science that does not mean squat." Are you trying to say that science does not intersect with philosophy? Seriously? If that's what you are arguing it is just flat out incorrect. Here is an example related to what I wrote above: Science (qua naturalism) presupposes mathematics, while mathematics presupposes, prima facie, abstract objects. Uh oh! If you can't see why this is a deep and serious problem, I have a reading list I can post for you. Anyhow, it seems clear to me that the way in which one deals (philosophically) with abtract objects is going to directly inform how one views the results of any science.LowenheimSkolem
August 3, 2006
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1962 Nobel Laureate in Physics Eugene Wigner: Unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
physics as we know it today would not be possible without a constant recurrence of miracles certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.
1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Richard Smalley: here
Evolution has just been dealt its death blow. After reading Origins of Life with my background in chemistry and physics, it is clear that biological evolution could not have occurred
Nobel Laureates for IDscordova
August 3, 2006
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there’s no debating that Godel was a bit crazy as per Wiki
Einstein often worried about his friend—and sometimes found his behavior utterly exasperating. One November day in 1952, a colleague encountered Einstein on the street, and noting his unusually perturbed expression, inquired what was wrong. "Gödel has gone completely crazy!" was the reply. "Why, what has he done now?" Einstein explained: "He voted for Eisenhower!"
tribune7
August 3, 2006
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Olegt, in this paper, in the quote I sited, Pauli said, "As a physicist, I should like to critically object that this model has not been supported by an affirmative estimate of probabilities so far." The idea that somehow a "random mutation" model should not be subject to the laws of probability is hardly realistic, is it? This does seem to be Pauli's primary objection to the RM+NS model, unless you have other knowledge than is presented in this paper.bFast
August 3, 2006
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bFast, Pauli wanted to derive biology from first principles. That's a noble but rather naive, quixotic approach. It fails most of the time even in his own field, physics. For example, thermodynamics and statistical physics cannot be derived from mechanics. Does that invalidate the thermal theory? I don't think so. A theory should make predictions that can be tested experimentally, that's all. Deriving it from scratch is neither necessary, nor sufficient.olegt
August 3, 2006
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“Whether or not past scientists believed something or not makes no difference.” Certainly it does. Dembski, Behe, etc disagree with NDE for intellectual reasons based off of the evidence that they have viewed.
Doug, You might be making yourself unpopular by suggesting that Dembski, Behe, etc are past scientists. :-) Bob P.S. bFast: biologists don't know "how a cell knows what segments of DNA to implement" because they don't know what it means! Any chance of you re-phrasing that using biological terminology?Bob OH
August 3, 2006
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ofro: What Mendel was getting at is that, because inheritance is done in discrete units, this means that you cannot have a "continuous variation" that progresses from point A to point B. The stability of the units was very high, not continuously changing. No matter how much you reshuffle the genes of dafodil you won't get a human. Thus, the idea that the same shuffling that produces hybrids is a model for how large-scale jumps are crossed is simply false. Hybrids are produced from fairly stable parts, whose stability is not modified through hybridization, and in fact the original species are often recoverable through additional breeding.johnnyb
August 3, 2006
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Olegt: "Pauli’s dislike of natural selection through random mutations is a philosophical position. In science that does not mean squat." Pauli:
“As a physicist, I should like to critically object that this model has not been supported by an affirmative estimate of probabilities so far. Such an estimate of the theoretical time scale of evolution as implied by the model should be compared with the empirical time scale. One would need to show that, according to the assumed model, the probability of de facto existing purposeful features to evolve was sufficiently high on the empirically known time scale. Such an estimate has nowhere been attempted though.”
Olegt, if your view is that this is a "philosophical dislike" rather than a scientific objection, then your definitions of philosophy and of science are much different than my own. I recognize that this is a significantly outdated statement. The real question is, how much progress has been made in the direction of establishing "an affirmative estimate of the probablilities." Surely there has been some work in the matter, I have seen it. However, my sense is that there remain huge areas, such as ORFan genes, where the work has not been done. Oh yea, biologists still don't understand the basics like how a cell knows what segments of DNA to implement. How can they possibly have done the probabilities work yet?bFast
August 3, 2006
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johnnyb, I have a hard time seeing how the text from Mendel's paper that you cited has anything to do with ID or even a rejection of Darwin. Gartner's experiments were efforts to cross (hybridize) relates species or different strains of the same species. What does that have to do with evolution or ID?ofro
August 3, 2006
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"Whether or not past scientists believed something or not makes no difference." Certainly it does. Dembski, Behe, etc disagree with NDE for intellectual reasons based off of the evidence that they have viewed. They, therefore, believe that some of the strong support voice for NDE is done more for philosophic reasons than scientific reasons. W.Dembski finds others (historically) who have disagreed with Darwin's conception of evolution to be based on similar reasoning (by using their cognitive faculties *that we all believe provide us with information from the 'real' world* to understand whether the evidence supports or denies Darwin's conception of evolution).Doug
August 3, 2006
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Olegt, you are dead on. Truth in science is not determined by how many people believe something but by whether or not something that can be shown to be true through experiment and other scientific evidence. Whether or not past scientists believed something or not makes no difference.Achilles25
August 3, 2006
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Gregor Mendel (he even dissented from the Darwinian mindset before "Origin of Species"):
[speaking in support of Gärtner] Gärtner, by the results of theses transformation experiments, was led to oppose the opinion of those naturalists who dispute the stability of plant species and believe in a continuous evolution of vegetation. He perceives in the complete transformation of one species into another an indubitable proof that species are fixed with limits beyond which they cannot change. Although this opinion cannot be unconditionally accepted we find on the other hand in Gärtner's experiments a noteworthy confirmation of that supposition regarding variability of cultivated plants which has already been expressed. Among the experimental species there were cultivated plants, such as Aquilegia atropurpurea and canadensis , Dianthus caryophyllus, chinensis , and japonicus , Nicotiana rustica and paniculata, and hybrids between these species lost none of their stability after 4 or 5 generations.
johnnyb
August 3, 2006
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You can't leave William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin off the list.tribune7
August 3, 2006
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Pauli's dislike of natural selection through random mutations is a philosophical position. In science that does not mean squat. Take, for example, Albert Einstein's nonacceptance of quantum mechanics: ``God doesn't play dice`` and all that. If, following Dembski, I would use Einstein's philosophical position as evidence against quantum mechanics, I would deservedly become the laughingstock of my field (physics). Quantum mechanics works very well in practice and no amount of philosophical whining will change that. Same with biology. If you're going to argue against TOE you must present a new framework that will withstand the test of experiments.olegt
August 3, 2006
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I nominate the six to whom I dedicated my "Manifesto" and my 2000 paper "Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information," Leo Berg, William Bateson, Robert Broom, Richard B. Goldschmidt, Pierre Grasse and Otto Schindewolf, not a Darwinian in the lot. They provided the raw materials for "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis." "A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." John A. DavisonJohn A. Davison
August 3, 2006
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Well, how about David Raup, who wrote the most useful book on extinction I have ever encountered. From what I can gather, he was interested in ID theory, but (probably) did not want to waste his time on useless controversy with Darwinoids or, worse, Darwinbots*. cheers, Denyse *Darwinbot - a person who reflexively defends Darwinism, on any occasion or none. O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, first observed the phenomenon when a huge crowd besieged the Smithsonian's e-mail and phone lines in May 2005 on account of the booking of The Privileged Planet film (based on Gonzalez and Richards' book of the same name, on the relative rarity of planets like Earth). A New York Times story picked up the news from my blog, the Post-Darwinist, and mistakenly claimed that the film is "anti-evolution." The NYT journalist had not seen the film**, and neither had the 'bots. In the former case, I think that not seeing the film was an unfortunate omission. In the latter case, I am sure it is quite irrelevant. Later, the Wash Post's editorial staff saw the film and pronounced it "religious," by which they meant that it supports the contentions of non-materialist religions rather than the materialist religion of which the Wash Post is a bastion. **By the way, this incident illustrates nicely why the legacy mainstream media continue to lose ground to blogging. I provide a blow-by-blow summary of the content of the film at the Post-Darwinist. Use the search box at the site; the auto URL may be too long to reproduce here.O'Leary
August 3, 2006
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The most important thinker of the past century (at least on my view): Kurt Godel! I'm not sure if everyone would count him as a "scientist" but you can't please everyone, so I say he counts. This passage is from a recent Godel biography by Rebecca Goldstein (ugh!): "The philosopher Thomas Nagel recalled also being seated next to Gödel at a small gathering for dinner at the Institute and discussing the mind-body problem with him, a philosophical chestnut that both men had tried to crack. Nagel pointed out to Gödel that Gödel's extreme dualist view (according to which souls and bodies have quite separate existences, linking up with one another at birth to conjoin in a sort of partnership that is severed upon death) seems hard to reconcile with the theory of evolution. Gödel professed himself a nonbeliever in evolution and topped this off by pointing out, as if this were additional corroboration for his own rejection of Darwinism: `You know Stalin didn't believe in evolution either, and he was a very intelligent man.'" Notice how Goldstein tries to use Godel's rejection of evolution as a way of showing that he was something of an idiot savant or a "crazy genuis." I mean certainly the man who singlehandedly detroyed the Hilbert school and the whole formalist project MUST be crazy for rejecting evolution, right? Now, comparing your views to those of Stalin probably isn't the best way to win over skeptics, but it seems to me that Goldstien is trying to use this to bolster the picture she's is constructing in which Godel is a sort of rain man character. There's no debating that Godel was a bit crazy (after all, he did starve himself to death), but I think its bollocks to suggest that his rejection of NDE was somehow reated to his mental or personal tics. In fact, there's good reason for a true Godelian to be critical of NDE, and autobiographically speaking, thinking about Godel-inspired questions in logic and the philosophy of mathematics is what led me to reject metaphysical/ontological naturalism. Although Godel's 1931 proof doesn't actually demonstrate that mathematical realism is true, it throws a ton of weight behind such a view. And if one fully accepts mathematical realism/Platonism (as Godel obviously did) one cannot, as far as I can tell, be a true naturalist (despite the best efforts of Penelope Maddy).LowenheimSkolem
August 3, 2006
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George Washington Carver is a past scientist who I think would qualify, based on quotes attributed to him on this web site: www.nps.gov/gwca/expanded/quotes.htm Not that he mentions Darwin, but he certainly mentions God. He sounds like the epitome of a humble, compassionate man, and a scientist as well. He wanted to share his inventions with the world.interested bystander
August 2, 2006
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