I'm a huge fan, But this news rather dismayed me.
Scott Adams is the wonderfully talented creator of "Dilbert." I am a fan not only of that strip but of some of Adams' other writings, as I've established on this blog by regularly employing his list of "tomorrow's headlines."
That has no very close connection to this ... Adams has described evolution as an established fact. But he has also said he expects the notion of "time" will be radically re-formulated in our lifetimes, and that the overthrow of any theory about biological evolution will be one consequence of that. This gives him an interestingly bifurcated view of the subject.
Who cares what a cartoonist thinks about evolution, or for that matter about the physics of time? Well ... nobody much.
Anyway, the minor brou-ha-ha about Adams' sock puppetry came to my attention because I checked Felix Salmon's blog Monday morning and saw this.
So I've been thinking about Adams, and this has led me in turn to think some more about evolution.
Insert some clever joke about the evolution of sock puppets here.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query evolution. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query evolution. Sort by date Show all posts
23 April 2011
28 April 2011
Evolution as Path Dependence
In a message board to which I go now and then to vent, I initiated a discussion of evolution. My own view, FWIW, is that humans almost certainly evolved from non-human primates, who in turn almost certainly evolved from non-primate mammals, and so forth. On the question of mechanism, I am skeptical about the explanatory value of natural selection. Still, I wanted the sense of my fellow posters'/venters' opinions, and not surprisingly got an earful.
I was also challenged, appropriately enough, to present a fuller statement of the reasons for my own view. I'll reproduce part of what I said in response, here:
Of course, macroevolution involving Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, and the rest of that cast of characters cannot be “observed” in 2011, any more than Julius Caesar can be. We have no choice but to rely on inferences in either case. But I’m not willing to give up on knowledge of the past of either thousands or millions of years ago.
If that is all I had to say, though, I’d be evading your sensible call for reasons. So here, with that as qualification and introduction, is a fuller statement of some of the lines of evidence that lead me to infer that the origin of our species is likely not that of a separate creation, but a matter of evolution from other less brainy primates.
To begin, there are our own bodies. In some respects, these do not seem to have been the product of any one-time intelligent design. Consider our appendix. This has been the subject of much contention. ID and creationist literature has made the point that the appendix can do various valuable things here.
Yet there is still the fact that a lot of us manage to live long lives long after the appendix has been removed – and that it had to be removed because it posed a threat to our lives. This seems, on the face of it, a counter-example both to intelligent design and to natural selection. But I'm just making a case here for path dependence, for the notion that our very distant ancestors were very different creatures from ourselves, and that this fact helps make us who we are. It does seem that the appendix continues to qualify as a dangerous vestige of earlier periods. Confusion comes about because of the misuse of the word “vestige” in this context, but let us avoid purely semantic quarrels. I'll link to a detailed discussion here.
Second, still looking inward, even aside from vulnerabilities such as the appendix, there are oddities such as the way Ostriches use their wings for balance when running. (Okay, this is a non-human example, but it relates to the broad issue of macroevolution). Surely an engineer, an intelligent designer, could have designed a more efficient way for a creature to balance itself. Lots of creatures run very quickly without falling over, and without the help of wings.
It seems to me (yes, making inferences, indulging in speculation) reasonable to suppose that the ostrich is descended from other species of bird that flew. Over time, creatures evolved from them that did not fly. Why? Because flight itself is a great expenditure of energy for those creature that rely upon it, and that energy could well be redirected into, say, finding a mate and caring for the young. Survival pressures might have started working against flight as soon as predators disappeared from a particular environment for whatever reason, so the energy use of flight became a waste. The wings, as pre-existing material, were then available for use as a balance, and that functionality was built into further evolutions, until we got to the ostrich. I suppose, if you wish to consider all birds simply as birds, that particular hypothesis could even be accepted and labeled as “micro-evolution.” But if that is micro, then the evolution of humans from other primates is micro, too. If the development of humans qualifies as macro, then I submit so does the development of the ostrich.
Thirdly, let’s talk about fossils. What are we to say of the Tiktaalik roseae?.
According to the University of Chicago, this is the fossil of a creature with a mix of fish and amphibian traits. It seems to have moved about on land without having been ready for that quite yet. The adaptations that would make sense for a more determined land dweller weren’t there, and some that make sense only for a sea creature were still there. Further, the specimens are dated to 375 million years ago, which fits nicely into the story that evolutionary biology had been putting together about life on earth before these fossils came into the ken of human observation … in 2005.
Fourth, let’s move up to something a little more recent. A mere 47 million years ago. Only one-eighth as old as Tiktaalik. What are we to say of the Darwinius Masillae? You can figure out what its discoverers thought of it (the name they gave it is a hint.).
The photograph there is a thing of beauty. The actual cladistic significance will be a subject of debate for a long time, since that is how science works. Plenty of room for inferences yet undrawn, not to mention wilder speculations here. But underneath it all, Darwinius seems “designed” to point in two different directions, toward lemurs on the one hand, and toward monkeys on the other.
Further, note the dating in each case. Yes, evolution would have suffered something of a blow if the Tiktaalik had been dated to only 47 million years ago and the Darwinius to 375. But that did not happen. Each fossil is where it ‘should’ be in the timeline.
Finally, let’s come to the paleontology of primates. The cluster of Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo species and debate about them continues of course. Competing museums, universities, and paleontological egos are at stake, so we can be sure there is a big future for such debates.
Recent excitement, though, (including some of my own) centers on Michel Brunet and his discovery in Chad, the Sahelanthropus Tchadensis.
Teeth and skull seem “human,” and these fossils date to between 6 and 7 million years ago. My own best inference from such fossils is that they will in time coalesce to tell a coherent story of development through various sorts of primate of the features of modern homo sapiens. You can always prefer to believe that God simply decided to create the Sahelanthropus, and the Orririn Tugenesis, and the Ardipithecus kadabba, and so forth – the whole range of species in the Africa of millions of years ago as indicated by such fossils – that each was specially created and involved no transitions to one another. Yet that seems uneconomical, and seems more a matter of giving up at explanation than of having found one.
My own conviction is that our bodies like our minds are the consequence of the will of a Prime Mover, and many of their particulars are path dependent, the product of the various secondary causes through which that Prime Mover has deigned to work. These big cerebral hemispheres with which we ended up can be put to few better uses than to work out the connections, which will surely over time shed light on our present condition.
I was also challenged, appropriately enough, to present a fuller statement of the reasons for my own view. I'll reproduce part of what I said in response, here:
Of course, macroevolution involving Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, and the rest of that cast of characters cannot be “observed” in 2011, any more than Julius Caesar can be. We have no choice but to rely on inferences in either case. But I’m not willing to give up on knowledge of the past of either thousands or millions of years ago.
If that is all I had to say, though, I’d be evading your sensible call for reasons. So here, with that as qualification and introduction, is a fuller statement of some of the lines of evidence that lead me to infer that the origin of our species is likely not that of a separate creation, but a matter of evolution from other less brainy primates.
To begin, there are our own bodies. In some respects, these do not seem to have been the product of any one-time intelligent design. Consider our appendix. This has been the subject of much contention. ID and creationist literature has made the point that the appendix can do various valuable things here.
Yet there is still the fact that a lot of us manage to live long lives long after the appendix has been removed – and that it had to be removed because it posed a threat to our lives. This seems, on the face of it, a counter-example both to intelligent design and to natural selection. But I'm just making a case here for path dependence, for the notion that our very distant ancestors were very different creatures from ourselves, and that this fact helps make us who we are. It does seem that the appendix continues to qualify as a dangerous vestige of earlier periods. Confusion comes about because of the misuse of the word “vestige” in this context, but let us avoid purely semantic quarrels. I'll link to a detailed discussion here.
Second, still looking inward, even aside from vulnerabilities such as the appendix, there are oddities such as the way Ostriches use their wings for balance when running. (Okay, this is a non-human example, but it relates to the broad issue of macroevolution). Surely an engineer, an intelligent designer, could have designed a more efficient way for a creature to balance itself. Lots of creatures run very quickly without falling over, and without the help of wings.
It seems to me (yes, making inferences, indulging in speculation) reasonable to suppose that the ostrich is descended from other species of bird that flew. Over time, creatures evolved from them that did not fly. Why? Because flight itself is a great expenditure of energy for those creature that rely upon it, and that energy could well be redirected into, say, finding a mate and caring for the young. Survival pressures might have started working against flight as soon as predators disappeared from a particular environment for whatever reason, so the energy use of flight became a waste. The wings, as pre-existing material, were then available for use as a balance, and that functionality was built into further evolutions, until we got to the ostrich. I suppose, if you wish to consider all birds simply as birds, that particular hypothesis could even be accepted and labeled as “micro-evolution.” But if that is micro, then the evolution of humans from other primates is micro, too. If the development of humans qualifies as macro, then I submit so does the development of the ostrich.
Thirdly, let’s talk about fossils. What are we to say of the Tiktaalik roseae?.
According to the University of Chicago, this is the fossil of a creature with a mix of fish and amphibian traits. It seems to have moved about on land without having been ready for that quite yet. The adaptations that would make sense for a more determined land dweller weren’t there, and some that make sense only for a sea creature were still there. Further, the specimens are dated to 375 million years ago, which fits nicely into the story that evolutionary biology had been putting together about life on earth before these fossils came into the ken of human observation … in 2005.
Fourth, let’s move up to something a little more recent. A mere 47 million years ago. Only one-eighth as old as Tiktaalik. What are we to say of the Darwinius Masillae? You can figure out what its discoverers thought of it (the name they gave it is a hint.).
The photograph there is a thing of beauty. The actual cladistic significance will be a subject of debate for a long time, since that is how science works. Plenty of room for inferences yet undrawn, not to mention wilder speculations here. But underneath it all, Darwinius seems “designed” to point in two different directions, toward lemurs on the one hand, and toward monkeys on the other.
Further, note the dating in each case. Yes, evolution would have suffered something of a blow if the Tiktaalik had been dated to only 47 million years ago and the Darwinius to 375. But that did not happen. Each fossil is where it ‘should’ be in the timeline.
Finally, let’s come to the paleontology of primates. The cluster of Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo species and debate about them continues of course. Competing museums, universities, and paleontological egos are at stake, so we can be sure there is a big future for such debates.
Recent excitement, though, (including some of my own) centers on Michel Brunet and his discovery in Chad, the Sahelanthropus Tchadensis.
Teeth and skull seem “human,” and these fossils date to between 6 and 7 million years ago. My own best inference from such fossils is that they will in time coalesce to tell a coherent story of development through various sorts of primate of the features of modern homo sapiens. You can always prefer to believe that God simply decided to create the Sahelanthropus, and the Orririn Tugenesis, and the Ardipithecus kadabba, and so forth – the whole range of species in the Africa of millions of years ago as indicated by such fossils – that each was specially created and involved no transitions to one another. Yet that seems uneconomical, and seems more a matter of giving up at explanation than of having found one.
My own conviction is that our bodies like our minds are the consequence of the will of a Prime Mover, and many of their particulars are path dependent, the product of the various secondary causes through which that Prime Mover has deigned to work. These big cerebral hemispheres with which we ended up can be put to few better uses than to work out the connections, which will surely over time shed light on our present condition.
22 May 2011
Evolution From Space
I'm finally in possession of a copy of a book I've only heard about and read second-hand reports of until now. It is EVOLUTION FROM SPACE by Fred Hoyle and N.C. Wickramasinghe, published in 1981.
The late Fred Hoyle was of course a very prominent astronomer and astrophysicist, once the leading proponent of the steady-state theory of the cosmos, and renowned for his work on the evolution of stars.
Wickramasinghe is professor of applied mathematics and astronomy at Cardiff University.
Today, they spin out their theory of panspermia. It is a theory not only of the origins of life on earth, but in their hands (as the book's title implies) a theory of how life has developed since. For the arrival of new genetic material from the stars was not, for them, as it was for other advocates of panspermia, a one time event.
Let's take fairly recent history -- in terms of geological or biological time. Let us consider especially the span of time between the emergence of the first hominids and our own selves. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe quote a Japanese biologist, Susumu Ohno, thus:
"Did the genome of our cave-dwelling predecessor contain a set or sets of genes which enable modern man to compose music of infinite complexity and write novels with profound meaning? One is compelled to give an affirmative answer....It looks as though the early Homo was already provided with the intellectual potential which was in great excess of what was needed to cope with the environment of his time."
This seems to Hoyle et ux to mean that Ohno has given up on Darwinism. If the cave dwellers already had the capacity to compose like Bach, without an environment that would get them any natural advantage out of composing like Bach, or having that capacity, then ... something other than natural selection was clearly at work.
If new genetic material repeatedly rains down on the earth from space, and if it must be absorbed somehow, then it is easier (these authors think) to see how human develpment could get ahead of the environment to this degree.
At least ... I think that is what they are saying. I have only just dipped into the book.
The late Fred Hoyle was of course a very prominent astronomer and astrophysicist, once the leading proponent of the steady-state theory of the cosmos, and renowned for his work on the evolution of stars.
Wickramasinghe is professor of applied mathematics and astronomy at Cardiff University.
Today, they spin out their theory of panspermia. It is a theory not only of the origins of life on earth, but in their hands (as the book's title implies) a theory of how life has developed since. For the arrival of new genetic material from the stars was not, for them, as it was for other advocates of panspermia, a one time event.
Let's take fairly recent history -- in terms of geological or biological time. Let us consider especially the span of time between the emergence of the first hominids and our own selves. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe quote a Japanese biologist, Susumu Ohno, thus:
"Did the genome of our cave-dwelling predecessor contain a set or sets of genes which enable modern man to compose music of infinite complexity and write novels with profound meaning? One is compelled to give an affirmative answer....It looks as though the early Homo was already provided with the intellectual potential which was in great excess of what was needed to cope with the environment of his time."
This seems to Hoyle et ux to mean that Ohno has given up on Darwinism. If the cave dwellers already had the capacity to compose like Bach, without an environment that would get them any natural advantage out of composing like Bach, or having that capacity, then ... something other than natural selection was clearly at work.
If new genetic material repeatedly rains down on the earth from space, and if it must be absorbed somehow, then it is easier (these authors think) to see how human develpment could get ahead of the environment to this degree.
At least ... I think that is what they are saying. I have only just dipped into the book.
24 June 2010
Human evolution
I saw a documentary recently about paleontological work on "Ardipithecus Ramidus,"
and a skeleton of a particular female of that species found on a hill called Aramis.
The documentary was not at all well constructed -- it repeated its points endlessly -- still, it did challenge two conceptions I have long held about human evolution.
First, I have long bought into the idea that humans walk upright because of the grasslands of Africa. Quadrupeds in anything like our size would often have their faces buried in the tall grasses, unable to get a clear view of potential predators, or potential prey. Bipedelism, in that environment, would seem a real plus in the Darwinian competition for survival.
That was my idea, and the idea of a lot of other people too, it seems. But this documentary indicated that we were all wrong. Ardi walked upright in a forest setting, where there aren't long convenient sightlines anyway so the advantages of bipedalism aren't at all as obvious.
Another challenge: I have long believed that the opposable thumb was crucial to the separation of hominids from other primates. Our thumb makes us tool-users, which in turn presumably spurred the expansion of the brain, the development of complicated social groups, and so forth. Right? Well, maybe in some later era the opposable thunb played the sort of important causative role that has been attributed to it. But bipedalism and other changes underway in Ardi's day would have preceded all that. Her thumb looks distinctly unimpressive.
09 September 2010
Marc Hauser
Marc Hauser seems to be in some trouble, although it is rather difficult to get a fix on how much.
Hauser is a big name in the field of evolutionary psychology. He's the co-director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program at Harvard University, Director of its Cognitive Evolution Lab, and adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education and the Program in Neurosciences.
In 2002 his paper, “Rule learning by cotton-top tamarins,” was published by the journal Cognition. Of course he has written much else, but I mention that paper because it is at the heart of the still developing scandal. Here's some info about the cotton-top tamarin. It's a small monkey, the sort of animal one would want to study if one were trying to prove, say, that humans are distinctive vis-a-vis moral/cognitive development even compared to other primates. Or that humans aren't that distinctive.
Hauser's experiments appear to have involved hidden loudspeakers within the living environment of these monkeys. The monkeys would, not surprisingly, sometimes turn about to look toward the loudspeakers when they started talking. But how frequently they turned around was used as a measure of whether they thought the loudspeakers were saying something interesting. After all, if the same-pld-stuff kept coming from the loudspeakers, then over time it would just become ambiant noise, and the monkeys would learn to ignore it.
By videotaping the environment, and carefully watching the tape for monkey turn-arounds, and correlating all that to what was coming out of those speakers at diferent times, one can presumably draw some conclusions about the recognition of speech by monkeys, and even (if the data set is large enough) about whether monkeys notice things like grammatical errors.
This is all founded on experiments that Elizabeth Spelke has run with human infants, as David Dobbs has explained in SLATE.
Here's what the Chronicle of Higher Education said on August 13. The findings published in Cognition in 2002 can not be relied upon. The conclusions are not supported by the data. So ... what happened? Did someone else look at the videotape and see monkeying around inconsistent with what the paper reported?
I suspect there are some big issues that are at stake here, and I wish Harvard were more forthcoming about its investigation.
Hauser is a big name in the field of evolutionary psychology. He's the co-director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program at Harvard University, Director of its Cognitive Evolution Lab, and adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education and the Program in Neurosciences.
In 2002 his paper, “Rule learning by cotton-top tamarins,” was published by the journal Cognition. Of course he has written much else, but I mention that paper because it is at the heart of the still developing scandal. Here's some info about the cotton-top tamarin. It's a small monkey, the sort of animal one would want to study if one were trying to prove, say, that humans are distinctive vis-a-vis moral/cognitive development even compared to other primates. Or that humans aren't that distinctive.
Hauser's experiments appear to have involved hidden loudspeakers within the living environment of these monkeys. The monkeys would, not surprisingly, sometimes turn about to look toward the loudspeakers when they started talking. But how frequently they turned around was used as a measure of whether they thought the loudspeakers were saying something interesting. After all, if the same-pld-stuff kept coming from the loudspeakers, then over time it would just become ambiant noise, and the monkeys would learn to ignore it.
By videotaping the environment, and carefully watching the tape for monkey turn-arounds, and correlating all that to what was coming out of those speakers at diferent times, one can presumably draw some conclusions about the recognition of speech by monkeys, and even (if the data set is large enough) about whether monkeys notice things like grammatical errors.
This is all founded on experiments that Elizabeth Spelke has run with human infants, as David Dobbs has explained in SLATE.
Here's what the Chronicle of Higher Education said on August 13. The findings published in Cognition in 2002 can not be relied upon. The conclusions are not supported by the data. So ... what happened? Did someone else look at the videotape and see monkeying around inconsistent with what the paper reported?
I suspect there are some big issues that are at stake here, and I wish Harvard were more forthcoming about its investigation.
05 May 2011
More on Marc Hauser
In September I wrote about Marc Hauser director of the Behavior Program at Harvard University, now on leave.
As I noted, Hauser acquired some renown for experiments on the cognition of primates, especially cotton-top tamerin. His experiments were thought to contribute to evolutionary psycholigy, i.e. to an understanding of the biological roots of our behavior as humans. His results, though, are now regarded as presumptively tainted, due to "evidence of scientific misconduct" in connection with some of his reported data.
So ... what is new? One of his controversial results has been rehabilitated -- has been, if you will, cleansed of that taint. This is big news, now just for those other primates but for human beings, and for the study of psychology as a natural science.
Justin N. Wood was the first named author, and Hauser the second, on the original paper, published in September 2007.
It found that certain non-human primates can distinguish intentional gestures by human beings from merely accidental or random movements.
This rather confirms my view, expressed last week, that the most humanly important fact taught to laypeople in general by scientific work on evolution is that we are path dependent beings. Who we are depends upon our history. For a discussion of the notion of path dependence in the social sciences go here.
As I noted, Hauser acquired some renown for experiments on the cognition of primates, especially cotton-top tamerin. His experiments were thought to contribute to evolutionary psycholigy, i.e. to an understanding of the biological roots of our behavior as humans. His results, though, are now regarded as presumptively tainted, due to "evidence of scientific misconduct" in connection with some of his reported data.
So ... what is new? One of his controversial results has been rehabilitated -- has been, if you will, cleansed of that taint. This is big news, now just for those other primates but for human beings, and for the study of psychology as a natural science.
Justin N. Wood was the first named author, and Hauser the second, on the original paper, published in September 2007.
It found that certain non-human primates can distinguish intentional gestures by human beings from merely accidental or random movements.
This rather confirms my view, expressed last week, that the most humanly important fact taught to laypeople in general by scientific work on evolution is that we are path dependent beings. Who we are depends upon our history. For a discussion of the notion of path dependence in the social sciences go here.
16 January 2011
Random Quote: History of Philosophy
Henri Bergson, CREATIVE EVOLUTION (1913).
"There is, then, immanent in the philosophy of Ideas" [Platonism and its kin], "a particular conception of causality, which it is important to bring into full light, because it is that which each of us will reach when, in order to ascend to the origin of things, he follows to the end the natural movement of the intellect....The affirmation of a reality implies the affirmation of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing. The principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the existence of the number 10 without affirming the existence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, ... , etc., -- in short of the whole interval between 10 and zero."
Emphasis in the original.
"There is, then, immanent in the philosophy of Ideas" [Platonism and its kin], "a particular conception of causality, which it is important to bring into full light, because it is that which each of us will reach when, in order to ascend to the origin of things, he follows to the end the natural movement of the intellect....The affirmation of a reality implies the affirmation of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing. The principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the existence of the number 10 without affirming the existence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, ... , etc., -- in short of the whole interval between 10 and zero."
Emphasis in the original.
06 December 2008
A Passage to India
Inspired by a recent viewing of the classic movie A Passage to India on a DVD, I decided to get a hold of the famous novel.
I'm reading through Forster's classic now, with great delight.
There's a thoughtful bit early on that involves two missionaries, Church of England presumably, and their debates with one another about the theological consequences of evolution. Or ... I think that's what it's about. Tell me if I'm wrong.
The missionaries, Graysford and Sorley by name, didn't make it into the movie at all (unless there's a bit I've forgotten already). They are present in the book so far as I can tell not as plot elements but as pieces of scenery -- local color. And here's the passage by which I'm intrigued:
Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah [of "our Father's house"], be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No but young Mr. Sorley, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr sorley's mind but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, aand was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr Sorley? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.
Now there's a fascinating slide down the Great Chain of Being!
I'm reading through Forster's classic now, with great delight.
There's a thoughtful bit early on that involves two missionaries, Church of England presumably, and their debates with one another about the theological consequences of evolution. Or ... I think that's what it's about. Tell me if I'm wrong.
The missionaries, Graysford and Sorley by name, didn't make it into the movie at all (unless there's a bit I've forgotten already). They are present in the book so far as I can tell not as plot elements but as pieces of scenery -- local color. And here's the passage by which I'm intrigued:
Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah [of "our Father's house"], be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No but young Mr. Sorley, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr sorley's mind but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, aand was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr Sorley? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.
Now there's a fascinating slide down the Great Chain of Being!
16 May 2008
Biology and Finance
Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled, purports to blow the whistle on a scandal -- i.e. that Darwinians are viciously attacking and ruining the lives of anyone, especially credentialled scientists, who challenge their Orthodoxy of natural selection.
I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to. But because I've attempted (in my other blog, and in HedgeWorld) to expose the badness of some of Stein's ideas on finance, I've become curious about the blogospheric controversy over this movie.
The two subjects are related. In Stein's case, at least, a predisposition to believe in "intelligent design" can't be the result of a Christian fundamentalist upbringing. What is its source. then?
I believe that Stein has adopted the premise that every body of systematic knowledge is a fraud. Darwinian stands on the same footing as modern financial/economic theory. He thinks that by piercing the veil of either of them -- charging that each is a conspiratorial mask -- he is proving his own superior wisdom.
But specifically: I understand that the movie claims that a former editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (PBSW) was "terrorized," that his "life was nearly ruined," because he posted a pro-intelligent-design article by Stephen C. Meyer.
"The paper ignited a firestorm of controversy merely because it suggested intelligent design might be able to explain how life began," says Stein in the movie.
Still talking second-or-third hand here, though: what kind of "firestorm" would be generated by the publishing decisions of a small academic journal by an unpaid editor? A rather contained fire, I'm guessing.
A little googling showed me that the disputed article wasn't about "how life began." It was about the Cambrian explosion, which Mr. Meyer considers "biology's big bang." Leaving "young earth" theories to the side, the origin of life is conventionally dated to somewhere around 3.6 billion years ago ["billion" in the US sense, a thousand million]. The Cambrian explosion began about half a billion years ago. Quite the difference.
Meyer's contention seems to have been that the conventional chronology is more-or-less right, but that natural selection does not suffice to explain the sudden appearance of so many different variants half a billion years ago, leaving open the possibility of intelligent guidance. That's an anti-Darwinian view although by definition it's an old-earth and in some sense a pro-evolution view.
The mis-statement about the point of the paper is Stein's fault, of course, not Meyer's. But it does seem like a big one, and an indication of carelessness.
For those who'd like to study the issue of Darwinian versus anti-Darwinian readings of the Cambrian explosion further, knock yourselves out.
I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to. But because I've attempted (in my other blog, and in HedgeWorld) to expose the badness of some of Stein's ideas on finance, I've become curious about the blogospheric controversy over this movie.
The two subjects are related. In Stein's case, at least, a predisposition to believe in "intelligent design" can't be the result of a Christian fundamentalist upbringing. What is its source. then?
I believe that Stein has adopted the premise that every body of systematic knowledge is a fraud. Darwinian stands on the same footing as modern financial/economic theory. He thinks that by piercing the veil of either of them -- charging that each is a conspiratorial mask -- he is proving his own superior wisdom.
But specifically: I understand that the movie claims that a former editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (PBSW) was "terrorized," that his "life was nearly ruined," because he posted a pro-intelligent-design article by Stephen C. Meyer.
"The paper ignited a firestorm of controversy merely because it suggested intelligent design might be able to explain how life began," says Stein in the movie.
Still talking second-or-third hand here, though: what kind of "firestorm" would be generated by the publishing decisions of a small academic journal by an unpaid editor? A rather contained fire, I'm guessing.
A little googling showed me that the disputed article wasn't about "how life began." It was about the Cambrian explosion, which Mr. Meyer considers "biology's big bang." Leaving "young earth" theories to the side, the origin of life is conventionally dated to somewhere around 3.6 billion years ago ["billion" in the US sense, a thousand million]. The Cambrian explosion began about half a billion years ago. Quite the difference.
Meyer's contention seems to have been that the conventional chronology is more-or-less right, but that natural selection does not suffice to explain the sudden appearance of so many different variants half a billion years ago, leaving open the possibility of intelligent guidance. That's an anti-Darwinian view although by definition it's an old-earth and in some sense a pro-evolution view.
The mis-statement about the point of the paper is Stein's fault, of course, not Meyer's. But it does seem like a big one, and an indication of carelessness.
For those who'd like to study the issue of Darwinian versus anti-Darwinian readings of the Cambrian explosion further, knock yourselves out.
03 December 2011
Jacques Barzun
A belated happy birthday to Jacques Barzun. He came into this world on November 30, 1907, so on Wednesday of this week he reached the distinguished age of 104.
I was honored to attend his centennial celebrations four years ago, and was never before or since in a room with such distinguished company.
Rafe Champion has written a fitting brief celebration of Barzun's work, here.
I enjoyed especially Champion's quoting from an interview Barzun gave to a reporter from the Austin Chronicle. The reporter remarked that Barzun had been in close working academic relationships with a lot of Marxists during the 1930s, but had never shown any enthusiasm for Marxism himself, nor had he ever taken up arms against it, identifying himself as an anti-Marxist. The exchange runs thus:
My own sense of Barzun's politics is that he has a fondness for various pre-Marxist sorts of socialism (what Marxists call the "utopian" sorts) and that he blames Marxism and its materialistic emphasis for having cut short that promising line of thought. Likewise with contemporary biology. He identifies with pre-Darwinian notions of evolution and, here too, sees Darwinian notions as too mechanistic and a threat to more vital conceptions of life.
Anyway, if I'm right to think of Barzun as a sort of Proudhonist politically, it explains how he has admirers of both right and left. When his writings touch on politics, there is the air of an emigrant's nostalgia that appeals to the right, but the Proudhonist idealism comes through and appeals more to the left.
I was honored to attend his centennial celebrations four years ago, and was never before or since in a room with such distinguished company.
Rafe Champion has written a fitting brief celebration of Barzun's work, here.
I enjoyed especially Champion's quoting from an interview Barzun gave to a reporter from the Austin Chronicle. The reporter remarked that Barzun had been in close working academic relationships with a lot of Marxists during the 1930s, but had never shown any enthusiasm for Marxism himself, nor had he ever taken up arms against it, identifying himself as an anti-Marxist. The exchange runs thus:
Barzun: I had no Marxist colouring, such as they had ... I stood aloof, although not hostile, and I take it they weren’t hostile to me. They deplored my blindness.
AC: You started writing about Romanticism when that was not very popular. It’s funny, you were aloof from Marxism, but also from the reaction to it, which was influenced so much by T.S. Eliot.
Barzun: Yes, I was always against the current. Eliot of course got it from Babbitt, who got it from the French eminences of anti-Romanticism. What I read about Romanticism didn’t agree with what was said about it. Everything in the books was contrary to fact and legitimate conclusions of fact. Including all sorts of fabrications, simply lies that had gotten into the critical stream and were reproduced over and over again without being checked.
AC: You seem temperamentally more comfortable being at the limit of the Zeitgeist than being in the center of things.
Barzun: Well, I would call that the historian’s detachment.
My own sense of Barzun's politics is that he has a fondness for various pre-Marxist sorts of socialism (what Marxists call the "utopian" sorts) and that he blames Marxism and its materialistic emphasis for having cut short that promising line of thought. Likewise with contemporary biology. He identifies with pre-Darwinian notions of evolution and, here too, sees Darwinian notions as too mechanistic and a threat to more vital conceptions of life.
Anyway, if I'm right to think of Barzun as a sort of Proudhonist politically, it explains how he has admirers of both right and left. When his writings touch on politics, there is the air of an emigrant's nostalgia that appeals to the right, but the Proudhonist idealism comes through and appeals more to the left.
16 October 2010
Writing Against The Scholars
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man, that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in support of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people."
Joshua Greene, an assistant professor of psychology at at Harvard University with an interest in moral philosophy, has evidently found that a stimulating quote. It inspired the title and much of the reasoning of his essay The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul. (Hmmmm. A Harvard man officially tasked with teaching psychology who writes about moral philosophy? Why would he interest a Jamesian like myself?)
Greene discusses trolley cars in that essay, and regular readers of Pragmatism Refreshed will not be surprised to learn that this bit drew my attention. [I'll assume my reader already familiar with the standard trolley-car hypothetical. Follow that last link if you want a refresher.]
Greene ups the ante: "What if the trolley is headed for a detonator that will set off a nuclear bomb that will kill half a million people?" he imagines asking a stubborn deontologist. "Suddenly the welfare of society as a whole starts to sound important again."
His point is that the initial refusal of many of his students to (imaginatively) sacrifice somebody to an oncoming trolley for the good of two or more somebodies is an emotional reaction, one bred into us by evolution, where immediate interpersonal relations are the only ones that really counted for our selfish genes. The emotional reaction gives way and "cognition" kicks in once numbers get really large.
So should we conclude that we owe it to ourselves as a species to get over our inbred emotional responses and do the right thing as our cognition indicates? That deontology is a phase in our existence we ought finally to outgrow? Green does not draw that conclusion. After all, taken without qualification that line of reasoning tells me also that I should "feel uneasy" about loving my children more than any other children. No parent [almost no parent?] feels uneasy about that, and Greene states the reason well. "It seems that one who is unwilling to act on human tendencies with amoral evolutionary causes is ultimately unwilling to be human." There must be a line between "correcting the near-sightedness of human moral nature and obliterating it completely...." Giving up on parental love would obliterate human nature. On which side of the line would one put the deontological refusal to stop the runaway trolley, even if it dooms two victims rather than one? Is that the humanness we must preserve or the near-sightedness thereof we should correct?
Greene leaves that question open. But the fact that he suggests deontology still has some life in it, even after treating it as an emotional response at odds with cognition, suggests that the secret in his soul may be the same as the secret in Kant's.
Joshua Greene, an assistant professor of psychology at at Harvard University with an interest in moral philosophy, has evidently found that a stimulating quote. It inspired the title and much of the reasoning of his essay The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul. (Hmmmm. A Harvard man officially tasked with teaching psychology who writes about moral philosophy? Why would he interest a Jamesian like myself?)
Greene discusses trolley cars in that essay, and regular readers of Pragmatism Refreshed will not be surprised to learn that this bit drew my attention. [I'll assume my reader already familiar with the standard trolley-car hypothetical. Follow that last link if you want a refresher.]
Greene ups the ante: "What if the trolley is headed for a detonator that will set off a nuclear bomb that will kill half a million people?" he imagines asking a stubborn deontologist. "Suddenly the welfare of society as a whole starts to sound important again."
His point is that the initial refusal of many of his students to (imaginatively) sacrifice somebody to an oncoming trolley for the good of two or more somebodies is an emotional reaction, one bred into us by evolution, where immediate interpersonal relations are the only ones that really counted for our selfish genes. The emotional reaction gives way and "cognition" kicks in once numbers get really large.
So should we conclude that we owe it to ourselves as a species to get over our inbred emotional responses and do the right thing as our cognition indicates? That deontology is a phase in our existence we ought finally to outgrow? Green does not draw that conclusion. After all, taken without qualification that line of reasoning tells me also that I should "feel uneasy" about loving my children more than any other children. No parent [almost no parent?] feels uneasy about that, and Greene states the reason well. "It seems that one who is unwilling to act on human tendencies with amoral evolutionary causes is ultimately unwilling to be human." There must be a line between "correcting the near-sightedness of human moral nature and obliterating it completely...." Giving up on parental love would obliterate human nature. On which side of the line would one put the deontological refusal to stop the runaway trolley, even if it dooms two victims rather than one? Is that the humanness we must preserve or the near-sightedness thereof we should correct?
Greene leaves that question open. But the fact that he suggests deontology still has some life in it, even after treating it as an emotional response at odds with cognition, suggests that the secret in his soul may be the same as the secret in Kant's.
04 May 2012
Black's Law Dictionary
I'd like to thank The Federal Lawyer for bringing me the news (in its May 2012 issue) that there is a new edition of Black's Law Dictionary available, the 9th.
This is not to say that I plan to rush out and buy it. My own quite limited need for legal lexicography is still satisfied by the very old (4th edition!) Black's that sits on the shelf above my desk. Still, it is good to see the mind of Black’s editor Bryan Garner at work as he explains the principles that have been guiding him over years of work on the evolution of this reference text.
Challenged, I looked up “bough of a tree,” in my old Black’s Fourth. I learned (or was reminded, I think I had heard it before) that the bough of a tree in feudal law was a symbol, it “gave seisin of land.” In other words, a feudal lord would hand a tenant who owed him fealty a bough of a tree taken from a plot of land, as a way of saying, “this plot is now yours to possess and work [so long as I continue to get my cut.]” It was the same sort of symbolic gesture we see today when a landlord hands you the keys to your new apartment, often with a bit of a flourish!
Knowing this, my dear reader, do you think Mr Garner should be boasting about having excluded such words in his own re-workings? Or do you think it made some sense to include this legal-history tidbit. Let us thrash it out here!
This is not to say that I plan to rush out and buy it. My own quite limited need for legal lexicography is still satisfied by the very old (4th edition!) Black's that sits on the shelf above my desk. Still, it is good to see the mind of Black’s editor Bryan Garner at work as he explains the principles that have been guiding him over years of work on the evolution of this reference text.
He writes that at least as recently as the 6th
edition Black’s contained definitions for (just taking examples from the Bs):
botulism, bouche (mouth), bough of a tree, bought, bouncer, bourg, boulevard,
bourgeois, Brabant,brabanter, and brachium maris.
“These can hardly be counted as legal terms worthy of
inclusion in a true law dictionary,” he says. So presumably he has been weeding
out such things. Challenged, I looked up “bough of a tree,” in my old Black’s Fourth. I learned (or was reminded, I think I had heard it before) that the bough of a tree in feudal law was a symbol, it “gave seisin of land.” In other words, a feudal lord would hand a tenant who owed him fealty a bough of a tree taken from a plot of land, as a way of saying, “this plot is now yours to possess and work [so long as I continue to get my cut.]” It was the same sort of symbolic gesture we see today when a landlord hands you the keys to your new apartment, often with a bit of a flourish!
Knowing this, my dear reader, do you think Mr Garner should be boasting about having excluded such words in his own re-workings? Or do you think it made some sense to include this legal-history tidbit. Let us thrash it out here!
25 June 2011
Why I Am Not A Conservative, Conclusion
In the end, the reasons I am not a conservative (the reasons that label doesn't apply to the views I do hold, and the reasons I don't agree with views to which the label more readily does apply) are roughly the same as those Hayek set out.
Hayek's essay of this title was published in the very same year as the Goldwater book I've been examining: 1960. Hayek said that in our day (in this respect, he speaks even more to ours than to his own) "movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty." A conservative and a real liberal, a defender of individual, may well be thrown together in mutual opposition to those progressive movements which may call themselves liberal.
But Hayek also said that the problem with conservatism is that it offers no alternative. "Let-us-keep- the-good-things-we-have" is not an alternative to change, because the world will necessarily change, and the real struggle has to be over the direction of change. Toward more liberty, or toward less?
Hayek wrote, "the tug of war between conservatives amd progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments."
That sentence echoes remarkably Goldwaters sentence, written at roughly the same time, about how the trouble with liberals is that they are in a hurry. That is just what Hayek warned us conservatives would falsely say the trouble with "liberals" -- the folks he called progressives -- is. The real trouble, on the other hand, is that the progressives are pulling us in the wrong direction.
I am reminded of a buddy of mine in college who was arrested for drunk driving. That was the 1970s, and -- so long as no one was hurt -- drunk driving was not yet regarded as the horrendous offense it is nowadays taken to be. It was under the general category stupid-college-kid offense.
Anyway, my buddy was driving along a sidewalk when he was arrested -- which made the breathalyzer test almost entirely unnecessary. The next day, after I bailed him out, he complained to me that among the 6 or 7 charges for which the police officer had written him up, there was "speeding." This was too much. How could he have been speeding when he was driving on a place he shouldn't have been driving on at any rate!
I'm not, BTW, making fun of DWI offenses. I was simply amused by my friend's indignation, and it comes back to me now because Hayek was offering in all seriousness -- and I think rightly -- the same complaint against the Goldwaters of the world. They should not pretend that any part of the offense is speeding. The problem is that progressives have us on a sidewalk!
This problem won't be resolved by complaints that suggest that a slower rate of speed on the sidewalk would be okay.
So: what are we to say about Goldwater's opposition to Brown v. Board? Does it tell us anything beyond that one historic incident? It tells us, I submit, that at a time when the progressive agenda demanded the end to Jim Crow, the conservative attitude reflexively defended Jim Crow. Of course, many people defended Jim Crow out of self-interest. It helped a lot of white people avoid competition in the job market, for example. The privileged generally abstain from challenging the grounds of their privilege. But even those who lived in states without Jim Crow often reflexively defended the system, or opposed its opponents, out of the knee-jerk reflex Hayek understood.
It tells us, also, that when the progressives won that one, when Jim Crow was dead, conservatives in time came along, and posed as the true defenders of equality of opportunity for the Linda Browns of the world-- not because their principles had changed, but because the real objection posed by those principles had been one of velocity, and that is irrelevant given an accomplished fact.
A true liberal -- a believer in liberty, and in such forms of progress as serve liberty, consistent with the preserving of such liberty as has been attained -- would have found the root of the problem in the whole notion of mandatory public education. Naturally, if there are government-run mandatory schools, if taxes are used to pay for them, if people under an arbitrary age are ordered to attend them absent specific state-sponsored exemptions -- then virtually everything that is done in the administration of that system will seem tyrannical to someone. Evolution is taught or it isn't -- coercion either way. The pledge of allegiance is made part of a regular ritual, or it isn't -- coercion either way. The races are separated or they aren't -- coercion either way IF one understands that the system itself is coercive.
The real direction of progress (not of progressivism) would involve getting people to see market alternatives, and understand that the forces of spontaneous order will address all such dilemma to the extent they are allowed to do so.
In some moments Goldwater seems to want to follow that rule. Alas, though, he was all too often a conservative instead.
Hayek's essay of this title was published in the very same year as the Goldwater book I've been examining: 1960. Hayek said that in our day (in this respect, he speaks even more to ours than to his own) "movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty." A conservative and a real liberal, a defender of individual, may well be thrown together in mutual opposition to those progressive movements which may call themselves liberal.
But Hayek also said that the problem with conservatism is that it offers no alternative. "Let-us-keep- the-good-things-we-have" is not an alternative to change, because the world will necessarily change, and the real struggle has to be over the direction of change. Toward more liberty, or toward less?
Hayek wrote, "the tug of war between conservatives amd progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments."
That sentence echoes remarkably Goldwaters sentence, written at roughly the same time, about how the trouble with liberals is that they are in a hurry. That is just what Hayek warned us conservatives would falsely say the trouble with "liberals" -- the folks he called progressives -- is. The real trouble, on the other hand, is that the progressives are pulling us in the wrong direction.
I am reminded of a buddy of mine in college who was arrested for drunk driving. That was the 1970s, and -- so long as no one was hurt -- drunk driving was not yet regarded as the horrendous offense it is nowadays taken to be. It was under the general category stupid-college-kid offense.
Anyway, my buddy was driving along a sidewalk when he was arrested -- which made the breathalyzer test almost entirely unnecessary. The next day, after I bailed him out, he complained to me that among the 6 or 7 charges for which the police officer had written him up, there was "speeding." This was too much. How could he have been speeding when he was driving on a place he shouldn't have been driving on at any rate!
I'm not, BTW, making fun of DWI offenses. I was simply amused by my friend's indignation, and it comes back to me now because Hayek was offering in all seriousness -- and I think rightly -- the same complaint against the Goldwaters of the world. They should not pretend that any part of the offense is speeding. The problem is that progressives have us on a sidewalk!
This problem won't be resolved by complaints that suggest that a slower rate of speed on the sidewalk would be okay.
So: what are we to say about Goldwater's opposition to Brown v. Board? Does it tell us anything beyond that one historic incident? It tells us, I submit, that at a time when the progressive agenda demanded the end to Jim Crow, the conservative attitude reflexively defended Jim Crow. Of course, many people defended Jim Crow out of self-interest. It helped a lot of white people avoid competition in the job market, for example. The privileged generally abstain from challenging the grounds of their privilege. But even those who lived in states without Jim Crow often reflexively defended the system, or opposed its opponents, out of the knee-jerk reflex Hayek understood.
It tells us, also, that when the progressives won that one, when Jim Crow was dead, conservatives in time came along, and posed as the true defenders of equality of opportunity for the Linda Browns of the world-- not because their principles had changed, but because the real objection posed by those principles had been one of velocity, and that is irrelevant given an accomplished fact.
A true liberal -- a believer in liberty, and in such forms of progress as serve liberty, consistent with the preserving of such liberty as has been attained -- would have found the root of the problem in the whole notion of mandatory public education. Naturally, if there are government-run mandatory schools, if taxes are used to pay for them, if people under an arbitrary age are ordered to attend them absent specific state-sponsored exemptions -- then virtually everything that is done in the administration of that system will seem tyrannical to someone. Evolution is taught or it isn't -- coercion either way. The pledge of allegiance is made part of a regular ritual, or it isn't -- coercion either way. The races are separated or they aren't -- coercion either way IF one understands that the system itself is coercive.
The real direction of progress (not of progressivism) would involve getting people to see market alternatives, and understand that the forces of spontaneous order will address all such dilemma to the extent they are allowed to do so.
In some moments Goldwater seems to want to follow that rule. Alas, though, he was all too often a conservative instead.
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