Evolution is a Basic Principle

Evolution is a Basic Principle

Creationists generally talk of the “theory of evolution”. Many who disagree with creationism reply that evolution is no such thing, but a fact. Thereby they fall into the same dogmatism as certain of their opponents, and become subject to the same refutation. After all, what is a fact? Nobody alive has ever met an Australopithecus or watched prokaryotic cells develop in the pre-Cambrian seas. It is a rather feeble retort that nobody has met Adam and Eve either, or watched the world coming into being by fiat.

In the last analysis, those of us who accept the idea of evolution do so because it is an inference, based on many different accumulated observations, which enables us to account for those data, fit them into a scheme that makes sense. The creationist can quite legitimately reply that this is what his beliefs do for him.

However, at this point in the history of science, it is a mistake to agree that evolution is a mere “theory”. That concedes more to the creationist than he deserves.

What is a theory, anyway? To answer that question, we must take a look at the scientific method itself.

Now, a number of distinguished scientists have denied that there is any such thing, and I rather agree with them. That, though, would take us too fat afield now. Let us just glance at the traditional paradigm, oversimplified though it is, the purpose will only be to make clear what we mean by certain words.

In this paradigm, scientists begin by making observations of nature, as exact as possible. Then somebody formulates a scheme which summarizes those observations, preferably in mathematical terms. That is because mathematics is the language par excellence of precision. Somebody else takes such a description and tries to explain it by a hypothesis. That is, this person proposes the existence of a mechanism or a relationship which would logically produce the observations themselves. A good hypothesis also yields predictions; it tells us what further observations we should try to make. If we make them, and the results fit the scheme well enough, then in due course the hypothesis gains the status of a theory. That is, we accept it as depicting, more or less correctly, some aspect of reality.

Evolution is no longer a mere theory. Illustration by Elena.

Later discoveries may prove irreconcilable with the theory. In that case, we have to discard it – or, at least, drastically modify it – and look for another.

The standard example comes from planetary astronomy. For untold millenia, observers had been gathering data about the motions of the heavenly bodies across the sky. This effort culminated, for the time being, in the magnificent work of Tycho Brahe in the 16th century. Meanwhile, of course, there had been many attempts to account for the data. The idea that everything revolves around Earth grew increasingly unlikely as information accumulated; the picture had to be made too complicated, with epicycles. As early as the 13th century, Alfonso X, king of Leon and Castile, remarked that if he had been present at the Creation, he could have given the Creator some good advice.

Eventually Nicholas Copernicus offered a much more satisfactory description, in which the sun was at the center. Galileo Galilei and others refined this system and added to it. Finally Johannes Kepler put it into elegant mathematical form, in his three laws of planetary motion.

Isaac Newton then accounted for those laws by his hypothesis of universal gravitation (even though he himself denied making hypothesis) together with his own three laws of the motion of all bodies, not just planets. Soon observation confirmed this so well that it became a basic theory in physics. By means of it, later generations discovered new planets and explained the behavior of distant stars.

There remained a few loose ends, such as a slow change in the orbit of Mercury. Early in the 20th century, Albert Einstein proposed a whole new theory, general relativity, which included Newtonian mechanics as a special case, and which accounted for those anomalous phenomena.

Thus far the usual description of science in action. As said, it is much oversimplified, and in many instances is scarcely true at all. Still, if nothing else, it does help us give clear meaning to our words.

The important point here, though, is that even taken as face value it is incomplete. It omits a further stage of thought which is of primary importance.

Before going on to that, let us very sketchily review the history of the evolutionary concept. That way we can compare it to the development of astronomy. If nothing else, we will be reminding ourselves that the idea of evolution was not invented by a few subversives in the 19th century, but has a long and honorable pas of its own.

By 1800 the concept was already in the air. There had been some speculation along those lines as far back as Classical times, if not before. During the Renaissance and after, men gradually realized that they were coming upon the petrified bones of beasts which no longer existed. Early in the 19th century, the great French naturalist Georges Cuvier advanced the hypothesis that more than one creation had occurred in the past: that life had appeared several times, to be wiped out by worldwide catastrophes, and that the account in the Bible refers only to the latest of these eras. Regardless of this deferral to religion, Cuvier was considered blasphemous by many. Once some of his students decided to throw a healthy scare into him. One of them costumed himself like the traditional Satan, entered the professor's home at night, woke him, and roared, “ I am the Devil, and for your impiety I have come to eat you!” Cuvier looked him up and down and replied scornfully, :Hmf! Horns and hoofs. You can't. You're graminivorous.”

His catastrophism was denied by a contemporary compatriot, Jean Baptiste Lamarck. A war here at age sixteen, Lamarck later boldly maintained that living species, had developed from less specialized ancestors. However, he thought that the causes lay in environment and the actions of individual organisms. This was so unconvincing that few accepted it until the 20th century, when for a time a version of it became official dogma in the Soviet Union.

(By Poul Anderson).

Evolution has become just such a basic principle. It is as much a fundamental of the universe, as we conceive the universe to be, as are the laws of thermodynamics or relativity. There is no scientific argument against it, only antiscientific one. Illustration by Elena.

Reality is Complex

Reality is Complex and in Polarity

A dialectical perspective holds that reality in complex, oppositional, and in polarity. Again, we intuitively recognize this from our lives and clinical work. Say a 12-year-old runaway (built like a 15-year-old) is admitted to a psychiatric unit by police. The file shows he's had horrible physical abuse as a child and mild developmental disability. As you interview him he appears to have manic symptoms with extreme irritability. Multiple drugs show in the tox screen. He's admitted for observation. At this point you think, “Huh, there is this and there is that, and then there is this other piece, wow, this is complicated.” But then he physically threatens the petite, beloved social worker in a sexually graphic way; now there is high emotion among the staff. 

As soon as someone on the inpatient unit takes the position of being flexible on program rules, it elicits someone else's description of why in this case no exceptions to the rule should be made. One person thinks the client can be reasonably discharged, which prompts someone else on the team to give reasons why that is not a good idea. We often respond to complexity in oppositional or polarized ways. The existence of “yes” gives rise to “no”, “all” to “nothing”. Maybe it is the nature of reality or may be simply the nature of human perception or language. 

Whatever the reason, we often fall into processes in which oppositional elements are in tension with each other. When applied to human conflict, often both opposing positions may be true or contain elements of the truth (e.g., there are valid reasons to discharge and to delay discharge). Taken together, these first two dialectical assumptions mean no one ever has a “whole” perspective on a client. Therapists are like the blind men each touching a part of an elephant and each being certain that the whole is exactly as the part they are touching. “An elephant is big and floppy,” “no,no, long and round and thin,” “no, no, no, solid like a wall.” Each has an alternative perspective. Each is true and each is partial.

From this view, then, smart, reasonable, people will disagree. Polarized divergent opinions are seen as inevitable when problems are complex. Nothing is wrong: the client isn't pathologically splitting the team; the therapist isn't (necessarily) naïve or narcissistic. It is simply the nature of the phenomenon. No one person on a treatment team has a lock on important. Therefore, DBT puts a large emphasis on dialogues that lead to synthesis. How does the piece I hold fit with yours to make a more complete, coherent, or workable whole? Together we search for what is valid and polarized or divergent positions rather than striving for a unified front. Rather than artificially resolve a conflict by dropping one end of the dialectic or fighting only for one position, effort is made to stay engaged without appeasing, capitulating, dominating, or accepting the invalid.

Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (A Practical Guide by Kelly Koerner).

Reality is complex... Photo by Elena.

Science and Creation

Science and Creation

One of the less endearing – and more dangerous -features of the 20th century has been a worldwide tendency to substitute rhetoric for discourse. By now, reasoned debate is a rarity. There is seldom even any effort to understand an opposing point of view. Instead, a person attributes opinions or attitudes to the other fellow and proceeds to heap billingsgate upon him because of them, although they may not actually be what he means at all. Living near Berkeley, California, I have over the years watched this sort of thing develop in the academic community and its hangers-on, until I am inclined to agree with a fictional character of mine who remarked, “Sure, I'm anti-intellectual. I prefer people who think...”

Well, that may be just a little exaggerated, a hint of the same behavior I was condemning. It got your attention, though, didn't it? Let me try to make the rest of this essay an exercise in rationality.

I propose to discuss the “scientific creationism” is so much in the current news. My conclusion will scarcely surprise you: that “scientific creationism” is a contradiction in terms. If that were all, there would be no point ins stating it yet again. Why preach to the choir? However, it does seem to me that spokesmen for the scientific establishment have generally made their points poorly, because often they themselves don't quite realize what the concept of evolution signifies. Thus the argument we'll advance against creationism here will take a turn that may prove surprising, therefore enlightening, to some readers. Indeed, it will be only the first step in a brief exploration of the philosophy of science. 

We begin by forswearing. The creationists are not a bunch of yahoos. They are generally well-educated and well-mannered individuals, a number of them with excellent scientific credentials. (While I don't know just what James Irwin's views on evolution are, we all know he believes the Biblical story of Noah is substantially true, and led an expedition in search of the remains of the Ark – after having been on the moon).  Nor do most of them want to suppress any other doctrine. Socially and politically, they have several quite valid, important points to make. Secular humanism has in fact become the teaching of the public schools, to the exclusion of crucial parts of our heritage. The effects on culture are already sad, the implications for the future of liberty and even for national survival ominous. Would it really infringe anybody's constitutional rights if children were to learn something about the roots of their civilization?

The question remains: How shall we persuade a lot of perfectly nice people that they are undermining a cornerstone of their entire civilization? Illustration by Elena.

But this does not mean they should learn things, at taxpayer expense, which simply are not true. By now, the scientific attitude and the body of discoveries to which it has led are themselves basic to society, and not merely Western society. “Scientific” creationism is not content to maintain that the universe is the work of God. It claims that this Earth is, at most, a few thousand years old, and that the species of living beings we know today came into being in their present forms. Of course, the First Amendment guarantees any American the right to believe and argue for that, and teach it privately. But the notion has no more claim on “equal time” in public education than do, say, astrology, psionics, or Marxism.

It is scarcely necessary here to repeat what has often been pointed out: that if the creationist assertion were true, then our astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and archaeology must be false. For example, evidence for geological ages includes matters as diverse as the well-established laws of radioactive decay and a cosmic red shift observed by familiar techniques of spectroscopy. Much has been made of certain unexplained anomalies in certain mineral formations – far too much. Science is always coming upon such phenomena, and needing time and effort to learn what brings them about.. We don't yet understand ball lightning very well, either; but nobody says that, on this account, we should throw out our meteorology. Instead, what understanding we do have provides a context within which to seek explanations of countless details.

Thus the claim that our planet is less than a million years old, and has undergone no significant changes during its existence, is incompatible with science. At best, a person might declare that God created the universe recently, full of misleading clues to something quite different. Emotionally, I am inclined to think this is an insult to the Creator. In the famous words of Einstein, the Lord is subtle, but He is not malicious. Logically, we need only note that the declaration is, by its nature, untestable, incapable of being disproven; therefore it is devoid of empirical meaning.

We might, though, find it worthwhile at this point to refute one statement frequently made by creationists, that the development of matter and life from primitive to complex forms would violate the second law of thermodynamics. Even some who have accepted evolution as a fact, such as the late Lecomte de Noüy, have maintained that it would have been statistically impossible without supernatural guidance. They should have known better. 

Part of the problem arises because the second law is deceptively simple looking but has profound and far-reaching implications. It can be expressed in confusingly many ways, and has been. In one of my college textbooks (Physical Chemistry, by Frank MacDougall, Macmillan, 1944) the phrasing of the law goes: It is impossible to devise any mechanism or machine by means of which a quantity of heat can be converted into the equivalent amount of work without producing other changes in the state of some body or bodies concerned in the process. Another book (Introduction to Theoretical Physics, by Leigh Page, Van Nostrand, 1928) puts it as: No self-acting engine can transfer heat from a body of lower temperature to one of higher temperature. Here a “self-acting engine” means, essentially, one which is isolated from outside influences and which takes its working substance through one or more complete cycles.

There are numerous other, equally valid versions of the same truth, but these two should be enough to show that we are dialing with something which is quite basic and not at all self-evident.

There is no scientific argument against evolution, only an antiscientific one. Image by Elena.

Marque and Reprisal

Marque and Reprisal

By Poul Anderson

1700 hours in San Francisco was 20000 in Washington, but Harold Twyman, senior senator from California and majority leader of United States representatives in the Parliament of the World Federation, was a busy man whose secretary could not arrange a sealed-call appointment any earlier on such short notice as Heim had given. However, that suited the latter quite well. It gave him time to recover from the previous night without excessive use of drugs, delegate the most pressing business at the Heimdal plant to the appropriate men, and study Vadasz's evidence. The Magyar was still asleep in a guest room. His body had a lot of abuse to repair.

Shortly before 1700 Heim decided he was sufficiently familiar with the material Robert de Vigny had assembled. He clicked off the viewer, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. An assortment of aces still nibbled at him. Once – Lord, it didn't seem very long ago! - he could have weathered twenty times the bout he'd just been through, and made love to three or four girls, and been ready to ship out next morning. I'm at the awkward age, he thought wryly. Too young for antisenescence treatment to make any difference, too old for – what? Nothing, by Satan! I simply sit too much these days. Let me get away for a bit and this paunch I'm developing will melt off. He sucked in his stomach, reached for a pipe, and stuffed the bowl with unnecessary violence.

Why not take a vacation? He thought. Go into the woods and hunt; he had a standing invitation to use Kan McVeigh's game preserve in British Colombia. Or sail his catamaran to Hawaii. Or order out his interplanetary yacht, climb the Lunar Alps, tramp the Martian hills; Earth was so stinking cluttered. Or even book an interstellar passage. He hadn't seen his birthplace on Gea since his parents sent him back to Stavanger to get a proper education. Afterward there had been Greenland Academy, and the Deepspace Fleet, and Earth again, always too much to do.

Shraply before him the memory rose: Tau Ceti a ball of red gold in the sky; mountains coming down to the sea as they did in Norway, but the oceans of Gea were warm and green and haunted him with odors that had no human name; the Sindabans that were his boyhood playmate, laughing just like him as they all ran to the water and piled into a pirogue, raised the wingsail and leaped before the wind; campfire on the island, where flames sprang forth to pick daoda fronds and the slim furry bodies of his friends out of a night that sang; chants and drums and portentous ceremonies; and – and – No. Heim struck a light to his tobacco and puffed hard. I was twelve years old when I left. And now Far and Mor are dead, and my Sindabans grown into an adulthood which humans are still trying to understand. I'd only find an isolated little scientific base, no different from two score that I've seen elsewhere. Time is a one-way lane.

With enough strength, lightweight unclefts can be made to togethermelt. Illustration by Elena.

My Object All Sublime

My Object All Sublime

By Poul Anderson

Once upon a time, a very, very long time in the future, there was a civilization. I shall not describe it to you, for that would not be possible. Could you go back to the time of the Egyptian pyramid builders and tell them about this city below us? I don't mean they wouldn't believe you;, of course they wouldn't, but that hardly matters. I mean they would not understand. Nothing you said could make sense to them. And the way people work and think and believe would be less comprehensible than those lights and towers and machines. Not so? If I spoke to you of people in the future living among great blinding energies, and of genetic changelings, and imaginary wars, and talking stones, and a certain blind hunter, you might feel anything at all, but you would not understand.

So I ask you only to imagine how many thousands of times this planet has circled the sun, how deeply buried and forgotten we are; and then also to imagine that this other civilization thinks in patterns so foreign that it has ignored every limitation of logic and natural law, to discover means of traveling in time. So, while the ordinary dweller in that age (I can't exactly call him a citizen, or anything else for which we have a word, because it would be too misleading), the average educated dweller, knows in a vague, uninterested way that millenia ago some semi-sauvages were the first to split the atom – only one or two men have actually been here, walked among us, studied and mapped us and returned with a file of information for the central brain, if I may call it by such a name. No one else is concerned with us, any more than you are concerned with early Mesopatamian archology. You see?

He dropped his gaze to the tumbler in his hand and held it there, as if the whisky were an oracular pool. The silence grew. At last I said, “Very well. For the sake of the story, I'll accept the premise. I imagine time travelers would be unnoticeable. They'd have techniques of disguise and so on. Wouldn't want to change their own past”.

“Oh, no danger of that,” he said. “It's only that they couldn't learn much if they went around insisting they were from the future. Just imagine.”

I chuckled.

Michaels gave me a shadowed look. “Apart from the scientific,” he said, “can you guess what use there might be for time travel?”

He shook his head. “Think again. They'd only want a limited number of Minoan statuettes, Ming vases, or Third World Hegemony dwarfs, chiefly for their museums. If “museum” isn't too inaccurate a word. I tell you, they are not like us. Af for natural resources, they're beyond the point of needing any; they make their own.”

He paused, as if before a final plunge. Then: “What was this penal colony the French abandoned?”

“Devil's Island?”

“Yes, that was it. Can you imagine a better revenge on a condemned criminal than to maroon him in the past.”

Punishment is a catharsis of society as a whole. Photo by Elena.