The Marxism conference begins on Thursday, so I'll be out of action there till probably the following Wednesday. John M is giving two presentations there, and needs help putting together powerpoint slideshows for both - so tonight I'm doing that. And picking up the minidiscs of the interview he conducted a few weeks ago, and if there's any time at all, begin transcribing it.
I had two hours to prepare my forum presentation on darwinism and creationism, so I just sat and wrote notes from memory, and selected from them as I presented. It stimulated a good discussion, covering Social Darwinism (aka Sociobiology), the place of real Darwinism in industrial capitalism, the conflict between science and religion, and the nature of certainty.
Roxanne came, bringing her ever delectable brother. Being flat broke between us, we went for drinks and a completely unnecessary curry afterwards while discussing how we couldn't really afford to go to Marxism2006. But were going anyway.
Oh, the weatherman says the country is set to get even hotter towards the end of the week, just as I'm crammed into a series of badly ventilated lecture halls filled with sweaty socialists who spent the night fitfully kipping on each other's floorboards.
My designated floorboards are in Tottenham, which means three hours on the bus each day. If politics were a love affair, I'd have gone celibate by now.
Anyway, these were my notes for the forum:
The christian religious right is attacking science and rationality. There's nothing new about that, but right now they're on the offensive, and though they haven't won any major victories yet, they're organised, well funded, and numerous.
The current main target for their propaganda is Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. So the first question I want to ask is: Why chose evolution? The second question is: What arguments do it's opponents use - and what's wrong with these arguments? And the third: Why should it matter to us? But before that: What is the theory of evolution anyway?
It's very simple. Offspring are slightly different from their parents and from each other. A few of these differences give small advangates or disadvantages in coping with the physical environment. Individuals with the advantageous differences have a marginally higher chance of breeding, and so passing on their variation. Over dozens or hundreds of generations, these variations build up into a general shift in the form of the species as it adapts.
There are plenty of little details. For instance, some species become overspecialised for their environment, so can't adapt quickly enough when it changes. Others divide into several isolated groups that diverge into seperate species, or into distinct subspecies that can interbreed but are significantly different.
You can fill libraries with the details and with examples, but the principle is amazingly simple.
So, why have the American fundamentalist christian political right chosen evolution as their target? I mean, there's plenty of other scientific theories, some of them really far-out and counterintuitive like String Theory and Quantium Mechanics. Others, like Einstein's Relativity, can be easily misrepresented as an attack on knowledege itself and moral values, and so attacked on those grounds.
Fluid Dynamics, Chemistry and the laws of thermodynamics are so badly misunderstood by the general public that it would be easy to rubbish them. Actually, pretty much all these theories are badly misunderstood by the general public.
I think one reason is that evolution is not necessary to industrial capitalism. The electrical laws and indeed some of quantum mechanics is obviously essential to build electronics. Newton's laws of motion and Solid Dynamics are needed for engineering. But you don't need knowledge of evolution do these things. In fact, often you don't need evolution to study most zoology or medicine.
Capitalism relies on technology, and so it relies on notions of science, reason, evidence and such. Capitalism also relies on these selfsame notions never being applied to itself - if you apply scientific method to capitalism, you get marxism, and capitalists don't want that.
So if you, as an ideologue on the offensive under capitalism, wish to begin destroying those parts of the Enlightenment legacy that threaten you, but keep those that support you intact, you need to begin by attacking, not the easy targets, but those you can most easily do without.
Certain kinds of evangelical christian like to range arguments against evolution that don't rely on their own religious faith. In the past few years, some of them have attempted to attack evolution on scientific grounds. Grounds like:
Evolution has never been observed
This is just preposterous. The first section of The Origin of Species isn't about exotic parrots or enormous tortoises - it's about pigeon fanciers. Professional breeders and racers of pigons have known for a very long time that the offspring of two fast birds are more likely to be fast than the offspring of two slow birds.
The fact that selective breeding works, whether you like it or not, shows that evolution occurs, because it shows that it can be controlled. You might say that the theory of eugenics is older than the theory of evolution.
Random chance can no more produce a working animal than a storm in a junk yard could produce a working car
But we’re not talking about random chance. We’re talking about selections from bounded variation.
Evolution is just one man's idea
Some say Darwin invented the whole of evolutionary theory in his head, and the rest of the scientific establishment inexplicably swallowed it. The idea is that before Darwin, everyone believed the literal word of the bible, that god created all the animals and they've never changed.
This is a rather strange thing to say, because Darwin's contemporaries knew perfectly well that species did change over time, that some died out and new ones appeared. Those who collected and studied fossils were very often priests with sidelines in paleontology. Academics were often required to know theology and be at least tokenistically christian.
It had long been common knowledge, even among the most devout, that the book of Genesis could not be literally true - it was effortlessly reinterpreted as a series of metaphors, as happens to all religious texts when they're disproven. And this process never damages the authority of the church for long.
The reason Darwin's theory attracted so much controversy was not that suggested species change, or that it proposed a mechanism for this change - there were several competing theories at the time, and most were quite similar to Darwins. No, the reason Darwin's explanation for species change was so controversial was that it said nothing about god.
According to Darwin, God was not necessary for evolution to occur - it happened whether or not he existed. The Origin Of Species in no way questions the existence and nature of god, and doesn't attack the church. It just doesn't give god anything to do.
Mutation
Evolution relies on chance mutations, which are selected for those which give some advantage. Genetic mutations are common in people living near the sites of nuclear explosions, but none of these mutations are positive, and these people aren't evolving faster than the rest of us.
This is simply a confusion about the meaning of mutation. Whenever a new human is made by reproduction, the mix of parental genes creates a new variation on an existing template. In addition, some genes will also mutate in the sense that small random changes are introduced by the planet's background radiation and by tiny chemical hiccups in the cells.
The vast majority of these variations and mutations have no measurable effect at all. Even the small number which affect the physical form of the offspring are well within normal parameters. Creationists here are confusing mutation with disability.
The lunatic wing of creationism is called Intelligent Design Theory. They are explicitly and unashamedly religious, but try to juggle this with the claim that a creator being need not be the supreme being of any existing religion.
When the chips are down though, they always name this creator as Yahweh if they're christian, or Allah if they're part of the growing Islamic creationist movement.
Behind all the obscuring verbiage, their message is: God will send you to hell if you believe in evolution, and...
Darwin was an atheist
Therefore presumably he published his theory to attack the church. Darwinism is part of an anti-faith conspiracy of godless scientists who want to impose their shallow materialism on decent folk.
Not that it matters, but Darwin was a committed christian and uncritical supporter of the church and establishment. When he wrote about social issues he was just as racist and incohearant as any other victorian gentleman.
They also say scientifically illitarate things like...
Evolution is only a theory, not proven fact
Whenever I've come across this one, I have to ask "What do you mean by Theory" and "What would constitute proof". At which point I'm hyserically accused of being a liberal, an atheist, a communist and probably a homosexual. I can’t think why ;-).
All these objections to evolution are pretty stupid. I mention them because they're quite common, but they hold no water at all. However, there are a few *good* objections to Darwinism - by which I mean, objections that rely on more subtle misunderstandings, and which need more than a second's thought to tear apart.
5% of a wing
Mammals don't fly, but some reptiles do. I can't think of a single species that has a system of internal heat regulation that has wings, and I can't think of a single creature with wings that also regulates it's body temperature in the way mammals do. Which suggests that there's a connection between a species not having mammalian physiology, and that species having the ability to develop wings.
This relates to one of the more common carricatures of Darwin's theory - the notion that evolution is completely free. That any species can develop in any direction if it's advantageous at the time. That cows could develop an extra pair of legs if the environment changed and they needed to walk on rocky terrain, that humans could develop feathers for warmth in an ice age, or rats could come up with eyes in the back of their head to better see predators.
Evolution is not free. Cows have no existing structures of bone and muscle that they could turn into extra legs, mammals could never develop feathers because, unlike reptiles, they don't have the scales that can be modified into feathers, and rats can't afford to take a few centuries off re-engineer their skulls for extra eyes.
In fact, no species does, and this is another carricature of evolution. Evolution does *not* allow species to go through useless or dangerous intermediate stages (for ten generations or a thousand) to eventually produce a useful adaptation. Each stage of adaptation must be useful at the time.
There's no way for that part of the fish jawbone that eventually becomes the mammalian hearing mechanism to think to itself, "I know these proto-ears have no function at the moment, and their development is causing havoc to the rest of the head, but trust me, in a few thousand years they'll be really useful".
But surely, the creationists say, if proto-ears and proto-wings are useless, they couldn't develop at all. I mean, what use is 5% of a wing?
The answer is that 5% of a wing is no good as a wing, but is useful as a means of cooling the body, but only to species that don't have internal temperature regulation. And that's why reptiles can develop wings but mammals can't.
5% of a wing is essentually a cooling fan flapped by muscles in the back. And 10% is a larger fan, powered by larger muscles. But 25% can also be used to glide when jumping from trees. And although 50% is too large and unweildy to be used for it's original cooling purpose, it's still useful for gliding, and it can go on growing because, up to a point, the bigger the sail, the better for gliding.
Then there comes a point where the sail gets so large and heavy that it's weight overcomes it's use in gliding. But by that time the wing is large enough and the muscles in the back are strong enough that they can flap, and take off.
Provided of course that the reptile would gain some advantage from flying. And if it lived in a desert without trees, it might need cooling fans, but it wouldn't need to develop sail to glide down from them with. That's why you don't get flying lizards evolving in places without trees.
It's all very elegant, determined only by the basic laws of physics and the need to survive in the circumstances given by the environment. There's no need for a creator who designs animals to fit their environment, or one who guides evolution by periodically redesigning them. The redesigning is automatic, built into the system.
Of course, you could then say that god created the system and then left it to run. But that's a pretty empty notion of god. It's like the god who creates the universe and then retires into noninterferance - praying to a deity to give you money or courage or salvation when you believe he never intervenes seems a tad pointless.
Irreducible Complexity
This comes from a subtle misunderstanding of that insight - that intermediate states in evolving organs don't occur if they don't serve some function, whether or not the intermediate use to which the organ is put is the same as it's eventual use.
The idea is that the various parts of the eye - retina, eyeball, cornea, optic nerve bundles etc - are seperate organs, each with their own evolutionary path, and the eye is therefore a composite of their various operations.
And that there's no reason for the evolution of the cornea to 'co-operate' with the evolution of the retina, because of a known mutual eventual benefit. These two organs have their own 'agendas', and it's therefore extremely unlikely that their unrelated interests should dovetail so neatly. It's like the monkeys on a typewriter hitting exactly the right keys to produce Hamlet.
It would be like ICI, Microsoft, Halliburton and a dozen other multinationals, each competing in their non-overlapping sphere of business, accidentally creating socialism from the chaos of capitalism.
Irreducible complexity is William Dembski's big idea. He says complex organs could not evolve in this way, and therefore a creator must have designed them.
There’s two problems here. First, it’s perfectly true that it’s monstrously unlikely for a cornea for emerge in just the right place over an iris without forward planning. But we’re not talking about organs evolving into existance by co-ordinating with each other, we’re talking about the most simply of light sensitive organs becoming more complex.
You might ask: What use is a very primative eye giving weak blurred vision? Ask a blind man.
But this is really just the old obervation that, "Isn't it fortunate that cats happen to have holes in their fur exactly where their eyes are?" Isn't it amazing that your feet are on the end of your legs instead of on your elbows? I mean, if they're in exactly the right place for you to walk on them. That can't be chance.
It's like when Tony Hancock in that famous "Blood Donor" sketch explained the existence of blood as something for the heart to pump around.
Interconnectedness
These two objections - 5% of a wing and what we now call Irreducible Complexity - were objections made at the time by the more intelligent of Dawin's critics. In fact, Darwin answered them, quite correctly and completely, in the second edition of the book.
The third good argument with Darwin dealt with was that bodily dimensions are densely interrelated, so changing one involves changing them all.
Increasing the length of the leg means increasing the width of the bones in the leg to support the extra stresses. But this also entails enlarging the muscles so they'll have the strength to move the larger bones, and proportionately engarging the connective tissue and skin. But it doesn't stop there, because the muscles of the lower back and abdomen are also involved in moving the legs, and the ribcage and spine will have to be modified to accommodate them. And so on. So one small change may end up entailing a complete redesign.
But this isn't the problem it appears. All it means is that, for a tall person to avoid back pain in later life, it would help if they had larger back muscles. It doesn't mean that tall people are instantly completely unviable. It does mean that humans are not perfectly designed.
Which is an argument against a perfect designer. Which may be one reason why this argument is currently unfashionable.
Evolution is true. By this I mean: There is a staggering ammount of evidence for it, no body of evidence against it, and no competing theories whatsoever - aside from "God did it".
There are of course details still being worked out, as with any science. And creationists love to point out these areas as "flaws" in the theory, but strangely never do the same for theology.
There are differences in emphasis between different thinkers. Richard Dawkins concerns himself with the evolution of DNA, regarding the animals and plants they code for as mere containers, and the species they belong to as part of genealogy. Stephen Jay Gould took the opposite view, that species evolve, individuals are the units that reproduce to allow this, and genes are the physical substrate. Darwin himself was in the middle, regarding individual acts of procreation as the site of evolutionary change.
There is also the debate over Punctuated Equilibrium, which is another difference of emphasis - does evolution occur for the most part slowly and steadily, or are species stimulated into a mad rush of rapid risky adaptation by environmental disasters and sudden change. Both modes occur, but which is the more common?
Again, creationists like to portray a developing science as a nonscience, as though a theory is only respectable when there are no more questions to answer. If that were the case, there would be no respectable sciences in the world ever.
But the creationism debate isn't just about the details of Darwin's theory. Just as fighting holocaust denial isn't just about historical accuracy.
Creationism is part of a broad attack on the values of independant thought, rational debate, and skepticism in the true sense of the opposite of gullibility. And whenever a set of values is being attacked, it's because the attackers want to replace them with another set of values.
It's about the surpression of dissent, and the rise of authority as the only arbiter of truth. Not just in distant matters of religion and science, but in personal morality, political power, and the maintainance of empire.
No comments:
Post a Comment