Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) was the author of Personal Knowledge (1958).
Our philosopher (and photographer) friend Laszlo Bencze is reading it and kindly writes to say, “The quote below shows that critiques of evolution long predate the rise of the Intelligent Design movement and are generally based on sound logical principles.”
This [distinguishing patterns from randomness] bears on the theory that the different living species have come into existence by accidental mutations. This can be affirmed only if, first you accredit the distinctive pattern of living beings as exhibiting a peculiar orderliness which you trust yourself to appraise, and second you accept at the same time the belief that evolution has taken place by a vastly improbable coincidence of random events combining to an orderly shape of a highly distinctive character. However, if we are to identify—as I am about to suggest—the presence of significant order with the operation of an ordering principle, no highly significant order can ever be said to be solely due to an accidental collocation of atoms, and we must conclude therefore that the assumption of an accidental formation of the living species is a logical muddle. It appears to be a piece of equivocation, unconsciously prompted by the urge to avoid facing the problem set to us by the fact that the universe has given birth to these curious beings, including people like ourselves. To say that this result was achieved by natural selection is entirely beside the point. Natural selection tells us only why the unfit failed to survive and not why any living beings, either fit or unfit, ever came into existence. —
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 35
Some have wondered why Polanyi’s critiques have not cut more ice.
Couple things: Timing might have been an issue because the very next year, 1959, featured a huge Darwin hooplah. American intellectual Gertrude Himmelfarb was allowed to critique it in Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959) but maybe no one took her seriously.
Friends have also been known to suggest that the Oxford establishment was uncomfortable with the brilliant and self-taught Polanyi who added to these vices by not participating in the Darwin cult.
Himmelfarb?
You may also wish to read: Himmelfarb On Darwin: An Enduring Perspective After 50 Years, Part 1 (science historian Michael Flannery, December 14, 2009)
A few months ago The Panda’s Thumb used the occasion of Irving Kristol’s death on September 18th to denigrate Gertrude Himmelfarb’s 50 year-old Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution as a “terrible book . . . demonstrating a lack of understanding of biology and a warped view of Darwin’s influence.” The article, written by Jeffrey Shallit, glibly casts aspersions on the late Kristol’s ethic for reviewing Gertrude Himmelfarb (aka Bea Kristol) in Encounter and failing to disclose that he was the author’s husband (though this writer could find no evidence of that at least with her Darwin), this without once reflecting on the questionable propriety of turning what should have been either a respectful obituary or complete silence into an opportunity to insult both the deceased and his widow. If that isn’t unethical, it is at least indecent. Shallit’s one-sided, high-toned moralizing aside, as the “Darwin year” draws to a close and given the fact that Himmelfarb’s biography of Darwin itself has just marked its golden anniversary, perhaps a careful reflection upon that effort is in order. What can be said of Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution in the dusk of 2009? Is it a terrible book?
And here’s Part 2.
Perhaps because, as in this case, he made the same basic error as so many other critics of the theory of evolution by accusing it of failing to achieve what it was never intended to achieve, explain the origins of life.
In the article from 2009 by Michael Flannery Himmelfarb On Darwin: An Enduring Perspective After 50 Years, Part 2 the author ends one paragraph with the following question:
One answer, which Flannery fails to address, would be that criticisms of the theory of evolution in biology come overwhelmingly from non-biologists such as theologians, philosophers, lawyers and engineers. In other words, they are trespassing in fields that are outside their own domains of expertise. Thus, when faced with the fact that the overwhelming majority of professional biologists accept the theory, they resort to tangential accusations of moral failings, philosophical weaknesses, bad theology and, most tellingly of all, allegations of a conspiracy theory to prop up a fatally flawed theory by suppressing criticism and evidence. Notably, the conspiracy theorists ignore the cognitive dissonance revealed by alleging a conspiracy theory to suppress publication of critiques of evolution – by publishing critiques of evolution.
Sevesky, writing off the argument does not make it wrong. Remove life from the equation and point out the actual evidence of speciation. Without being witnessed and replicated, which has never happened, it is fiction. Belief based on assumptions has nothing to do with science.
Why do you believe speciation to be a valid theory without evidence? If smart people in academia started claiming there was a small black hole at the center of Earth and claimed to have evidence, would you accept what they say without question?
Seversky, ironically, ENGINEERS ARE THE ONLY ONES who are qualified to criticize the theory of evolution … theologians, philosophers, lawyers and especially biologists – natural science graduates – ARE NOT QUALIFIED …
Engineers are the only ones, who were able to replicate (more or less) some of the species features … not biologists, not archeologists, not paleontologists or any other ‘-logist’ …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmNaLtC6vkU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJCMIsLuGpg
the other guys (-logists) just telling stories, very absurd stories, these guys never made anything …
MR, do I need to remind that in the UK, Institute of Physics is a member of the Institution of engineers? Where, too, you would be surprised at the relevant background of many in your list of the unqualified. The problem is not the design inference on signs or its warrant, but that we have a deeply entrenched school of thought locked into rejecting relevance of such signs. And people from your list can help a lot in taking apart the errors of reasoning and of fact involved. KF
Martin_r,
Agreed.
I saw a video someone here shared about a famous molecular engineer that was walking his students through the process of what it took to build the simplest molecular machine. It is spectacularly difficult for many, many different reasons, and he made it totally clear why it just cannot happen in a natural environment and without deliberate efforts to achieve a specific goal. Can’t be done.
KF
sure, that makes sense. I had lots of advanced physics / math during my study at technical university i graduated from.
So let’s talk about fully autonomous self-navigating flying systems that chasing other fully autonomous self-navigating flying systems at high speed (e.g. insects, birds, mammals) who in particular has the relevant background ? A philosopher ? A lawyer ? A theologian ? Or a biologist ?
A theory based on an proved unscientific idiocy(random mutation) and a tautology ( natural selection=”survival of survivors”).
PS: Genome is just the library of the cell (where are kept the blueprints) and doesn’t have executive power. Brainwashing = when somebody ask you to focus on the wrong thing while he take your wallet. 🙂
That’s quite a big list. Within the ranks of biologists, criticism is not permitted. But then outside of those ranks, we find criticism coming from many and diverse academic fields. That’s also because the claims of evolution touch on every aspect of life. Evolution makes claims about the origin (and therefore by implication the meaning) of human life itself, on society as a whole and on the history of the earth. Then we see the “keepers of the theory” walk in lock-step, defending it, and they attack everyone else as lacking competence. But how much competence is needed to see the problems in evolutionary theory? It seems that anyone who critiques it, by that fact, is considered incompetent. I’ve been studying it seriously for 15 years, but supposedly only the professional biologists can understand the theory and I cannot? That tells me there’s something wrong with the theory right there.
Polanyi rightly criticized the idea that natural selection can explain the origin of organisms and that does not need to refer to origin of life. There was, supposedly, one OOL event. But Polanyi points out that natural selection needs to explain “why any living beings, either fit or unfit, ever came into existence” – giving evolution the first one. That’s the problem. We’ll give you origin of life. Natural selection still cannot tell us why any other living beings exist beyond the first life form. It cannot even do that in theory – and definitely cannot demonstrate it scientifically. Why did bacteria need to become multi-cellular life?
What is ironic is that the scientific community ridicules ID-supportive science journals as “non-scientific” but then they’ll say that there’s plenty of space to publish critiques of evolution so why are IDists complaining? We’re forced into our in-house publications because of the very conspiracy that is denied by this.
One would think that biologists would be able to defend what they believe.
The first one who can will win a Nobel prize. But not in medicine. It will be in Literature because it will definitely be a work of fiction.
Challenge: for anyone but especially the anti-ID people here.
Name one person in the universe who can defend a theory of Evolution?
Seversky: criticisms of the theory of evolution in biology come overwhelmingly from non-biologists such as theologians, philosophers, lawyers and engineers.
That’s like saying the criticisms of the Roman Catholic church come overwhelmingly from non-Catholics. Being inside an ideological groupthink bubble is neither a defense nor a persuasive argument.
martin_r: ENGINEERS ARE THE ONLY ONES who are qualified to criticize the theory of evolution … theologians, philosophers, lawyers and especially biologists – natural science graduates – ARE NOT QUALIFIED
I’m an engineer, and I evaluate blind-watchmaker claims from an engineering standpoint. And while I can’t agree with your statement fully, I almost can. If blind-watchmaker evolutionary biologists would take a few semesters of engineering, BWE would probably dry up in a generation.
–Ram
Nothing illustrates Seversky’s observation with more poignancy than the self-described granddaddy of ID, Phillip Johnson….
Than the people who are experts in biology and support ID
Douglas Axe, PhD Maxwell Professor of Molecular Biology
Michael Behe, PhD Professor of biological scIences.
Michael Egnor, MD Professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics
Cornelius G. Hunter – a graduate of the University of Illinois where he earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology
Johnathan Wells earned PhD in molecular and cellular biology at UC Berkeley
Günter Bechly, PhD Paleontology
Ann Gauger is a zoologist with a BS in biology from MIT and a 1989 PhD from the University of Washington
Dean H. Kenyon is Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University,
Fazale (Fuz) Rana – PhD in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry from Ohio University
Michael John Denton – holds a PhD degree in biochemistry
Then there are the physicists and those with philosophy of science degrees. As usual ChuckDarwin is batting a thousand, being wrong. He cannot point to one biologist who can defend Evolution. Which includes himself.
Martin_r/3
Another data-point in support of the Salem Hypothesis.
Ram/10
Nor is an allegation of existing within “an ideological groupthink bubble” an effective criticism. It’s just a conspiracy theory by another name. If those non-biologists had come up with criticisms of evolutionary theory of which evolutionary biologists acknowledged they were previously unaware then the critics might have a case. Has that ever happened? As for allegations of a “groupthink bubble”, it could only be made by those who are unaware of the often fierce debates within the field over controversial issues such as “junk” DNA.
Yet another data-point for the Salem Hypothesis.
I realize that some of you don’t like my style. I apologize.
But i have to insist, only engineers are qualified to comment on biology. Biology is all about engineering … So when some biologist, paleontologist or archeologist (or people like Seversky) is going to give me a lesson from evolutionary theory, i can only laugh. These people don’t even understand how ridiculous they are – that is the most sad think about it … these people are naive romantics – natural science graduates – they know nothing about real life. Nothing. They never made anything. It is very sad that this nonsensical very absurd theory is still taught in 21st century schools … The theory was developed in 19th century, and this is exactly where it belongs.
PS: of course, theologians, philosophers, lawyers may comment on the theory as well, they may have some good ideas, but like i said, biology is all about engineering – NO EXCEPTIONS! Even feelings like love or hate (or stupidity) had to be engineered …
Seversky is repeatedly mention the Salem hypothesis….
So let’s have a closer look, from wikipedia:
I tried to google Bruce Salem (if it is his real name), to learn what is his education or what he is doing for living … i couldn’t find a thing. Seversky, could you help? One thing is for sure, Bruce Salem is not an engineer.
As to Salem hypothesis:
i agree with this part … but then it continues:
possibly ??? POSSIBLY ???
This also perfectly illustrates Darwinism …
“Possibly …. it may have … most probably … most likely … ”
Assumptions everywhere – that’s Darwinism …
Perhaps it would help, if this Darwinian clown talks to an engineer :)))))
Anyway, this guy Bruce Salem, has to explain why only engineers out of thousands of other occupations out there … what may be the reason ???? :)))))))
Is Bruce Salem suggesting, that we engineers, who created every single thing on this planet, are most messed up, that we allegedly tend to believe nonsense ? Why us ?
Ram @10 is mentioning R Dawkins’s blind watchmaker …
I hate to comment on R Dawkins, because this guy is so confused (politely said)
Anyway,
Is Dawkins suggesting, that blind people do not know what they are doing ? Are blind people unconscious ? Or what is this clown suggesting ?
The watchmaker might be blind, but in order to create/assemble a watch, he is still using his other senses + his brain as well …
Dawkins should have used another description – a dead watchmaker.
True. But bear in mind that theologians know directly from the Engineer that invented life engineering. There are 2 kinds of knowledge that reach same conclusion.
Seversky states that, “criticisms of the theory of evolution in biology come overwhelmingly from non-biologists such as theologians, philosophers, lawyers and engineers.”
In that statement Seversky is presupposing that there has not been widespread discrimination, censorship, and expulsion, in academia against anyone who may dare question the theory of evolution.
Seversky is, as usual, completely wrong in his presupposition.
Also, directly contrary to what Seversky tried to imply about engineers having nothing meaningful to say about biology, It turns out that engineers, via some of their, (fairly technical), models for understanding engineered systems, have a lot to say about biology,
And whereas engineers, directly contrary to what Seversky tried to imply, have a lot to say about biology, it turns out that Evolution theory itself has very little, to nothing, to offer biologists in terms of successfully guiding their biological research.
In fact, given the ‘junk-DNA’, and vestigial organ, ‘predictions’ of Darwin’s theory, Darwin’s theory actually has a long history of grossly misleading biologists instead of successfully guiding them to insightful breakthroughs in biology.
In conclusion, the reality of the situation is, as usual, far different than what Seversky falsely imagines it to be.