Why Were So Many Darwin Defenders No-Shows at the World’s Premier Evolutionary Conference?

_{Thomas Cudworth

July 9, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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I have often wondered whether the loudness and aggressiveness of many culture-war defenders of neo-Darwinian evolution bears any relationship at all to the actual scientific contributions of those defenders to the field of evolutionary biology. As it happens, we have at hand some evidence, albeit of a rough and ready kind, relevant to that question.

From June 17 to June 21, 2011, at the University of Oklahoma (Norman) campus, the conference “Evolution 2011” was in session. It was co-sponsored by three scientific societies – The Society for the Study of Evolution, The Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. It was billed by its promoters as “the premier annual international conference of evolutionary biologists on the planet.”

That billing may be somewhat hyperbolic, yet two things are clear: the conference was huge, with an expected turnout of 1400-1500 people; and many of the big names of evolutionary biology were to be there. Jerry Coyne was to give an address; H. Allen Orr was to chair a session; and Gunter Wagner and Sergey Gavrilets, cutting-edge biologists from the famed 2008 Altenberg conference, were to be there as well. Hundreds of papers were scheduled, and the research contributors to the various papers and presentations, according to the index for the conference, numbered something like 2,000.

It is interesting to make a mental list of the Darwin-defenders who have been most active in the culture wars, whether by publishing popular books defending Darwin, by appearing as witnesses against school boards in court cases, by working for the NCSE, by running pro-Darwinian blog sites, or by attacking Darwin critics throughout cyberspace, and to see which of them either read papers or at least contributed to the research and writing of papers for this premier conference.

Let’s start with those Darwin defenders who are actively anti-religious or show contempt for religion in their writings and internet remarks. Conspicuously absent from the list of conference contributors were evolutionary champions Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, Larry Moran, and Eugenie Scott.

Among those who have not attacked religious belief, but have violently bashed ID and/or passionately upheld neo-Darwinian theory, Paul Gross (co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse) and plant scientist Arthur Hunt (who has debated ID people live and on the internet) were not listed as contributors to any of the papers.

Among those who were active in the Dover ID trial, as witnesses for the plaintiffs, the no-shows include Kevin Padian, Robert Pennock, and Brian Alters.

Among the prominent Christian Darwinists, i.e., theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists, only Ken Miller was going to be there, and not to read a scientific paper, but to issue a cultural manifesto on why evolution matters in America today. The leading figures of Biologos – Darrel Falk, Dennis Venema, Kathryn Applegate, David Ussery, David Kerk, Denis Lamoureux – who have so often been presented, explicitly or implicitly, as experts on evolutionary biology – produced no papers for this conference. British scientists Oliver Barclay and Denis Alexander, who have posted several guest columns on Biologos, are not mentioned. The frequent UD commenter and Quaker TE Allan MacNeill, who has penned hundreds of thousands of words on UD and on his own blogs, apparently couldn’t manage 5,000 or so words for an original research paper for the conference, nor could the belligerent Calvinist TE and almost as prolific anti-ID blogger Steve Matheson.

Now of course statistics of this sort don’t prove anything about the competence or incompetence of any particular individual. There are all kinds of good reasons why a competent evolutionary theorist might not contribute to a particular evolutionary conference. Maybe some of these people elected to attend another evolutionary conference later this year, or early next year, or maybe their travel budget was exhausted. Maybe personal matters prevented them from going. Maybe some of them attended the conference, to keep up with the field, even though they contributed no paper. But one wonders why such a large number of rabid pro-Darwinists would be non-contributors at the premier evolution conference in the world, if they are as competent in the field of evolutionary biology as they make out. Could it be that most of these people, though possessing degrees in the life sciences, are in fact not trained specifically in evolutionary biology, and therefore had no original work to contribute?

I would be interested in hearing from readers about this. Of the people I’ve named, how many have read a paper at, or at least co-written a technical paper for, any secular conference on evolutionary biology in the past ten years? Or published a peer-reviewed paper specifically on evolutionary biology in a secular scientific journal in the past ten years? Are many of the loudest defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in fact unqualified to talk at an expert level about the latest theoretical and experimental work in evolutionary biology? And if so, why do they set themselves up as the world’s teachers when it comes to evolution? Why do they write so many blogs, post so many comments, put up so many nasty book reviews on Amazon, participate in so many anti-ID debates on the Darwinist side, if they aren’t experts in the field? Why don’t they let the real experts in evolutionary biology – the Coynes and Orrs and Sean Carrolls – do the public cheerleading and debating for evolutionary biology, and stick quietly to their own specialties of cell biology, genetics, developmental biology, etc.?

In most scientific areas, non-experts don’t pretend to stand in for experts. You don’t see solid-state physicists rushing onto the blogosphere to defend the latest view on black holes from Stephen Hawking. They leave the defense of cosmology to the cosmologists. But for some reason every medical geneticist, soil scientist, biochemist, developmental biologist, cell biologist, anthropologist, part-time first-year biology instructor, undergrad biology teacher at a Christian college, etc., thinks himself or herself an expert on evolutionary theory, and competent to debate it with anyone, any time. Normal professional humility goes out the window when defending Darwinian theory is concerned. That’s why I think it’s important to ask the question: how many of the self-appointed defenders of Darwinian evolution have demonstrated competence, proved by research and publication, in the field of evolutionary biology?

Comments

Mung:
Elizabeth Liddle: no I have not read any of Dembski’s books, as I have already said. not any. not one. none. Surely then, you’re an expert. I am NOT surprised by this “revelation.” Elizabeth Liddle: I have, however, read all, I think, of his online articles, in considerable depth. Please demonstrate when you first published the fact that you had read Dembski’s 2005 article on specification. There’s nothing quite like a “critic” who has not read the relevant source material.
come again? What are you talking about? Are you asking me when I first read Dembski's 2005 article? I can't remember. Why is it important? If you aren't asking me that please explain your request, I don't understand it: "Please demonstrate when you first published the fact that you had read Dembski’s 2005 article on specification." I have no idea when I "first published the fact that [I] had read Dembski's 2005 article on specification". I certainly read it a while back, so I'm sure I've commented on it somewhere. I know I've commented on this one: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.11.ID_coming_clean.htm and this one: http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm because I actually did so here at UD a few years ago (and was subsequently banned by DaveScot).Elizabeth Liddle_{July 18, 2011
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Mung:
Thomas Cudworth: Glad you agree with me about the contents and style of ID books. Dude. She has admittedly never read a single book by Dembski.
I have read all his online papers. I did not make any comment at all about either the the content or style of his books.
Who has she read? Behe? Johnson? Gonzales? Denton? Berlinksi?
Books Behe, Denton, Sanford, now half of Meyer. Articles by Johson, Behe, Dembski.
Her “agreement” about the “content and style of ID books” is based on what, exactly?
Yes, I'd quite like to know that.
Complete utter freaking ignorance? Seriously.
Let me say once again: If I read a scientific paper (by Dembski or anyone) and it contains what I believe are flaws, it is no defense to say that I need to read a book. A scientific paper should stand on its merits. Right? And: My comment concerned the tone of the books and papers I have read. With the exception of Sanford, they have not contained polemic, but have been calmly reasoned. In that sense I agree with Thomas, and I assume that was the sense in which he gave that response. You are picking fights where there are none. It's a bit annoying.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 18, 2011
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Thomas Cudworth, I very much enjoyed your exchange with Lizzie (particularly yesterday). Very insightful and plenty of 'keepers' (as Cannuckian Yankee would put it) in your comments.Chris Doyle_{July 18, 2011
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Thomas Cudworth:
Glad you agree with me about the contents and style of ID books.
Dude. She has admittedly never read a single book by Dembski. Who has she read? Behe? Johnson? Gonzales? Denton? Berlinksi? Her "agreement" about the "content and style of ID books" is based on what, exactly? Complete utter freaking ignorance? Seriously.Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
They do not call that Design a miracle./blockquote> We do not call that "Design" Design. What is it, precisely, that you wish to convey through your use of big D Design? And if big D Design is not a miracle, what is it? How is it that you can understand what is meant by miracle but not understand what is meant by supernatural?
Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
Can I ask what your field is, Thomas? It might help us understand each other. There is no "field" that helps one understand nonsense. There is no "science of handwaving." There is no field of "I want to believe, therefore..."
Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle: What they do instead is to say: the pattern of life must, because of these equations, be designed. Huh? What is "the pattern of life"? Cite a source please, for an ID theorist, preferably one who is well known, to substantiate your assertion. I say you just made it up. I say that the most likely response, if we get one, is that: a) you were misunderstood (we didn't read your whole post!) b) you didn't really mean wh you wrote, you meant something else.Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle: This, incidentally is the first scientific error Dembski makes – he sets up his hypothesis incorrectly, and so finds himself in a position where no other hypothesis, by definition, can account for the data. A lie.Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
If there is key point in his books that he does not make in his articles, then it does not say much for his articles!
Sure, blame your failure to perform due diligence on Dembski. He should have known you would not read his books, but only his online articles.Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle: no I have not read any of Dembski’s books, as I have already said. not any. not one. none. Surely then, you're an expert. I am NOT surprised by this "revelation." Elizabeth Liddle: I have, however, read all, I think, of his online articles, in considerable depth. Please demonstrate when you first published the fact that you had read Dembski's 2005 article on specification. There's nothing quite like a "critic" who has not read the relevant source material.Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Nick Matzke:
Even the mildest forms of ID depend on insertion of miracles into biological history, even if it’s just to tweak the DNA a little bit. It’s still a violation of conservation of mass/energy
lol. how quaint.
Until miracles are abandoned by the ID movement, ID will be just a form of creationism.
likewise. Nick, do you have an actual argument?Mung_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: Ah, I see. Well, all I can say is that it's different in the Arts. Articles are important, but the Book (which is often refereed) remains the focus. And that's of course rooted deeply in the Western tradition of the liberal arts. For me, the issue is: when an author chooses a certain format in which to express his thought, he should have a good reason. If he chooses a book rather than an article, it must be because he thinks he can say certain things only in a book, or better in a book. I respect authors. If they write a book on ID, I will read it without wishing that they had written an article instead, just as, were I a mathematician in Newton's day, I would have read his Principia without wishing that he had written an article instead. Arts professors think in terms of reading books. They think of the book as the main medium of communication for all truly important thought. It's a habit of thought that goes back to the books of Plato, of Homer, of Augustine, of Aquinas, etc. And it's a habit I'll never shake. Of course, I do sometimes wish that some books were 20% or 33% shorter, including some ID books! But that has to do with the author's lack of skill in organization or prose editing, not the decision of book vs. article. I would still maintain that the book form was the right choice for Darwin's Black Box, The Edge of Evolution, The Design of Life, Nature's Destiny, etc., as it was the right form for Darwin. When one is trying for scope, for novelty, and for breaking down old prejudices, one needs many examples and much explanation because the audience may be slow to be convinced, and in such cases the book is the right choice. I would argue that the different procedures in the Arts and Sciences have some bearing on the ID debate. I would argue that a lifetime of publishing by scientists under the conditions you outline creates an entirely different strategy of research, writing and reading. And I would argue that it tends to make scientists more conscious of precise minutiae, and less inclined to big picture thinking. Let me give you an example. I've been involved in many internet discussions of ID. And I've been surprised how often people will vehemently and angrily argue something like this: "On Page 16, Behe mistakes 2-glucy-amino-globulin-major for 2-thucy-amino-globulin-major, and only a dense undergrad would make an error like that. Anyone who would make such a blunder does not know even sophomore biochemistry, let alone evolutionary theory, and has no claim on scientific attention." Now in such discussions, various people will ask these scientific critics whether the alleged error is such that it destroys the entire argument of Behe's book, or only weakens one small part of one sub-argument, still leaving the overall structure standing. Usually these critics refuse to answer, or they grumble that this isn't the only error, though they specify few others, and those they specify appear to be of similar moment, affecting usually only a sentence, or paragraph, rarely a whole chapter and never the whole book. One thus gets the very strong impression that what they are professionally and almost morally offended by is *sloppiness*, *even if they know that this sloppiness isn't enough to destroy his thesis*. I wonder if the scientific system of publishing you are describing -- the emphasis on minute technical articles which have no great literary or philosophical or paradigm-changing virtue, and whose *only* value is that their data or their calculations are correct and reliable -- doesn't produce a sort of "tunnel vision", whereby "good science" becomes identified with "good technical craftsmanship" *and nothing more*. Whereas, in Darwin's day, while there were doubtless many errors in the *Origin* (he produced five more corrected editions), you didn't hear people arguing, "Darwin had the wrong Latin name for the skink on page 34, and that proves he is no true naturalist, so we can ignore the rest of his book as unscientific speculative rubbish by an untrained amateur." In those days, the scientific readers were looking at the big picture, what Darwin was trying to do overall. Is it possible that a lot of the carping against ID authors is not so much due to malice, as just to intellectual narrowness, coming from very competent but undistinguished bench scientists whose idea of good science is a very crude notion of correctness? And that ID people's notion of good science involves reconceptualizing a field in light of a bold new insight? So that what we have is two clashing scientific cultures, the big-picture culture (which is more like the Arts culture) versus the detail culture? And that detail men are often very uncomfortable with big broad questions? Certainly it is the case that many of the ID people have a much stronger "Arts" component in their education than most biologists. Dembski has degrees in Psychology and Divinity as well as Math and Logic; Nelson has a Ph.D. in Philosophy to top off his Biology degree; Wells has a Ph.D. in both cell biology and Religious Studies; Richards has a Ph.D. in Philosophy/Theology; Meyer has degrees in Physics and Geology but a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science. Is it perhaps that the broad kind of education that ID people bring to the table clashes with the narrow, more craft-oriented education of most working scientists? And that they overreact to small examples of technical sloppiness as a defense mechanism to avoid having to undertake a searching criticism of the standard paradigm, an epistemologically unsettling kind of scientific activity which is not their forte? Just asking. :-)Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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Thomas: I agree with you about Origin. It is a great book. But I think you have misunderstood the issue of books vs papers for scientists. Scientific books are not really peer-reviewed at all. Publishers commission books because they want them to sell, and they will commission reviews if they think it will help them sell better, or improve the book. There are some very good scientific books, but they don't count much towards grants, tenure, because they are not peer-reviewed. It isn't that scientific papers lack scope or vision - review papers can have huge scope and be very influential. But they are peer-reviewed. Books are not a step above - they are a step sideways, and mostly slightly down. My husband has over 200 peer-reviewed papers, a few book chapters, and one book. It's a very good book. But it's irrelevant to his CV. I don't read articles rather than books because they are nice and short, or because they are free. I read them because they are cast in a scientific format, and have, normally, undergone the rigor of peer-review, and, if not, at least are written in a format that facilitates rigorous review.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Point.kairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: "Here, peer-reviewed publication counts in the humanities as well as science – I’m not aware of any field where tenure depends on books as opposed to peer-reviewed papers, although I am aware of fields where books are a reasonable substitute." You write here as if "book" and "peer-reviewed" are mutually exclusive. They aren't. I was speaking not of popular books that an academic might write "on the side," but fully academic books in the academic's special field. These would be in most cases sent out by the publisher for peer review before the manuscript was accepted for publication. That might not be true for some minor or slightly shady academic publishers, but it would be true for the big high-quality ones. There's no formal requirement of book versus article for tenure; a historian *could* get tenure on the strength of a lot of good articles in major journals. But it's a lot more impressive to have a 400-page book on the Black Plague published by Oxford University Press than to have two or three piddly articles in the Journal of Thirteenth-Century French History. To give you an idea of how tough the competition is: I once applied for a tenure-track job. I had two books published. I didn't get interviewed. I found out who did. He had *four* books (and also articles) published. For an entry-level job!!! So if people are getting *hired* with several books, for someone not to have even *one* book yet, four years after being hired (when tenure review would take place) -- that looks really bad. So most Arts profs try for a mix -- a few articles in journals, hopefully at least one in a major journal, and at least one book with a decent academic press. It's my impression that at the early, pre-tenure stage, scientists don't worry about books at all. They go for lots of articles -- joint articles, solo articles, whatever; ten or twenty or twenty-five if they can manage that much in four years; and departments then go by various ratings systems to evaluate the articles, taking into account the quality of the journals, the author's citation index, etc. So the incentive in science is to produce small, quickly doable, tight pieces of research, which though lacking much scope are likely to get cited precisely because they answer a narrow technical question very well when someone needs it. Arts people, on the other hand, are encouraged to be thinking of large-vision pieces from the very start. Thus, they write more books, and review more books, and read more books, than scientists generally do. Articles are still very important in the Arts culture, but books are thought of as showing more integrative power, as requiring more work, and as giving more prestige to the institution. So Arts people just take it for granted that they will be reading a lot of long, hard, theoretical books in their careers; and they often prefer reading books to articles because they are broader and more stimulating. So when someone says, Dembski has written this great book No Free Lunch, as more of an Arts person, it would never even occur to me to ask: "Hey, that's 400 pages! Has he got anything shorter I can check out?" If that's what's being touted as his decisive theoretical work (as it was at one time), then that's what I felt obligated to read. It would be like saying "Origin of Species"? Ugh. 500 pages. Has this Darwin got anything shorter? Of course, in Darwin's day, no one objected to reading a long and thorough treatment of a breakthrough idea. But back then scientists were gentlemen of leisure, and now they are careerist busy beavers, and they often lack the patience for that sort of time investment. They want brevity, a businesslike precis they can file away in the mind as yet another current view. To me this is very sad. I read *The Origin of Species* through lovingly and patiently, and consider it one of the greatest books ever written. The fact that most biologists today won't take the time to read it is really depressing to me. (And it's even more depressing when they say stupid things about Darwin on their authority as biologists, and I know they are wrong because I've actually read the book, while they're going on hearsay.)Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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PPS: How could I forget, Wikipedia's ID article must come up for special mention, as a LOCKED-in -- look at the locked article icon, as at a few days ago! (you can't make this up . . . ) -- piece of willful deception. Wiki is simply of no credibility on this subject.kairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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PS: This thread is no 1 on daily popular.kairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Dr Cudworth Sadly, we need to do both. On long observation, I have found that the favourite and most consistent rhetorical tactic of the evolutionary materialist Darwin defenders is to distract attention from a cogent response or point, by dragging a red herring away towards already set up strawmen soaked in ad hominems and ignited by incendiary rhetoric to cloud, poison, polarise and confuse the atmosphere. To win, they plainly need confused, angry people drunk on toxic materialist rhetoric. This of course is exactly what Alinsky espoused in his Rules for Radicals. Especially in the aftermath of having had an attack on my family by way of the mafioso tactic we know you, we know where you are, we know those you care for . . . and other vile and slanderous things I will not summarise; where my family has absolutely nothing to do with the issues I have addressed, e.g. in the foundations series that has a new post here today, but such outing tactic thuggery is going to have an intimidatory and chilling effect on others.
(SIDEBAR: If they had bothered to ponder on what my given name means and why I got it as a Jamaican, they would have learned that they picked the wrong man to try to intimidate or hurt by personal abuse and threats to his family -- just look up "bydand" and the Jamaican national hero of the same name of that regiment to see why -- but this tells me we are dealing with exactly the sort of ruthless amoral materialist thuggery that Plato warned against: "the highest right is might." NOT. Bullies like this only understand the equivalent of a swift bloody nose from an intended victim in the school yard, and those who egg them on or harbour them will only understand seeing that such tactics backfire bigtime and cost them more than they can afford to pay. They are going to have to learn that when they go nuclear like that, they are going to pay a stiff price, one they have only just begun to pay. The first down payment is that these have now totally lost all credibility and respect, and are now known enemies of the civil peace of justice; in the case of one of my would be tormentors, he is trying to hold up the fig leaf that the girl he took dubious pics of is 23 years old, i.e. half his age, and plainly her face says 1/3 his age or so; so when he came out spewing hate over an expose of damage wreaked by cyber porn, that tells me all I need to know. We need to understand this is what we are dealing with and we must understand that the pretence of civility or morality in such mouths is going to be simply a subterfuge. Until there is clear evidence of repentance and transformation of life, we are dealing with those who have crossed the line beyond mere personal insult to being threats to the civil peace of justice. That is, they have become criminal. The Christian duty is to love sinners while dealing firmly with sin and its destructive effects. That implies a right of defense of the innocent and of the civil peace of justice; why the Magistrate bears the sword as God's servant. Starting with the friendly local police. [Updating the technology, SA 85s and MP 5s. Don't forget, Paul accepted protection of the equivalent of a reinforced armoured cav troop.])
So, yes, we have to get the scientific issues right. We have to get our tone right:polite but firm. We have to deal with worldviews and ethics issues right, and correct a lot of fallacies. Yes, where we make mistakes, these jokers will try to pounce. So, if we see errors, let us correct them, making sure we have the vital points right. But, we have to understand that even where we are right we are going to deal with those who will be willfully deceitful and will construct handy strawmen laced with poisonous ad hominems they can ignite. Such as Dr Matzke et al have plainly done for YEARS in the teeth of all corrections on the "ID is creationism in a cheap tuxedo" smear. What we have to do on this one, is that when we see those who are patently dishonest like this, we have to stop simply trying to please and plead with such to be reasonable and civil. "Nay, my sons . . . " does not work. He who insists on poisonous rhetoric like this in the teeth of correction has identified himself as an enemy of the truth and the right, and as an ally of the sort of internet thugs I am dealing with. Such a person -- hard as it is for me to have to say so -- is, by his persistent actions, a slanderer and a willful deceiver. And yes, Dr Matzke, regrettably, by your actions, that means you. And until you amend your ways, it will continue to mean you. So, please amend your ways before it is too late. Those who cross a nuke tripwire by indulging in thuggery or willful slander and willful deception -- refusing all correction -- have to live with the consequences of the path the have insistently taken. Bydand, GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: I explained neo-Darwinism in another post, but you’ve fallen behind on reading them. Why not space out your replies over several days? It would help both of us.
Probably a good idea. I probably won't get much time to post next week.
I meant that no evolutionary biology is taught *as part of the medical school program*. So if a medical student arrives in medical school without any evolutionary biology, he’ll graduate without any.
Well, that's a shame.
Most, but not all, pre-med students major in biology. Some major in biochemistry (where evolution is not taught); some in chemistry (where evolution is not taught); in some more progressive medical schools, they can come in with liberal arts degrees in lieu of science degrees. But even the ones who major in biology don’t necessarily take much evolutionary biology. Oh, of course they will take an undergraduate course in something like “Genetics and Evolution”, which will be more basic genetics than evolution, but beyond that, they may well never take any courses specifically on evolutionary theory again. That’s the full scope of formal evolutionary knowledge that most medical students start out with. And there’s no evidence that if they knew more about whale evolution they would better be able to diagnose illnesses. So the medical schools don’t make them take any more. Quite sensibly. You mention antibiotic resistance. Are you not aware that ID people have answered that 5 million times? That’s pure microevolution. Doesn’t prove a thing relevant to ID. Read Behe’s Edge of Evolution.
So, it's part of evolutionary theory. So, they'd better understand it.
You can understand how rodent and primate brains differ from human brains by empirical means. You don’t need one stitch of evolutionary theory. Dissect them. Stimulate the lobes. Find out what controls what. All that evolutionary theory of mammal brains will give you is theory-derived preconceptions about what you might *expect* to find in rodent or primate brains; but those preconceptions might be wrong (and probably will be wrong, as evolutionary theory is in constant flux and what it predicts about rodent brains ten years from now will be different from what it predicts today) and in the final analysis only the lab results are of demonstrative force. Rodent brains are what they are, and do what they do, no matter how Margulis or Coyne or Matzke thinks they evolved. Trust your experimental work, and forget wildly speculative evolutionary pathways which no biologist on earth can even enumerate, let alone demonstrate. I’m an intellectual jack of all trades, much like yourself, all over the map, winning a science scholarship but then criscrossing boundaries between Arts and Science, leading to a Ph.D. I studied Music, too. (How can anyone love music and be a Darwinian? What a metaphysical mismatch! Unless maybe the music you love is Wagner, or Strindberg.) But more on my biography another time.
Interesting! But gotta run right now. PS: my field is "early music": http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Elizabeth+Liddle+viol&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a with a bit of contemporary (I compose).Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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gpuccio, Elizabeth: Yes, move it to a new thread. This one is too long now, and it will get buried. Also, we're already off the Contents page (most recent entries), so no one will know abuot it. It needs a fresh title and a fresh start. gpuccio, don't you have writing privileges here? If you do, why not just start a thread of your own? If not, maybe kairosfocus could start a new one for you. In the meantime, people can continue to talk here about the ongoing subjects.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: I explained neo-Darwinism in another post, but you've fallen behind on reading them. Why not space out your replies over several days? It would help both of us. I meant that no evolutionary biology is taught *as part of the medical school program*. So if a medical student arrives in medical school without any evolutionary biology, he'll graduate without any. Most, but not all, pre-med students major in biology. Some major in biochemistry (where evolution is not taught); some in chemistry (where evolution is not taught); in some more progressive medical schools, they can come in with liberal arts degrees in lieu of science degrees. But even the ones who major in biology don't necessarily take much evolutionary biology. Oh, of course they will take an undergraduate course in something like "Genetics and Evolution", which will be more basic genetics than evolution, but beyond that, they may well never take any courses specifically on evolutionary theory again. That's the full scope of formal evolutionary knowledge that most medical students start out with. And there's no evidence that if they knew more about whale evolution they would better be able to diagnose illnesses. So the medical schools don't make them take any more. Quite sensibly. You mention antibiotic resistance. Are you not aware that ID people have answered that 5 million times? That's pure microevolution. Doesn't prove a thing relevant to ID. Read Behe's Edge of Evolution. You can understand how rodent and primate brains differ from human brains by empirical means. You don't need one stitch of evolutionary theory. Dissect them. Stimulate the lobes. Find out what controls what. All that evolutionary theory of mammal brains will give you is theory-derived preconceptions about what you might *expect* to find in rodent or primate brains; but those preconceptions might be wrong (and probably will be wrong, as evolutionary theory is in constant flux and what it predicts about rodent brains ten years from now will be different from what it predicts today) and in the final analysis only the lab results are of demonstrative force. Rodent brains are what they are, and do what they do, no matter how Margulis or Coyne or Matzke thinks they evolved. Trust your experimental work, and forget wildly speculative evolutionary pathways which no biologist on earth can even enumerate, let alone demonstrate. I'm an intellectual jack of all trades, much like yourself, all over the map, winning a science scholarship but then criscrossing boundaries between Arts and Science, leading to a Ph.D. I studied Music, too. (How can anyone love music and be a Darwinian? What a metaphysical mismatch! Unless maybe the music you love is Wagner, or Strindberg.) But more on my biography another time.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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gpuccio:
Elizabeth: The ID argument about the design inference is simple, beautiful and consistent. It can be expressed in various ways, and that creates some of the confusion you allude to. I can discuss it with you in very simple and empirical form. The paper by Dembski you allude to is not, IMO, his best, whatever he thinks. We are not tied in any way to what Dembski thinks. You can criticize it, and I would probably agree with you. In no way that means that the concept of design inference and the explanatory filter are lee strong or valid. For some of the basic concepts about functionally specified information (a concept which is not always clear in Dembski, because he sticks to more general mathematic definitions of specification) I would suggets some papers by Abel, like: “Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models” http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/.....30;3..211A “Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information” http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29 “Constraints vs Controls” http://www.benthamscience.com/.....4TOCSJ.pdf Or you can just discuss that point here, now, with me. Why have I the impression that you are eluding that? :)
Probably because, as I've said, I don't want to hijack Thomas's thread, especially as he has specifically asked us not to. I've suggested we adjourn here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-the-csi-concept-well-founded-mathematically-and-can-it-be-applied-to-the-real-world-giving-real-and-useful-numbers/Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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kairosfocus (237): I agree with you. I'm on your side both in the culture war and on the scientific question of design. But I don't think the two should be mixed together in theoretical discussions of biology. So yes, I'm against Dawkins's biology *and* against his shallow and ignorant attacks on religion; I'm against P.Z. Myers's biology *and* against his revolting verbal treatment of other human beings, which disgraces the very position of university professor and in an older and morally healthier world would have cost him his job; I'm against Eugenie Scott's biology *and* against her tyrannical ideas about science education. But if I accidentally make a bad argument regarding education, ethics or religion, I don't want the argument for design in nature to fail because of that. That's why we need to keep them separate. But I think you are right that at the ultimate level the questions of science and culture come together. The Greeks saw that certain metaphysical positions about nature and certain social and political results were connected. They saw much more clearly than modern philosophers do. So I'm attuned to the connection you are making. But we have to limit our arguments to the capacity of our opponents; and when they are unphilosophical people like Myers and Shallit and Dawkins who cannot grasp metaphysics but only a vulgar, positivist conception of science, that's the level we have to argue at. We will never make them thinkers; but we can show the world that they cannot defend their reductionist science even in its own terms. The rest will follow at the appropriate time, in accord with the rational unfolding of the Good.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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Thomas:
Elizabeth (247), you are being silly. I never said anything so dumb at that people in the Arts don’t publish articles. I said the big currency for hiring, tenure and promotion was books. In the sciences, someone could have a stellar career publishing almost nothing but articles — rise to the top of the academic heap. In the Arts that is almost impossible. You have to publish books, and the earlier in your career, the better. You almost certainly won’t get tenure if you haven’t published at least one book, in most Arts fields. That’s not true in most sciences.
OK, fair enough. It's not my experience (I have friends across the Arts and Sciences, as you can probably imagine, given my weird CV!), but it may be true in the States. Here, peer-reviewed publication counts in the humanities as well as science - I'm not aware of any field where tenure depends on books as opposed to peer-reviewed papers, although I am aware of fields where books are a reasonable substitute.
Regarding the importance of evolution for biology, it’s pure propaganda that all of modern biology is undergirded by evolutionary theory. It true that all of modern biology is *glossed* by evolutionary theory. But all the really useful advances in gene sequencing, gene function determination, cell physiology, biochemistry, ecology, medicine, etc. can proceed quite well under six-day creationism.
I disagree. Or, only by being parasitical on evolutionary theory, as it were, just as YEC geologists manage to survive in the oil industry, by making old earth assumptions for the purposes of the work. Although I'm still not quite clear which 10% of modern biology you have the problem with. Perhaps you could explain? Do you accept common descent? Microevolution? Differential reproduction? The spontaneous generation of potentially beneficial alleles? Drift? Speciation?
Only where questions of origins become central would the collapse of evolution harm biology. But questions of origins are almost never central. We never need to know where a biological system came from in order to study how it works.
But it still underpins the study, and any predictive hypotheses.
We only need to know where it came from if we are interested in the question where it came from. But there is no need for more than a handful of biologists to occupy themselves with that question. Tell me, do you have to know the evolutionary pathway from the brain of Zinjanthropus to the brain of the Cro-Magnon in order to do a neural scan properly?
No, but without rodent and primate studies, neuroscience would be way behind where it is, and in order to understand how rodent and primate brains differ from human brains, evolutionary theory is highly relevant. Also genetic imaging is virtually impossible to divorce from evolutionary theory. Yes, as with the YEC geologists, I guess it can be done, but only by deliberately cutting yourself of from any but the most proximal questions. Which seems a weird thing for any scientist to do.
Do you have to know whether Margulis’s theory or classic neo-Darwinism is more correct to explain how axons and dendrons work?
As I'm still struggling to know what "classic neo-Darwinism" is, I'm not sure, but Margulis's theory is potentially relevant. But as I say, if you want to stay focussed on the trees without considering the forest, then it's possible. Handicapping, but possible.
Is there anything you do in your profession that you would have to stop doing if the Cambrian rabbit were found tomorrow? Can you name any scientific profession (other than those obviously based on evolution, e.g., paleontology and evolutionary biology) that would have to stop operating in such a case?
Not "stop operating" but undertake a radical rethink, as I explained above.
Not a single medical school in the USA requires doctors to take a course on evolutionary biology. Why is that, if evolution is central to biology and biology is central to medicine?
I hope that medical schools in the USA require biology, and that it includes evolutionary biology. If not, I'm quite shocked. It's important for many aspects of medicine including the understanding of antibiotic resistance. Also epidemiology.
Prediction could carry on just fine without evolution. If I didn’t believe in evolution, I’d probably guess that things were specially created, and then I’d probably predict that most DNA will have function, and not write off most DNA as “junk,” as many “experts” did. So I’d do knockout experiments to test for function. But even if I were agnostic about origins I could still ask how much DNA has function, and test for it, out of sheer natural curiosity. No overarching theory of origins is required at all. In fact, I might *deliberately* put off grand theories of origins until I knew much better how the organic machinery actually worked. That would be a good, healthy, empirical attitude. But of course it would not make as much work for evolutionary biologists.
Can I ask what your field is, Thomas? It might help us understand each other.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth: The ID argument about the design inference is simple, beautiful and consistent. It can be expressed in various ways, and that creates some of the confusion you allude to. I can discuss it with you in very simple and empirical form. The paper by Dembski you allude to is not, IMO, his best, whatever he thinks. We are not tied in any way to what Dembski thinks. You can criticize it, and I would probably agree with you. In no way that means that the concept of design inference and the explanatory filter are lee strong or valid. For some of the basic concepts about functionally specified information (a concept which is not always clear in Dembski, because he sticks to more general mathematic definitions of specification) I would suggets some papers by Abel, like: "Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models" http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006PhLRv...3..211A "Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information" http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29 "Constraints vs Controls" http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocsj/articles/V004/14TOCSJ.pdf Or you can just discuss that point here, now, with me. Why have I the impression that you are eluding that? :)gpuccio_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth (247), you are being silly. I never said anything so dumb at that people in the Arts don't publish articles. I said the big currency for hiring, tenure and promotion was books. In the sciences, someone could have a stellar career publishing almost nothing but articles -- rise to the top of the academic heap. In the Arts that is almost impossible. You have to publish books, and the earlier in your career, the better. You almost certainly won't get tenure if you haven't published at least one book, in most Arts fields. That's not true in most sciences. Regarding the importance of evolution for biology, it's pure propaganda that all of modern biology is undergirded by evolutionary theory. It true that all of modern biology is *glossed* by evolutionary theory. But all the really useful advances in gene sequencing, gene function determination, cell physiology, biochemistry, ecology, medicine, etc. can proceed quite well under six-day creationism. Only where questions of origins become central would the collapse of evolution harm biology. But questions of origins are almost never central. We never need to know where a biological system came from in order to study how it works. We only need to know where it came from if we are interested in the question where it came from. But there is no need for more than a handful of biologists to occupy themselves with that question. Tell me, do you have to know the evolutionary pathway from the brain of Zinjanthropus to the brain of the Cro-Magnon in order to do a neural scan properly? Do you have to know whether Margulis's theory or classic neo-Darwinism is more correct to explain how axons and dendrons work? Is there anything you do in your profession that you would have to stop doing if the Cambrian rabbit were found tomorrow? Can you name any scientific profession (other than those obviously based on evolution, e.g., paleontology and evolutionary biology) that would have to stop operating in such a case? Not a single medical school in the USA requires doctors to take a course on evolutionary biology. Why is that, if evolution is central to biology and biology is central to medicine? Prediction could carry on just fine without evolution. If I didn't believe in evolution, I'd probably guess that things were specially created, and then I'd probably predict that most DNA will have function, and not write off most DNA as "junk," as many "experts" did. So I'd do knockout experiments to test for function. But even if I were agnostic about origins I could still ask how much DNA has function, and test for it, out of sheer natural curiosity. No overarching theory of origins is required at all. In fact, I might *deliberately* put off grand theories of origins until I knew much better how the organic machinery actually worked. That would be a good, healthy, empirical attitude. But of course it would not make as much work for evolutionary biologists.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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kf: yes, that's a good idea - I'll get back to one of those threads.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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Thomas: I understand that you are angry with Nick. I've said that I disagree with him about ID being about miracles. I have no comment to make on any other role he has played, because I don't know (from primary sources!) what it is. I have however, read his scientific papers which I very much admire. And yes, I'd dearly like to see civilised conversations between IDists and others, which is why I'm delighted to be here. But no, I haven't "read many more internet pages about ID's social side than [I] have read about its theoretical side", although I was once banned from here, not for sneering (the sneering was all the other way), but AFAICT for disagreeing with (technically "not understanding") the science. But I do appreciate that UD has moved on, and I think that's extremely healthy. And given that UD has changed, yes, I'd like to see the quality of the conversation improve from both sides of the ID argument, and I've been very appreciative of those who have welcomed me here, including those who have disagreed with me profoundly. Like you, I find sneers utterly irrelevant to most interesting conversations, which is why I mostly ignore them.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 17, 2011
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GP & EL: Actually, I have recently put up threads discussing the CSI and related concepts; cf here and here, actually on two successive days within the past two weeks. The Dembski Chi metric can be empirically simplified and reduced by taking up the logs. Clipping the first link just given:
1 –> 10^120 ~ 2^398 2 –> Following Hartley, we can define Information on a probability metric: I = – log(p) . . . eqn n2 3 –> So, we can re-present the Chi-metric: [where, from Dembski, Specification 2005, ? = – log2[10^120 ·?S(T)·P(T|H)] . . . eqn n1] Chi = – log2(2^398 * D2 * p) . . . eqn n3 Chi = Ip – (398 + K2) . . . eqn n4 4 –> That is, the Dembski CSI Chi-metric is a measure of Information for samples from a target zone T on the presumption of a chance-dominated process, beyond a threshold of at least 398 bits, covering 10^120 possibilities. 5 –> Where also, K2 is a further increment to the threshold that naturally peaks at about 100 further bits [that's a reasonable upper limit for the number of PTQS's or our observed cosmos, 10^150; where even the fastest chemical reactions need 10^30 PTQS's] . . . . 6 –> So, the idea of the Dembski metric in the end — debates about peculiarities in derivation notwithstanding — is that if the Hartley-Shannon- derived information measure for items from a hot or target zone in a field of possibilities is beyond 398 – 500 or so bits, it is so deeply isolated that a chance dominated process is maximally unlikely to find it, but of course intelligent agents routinely produce information beyond such a threshold. 7 –> In addition, the only observed cause of information beyond such a threshold is the now proverbial intelligent semiotic agents. 8 –> Even at 398 bits that makes sense as the total number of Planck-time quantum states for the atoms of the solar system [most of which are in the Sun] since its formation does not exceed ~ 10^102, as Abel showed in his 2009 Universal Plausibility Metric paper. The search resources in our solar system just are not there. 9 –> So, we now clearly have a simple but fairly sound context to understand the Dembski result, conceptually and mathematically [cf. more details here]; tracing back to Orgel and onward to Shannon and Hartley . . . . As in (using Chi_500 for VJT’s CSI_lite [UPDATE, July 3: and S for a dummy variable that is 1/0 accordingly as the information in I is empirically or otherwise shown to be specific, i.e. from a narrow target zone T, strongly UNREPRESENTATIVE of the bulk of the distribution of possible configurations, W]): Chi_500 = Ip*S – 500, bits beyond the [solar system resources] threshold . . . eqn n5 Chi_1000 = Ip*S – 1000, bits beyond the observable cosmos, 125 byte/ 143 ASCII character threshold . . . eqn n6 Chi_1024 = Ip*S – 1024, bits beyond a 2^10, 128 byte/147 ASCII character version of the threshold in n6, with a config space of 1.80*10^308 possibilities, not 1.07*10^301 . . . eqn n6a [UPDATE, July 3: So, if we have a string of 1,000 fair coins, and toss at random, we will by overwhelming probability expect to get a near 50-50 distribution typical of the bulk of the 2^1,000 possibilities W. On the Chi-500 metric, I would be high, 1,000 bits, but S would be 0, so the value for Chi_500 would be - 500, i.e. well within the possibilities of chance. However, if we came to the same string later and saw that the coins somehow now had the bit pattern of the ASCII codes for the first 143 or so characters of this post, we would have excellent reason to infer that an intelligent designer, using choice contingency, had intelligently reconfigured the coins. that is because, using the same I = 1,000 capacity value, S is now 1, and so Chi_500 = 500 bits beyond the solar system threshold. If the 10^57 or so atoms of our solar system, for its lifespan, were to be converted into coins and tables etc, and tossed at an impossibly fast rate, it would be impossible to sample enough of the possibilities space W to have confidence that something from so unrepresentative a zone T, could reasonably be explained on chance. So, as long as an intelligent agent capable of choice is possible, choice -- i.e. design -- would be the rational, best explanation on the sign observed, functionally specific, complex information.]
And of course immediately following I have applied straightforwardly to the Durston et al protein family cases. The debates on Dembski's terms are moot. Notice, the key issue is that observed events E from functionally specific complex cases will be in narrow and unrepresentative zones T from the space of possibilities W. Precisely because of the narrowness and unrepresentativeness of T, in the face of the scope of possibilities W, relatively small samples of he space will be maximally unlikely to land on the shores of zones T. In the case of 500 bits, there are ~10^150 possibilities, 10^48 times the number of PTQS's of our solar system to date. Such a small relative sample is most UNlikely to find cases from T, save by intelligent direction. To break this inference, you would have to find a case where either the zone T is typical and a large fraction of cases from the set W, or else where there is some unknown mechanism apart from intelligence that in the face of high contingency directs one to zones T. GA's and the like, START within a narrow zone of function. Their hill climbing is within a narrow unrepresentative zone T, and so they beg the question when presented as though they solve the problem of finding T in W. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 17, 2011
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Elizabeth (243): Glad you agree with me about the contents and style of ID books. As for the culture war questions, what would you have me say? Am I happy that *some* ID people, *many* years ago, produced the Wedge Document? No. Am I happy that Of Pandas and People was rewritten using ID language to disguise its character? No. Am I happy that the Dover School Board used ID for its creationist purposes? No. Do I wish that ID people had stuck to nothing but scientific arguments from the start? Yes. But, you know, Elizabeth, it's funny. I became aware, almost as soon as I heard of ID, of charges that it was closet creationism, that it had a theocratic agenda, etc. Within a few months of reading all the charges and defenses, all the blogs on Discovery and hostile sites, I had things pretty well sorted out. It was clear to me that most ID proponents were strongly motivated by religious faith, that some were fundamentalists and creationists, that many of them were as much concerned about the moral and political reform of America as about science. But it was *also* clear to me that the particular arguments they made, against Darwinism and for design, didn't ultimately depend on these motivations. So I immediately decided: the important part of the ID movement, the part that may have lasting impact on science, and indirectly on philosophy and theology, is this whole set of arguments revolving around design vs. chance, information theory, genetic entropy, etc. I decide that this was the only part of the business worth studying in detail. (If I were a sociologist I might have made a different judgment, since sociologically the other stuff is very interesting.) From then on, I simply made separations as needed. "Darwinism is bad science" -- a scientific claim. "We must oppose Darwinism because it led to Hitler" -- a historical and moral claim. One must separate them. So if some ID proponent makes a bad argument that Darwin led to Hitler (and note that I'm being hypothetical here, not taking sides on that question), and that argument were refuted by a historian, that still wouldn't prove that Darwinism is good science. They are separate questions. So I can take in stride a number of weak or even foolish arguments made by ID people about moral, cultural, political and other issues. They have nothing to do with the crucial question, which is whether unguided processes such as random mutation and natural selection can produced complex integrated biological systems. Now I could achieve that separation of issues, that intellectual clarity, after just a few months of getting the lay of the land. Five years later, I know what I'm doing. But I keep having to argue with people who, after five years or sometimes ten or fifteen years of studying ID, still can't (or more likely won't) make these basic separations. They can't or won't see that the sociology, the history, the science, the theology, etc. all need to be argued separately, and that a bad argument in one area doesn't invalidate a good argument in another one. They can't see that a bad policy blunder by Discovery doesn't invalidate the arguments that Discovery fellows make in their books. Such a person is Nick Matzke. He's still arguing about a Thaxton book published nearly 30 years ago, before modern ID or Discovery ever existed. He's still harping on the Pandas book. In the post-Dover world, the focus of ID has been greatly sharpened. It's now more than ever a theory of design detection. Its proponents now hold regular conferences in which heavy-duty science is discussed in serious papers -- evolutionary computer algorithms, genetic entropy, molecular evolution, organism-centered vs. gene-centered evolution, etc. The peer reviewed papers are starting to come out. The books are slowly getting grudging attention from at least a few non-doctrinaire scientists. This is what Nick should b e focused on. Not ID's past, but its present and future. You know, if I were judged by what I was like as a teenager, I would have been condemned by the world before I could get started. I was immature, irregular, finding myself. Sometimes I acted well, and sometimes like a jerk. In the end I overcame many of my negatives and grew up into something moderately positive. Movements, like people, need time to define themselves, achieve a focus, and accomplish something. I'm not going to go back into Nick Matzke's yearbook and say: "Gee, what a stupid witticism you wrote under your photo, Nick; you can't possibly be an intelligent evolutionary biologist if you made a joke like that about Bono." And I'm not going to look at the fact (if for the sake of argument it was a fact) that Nick once belonged to the Youth Libertarian Party, and say, "Gee, Nick, the fact that you were a libertarian explains the roots of your Darwinism and proves that all your science is governed by a philosophical agenda." I'm going to cut Nick some slack, and say: "Nick, if you can write some good, fair, objective science, I will never try to undermine it by referring to your yearbook or your youthful political adventures." But Nick won't cut ID that slack. He won't read the books I've recommended, and limit his commments on ID to the arguments in those books. He insists on dragging up other stuff. And what applies to Nick applies to all the other people I've named -- whose internet and other activity you seem to be barely aware of. They should let Pandas go, and let Dover go, and let Thaxton go, and let the Wedge go, and *meet the arguments posed in the books*. If they cannot make this separation, if they insist on making essentially *ad hominem* arguments against ID, we cannot have a rational discussion. We can only re-enact stupid culture war fights which I and all the more sophisticated ID proponents want to leave behind. So again, I grant you that ID people have done some dumb things and taken some dumb stands. But none of those things touch ID at the theoretical heart. I'm a thinker. I do theory, not culture-war politics. So I'd appreciate if if you would let the culture-war stuff go, and if Nick would be man enough to admit that he has played culture-war politics himself, and that he is every bit as guilty as any Discovery person at doing so. He has deliberately misled the public about Behe and Denton and the main theoretical claims of ID. He should apologize, and desist. But he won't. He will keep sputtering his defenses, keep bringing up ancient history like Thaxton etc. And that tells me that his arguments against ID must be really lousy. If he had good ones, he would be arguing about information theory and genetic entropy, not Thaxton and Pandas. If you bring up ID's social behavior again, Elizabeth, I won't reply. It's irrelevant the questions I'm interested in. And you dwell on it far more than is good for your mind. It's clear that you've read many more internet pages about ID's social side than you have about its theoretical side. I suggest you reverse that proportion. In the future, if ID should prove to have any valid insights at all, that reshape any aspect of biology, what will be remembered is not Dover and Pandas and the NCSE and the Pharyngula; all of that will be footnotes of interest only to dusty historians. What will be remembered is the few key books and articles where the arguments were made. So far, those arguments have been addressed 80% by sneers and ad hominems and only 20% by calm scientific discussion which treats ID authors with dignity. I'd like to see that changed. I hope you would, too.Thomas Cudworth_{July 17, 2011
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