Survival of the Sickest, Why We Need Disease

_{Salvador Cordova

April 27, 2009

Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

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“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”

This is a phrase a software engineer will use to jokingly confess his software has a defect.

When Sharon Moalem wrote the NY Times Bestseller, Survival of the Sickest: Why We Need Disease, he probably did not intend to make a joking confession of flaws in Darwin’s theory, but he succeed in doing so.

Recall the words of Darwin:

Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good.

C.DARWIN sixth edition Origin of Species — Ch#4 Natural Selection

If Darwin’s claim is true, why then are we confronted with numerous, persistent, hereditary diseases?

Can it be that Darwin was wrong? The obvious answer is yes. But in the face of an obvious flaw in Darwin’s ideas, Moalem argues that what appears to be a flaw in Darwin’s theory is actually an ingenious feature! Moalem extols the virtues of disease, and since disease is virtuous, natural selection will favor it.

It is accepted that sickle-cell anemia persists because of natural selection, but what about other diseases? Moalem explores many other diseases like diabetes, hemochromatosis, high cholesterol, early aging, favism, obesity, PANDAS, CCR5-delta32, xenophobia, etc. showing how natural selection incorporated these “virtuous” diseases into our species.

Moalem is not alone in arguing that natural selection creates through the process of destruction. For example, Allen Orr suggests that natural selection is the cause of blindness in Gammarus minus. In the world of Darwin, what happened to Gammarus minus isn’t the loss of vision, it is the creation of blindness. And since selection favors blindness in Gammarus minus, blindness is a functional improvement! Once again, Darwinism is immune to any testability through the process of constantly redefining what is considered “good”.

The net result is that Moalem’s book becomes an unwitting critique of Darwinian evolution. It highlights numerous empirical examples of how natural selection actually goes against Darwinian ideas of constant progress, and instead demonstrates how natural selection can be an agent of demise.

Comments

PaV--You are curious of the bias in the machine which chops wood, I am curious of the bias contained in weather, producing clouds of familiar shape. My point: what is the difference?eligoodwin_{April 28, 2009
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Hi Mr Nakashima, <i.Mr MacNeill, I’m not sure why you quibble about knowing the exact history in 108. There is plenty of good research on the evolution of the genetic code, such as recent study. I mentioned a similar hypothesis in #106, but since I am in perpetual moderation, it was probably missed. That being said, I think Allen is simply saying we most likely will never be able to figure out the exact process by which the genetic code arose. However, it's my opinion we have several hypotheses that can at least demonstrate the plausibility of the code's evolution through natural means. The basic stereochemical affinity of specific tRNA's with certain amino acids suggests to me that intelligent design is not necessary to explain the origin of the code.Dave Wisker_{April 28, 2009
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Joseph: [119]
They synthesized RNA and all it could do was make ONE new bond connecting two other pre-synthesized parts together. ONE new bond in ideal conditions. Shouldn’t that give us an indication on the powers of nature, operating freely?
By way of answering some of the questions posed earlier on on this thread, I agree, Joseph, that we should note the limitations of mutational power on the part of nature. In fact, some have discussed algorithms and such, and how we should look to nature for confirmation or negation. Well, isn't that exactly what Behe has done? First, with a mathematician by the name of Snoke, he did a computer simulation designed to elicit the evolutionary firepower needed to produce a simple peptide through duplication events combined with recombination and immediate fixation of the changes (this is often invoked by the intelligentsia as the mechanmism by which evolutionary progression occurs in nature). Behe found---rather, the mathematical model found---that only small changes in amino acid sequences can be searched out when invoking the gene duplication/recombination/fixation scenario, and only using huge population numbers and huge numbers of generations. Then he found an example in nature with which he could compare the evolutionary firepower of nature versus what his model told him. Nature confirmed his model: at most, after huge numbers of generations, only two a.a. substitutions were found to take place in the Plasmodium farmecium, the malarial parasite, amidst its life and death struggle with quoinone. eligoodwin [120] Please notice the questions I asked. I asked how one would react if the shape of a squirrel came out from a process I described. I asked the question: " . . . wouldn’t all of us be curious about the ‘non-neutral’ force that must have surely brought it about? Wouldn’t it be natural to ‘intuit’ such a force or power? Now, if I asked the question: Is it possible for clouds to assume shapes that we're familiar with simply through changing wind currents and air pressure? how would you answer? I don't think you'd be invoking God would you? I don't think you could as easily dismiss the necessity for some kind of intervention in addition to natural forces if what I decribed above were to happen. As to invoking God, how do you know that I'm not describing a toy factory?PaV_{April 28, 2009
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Your argument is based on things which are metaphors, not actual. You use the words "telling," "instructions," "information," “meaning,”-- talk to a molecular biologist and they will speak of "cellular machinery" and "intracellular communication." The only have such “properties” because someone was there to decide such things were like instructions, relating a phenomenon to something they have familiar experience with. RNA transcription to protein translation (another metaphor) is not literally translating the language of RNA to the language of proteins. It is a series of chemical processes of high specificity which result in a peptide. Without an observer to apply meaning, because the molecules cannot do it themselves (unless you are suggesting the molecules are capable), there is no meaning—it is a human contrivance. It does not strengthen the ID position—would you say the axle is telling the wheel to move? IDists have a tendency to use the metaphorical language in biology as “evidence” for ID. I would hope some would be smarter…. Good job scordova on the quote min. Perhaps next time you will include the “It may be metaphorically said,…”eligoodwin_{April 28, 2009
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I am enjoying this thread and don't want to derail it with an extended discussion of the relationships between ID and engineering. But let me just point out that although you started out well, as this thread progresses you seem to increasingly imply that you are speaking for the majority of engineers. Based on my engineering experience, you are not.Freelurker__{April 28, 2009
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Mr MacNeill, I'm not sure why you quibble about knowing the exact history in 108. There is plenty of good research on the evolution of the genetic code, such as recent study.Nakashima_{April 28, 2009
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Perhaps the metaphysical materialists on this thread would venture to answer an inconsistency in their conclusions. When as rock falls away from the side of a cliff it has no meaning. It is simply acting upon chance, gravity, erosion, etc. The same applies to water evaporating off the sidewalk on a coolish day. Its a mixture of lowered air pressure acting upon established elements - but there is no meaning. Following the materialists paradigm, there is no meaning in the material world. Chance cannot create meaning, and neither can physical necessity. Yet, prescriptive algorithms are the exact opposite. Intructions inherently have meaning. They mean something. There is nothing in the physical laws of this Universe that says that instructions have to physically exist. Also, there is also nowhere in the Universe that it can be demonstrated that chance can formulate meaning or create instructions within any material object whatsoever. Metaphysical materialists must then deny that instructions have meaning. Or, they must deny that nucleic sequences are instructions. Or, perhaps they can simply deny that meaning is meaning, after all. So which is it?Upright BiPed_{April 28, 2009
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#118 You mean like clouds that have similar shape and form to objects? Are you suggesting that a god is responsible for those coincidental shapes?eligoodwin_{April 28, 2009
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Am I to understand that the ONLY evidence for ID t6hat will be accepted is a meeting with the designer? Why can't we just look to experiments like Tracey and Joyce with their RNA? They synthesized RNA and all it could do was make ONE new bond connecting two other pre-synthesized parts together. ONE new bond in ideal conditions. Shouldn't that give us an indication on the powers of nature, operating freely?Joseph_{April 28, 2009
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[93] Allen wrote:
would only add that, as generally understood by most evolutionary biologists, natural selection is neither progressive nor regressive. On the contrary, since both of these terms include an evaluative component, natural selection (as a “natural” process) literally can’t be either of these things.
Allen, if we couple the "neutral theory" of mutations with this, your understanding of NS as basically "neutral", then we have two components of change that are both "neutral". Here is an analogy of such a combined, neutral mechanism of change: Imagine a wide, very sharp-edged cutting blade locked in position. Next, imagine an immensely large holding bin positioned directly above this edge filled with an inumerable quantity of bust-sezed blocks of wood. Now imagine that beneath the cutting edge is a collection basin, having within it a conveyor belt that returns the blocks of wood to the bin overhead after being dropped over the cutting edge. In such an imagined scenario, the only forces at work are gravity and resistance, with gravity providing velocity to the blocks, and the edge providing shear (resistance). Would you expect that this process of dropping the blocks of wood over the fixed edge (at either a fixed, or, randomly changing heighths) and then returning them to the bin above once they have been dropped, carried out over an immense amount of time, would produce the figure of an animal, for example? My point here is that if everything is "neutral", then I don't believe anyone would expect an 'art' form to emerge from such a process. And, if such a 'form' did emerge from such a process, then wouldn't all of us be curious about the 'non-neutral' force that must have surely brought it about? Wouldn't it be natural to 'intuit' such a force or power? IOW, even if you don't want to go so far as to posit a designer, then surely you must posit that NS is 'not' neutral. (Dawkins argues thusly.)PaV_{April 28, 2009
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Allen,
Because we cannot show using empirical methods that this is, in fact, the case. Once again, arguments by analogy have essentially no logical validity.
So you would also say that if we could stir up some elements in a pot and get DNA that we could not infer anything for the same reasons? If so, I appreciate your consistency.ellijacket_{April 28, 2009
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Allen, I'm sorry, but I don't think you really grasp what is at issue. I'm not talking about effects of natural "laws," such as birds having feathers because of x, I'm talking about the "laws" themselves. This is not a question of teleology. It is a question of knowledge about the "laws" themselves. I appreciate your long answer, but it doesn't address my post.Clive Hayden_{April 28, 2009
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In #112 Alan Fox suggested:
"If extraterrestrial evidence turned up, say, on Mars, with bacteria that had a similar structure to earth bacteria, but with opposite chirality, for example, or utterly different chemistry, or identical, that would give us a few clues."
The problem with Mars is that it's too close to Earth; one cannot rule out cross-contamination as a source of similar biochemistries. However, you do have a point if what we discover is life with very different biochemistries. What this would imply is that the "frozen accident" hypothesis for the origin of biochemical homochirality and the genetic code was a more parsimonious model given such observations. On the other hand, finding similar biochemistries in other stellar systems would support the opposite conclusion: that the chirality and genetic code that characterizes life on Earth is probably "necessary", rather than "accidental". And please note that neither of the two explanations outlined here includes any reference to a supernatural Intelligent Designer, because one isn't necessary for either explanation.Allen_MacNeill_{April 28, 2009
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In #109 ellijacket asked:
"Since we know intelligence can produce information just like the genetic code how can we so easily discount that intelligence was behind the original?"
Because we cannot show using empirical methods that this is, in fact, the case. Once again, arguments by analogy have essentially no logical validity. See: http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/01/tidac-identity-analogy-and-logical.htmlAllen_MacNeill_{April 28, 2009
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Sorry about 111, hit wrong key!Alan Fox_{April 28, 2009
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…there is absolutely no way (short of time travel) to verify that this pathway was, indeed, the way it actually happened.
If extraterrestrial evidence turned up, say, on Mars, with bacteria that had a similar structure to earth bacteria, but with opposite chirality, for example, or utterly different chemistry, or identical, that would give us a few clues.Alan Fox_{April 28, 2009
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...there is absolutely no way (short of time travel) to verify that this pathway was, indeed, the way it actually happened.
If extraterrestrial evidence turned up, say, on Mars, with bacteria that had aAlan Fox_{April 28, 2009
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Fascinating as it is, the question of how the genetic code and its translation machinery originally evolved (or, alternatively, was created) appears to me to be entirely beyond the scope of the empirical sciences.
The empirical sciences can offer information as to which way the balances may tip. One question that seems quite reasonable to me is that the genetic code could not have occurred in gradualistic steps. At some point partially formed organisms will not be viable. This is very obvious with dead creatures. They have large amounts of biotic material, in some cases a higher concentration of the kinds of chiral materials than all the OOL labs have ever produced. It would seem that when life first appeared it would have to have been farily intact. As Gould said, "what good is half an arm", this is especially true of a computer program, "what good is a partially formed computer program running on a partially formed computer?" Formally speaking, sudden emergence on its own does not necessarily imply ID, we might just simply say it was an improbable, unique, unrepeatable event. But at some point stochastically improbable events are indistinguishable from miracles. The goal of most OOL researchers is to try make a case that the conditions for first life were not all that improbable. But the reason ID has grown has been the spectacular lack of success by the OOL community despite their valiant and talented efforts. Some, faced with the empirical evidence became ID proponents. The most well known story was that of Dean Kenyon who wrote the premiere graduate textbook on OOL. After reading Cybernetic Evolution by Oxford chemist AE Wilder Smith, Dean Kenyon eventually became an ID proponent. He struggled with this for almost 20 years after publishing his OOL textbook. Kenyon was most well-known for his other textbook Pandas and People prominently featured in the Dover trial. Allen is correct that the exact details are probably beyond our reach, but sudden emergence of fully functional, Irreducibly Complex life seems like the most reasonable inference. Whether God was involved, I suppose is a matter of faith, but sudden emergence seems theoretically difficult to refute. Everything we've discovered in the lab doesn't suggest falsification of sudden emergence will ever happen. I can understand the separation of OOL from the rest of evolution. Indeed, most of my ID focus has been OOL. But even generously granting Darwinian evolution after the first life emerged, sudden emergence of the first life strikes me as undeniable. And this sudden emergence certainly made ID believable on a personal level. One may argue that religious motives may drive ID, but even granting that, from an intellectual standpoint, the convictions run deep, especially among computer engineers and physicians. The machine metaphor is just too compelling, and nothing in labarotory experience suggests machines can spontaneously emerge fully intact nor even through gradualitic steps. If the machine metaphor were not so compelling, I would not be in the ID movement. I'd probably be an agnostic (as I nearly was in 2001). And perhaps to tie this to the original post, the notion of sickness (which is non-funtioning) makes the most sense when one accepts the machine metaphor. If we exorcise teleological metaphors from biology, it would cause biology to disconnect with the implicit way the medical industry views biology. The metaphysical viewpoint of teleology seems too useful for technology and medical science. The fact that Moalem and others have suggested the ways Natural Selection favors diabetes, doesn't seem to remove the intuition that diabetes is fundamentally a bad thing.scordova_{April 28, 2009
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Allen, Since we know intelligence can produce information just like the genetic code how can we so easily discount that intelligence was behind the original? The scientific method will verify over and over again that our only known way to produce this type of information is through intelligence. It seems then that, scientifically, it's safe to say that intelligence is needed to produce a genetic code. Let's say you disagree. What if we flipped it? What if we couldn't produce a genetic code through intelligence but everytime we mixed certain elements together a genetic code appeared on it's on? I think materialists would jump on that as proof that there is no need for any kind of creator. I guess my point is that it seems dishonest for materialists to ignore what we currently know about producing specified information of the type found in a genetic code. If the tables were turned as above I don't think they would ignore it because it would fit what they want to see.ellijacket_{April 28, 2009
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Re the question in #37: Fascinating as it is, the question of how the genetic code and its translation machinery originally evolved (or, alternatively, was created) appears to me to be entirely beyond the scope of the empirical sciences. Molecules do not (indeed, cannot) fossilize, and even if we could somehow "recreate" the various steps in what we might assume to be the "logical" evolutionary pathway to the origin of such systems, there is absolutely no way (short of time travel) to verify that this pathway was, indeed, the way it actually happened. Ergo, it is one of those "Wittgensteinian undecidables" about which I prefer to remain silent.Allen_MacNeill_{April 28, 2009
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Re #103 by Clive Hayden: The word "why" occurs in your long post eleven times, whereas the word "what" appears only three times and the word "how" appears in it only once. This is very interesting, as science can only be concerned with "what" and "how" questions. When a scientist asks the question "why", the answer is exactly the same as the answer to the question "how". Ergo, in scientific explanations, there is only the question "how". Scientific "what" questions are asking for a description of something observable in nature. for example, a scientist might ask "what" is that muscular structure in the center of the chest cavity of mammals? To answer such a "what" question, s/he would measure this muscular structure, dissect it to determine its fine structure, perhaps measure its electrical nature, its rate of contraction, its "ejection fraction", etc. All of these empirical observations, taken together, would constitute an answer to the "what" question. That is, they would constitute a description of the heart. What all of these descriptions add up to is that "the heart is a hollow muscular organ regulated by the autonomic nervous system that pumps blood through the circulatory system". Scientific "how" questions are asking for an analysis of something observable in nature. For example, a scientist might ask "how" does the mammalian heart pump blood through the circulatory system? To answer that "how" question s/he would measure the fluid dynamics of cardiac contraction, the conduction of motor endplate potentials in the sino-atrial and atrio-ventricular nodes, the Purkinje fibers and the bundles of Hiss, the effects of laminar versus turbulent flow through vessels and valves, etc. All of these empirical observations, taken together, would constitute an answer to the "how" question. That is, they would constitute an analysis of the heart. What all of these analyses add up to is that "the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system according to the following principles und so weiter". The peculiar and most interesting thing (to me) about the empirical sciences is that if a scientist asks the question "why" about the heart, her/his answer is exactly the same as the answer to her/his "how" question. To be very specific, there is no separate and epistemologically superior appeal to teleological explanations. The object/process simply does what it does, period, end of story. About the question "why" the universe and its natural laws are the way they are, as Wittgenstein says, "we must remain silent". The reason we remain silent in the face of "why" questions about any "ultimate" explanation for natural objects and natural laws is that such questions cannot be answered using the empirical methods of science. Furthermore, any attempts to answer "why" questions in science produce no new information, as they simply reiterate the answer to "how" questions about the same phenomena. Nothing whatsoever is added to a scientific description by attempting to answer the question "why" about the subject under study. This is most especially the case when we talk about evolutionary explanations for the origin and evolution of particular biological characteristics. A scientist might ask "how did the mammalian heart come to have its particular structural and functional characteristics?" The answer would involve references to comparative vertebrate anatomy: in fish, there is a two-chambered heart, augmented by the sinus veinosus and the conus arteriosus. With the separation of the pulmonary and systemic circulations in amphibians (the first terrestrial tetrapods), and additional circuit evolved by the separation of the common atrium of ancestral Ripidistians into the two atria found in amphibians. This separation was correlated with the increased oxygen demand associated with terrestrial locomotion, which is in turn associated with the increased availability of oxygen in the air. This same separation of the pulmonary and systemic circulations was extended to the ventricles in birds and mammals. There is increasing evidence that this configuration of the hearts in birds and mammals evolved independently in these two clades, especially as we learn more about the evolutionary developmental biology of the vertebrate circulatory system. And the answer to the question "why did the mammalian heart come to have its particular structural and functional characteristics?" The answer: the exact same information as contained in the previous paragraph. Ergo, the eleven questions "why" contained in your long post are either not answerable using empirical science, or they reduce to the answer to the question "how". To be as succinct as possible,
There are no "why" questions that are separably answerable by the empirical sciences.
How do birds come to have feathers? They inherit the developmental capability to produce feathers from their parents. Why do birds come to have feathers? They inherit the developmental capability to produce feathers from their parents. And so forth, ad infinitum...Allen_MacNeill_{April 28, 2009
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hi ellijacket, I'm not speaking for Allen, but I can give something of an answer to your question:
That’s one of the big issues I have with this whole arguement. Given a genetic code then….. How can we just say that? The genetic code is information and meta-information of specified complexity. The only thing we have discovered that can produce similar information and meta-information of specified complexity is intelligence. The genetic code is the biggest reason to believe there is intelligence behind what we see. How can we ignore that fact, skip past it and then just discuss the items you listed?
I don't think Allen is "just saying that". There are hypotheses for the origin and evolution of the genetic code. Here is one, accessible to all: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10696 .abstract Vetsigian K, C Woese & N Goldenfield (2006). Collective evolution and the genetic code. PNAS 103(28): 101696-1071 From the abstract:
A dynamical theory for the evolution of the genetic code is presented, which accounts for its universality and optimality. The central concept is that a variety of collective, but non-Darwinian, mechanisms likely to be present in early communal life generically lead to refinement and selection of innovation-sharing protocols, such as the genetic code. Our proposal is illustrated by using a simplified computer model and placed within the context of a sequence of transitions that early life may have made, before the emergence of vertical descent.
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Allen, I asked a question back in #37 and didn't see a response. I might have missed it but was just curious what your thoughts were.ellijacket_{April 28, 2009
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Footnotes: 1] Cosmic inflation itself raises further issues of itself being finetuned. 2] Many finetuned parameters -- e.g. the near balance of charge in the observed universe -- are independent of such inflation. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 28, 2009
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Allen, "Actually, this isn’t the case. All you really need for “fine-tuning” (i.e. coordinating the various physical fine structure constants) is “cosmic inflation”. The inflationary process itself produces a “flat” universe, which is essentially the universe in which we live. Ergo, the problem is not coordinating a whole set of unrelated constants, the real problem is explaining “cosmic inflation”." Neither the fine-tuning nor the flat universe, (which makes me laugh, because it was first thought that the world was flat, now we're saying it's just the universe that's flat, and not the world), will be "figured out" in the respect that we can ever get behind the laws and know their relation and inner synthesis. We can see the relationship between laws of logic and reason, but we have no equivalent "inside" information with the laws of nature. All we can do is record their effects, we can never say why they are the way they are. But that's not to say that the laws don't seem awfully fine tuned, because they certainly are fine tuned, the question is why? The obvious answer, to me, is that there was a fine-tuner. But there is a deeper, more conceptual reason for believing in, what is essentially, a fine-tuning argument, which credits an intelligence for the laws of nature. But this concept would apply even if the laws of nature were not fine tuned. It has to do with the nature of laws in themselves. Since we cannot see why the laws of nature are the way that they are, we cannot see why they shouldn't have been otherwise. "It discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation....But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts. They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically connected them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a white answer. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As IDEAS, the egg and the chicken are further off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the "Laws of Nature." When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC. It is not a "law," for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore an exception. All the terms used in the science books, "law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples... This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance... We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget." ~"The Ethics of Elfland"--Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton. Lets be honest with ourselves. We have no inner knowledge of why the laws of nature are as they are. Recording their effects won't get us one bit closer to answering this more fundamental question either. Nor will recording their effects tell us why they should be one way and not another. We are in the unfortunate position for the materialist who wants a complete picture, and the fortunate position for the spiritualist who likes the mystery and awe of nature to be maintained, when we admit that we will never "get behind" these laws of nature as we can get behind laws of reason and understand their connection and reasonableness or lack thereof. And I see no reason to not accept this world as being anything except just as wonderful and mysterious as a fairy tale is. The only difference is that we've gotten used to this one.Clive Hayden_{April 27, 2009
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Gotta go to bed; it's been a blazing hot day here in Utopia, and the bedroom is finally cool enough to contemplate sleeping. Later, y'all...Allen_MacNeill_{April 27, 2009
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sal also wrote: "My view is it can’t hurt to go out into the field and actually see if a hypothesis is correct." Indeed, that's the whole basis of the empirical sciences; it ain't science until you've tested it against nature itself...which usually means that you've gotten a bunch of confusing data, some of which supports your hypothesis, a lot of which supports absolutely nothing, and (if you're incredibly lucky) some of which suggests something you (and everyone else) has never thought of.Allen_MacNeill_{April 27, 2009
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sal wrote: "This a shocking, heretical statement. I like it as it raises important questions." That's the spirit! No sacred cows... I often say to my students that our intro evolution course consists of a series of "rug-pullings". That is, we spend a significant period of time laying out a particular piece of "received wisdom" (e.g. the "modern synthesis") and then pull the rug out from under it by showing how its basic assumptions have been undermined by further empirical research. When you first have the rug pulled out from under you, the usual result is that you fall on your ass. However, once you've had several rugs pulled out from under you, it is possible (if one is nimble-footed) to develop a certain equanimity, and thereby save your ass a lot of nasty bruises. To me, that is the chief value of skeptical iconoclasm.Allen_MacNeill_{April 27, 2009
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Allen writes:
I would also point out that Stephen Jay Gould relentlessly criticized the idea that evolution was “progressive” in any way. That, among many other things, is why I tend to agree with Gould, to the point of thinking of myself as a “Gouldian”, rather than a strict “Darwinian”.
Well, I'm still only a grad student, but right now I'm not much of a "Gouldian" in my outlook, especially when it comes to some of the mechanisms on Allen's list like species selection. However, reading Gould and Lewontin's Spandrels paper was one of those defining moments in my education, and I think Gould, along with Dawkins, is relentlessly misrepresented and misunderstood. He was also one of the most graceful writers in English. So maybe this can be fun. As for the pdf of the Charlesworth et al paper, since Allen has given us his email address, may I send it to him as point of contact?Dave Wisker_{April 27, 2009
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It's something you use when you want to take the sting out of something since web communication is often misconstrued for the worse :-)tribune7_{April 27, 2009
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