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Wednesday, February 02, 2005Written yesterday, February 1st, after reading through the Times Science section:Scribble the first The New York Times Science section is taking the opportunity to bemoan the decline of evolution in the American classroom. The Times could use a little homework on the matter itself. Much of their story is sociological in nature, which is fair enough. This is about how people act about evolution, not what it is. However, a close reading of the article lays the groundwork for another sociological investigation: how people who "believe" in evolution treat the matter. The Times asserts, There is no credible challenge to the idea that all living things evolved from common ancestors...True. But through much of Western history, there was no "credible" - believed and believable - challenge to the idea that we were creations of a terrible God who ruled us according to His whims, down to the last flickering of a gnat's eyebrow. Evolution as a theory doesn't hang together too badly. But to read the Times article, you'd get the impression it was simple fact and that fundamentalists were going around saying "stop" meant "avocado." It might be better to say that they keep seeing blue-green where everyone else seems aqua: They're looking at the same thing and seeing something different. And they may be off the mark. But it's hard to say for sure, or, if so, how far. What I find curious about the Times article is it certainly doesn't seem to favor the phrase "Theory of Evolution." They can't say, this is science's best guess and enough of it checks out that yeah, it's worth assuming it's true unless or until something better comes along. For people who want us to leave behind superstition and see "the truth," some scientists and particularly evolutionists seem awfully wary of highlighting the fact of science that is its truest source of power: Its willingness to doubt. For hundreds of years, we lived in a Newtonian universe. Then Einstein gave us the Theory of Relativity and Newtonian physics started becoming a great tool for guessing at macro events, but not the final word. What enabled science to survive the discovery that matter only behaved like matter if it wasn't too small to be confused with a wave is that it was only science. That is, what was and is known. If we knew something different, well, it was science too. That's what the word's all about. Unfortunately, the New York Times doesn't seem to know what science is and isn't. If they did, they wouldn't give us this quote: " In Japan, something like 96 percent accept evolution."That's from Dr. Jon Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern. Big deal. In 1942, something like 96 percent of Japanese believed they'd win the war. And if 70% of Iranians think you should stone prostitutes, should we? If the Times is cataloguing the willingness of the Japanese to be brainwashed by scientists in contrast with the willingness of Americans to be brainwashed by preachers, they're onto something interesting. But the feeling one gets is that Dr. Miller and the Times reporter don't want to highlight a difference in belief system but to suggest we should be more like the Japanese. I really hate it when the Times does these little pieces, because they are part of the problem, part of the reason so many Americans are so stridently against the teaching of evolution. The Times, their commenters and too many evolutionists are in the Richard Dawkins school, wearing a man-disdaining atheistic belief in evolution as a badge of honor. But Dawkins worships his own cleverness as much as any Bible-thumper worships Jesus. The end result is that science degrades into politics. Bottom line: Evolution should be taught as what it is: a theory. A damn good one. An idea that seems to account for existing evidence, but isn't enabling us to predict future events, else it would be a law. If we talked about the "Theory of Evolution" as a tool that scientists use to make sense of what they've seen and develop new ideas to explore, we'd be telling the truth about how science really works. But to present science as having all the answers and the local preacher as being an idiot who doesn't know anything is bound to stir hurt feelings without promoting "enlightenment". It is my view that evolution should be taught. And not just as one theory among many, but as the best we have. It would be judicious to mention I.D. and other creationisms, of course, but it would also be fine to mention that there's a lot less evidence for them. But at the end of this would come the important part: An explanation of what it means to do science, starting with the realization that if a better theory comes along, yours is gone. I think it would go a long way with the creationists if the evolutionists simply conceded that Newton was right until he wasn't and that they, too, could later be proved wrong. Telling children that they're monkeys, not creations of God, and that science says so is not good science, because science doesn't know so. It suggests evolution as a way of understanding the similarities and differences among life forms. Where God does or doesn't fit is beyond the scope of science. On the other hand, telling children that the idea of evolution provides a way of understanding what all creatures have in common but that what we understand may very well change the more we learn would be fair, reasonable and right. An example, in fact, of the open-mindedness that makes science work, in contrast to the close-mindedness of evolutionists who worship science but plainly don't understand it. Scribble the second Birdbrains and Evolution The same NY Times Science section that is in a snit about not enough evolution being taught also features a marvelous article on our understanding of... birdbrains. It used to be thought that birds didn't really have cognition, that their behavior was largely instinctual. Here's why: Avian brains got their bad reputation a century ago from the German neurobiologist Ludwig Edinger, known as the father of comparative anatomy. Edinger believed that evolution was linear, Dr. Jarvis [of Duke University] said. Brains evolved like geologic strata. Layer upon layer, the brains evolved from old to new, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to birds to mammals. By Edinger's standards, fish were the least intelligent. Humans, created in God's image, were the most intelligent... Looking at the physical structure of brains, Edinger saw sophistication among mammals but only centers for instinctual processing among birds. Notes the Times: This view persisted through the 20th century and is still found in most biology textbooks, said Dr. Harvey Karten, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the consortium [of avian brain researchers] whose research has long challenged the classic view. You'll notice what we have here: honest to God scientists discussing differing understandings of how evolution works and suggesting that a faulty understanding led to a major part of the animal kingdom's cognitive function being mischaracterized. When we touched on evolution in my science classes (lightly, I'm from a rural area), I detected little of this debate. To the contrary, our textbook offered evolution as essentially settled. I believe there was a disclaimer about it being a theory and not proved. But there were not warnings that scientists disagreed on how it worked, why it worked or where humans fit in. (There were certainly no allusions to the mighty Darwin's beliefs about which races and societies were most evolved, though this was a big preoccupation in the unpublished version of his journals.) If science teachers wanted to do their classes a major service, they would cut out the Times articles on evolution and on birdbrains. They could then show their students the difference between science and ideology. Science, their students would learn, is exciting, with its vibrant debate about how the world works. They would see how a group of scientists are disproving what was taken as "fact" 30 or 40 years ago. From this, they could learn that the best of science is rooted not in "belief" that you "know," but in attempts to learn, understand and learn anew, always waiting - eagerly - to discover something you'd missed. The teacher could then take the article on evolution to show that science, like any other human activity, is peopled not with immortals but with mere humans. That even human scientists, when put on the defensive, retreat from thought and blindly defend against outsiders. The evolutionist response to creationism tells you all you need to know about why racism, ethnocentrism and sexism are so insidious. Even logical scientists freak out and close ranks when facing the "other." It also tells you why scientists need to stop using evolution as a litmus test for deciding who is serious and return to using it for what it is - a tool for broadening our understanding of how life works until we can refine it into a law (which may still be disproved in time) or discard it favor of a new tool. 
posted by gbarto at 1:12 PM |
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