Uncommon Descent Contest 20: Why should human evolution be taught in school?

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 16, 2010

Contests}

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I just came across this fact in the journal Nature: Little is known about human evolution other than basic outline.

Note: This contest has been judged. Go here for announcement.

So, contrary to widely heard huffing, there are huge gaps in our understanding of early humans. In Nature’s 2020 Visions (7 January 2010) Scroll down to Leslie C. Aiello, and we learn

Most of the recent effort in hominin palaeontology has been focused on Africa and Europe. But the announcement in 2004 of the small hominin Homo floresiensis in Indonesia was a warning that we are naive to assume we know more than the basic outline of human evolutionary history. If H. floresiensis is indeed a surviving remnant of early Homo that left Africa around 2 million years ago, we have to reject the long-standing idea that Homo erectus was the first African emigrant. We also must reject many hypotheses concerning the prerequisites for this emigration, such as a relatively large brain size, large body size and human-like limb proportions. Importantly, we must confront our relative ignorance about human evolution outside Europe and Africa.- “Hominin paleontology”

Now, I don’t believe for a moment that 2020 is going to yield a whole lot more information, as Mr. Aiello* hopes – more likely a whole lot more grant applications, as more people graduate and need a focus for their work.

That doesn’t mean the work isn’t worth doing. It does, however, raise a key question: Why are people expected to learn in school whatever evolution story is currently taken seriously – by whomever and for whatever reason?

When I was in school fifty years ago, we struggled through polynomials, the life cycle of the common toad, and how to behave on stage when putting on a fragment of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – facts that were not under dispute and unlikely to change in the lifetime of anyone present.

Anyway, courtesy of the Discovery Institute, I have a copy of David Berlinski’s The Deniable Darwin, for the best answer to the question: Why is human evolution, in its actual present state, compulsorily taught in schools? Why are people going to court in order to force the teaching?

Here are the contest rules. Winners get a certificate as well as the prize. You do not need to give me your actual address, just an address I can send the prize to, and we never save addresses for a mailing list.

*Aiello is President, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

Comments

What observation about living things can be only be explained by the introduction of a new fundamental entity?
We have been over this already- the difference between living organisms and non-living matter. We have observed that differences exist and have gone about cataloging those differences. Biologists make a living because of those differences. And it cannot be explained by calling on matter, energy, information, chance and necessity.
What specific differences cannot be explained by your (new and expanded!) list? I am looking for something a bit more specific than "life lives, and non-life doesn't". Can you cite an example?Tom MH_{January 29, 2010
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Mr Joseph, And BTW I am not introducing a fundamental new entity- It has existed for quite a long, long time. I agree. You did not create life. Or the idea of "life". Or the Game of LIFE (TM). But you also haven't got past the "life is alive" step in explaining this fundamental thing. I've asked you previously for an example of two objects, one living, one dead, which have exactly the same arrangement of matter and energy. I can measure matter in grams, energy in joules, information in bits. What is life measured in? The 'vit'? How many vits in a rock? A fire? A computer (off)? A computer (running a CA like Evoloops)? A flower? A baby? A pregnant woman? A mosquito full of malaria? How do you know?Nakashima_{January 28, 2010
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And BTW I am not introducing a fundamental new entity- It has existed for quite a long, long time. All I am doing is pointing it out. If you don't want to look that is understandable. Your position just cannot allow for such an entity so it cannot exist. Got it.Joseph_{January 28, 2010
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Tom MH:
Of COURSE they are reducible to chemicals — from where do you think we learned about those chemicals in the first place?
Just saying it doesn't make it so. Of COURSE studying biology isn't the same as understanding its origins. Tom MH:
What observation about living things can be only be explained by the introduction of a new fundamental entity?
We have been over this already- the difference between living organisms and non-living matter. We have observed that differences exist and have gone about cataloging those differences. Biologists make a living because of those differences. And it cannot be explained by calling on matter, energy, information, chance and necessity.Joseph_{January 28, 2010
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joseph: You don’t have any evidence to support your claim but you know my claim is wrong.
I didn't say your claim was wrong, I said it was supported by neither logic nor data. I've invited you to offer one or the other, or both. Your argument seems to be summarized in the following:
Yet no one can demonstrate they are reducible to chemicals- water and lipids and proteins and enzymes (which are proteins) and nucleic acids.
Of COURSE they are reducible to chemicals -- from where do you think we learned about those chemicals in the first place?
That tells me there is something else required.
Required for what? What observation about living things can be only be explained by the introduction of a new fundamental entity?Tom MH_{January 28, 2010
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Clive Hayden: Are you saying that “life” is a quality and not itself a physical object?
My answer would be yes. There is no need to invoke an additional fundamental entity ("life" particles"?) and no evidence for its existence.
are you saying that life is an emergent quality, as you think cognition is an emergent quality of an arrangement of brain material?
Not everything that is alive has a brain -- most of the biomass of Earth consists of bacteria.Tom MH_{January 28, 2010
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Tom MH:
Living things are comprised of water and lipids and proteins and enzymes and nucleic acids and other stuff – chemicals.
Yet no one can demonstrate they are reducible to chemicals- water and lipids and proteins and enzymes (which are proteins) and nucleic acids. That tells me there is something else required.Joseph_{January 28, 2010
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Tom MH:
The difference bewteen a living thing and an inanimate thing can be explained by the arrangenment of matter, energy and information.
So your "evidence" is just to keep repeating that bit of unsupported tripe?Joseph_{January 28, 2010
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Tom MH, You don't have any evidence to support your claim but you know my claim is wrong. Got it. BTW biochemists cannot demonstrate that living organisms are reducible to matter, energy and information.Joseph_{January 28, 2010
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Mr Hayden, Yes, I think you understand my position correctly. What we call life is an emergent property of some complex arrangements of matter and energy. These arrangements are far from equilibrium, and stay far from equilibrium over extended periods of time by processing matter and energy available in the environment. That's my thumbnail definition. I don't think there a special property called 'life' which is a substance (elan vital) that is inside living bodies and not present elsewhere in the universe. In addition, the category itself is fuzzy, with edge cases which are not clear (either due to our current ignorance, or because the category is inherently fuzzy). Some examples: A dormant seed or spore. When is it clear that it is alive or dead? A virus. Sure a virus needs a very specific environment, but so do I. A bacterial cell that has just died. What is the change that just happened at the moment of death? Abiogenesis. I remember reading an essay on abiogenesis that made the point that near the beginning of life's development, the boundary between molecules occaisionally interacting and consistent packages of molecules could have wavered back and forth - life could have sputtered for a while before catching hold. As an emergent property, it does imply that there is some gradation across this fuzzy boundary. You could say that a fire, or an avalance of rocks rolling downhill, fit the definition. The fire and the avalanche are way over on one side of the spectrum, and mice, flowers, and bacteria are way over on the other. In the middle are the kind of things I gave examples of earlier. What does it mean for the definition of life that there are viruses that are larger than bacteria? Personally, I do accept this fuzziness as inherent in the category - life cannot be defined crisply and precisely.Nakashima_{January 28, 2010
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Nakashima,
Don’t you see that your answer “the arrangement” is exactly what I was saying distinguishes living from dead earlier, when you were asserting that there was some special something that all living things had?
You determine life from death by an arrangement of particles? Presumably you mean a working and moving arrangement because living things move and dead things don't, right? Is that what you mean? Machines move, are they alive? Dead things move. I'm sincerely trying to understand how you understand life/death by virtue of material arrangements. I think what Joseph means about a special quality that all living things have is called "Life". Both dead and living things have parts and arrangements that move, so I don't understand your criterion for any arrangement to answer the question between life and death. Are you saying that "life" is a quality and not itself a physical object? are you saying that life is an emergent quality, as you think cognition is an emergent quality of an arrangement of brain material?Clive Hayden_{January 28, 2010
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joseph: What do you think we should call that difference?

Tom MH: Chemistry.

joseph: That’s it? RotFLMAO!!!!
Living things are comprised of water and lipids and proteins and enzymes and nucleic acids and other stuff – chemicals. Biochemists have been studying these things for years, learning how these chemicals can interact in certain ways to enable metabolism, growth, response to stimuli, and reproduction. Surely you were aware of this? Surely you are aware that NONE of the researchers in biochemistry have needed to invoke a new fundamental entity (“life”) to explain any of the observed phenomena of living things? The properties of chemicals (“matter”) and their states and interactions (“energy”) and their arrangement (“information”) seems to be sufficient. If you have identified a deficiency, please let us know.Tom MH_{January 28, 2010
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joseph: Yes there is a difference and it can be explained by the difference in arrangenment of matter, energy and information.
Yes, the difference between two inanimate things can be explained by the arrangement of matter, energy and information. The difference bewteen a living thing and an inanimate thing can be explained by the arrangenment of matter, energy and information. The difference bewteen a living thing and a dead thing can be explained by the arrangement of matter, energy and information. The difference bewteen two living things can be explained by the arrangement of matter, energy and information. If you think additional fundamental entities need to be invoked to explain any of these diffeences, YOU must supply the argument, and the evidence. So far you have not.
joseph: Is there any evidence that living organisms can be reduced to matter, energy and information?
Let me invoke an authority I am sure you will respect:
Life could very well be a fundamental entity- along with matter, energy and information. Living organisms arise when those for come together in one unit.
This is YOUR list. We are only quibbling about the fourth number.Tom MH_{January 28, 2010
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Mr Joseph, Yes there is a difference and it can be explained by the difference in arrangenment of matter, energy and information. No, the answer is PCness - the quality that only PCs have. Don't you see that your answer "the arrangement" is exactly what I was saying distinguishes living from dead earlier, when you were asserting that there was some special something that all living things had?Nakashima_{January 28, 2010
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So you agree that there is a difference between computers and living organisms even though both consist of matter, energy and information. What do you think we should call that difference? Tom MH:
Chemistry.
That's it? RotFLMAO!!!! Thank you for proving this discussion has been a waste of time. Tom MH:
Question for you: is a Mac different from a PC? If so, what fundamental entity needs to be added to “matter, energy, and information” to explain the difference?
Yes there is a difference and it can be explained by the difference in arrangenment of matter, energy and information. So i will ask you AGAIN: Is there any evidence that living organisms can be reduced to matter, energy and information? Or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing?Joseph_{January 28, 2010
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Tom MH Taken to its logical extreme this would have kept Pasteur’s disproof of the spontaneous generation of life from being considered . . .I’m afraid I don’t understand. The point I'm making is that some accuse ID of not being science because it doesn't rule out a supernatural designer. Pasteur did not rule out a supernatural cause of life. ID is every bit the study of nature as Pasteur's observations. Now, with regard to meth-nat it's not so much the methodology with which I'm taking issue but the claim to authority some give it. And meth-nat is clearly not the only means -- and may not even be the most effective means -- of practicing natural science.tribune7_{January 27, 2010
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trubune7: Philosophical naturalism is arguably part of meth-nat: Steven Schafersman contends methodological naturalism is “the adoption or assumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it
Schafersman's point (highlighted) is what I was trying to say. MN is practiced without the need to embrace PN.
tribune7: The problem that has arisen is the arbitrary definition that a natural cause must be declared before a matter is considered “science”. Taken to its logical extreme this would have kept Pasteur’s disproof of the spontaneous generation of life from being considered
I'm afraid I don't understand. Science is the study of nature. Pasteur's experiments with fermentation, and the conclusions that he (and we) drew from them, were fully in accord with how we think science should operate. A non-scientific (non MN) conclusion could have been that fermentation did not take place in Pasteur's sealed flasks because a supernatural agent prevented it (or conversely, caused it to take place only in flasks exposed to the air). Both the reigning hypothesis of spontaneous generation and the (now accepted) counter-hypothesis of biogenesis were scientific. Neither depended on supernatural entities AFAIK. The latter theory won out because it was supported by evidence from nature (something that was rather weak in much of Aristotlean natural philosophy) obtained from a number of experiments, Pasteur's being the final and most convincing.Tom MH_{January 27, 2010
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TomMH -- Methodological naturalism is an approach, and should not be confused with philosphical naturalism, Philosophical naturalism is arguably part of meth-nat:
Steven Schafersman contends methodological naturalism is "the adoption or assumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it
science is remarkably good at finding out things about the natural world, Science should not be synonymous with meth-nat. If you study nature you should not go beyond nature, but if you should it is obvious to all concerned and reactions should be in accordance with the logic as to why you might have done so. The problem that has arisen is the arbitrary definition that a natural cause must be declared before a matter is considered "science". Taken to its logical extreme this would have kept Pasteur's disproof of the spontaneous generation of life from being considered -- something that has had a far, far greater impact on practical biology (think sanitation, food processing etc.) than Darwin's theory. I'll agree that if you limit meth-nat to specific problems (how did the bridge collapse?) it can be useful. But it should only be considered a small part of science.tribune7_{January 27, 2010
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joseph: So you agree that there is a difference between computers and living organisms even though both consist of matter, energy and information. What do you think we should call that difference?
Chemistry. Question for you: is a Mac different from a PC? If so, what fundamental entity needs to be added to "matter, energy, and information" to explain the difference?Tom MH_{January 27, 2010
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Nakashima-san-
A personal question, why can’t you keep a conversation civil? Why do you include the “talking out of your arse” and “waste of bandwidth” comments?
I am civil given civil opponents...Joseph_{January 27, 2010
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Tom MH, So you agree that there is a difference between computers and living organisms even though both consist of matter, energy and information. What do you think we should call that difference? Should we try to qualify and/ or quantify it? Or should we just say there is a difference and never even try to explain it? Also one doesn't require a crisis before we can take a look at what that difference is. And I will also note that not person on this planet can demonstrate that living organisms can be reduced to matter, energy and information. IOW Tom MH you don't have any evidence for your claim yet you seem to think your claim refutes mine even though I can demonsttrate a difference bewtween computers and living organisms although they both - according to you- consist of the same basic stuff.Joseph_{January 27, 2010
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tribune7, we are obviously misunderstanding one another. Let me see if I can clear things up by addressing one of your questions:
tribune7: What is declaring a cause to be material without being able to describe, much less demonstrate, it, if not faith? And blind, arbitrary faith at that?
It is a method, not a faith. Methodological naturalism is an approach, and should not be confused with philosphical naturalism, which might be an attractive worldview for atheists.
If the reality is that God created life it is counter-productive in the search for truth to use an arbitrary definition to deny that reality.
If the truth is that God created life then it is a truth that cannot be reached by science. Or at least, by methodological naturalism. Which is okay with me -- science is remarkably good at finding out things about the natural world, but it is not the only way that truth can be discerned (if indeed anything in science can be held to be "true"). But I see no way to amend science to enable it to accept miracles without doing irreparable damage to the whole enterprise.Tom MH_{January 26, 2010
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Tom MH --Is it irrational to use Newtonian mechanics to plan a space launch Why would you think Newtonian mechanics relating to a space launch would be a first cause? The point I'm making is that it is irrational to use a method based on the claim that all can be discerned via objective measurements of energy or matter to explain the existence of energy or matter.tribune7_{January 26, 2010
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tribune7: The problem with using meth-nat to try to address first causes is that the internal logic of such an attempt is inconsistent hence it becomes irrational to try.
What do you mean by "first cause"? Is it irrational to use Newtonian mechanics to plan a space launch because God could alter the Earth's rotation? If not, then please explain this line of demarcation. In what areas of scientific research should methodological naturalism be abandoned?Tom MH_{January 26, 2010
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joseph: As I said a computer consists of matter, energy and information yet it is not alive. IOW there is a difference between computers and living organisms. Do you agree with that?
Sure. So what? Why do you need to invoke a fundamental entity to explain the difference? There is no crisis in biology or chemistry (or computer design) that requires additional fundamental entities.Tom MH_{January 26, 2010
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TomMH If (life) did have an origin, then it somehow originated from non-life. . . .Or a life not bound by the laws of nature. Why would you reject that possibility?. . .I would reject it for science because it requires that we pass beyond the borders of science and into the realm of religion and faith. It's not science that would reject it but a very narrow methodology of science called methodological naturalism. The problem with using meth-nat to try to address first causes is that the internal logic of such an attempt is inconsistent hence it becomes irrational to try. Consider "we pass beyond the borders of science and into the realm of religion and faith" What is declaring a cause to be material without being able to describe, much less demonstrate, it, if not faith? And blind, arbitrary faith at that? This means we must not use a method that may be useful in describing how a bridge collapsed to attempt to address (or more damningly dismiss) the big questions such as "what is the purpose of our existence, how should we treat others etc. If the reality is that God created life it is counter-productive in the search for truth to use an arbitrary definition to deny that reality. Now, it is a legitimate concern that the pendulum can swing too far in the other direction and we have prohibitions into areas of research such as OOL based on religious dogma. Science should not involve dogma whether it be religious or anti-religious. Can you cite me a verifiable example of a life not bound by the laws of nature? Sure :-) There is going to be a big celebration of one in about 70 days.tribune7_{January 26, 2010
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Mr Joseph, A personal question, why can't you keep a conversation civil? Why do you include the "talking out of your arse" and "waste of bandwidth" comments?Nakashima_{January 26, 2010
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Mr Joseph, The point being – Tom and Nakashima- is that what it takes to destroy something is not equivilent to what it takes to make it in the first place. Yes, that is called entropy. You are not helping your argument by changing it.Nakashima_{January 26, 2010
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The point being - Tom and Nakashima- is that what it takes to destroy something is not equivilent to what it takes to make it in the first place. Also I will say it again- The only way you are going to refute what I am saying is to demonstrate that living organisms are reducible to matter, energy and information. How is that coming? In the absence of that all you are doing is whining. Do you think that whining helps your case?Joseph_{January 26, 2010
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Tom MH:
You should have paid some attention to Nakashima’s comment
Nakashima said the rust reproduces. Also what he said- that you referenced- does not mean living organisms arereducible to matter and energy. IOW it is called boloney not parsimony.Joseph_{January 26, 2010
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