Olivia Judson hits exactly the right note in her article about Charles Darwin and the coming centennial year of The Origin: brilliant fellow who revolutionized our thinking, but he wasn’t the only one and he definitely wasn’t the final word on evolution. So let’s party!
This is going to be a great celebratory year for biologists, and I have to confess — I’m also looking forward to the bitter gnashing of teeth by the creationists.
(.)(.)
I hope that the sesquicentennial of “The Origin…” & the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth get a huge, & hugely deserved, amount of media attention.
They probably will, here in the UK, & maybe in Canada too, but I’m not so sure that they’ll get the proper respect in the USA.
Oh absolutely, the others who thought up natural selection should be remembered more.
Unquestionably, however, Darwin is the one who came up with the needed evidence, thus he turned evolutionary ideas into science.
This should be a great year for educating people. Perhaps it’s time to shift toward pointing out that Darwin integrated biology into the rest of the sciences, via his theory of evolution. He wasn’t opposed to the god-fearing Newton, his work was what brought life into the same physical universe as the rest of the physical universe.
Indeed, simply showing that life is governed by physics may have been the earliest and greatest contribution to practical benefits that have come from evolutionary theory thus far. It took some time, but Darwinian ideas eventually made scientists quit looking for magic in life.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Such is the way of the world – we remember Darwin, but few know of Wallace (though the Wallace line and Wallace effect both bear his name), and Crick and Watson are well known, yet Nirenburg is relatively unknown, despite being the first to decipher codons.
Looks to be a good year though, I’m hoping to learn a ton :)
I think that any celebrations will serve to educate the public, and obviously that is what we need to focus our efforts upon.
150 years is not a long time to find all of the holes in the theory, but they are working on it, and should have something to show for all of that hard work in time to “celebrate”.
Wow, misspelled Nirenberg (oops)… guess that reinforces the point though.
“I’m also looking forward to the bitter gnashing of teeth by the creationists.”
Although the local papers run all kinds of letters to the editor regarding subjects I have a vested interest in (such as health care, trade agreements, local issues, and national politics), I only seem to get up the motivation to write when someone is supporting something blatantly wrong (such as abstinence-only education, bible classes in public school, prayer in the legislature, anti-gay legislation, and anti-evolution education), for clearly religious reasons.
The reason for this is that if I were to, say, write in my opinion on health care, I would have to cover where I think previous writers got it right, where they got it wrong, discuss underdiscussed complexities, findings, cross-national comparisons, changes to society over time, etc, and fit it all in under 300 words, without looking like I’m either taking an oversimplistic position or taking no position at all.
Compared to this, religious zealots are easy. You break up their letter into its composite claims, refute each one thoroughly and briefly, tell them they are absolutely wrong, and remind everyone we live in a secular evidence-based society, with 25 words to spare.
It’s not hard to see why you do something similar, PZ, taking the more than occasional break from your very well-thought-out blogging on peer reviewed science with brief posts that basically say “This is stupid, here’s why.”
By the way; check out Olivia Judson on the link that PZ provided.
Smokin’!
“Centennial?”
Hey Scholars! I happen to know that it’s not quite too late to submit an abstract for this one:
http://www.hofstra.edu/Community/culctr/culctr_events_darwin.html
And, incidentally, as somebody pointed out on another thread, the sesquicentennial celebration rightly begins today: it was June 18, 1858 when Darwin received the manuscript from Alfred Russell Wallace that finally kicked Darwin’s reluctant ass into publishing.
As I have noted before, 2009 is also the bicentennial of the publication of Lamarck’s Zoological Philosophy.
Darwin Day Events: http://www.darwinday.org/NEWlang/home/2009.php
Darwin 2008/2009 Events listed on Darwin Online: http://darwin-online.org.uk/2009.html
Darwin 200: http://www.darwin200.org/
There’s going to be too much to keep track of…
As I have noted before, 2009 is also the bicentennial of the publication of Lamarck’s Zoological Philosophy.
Now that’s a good point. People are saying Wallace and others who thought of something rather like natural selection deserve more credit. Well what about Lamarck? Rather than being known as one of the first people to take seriously the concept of evolution, his name is popularly associated with the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, which (following Lysenko) isn’t just wrong, but has a sinister history.
“I’m also looking forward to the bitter gnashing of teeth by the creationists.”
I noticed the creationists are winning. Look what’s going on in Louisiana. Their House of Representatives and their Senate voted 94-3 and 36-0 for a bill to dumb down the teaching of evolution, and their creationist governor is expected to sign it.
1 out of every 6 American high school biology teachers is a creationist, and many of the other biology teachers don’t teach evolution to avoid harassment from Christian thugs.
Meanwhile about half the American population thinks people were magically created, and most of the other half invokes the Sky Fairy to guide evolution.
Permit me to interrupt to ask you all to help Barbara Forrest. She’d like as many emails as possible, as soon as possible, to be sent to Governor Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, encouraging him to veto the new bill that just got passed there. For material to use in drafting your email, please visit these links:
Louisiana Coalition for Science. Also, at Eugenie Scott’s National Center for Science Education: Louisiana creationism bill is on Governor’s desk.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread.
Lamarck gets a bad rap; if you read his book he does okay at trying to figure out something that, let’s face it, no one else had figured out properly until much later. Wallace should probably be known more. But Darwin, I think, deserves the mega attention not just because of his evolution publications, but because he’s a great model for what a scientist can be like. His thorough research, terrific scientific yet popular writing, so compelling and so clear, is something everyone in science should aspire to.
A salute and thanks to Olivia Judson for the fine article on our friend Charles Darwin! I may just celebrate by berating (ok, gently!) all the religious cretins I run into (no, not by car!) on that momentous day!
I thought of a good bumper sticker to celebrate that day:
“You can thank Charles Darwin who proved and why you are here!” I could add, you freaking morons, but they just endured a swift kick to the gut so I’ll be magnamanous and leave that part off!
Dr. Judson is a colorful character. She may be better known to some by her alias, “Dr. Tatyana”.
I have a suggestion: In places where the teaching of evolution is under siege, such as Louisiana and Texas, in addition to doing all the serious stuff like litigation, they could also throw a big party for Darwin. This would be another way to undercut creationist ignorance.
Smithsonian Magazine (June 2008): “On the Origin of a Theory”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/presence-darwin.html#
At least they were pushed aside for something worthwhile; Darwin seems to have been the veritable genius for his methodic approach. I was just reminded on another thread how Prigogine’s pop science on non-equlibrium thermodynamics has placed Onsager’s real contributions far from recognition.
I remember that face for her linked book (still unread), “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex”.
So maybe that was “Dr. Tatiana”?
Im still reading through his complete works,
the one about the orchids was a work of love.
His Beagle`s notes are excelent, made me
feel like traveling to strange new lands
in the victorian era.
Maybe we should reclaim time from the theists and declare 2009 is in fact 200 AD
After Darwin.
#16, here’s mine:
Governor Jindal,
Re bill SB 733
Thank you for ensuring that I won’t have any competition from knowledge workers in Louisiana!
I work in a technical field where it’s an advantage to be literate, logical, questioning, and otherwise scientifically minded. If you let bill SB 733 pass, you’ll be hobbling the children of your state so they’ll be working in call centres while I’m writing their user manuals. Thanks!
According to Johnson, Dembski, and Wells, evolution by natural selection should now be in its death throes, consigned to the dustbin of history.
Hmm, I wonder who is going to be a footnote in history books? These “prophets” or Darwin?
Interesting paper on the amphioxus genome in Nature today. Fair warning to creationists: this paper talks about evolution.
Torbjörn:
Yes, you’re right! That’s her.
I have a justifiable mental block about that commonly-used Latin-alphabet spelling. In Cyrillic, it’s “Татьяна”, which transliterates to “Tat’yana”. My russkaya-amerikanka friend Татьяна, who originally hails from St. Petersburg, spells it “Tatyana”. And when spoken, the suggestion of “tya” is a bit stronger than the “tee-ah” implied by the “ia” spelling, so there you have it.
But, yes. Dr. Tatiana. :-)
Another example of a similar kind might be Wolfram’s impact on the perception of cellular automata, as was discussed in this thread.
Next time you visit England, take a close look at the ten-pound banknote. Since November 2000, it has featured a portrait of Charles Darwin. Here in England, we celebrate one of our greatest scientists every time we buy something.
Can you imagine Darwin appearing on the $10 bill?
I dislike the qualification PZ and many other biologists always adds whenever they praises Darwin. “Darwin was a brilliant guy, but there was a lot he didn’t know and biology has come on a long way since him.” Well of course it has; that should go without saying.
Quite frankly, this comes off a smug way of saying, “Modern biologists like us know so much more than Darwin did.” Which is, anyhow, highly debatable. It’s quite possible that even in Darwin’s time biology was too vast a subject for any one person to completely master.
I dislike the qualification PZ and many other biologists always adds whenever they praises Darwin.
Comically garbled. An Edit option, an Edit option, my kingdom for an Edit option.
J, I believe that qualifier is frequently added for another reason altogether: because creationists, who don’t seem to know how to think about anything outside of the contexts of Argument from Authority and Cult of Personality, invariably view the prophet Darwin as the be-all and end-all of evolutionary thought, and assume everyone else does, too. And, just as invariably, they’ll point to any errors or shortcomings of the original ToE (as well as any personality defects, whether real, imagined, or fabricated, in Darwin himself) as “evidence” that the theory is “flawed” and “in crisis” and so forth. I see that qualifier as a hedge against those ubiquitous, if invalid, claims.
I don’t see that anyone else has mentioned this yet, so for those in the area:
Public Lecture by Olivia Judson
The Art of Seduction: Evolution, Sex, and Society
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Sunday, June 22, 4 p.m.
Free
Headlining the “Evolution 2008” series of events is Olivia Judson, New York Times columnist and author of the 2005 best-selling book, Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, which caused a pop sensation and spawned a hit TV-series in Britain. Judson’s guide to the evolutionary biology of sex in the animal kingdom takes a lighthearted look at some usual and not-so-usual animal habits such as necrophilia, virgin birthing and peculiar dining rituals during mating. Judson will give a public talk on “The Art of Seduction: Evolution, Sex and the Public” at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 22 at the University’s Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2106 Fourth St. S., Minneapolis.
Lamarck? Rather than being known as one of the first people to take seriously the concept of evolution, his name is popularly associated with the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, which (following Lysenko) isn’t just wrong, but has a sinister history.
It’s not always appreciated just what were the real conflicts between Darwinian and Lamarckian views. Darwin couldn’t rule out acquired characteristics because the mechanism of inheritance simply wasn’t known. Darwin’s theory required that inheritance be particulate, as opposed to the “blending” of characteristics, otherwise new traits would be swamped before they could spread in a population. It was hard to see how transmission of acquired characteristics could acheive that, but no one really had any better ideas (except for Mendel, whose work was as yet obscure).
The real conceptual divide, however, was common descent. Lamarck envisioned life as a series of parallel, unrelated lineages, with spontaneous generation of “lower” life forms filling in the vacuum created as older forms progressively evolved. Darwin’s real contribution was the tree of life as opposed to the teleological ladder of Lamarck (and all previous evolutionists).
Party like it’s 1859? Oh yes. The prospect of engaging in Darwin celebrations in the classroom almost…almost…make me wish I wasn’t a retired teacher.
For those of you still in the classroom, let it be a great year for science education.
#16 (veto the bill)
I found the model e-mail too wordy. This is what I wrote:
Go Ahead. Make my day. Sign SB 733 into law. I want lawyers from all around the country to get rich.
The form allows only certain titles – no Dr. allowed. Stupid.
Don’t get too carried away with the spin about the genius of Charles Darwin. If you really want to know what happened between Wallace and Darwin read The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime published in London last month and available from Amazon. No guesswork this: it’s all referenced and much of it from Darwin’s own correspondence. Darwin received two letters from Wallace which he claimed arrived much later than they had done. In both cases he transferred to his own manuscript ideas sent him by Wallace and then claimed that he had known about them all along convincing, in the process, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker to fight his corner for priority at the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858. Hard to believe? Steal, borrow or buy the book now and be one of the first to understand what really went on in Darwin’s mind between September 1855 and June 3, 1858. And please, spare us the constant, ‘…but Darwin knew about natural selection in 1842 a long time before Wallace wrote to him…’. That isn’t true. Darwin’s natural selection theory of the 1840s was not the same idea as that of the Origin of Species. Who says? Dov Ospovat says in his book, The Development of Darwin’s theory. Cambridge 1981.
Go on. You know you want to get your facts right. Look it up.
J @30:
Like it or not, there is a lot more relevant information now than Darwin and his colleagues knew then.
As one example, modern genetics didn’t exist at all then. So, you can include all of modern genetics, for one thing.
One upshot of this and other knowledge is that evolutionary theory has moved considerably beyond what was thought in Darwin’s day.
uh oh. Sounds like # 37 is one of those closet theists trying to “find something” on Darwin that will discredit him by some “undicovered” text or hearsay. Who the hell is Dov Ospovat? Sounds like a pseudonym for Rasputin! Good grief, now we have to rake this clown over the coals to prove or disprove him! Funny that this should surface now that Darwin’s Origin Of Species is having an anniversary?
That isn’t true. Darwin’s natural selection theory of the 1840s was not the same idea as that of the Origin of Species. Who says? Dov Ospovat says in his book, The Development of Darwin’s theory. Cambridge 1981.
Go on. You know you want to get your facts right. Look it up.
Utter nonsense. You’re presenting a maverick opinion as if it’s established fact, and you’re doing this with the utmost pomp. Unbelievably obnoxious.
Most people who’ve looked into the matter agree that Darwin was fully aware of the idea of natural selection well before he’d heard of Wallace. Look it up.
Like it or not, there is a lot more relevant information now than Darwin and his colleagues knew then.
Of course. This doesn’t mean we ought to add disclaimers whenever praising our scientific heroes.
Yeah! Dontcha hate that? (And on a blog, of all places!)
;-)
J, I believe that qualifier is frequently added for another reason altogether: because creationists, who don’t seem to know how to think about anything outside of the contexts of Argument from Authority and Cult of Personality, invariably view the prophet Darwin as the be-all and end-all of evolutionary thought, and assume everyone else does, too.
Yes, I suspected that was the reason. I still find it a little annoying. We shouldn’t have to be constantly looking over our shoulders at the creationists. They’re a gang of bungling, inconsequential jokers who shouldn’t be taken seriously. Tiny-brained flies buzzing against the window pane.
re: #37
If you do try to find The Darwin Conspiracy at Amazon, make sure to go to http://www.amazon.co.uk, since it’s unavailable at the US site. You’ll learn that the author of the book is (surprise!) one Roy Davies (cf. comment #37) and that the two reviews–both 5 stars–are by an anonymous “postgrad” (whose real name, I’d bet money, is Roy Davies) and by one Paul Hannon, who is (surprise!) the publisher of the book in question. Also, this seems to be the one and only book ever published by Mr. Hannon’s Golden Square Books.
FWIW.
Yes, J., but whatever justification there might be for adding that disclaimer also provides a reason to discourage the use of the terms “Darwinism” and “Darwinian evolution” except when referring to the state of the theory in Darwin’s day. Perhaps adherence to the latter habit might render the former unnecessary. :-)
In contrast, “Newtonian mechanics” works, because the term encompasses only what it claims to encompass, and not all of physics from Newton on up to the present day.
I guess this is all pretty obvious to the regular readers here… sigh.
Yes, J., but whatever justification there might be for adding that disclaimer also provides a reason to discourage the use of the terms “Darwinism” and “Darwinian evolution” except when referring to the state of the theory in Darwin’s day.
“[T]he state of the theory in Darwin’s day” is only of limited historical interest, and we don’t really need a separate term to refer to that. Incidentally, “Newtonian mechanics” has been extensively developed since Newton. The standard formalism has been completely rewritten, more powerful mathematical techniques have been developed, and if Newton were alive today he would only recognize his mechanics (in a standard modern treatise on the subject) after close scrutiny. Yet physicists don’t feel the need to say “neo-Newtonian” mechanics, or anything like that.
Richard Dawkins has even said in print that he doesn’t see the need to add on the “neo-“.
Actually, I think the analogy with physics is rather interesting. Classical mechanics (as distinct from quantum mechanics) refers to Newtonian mechanics plus electromagnetism plus special relativity plus general relativity. (There are other, more powerful ways of phrasing Newtonian mechanics, i.e. Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics, but they may be deemed equivalent.)
I don’t understand why the biologists don’t follow suit. Why not have the “modern synthesis” referring to a composite of Darwinian evolution by natural selection plus Mendelian genetics plus population genetics plus whatever the hell you want?
That’s precisely what is meant by the “modern synthesis,” if you include the idea of allopatric speciation.
Kseniya:
Actually I like “Darwinian evolution” as a term for a sort of no-frills evolution by natural selection. It’s also useful if you want to say that something similar happens outside of biology (for example, in a computer simulation).
The problem is that it’s probably a lesser known way of using the word – remember when that troll got his knickers in a spectacular bunch because Majerus spoke of ‘Darwinian’ evolution in those peppered moths? IMO, the intent was only to emphasize that natural selection had been finally demonstrated.
J:
“Modern synthesis” already refers to that. What do you suggest?
I don’t see the problem with Darwinian evolution any more than Newtonian Dynamics. It’s the labelling of it as Darwinism which I see causes many problems; mainly religious folk seeing it as a religion we adhere to.
“Modern synthesis” already refers to that. What do you suggest?
It’s quite obvious what I’m suggesting; are you reading the thread? Kseniya indicated above that we should try to avoid referring to “Darwinism” or “Darwinian evolution”. Lots of biologists seem to think this (hence “neo-Darwinism”).
I’m saying that modern evolutionary biology is Darwinian evolution plus a load of additions. If that’s the case, terms like “neo-Darwinism” simply aren’t necessary.
…plus a load of additions.
Talk about tautologies. But you know what I mean.
I am reading it, you just did not express yourself at all clearly here:
Why not have the “modern synthesis” referring to…
I am not familiar with this grammatical structure.
Actually, neo-Darwinism was another historical development, not a proper way to refer to the state of the art now, although it is sometimes incorrectly used that way. Neo-Darwinism was original Darwinism minus the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
I am not familiar with this grammatical structure.
OK, sorry. I should start using the Preview facility.
That’s precisely what is meant by the “modern synthesis,” if you include the idea of allopatric speciation.
Allopatric speciation is more of an idea than a subject, isn’t it? I’m not a biologist, but I suspect it falls in the same bin as punctuated equilibrium: a very minor addition rather than a radical adjustment. Both “theories” seem to have got the publicity they did largely down to the absurd exaggeration of the reputations of their unoriginal(Mayr and Gould respectively).
Oh no, not again. Should read:
Both “theories” seem to have got the publicity they did largely down to the absurd exaggeration of the reputations of their unoriginal authors (Mayr and Gould respectively).
The importance of allopatric speciation is pretty uncontroversial. I think Sven mentioned it because it was not present in original ‘Darwinism’, at least not explicitly. The controversy is/was over whether other types of speciation can also be important.
Mayr is usually included in the list of Authors of the Modern Synthesis: Fisher, Haldane, Wright, and Dobzhansky (population genetics), Mayr (mechanism of speciation–important and wholly uncontroversial, I assure you), G.G. Simpson (compatibility with paleontology), and sometimes Stebbins (for application to plants) and a few others.
Gould may well have been a member of that pantheon in his own mind, but I think it’s safe to say that the jury is still out on the originality and importance of his contributions to evolutionary theory.
Mayr is usually included in the list of Authors of the Modern Synthesis: Fisher, Haldane, Wright, and Dobzhansky (population genetics), Mayr (mechanism of speciation–important and wholly uncontroversial, I assure you), G.G. Simpson (compatibility with paleontology), and sometimes Stebbins (for application to plants) and a few others.
I think it’s amusing that Mayr has been elevated to that level of respect. The four present models of speciation all seem over Mayr’s unmathematical and ungenetic head.
Anyway, geographic separation isn’t necessarily essential for the occurrence of speciation.
You mean the models Mayr proposed, more or less? :)
Mayr may have had his flaws but since no one else stepped up at the time and started making noise about mechanisms of speciation, he managed to make a big contribution, even as the complete chump you seem to think he was.
“Party like it’s 1859″….. Hey, I want that on a T-shirt!
Darwin insisted that women were biologically inferior to men. So this womens writings on him he would dismiss until the men spoke.
If Darwins ideas became standard belief then this woman writer wouldn’t be writing for the big media but home sweet home.
Evolution has failed to persude the most intelligent people in mankinds history . Americans (and some Canadians). It doesn’t matter what Italy, India, or Israel thinks.
Evolution is gasping for life even with the protection of the law to prohibit competition before the younger people. Evolution fails on the merits before any intelligent audience to bring conviction. Every time.
Only those people in america and the world who don’t question authority accept evolution unless save those who have studied it. These few are simply wrong.
Darwins ideas have contributed to no advancement in mankind and is such a obscure subject that it survives only because of presumed authority and scholarship behind it.
The need to praise darwin is because in the English-speaking world its heading for the ashheap of history along with its companions of marxism, and the bigger the computer the betterism.
Byers.
You’re a fucking idiot.
Byers I hope you put your money where you mouth is and refuse to get flu shots every year. Because the medicine was made entirely under the premise of Darwinian Evolution. Otherwise you would be a hypocrite for denying a theory that helps pretty much all of modern medicine.
Freud’s on the ash heap already, okay, but he’s been succeeded by “the bigger the computer the betterism”? Whoa.
“Evolution has failed to persude the most intelligent people in mankinds history . Americans (and some Canadians).”
Hahahaha. What history book are you reading? And who is this “Evolution” that is trying to persuade people? I only listen to ‘Relativity’ or sometimes ‘Atomic’.
In other words: What the fuck you talkin’ bout?
You mean the models Mayr proposed, more or less? :)
Mayr proposed the verbal idea that geographic separation is essential for speciation. This is nowhere near the same as an evolutionary model.
Mayr stayed away from mathematics and genetics, on which modern evolutionary theory depends. His reluctance or inability to arm himself with these tools doesn’t reflect well on him as a 20th century biologist. I find it amazing that such a person, who seemed to have no mastery whatever of modern evolutionary theory, could be considered a great scientist alongside Fischer, Haldane and company.
“Darwin insisted that women were biologically inferior to men. So this womens writings on him he would dismiss until the men spoke.
If Darwins ideas became standard belief then this woman writer wouldn’t be writing for the big media but home sweet home.”
Even if this were true, this is some indictment of the theory of evolution how? Also, source of claims please.
We can still celebrate the father of modern evolutionary theory for his accomplishments rather than his beliefs. That you would rather intertwine the two in order to fit your bassackwards beliefs betrays your own corrupted thinking.
“Evolution has failed to persude the most intelligent people in mankinds history .”
This sentence fails on so many levels.
“Americans (and some Canadians).”
OK, now that is an odd thing to say… methinks thou art a troll, or incredibly stupid – probably both.
“It doesn’t matter what Italy, India, or Israel thinks.
Evolution is gasping for life”
The only ones gasping are the mouth breathers who cannot fathom that the facts do not indicate anything OTHER than evolution.
” even with the protection of the law to prohibit competition before the younger people.”
We only need a law to protect our children from a wholly religious viewpoint being taught in schools as science. By all means, you’re welcome to hock your hooey in a religious studies classroom as long as you do so neutrally. I think you’re forgetting there is a wall of separation meant to protect not only the evilutionist but the creotards as well.
” Evolution fails on the merits before any intelligent audience to bring conviction. Every time.”
yawn
“Only those people in america and the world who don’t question authority accept evolution unless save those who have studied it. These few are simply wrong.”
Is English something else you’ve failed to study because you have a problem with authority?
“Darwins ideas have contributed to no advancement in mankind”
If we were to use this as an actual measure of facts, then you’d still be dead farking wrong. I will go for the most obvious: it affords us an accurate and illuminable insight into deep history and our origins, expanding mankind’s understanding of the world. You know, the REAL world. With facts and shit. Welcome to it. I suggest you start with the Talkorigins faq.
” and is such a obscure subject that it survives only because of presumed authority and scholarship behind it.”
To sum up your argument so far: “I don’t have shit on the actual facts regarding evolution, so I’ll baselessly assert that it is already been disproved only that no one is willing to accept it and again I’ll assert that evolution is merely argument from authority with not even a cursory mention of how much a failure an IDist’s ‘theory’ is.”
“The need to praise darwin is because in the English-speaking world its heading for the ashheap of history along with its companions of marxism, and the bigger the computer the betterism.”
SCREEEEEEEEEED!
I don’t need to praise Darwin any more than you need to pray for a Deity to bless your food in order for you to be nourished. The only difference is that I realize that and accept it as merely how the world works.
You sound a lot like Ted Kaczynski, only less educated.
Accepting Darwin’s ideas on evolution doesn’t make you hate women anymore than accepting Einstein’s ideas on relativity make you an ethnic Jew. Darwin’s character doesn’t matter.
Never mind that Darwin’s social views were liberal and enlightened compared to the average European male of his day. He wasn’t the only 19th-century white man to view womenas “the weaker sex”.
It’s just another argumentum ad hominem. One might as well argue that evolution is wrong because Charles Darwin had never flown in an airplane.
J, your weird animosity toward Ernst Mayr seems rooted in math worship.
Believe it or not, biology =/= mathematics.
In fact, despite the domination of the field by population genetics for the last 50 years, evolutionary theory =/= (only ) mathematics. For a clue that the pendulum is swinging back toward actual biology, see West-Eberhard’s book –not that it’s mainstream evolutionary theory (yet?), but it discusses a boatload of heavy-duty ideas without much in the way of math. Population genetics theory is elegant and important, but it’s very limited in its application to studying the complexity of real organisms in real environments, i.e. Biology.
Mayr may have been a pompous ass, and he loved to pontificate, and his major contributions were made in the 1940s, but none of that diminishes the importance of his contributions (the biological species concept, mechanisms of speciation). If nothing else, all modern theory of species and speciation, mathematical and not, derives heuristically from his work. (The same could be said, of course, in a bolder font, for Darwin, also a nonmathematician.)
So cut the guy a break; he was a clasically trained ornithologist with some important big ideas. Biology is not about symbolic equations; it’s about organisms, groups thereof, and their organic parts. In that sense Mayr was a more important biologist than, say, Fisher (whose contributions I do not wish to minimize!)
I had previously read the article in question and am glad to see PZ shares my opinion of it.
Unfortunately for his detractors, Darwin was a fine member of the human race. Morally, he was superior to both Newton and Einstein. Einstein? Well, did you know that after Einstein split up with his first wife, he developed no ralationship whatsoever with his children, something that contributed to the schizophrenia of one of his sons?Einstein was not a family man; for all his moral vision and personal kindness, in private he was totally self-centred and surrounded himself with surrogate nursemaids like a demanding child.
No one said a genius had to be a nice guy in alsmost every way, but Darwin was.
In an age of remote Victorian parenting, where rich children were reared by nannies, Darwin never hid his love for his children. It is one of the most touching and endearing things about him. The death of Annie, his favourite, almost broke him. But all of his sons grew up to be distinguished and independent men in their own rights and were never troubled by their father’s shadow.
Incidentally, that is another link between Darwin and the man whose bicentennial also approaches. Abraham Lincoln also showed his love for his children, and suffered the agonizing loss of his favourite, Willie. In age, where “family values” heroes are few, there are none better than these two men born on the same day in 1809.
Since Darwin had seen slavery at first hand during the Brazil stopover on the Beagle voyage, he followed family tradition by opposing slavery. He also went against most of his class by supporting the North in the Civil War.
Toby, how dare you disturb all that anti-Darwin dogma with your silly little facts!
:-)
J, your weird animosity toward Ernst Mayr seems rooted in math worship.
Not just mathematics: Mayr didn’t like the notion of the selfish gene (or maybe genes in general), as far as I’m aware.
I’m quite prepared to admit I’m wrong about Mayr if and when I see the need. As it is, I find his writing utterly tedious stating of the obvious. And I can’t understand how a good modern evolutionary biologist could distance himself from mathematical models and genes.
Anyway, “math-worship” is a preposterous phrase. There can be no doubt that mathematics is an extremely useful tool in science. A scientist who disdains it, like Mayr, is putting himself at a severe disadvantage.
OK, it’s not a preposterous phrase, as there are people who think that anything mathematical is worthy of respect. However, it’s misleading to say that for emphasizing the importance of mathematics in modern science I’m guilty of “math-worship”.
Fair enough–I’ll cop to rhetorical excess!
J:
Iconoclasm is all fine and good, but I think you are ignoring the historical process – it’s not like Mayr pushed a verbal model in a time when better, mathematical models of speciation would have been available. General mathematical models of speciation are only starting to emerge now (through the work of Gavrilets and others), so verbal models of speciation were/are extremely useful to have in the meantime.
Most biologists see both the mathematical and the “natural history” approaches to speciation as valuable: here is a review of two recent books on speciation which illustrates that.
Sven:
I don’t think there’s a need to draw a dichotomy between pop gen and math on the other side and organisms on the other – isn’t attempting to synthesize genetics and developmental biology a big part of West-Eberhard’s work?
Besides, ecology is even more “mathematicized” than genetics, and they deal with whole organisms…
@ Kseniya:
Ah, that explains the different spellings I have seen.
But not why Tatiana spells it such, Tatyana looks and sounds much sexier. :-P
@ Blake:
Thanks, I read the post but not the comments after you mentioned it @ erv (good post btw), so I missed that bit.
Btw, Shalizi says something peculiarly analogous to what McCarthy says, about simpler UTM penalizing straightforward information coding.
Seems that in statistical model selection the MDL (Minimum Descriptive Length) principle says to “pick the model which gives you the most compact description of the data, including the description of the model itself”. But this “penalized maximum likelihood” doesn’t seem to add to “straightforward likelihood maximization”.
Possibly a brain fart, but it seems to me that this all is roughly saying that data is more valuable than, say, parsimony of the specific theory producing (predicting) it.
@ J:
I would call that classical mechanics as opposed to Newtonian mechanics, as it is based on some variational principle instead of Newton’s postulates.
Such variational principles, that classical paths prefers minimal variation makes for a deeper theory, and connects with quantum paths which interferes around similar minimal variation paths. And the non-quantum theories are in principle equivalent theories, but in practice it differs as well when you want to apply the different methods.
I don’t feel qualified to discuss the West-Eberhard book in much detail–currently slogging my way through Chapter 3–but my impression is that she (like Mayr) puts a much larger emphasis on the importance of phenotypes in evolution than genes, and that the developmental genetics of interest are a far cry from the highly mathematical models of population genetics that usually pass as “evolutionary theory.” She certainly has little time (in Ch. 1) for the Hardy-Weinberg-based version of evolutionary theory that dominates at least intro-level textbooks.
That said, I am not really interested in drawing dichotomies in general–my comments were reactions to what I perceived as J’s the blanket dismissal of “natural historians” like Mayr.
Well, with populations (and communities) of whole organisms. I think that physiological and auto-ecology–which do concentrate on the individual-organism level of organization–are probably the least mathematical of ecological subdisciplines.
But all of this doubtless reflects my own biases: I think animals are cool beyond words and have always hated math. So sue me *shrug*
Gotta organize some bonobo-style orgies to celebrate. Now, who’ll bring the squid?
Gotta love Byers:
“Darwin insisted that women were biologically inferior to men. So this womens writings on him he would dismiss until the men spoke.
If Darwins ideas became standard belief then this woman writer wouldn’t be writing for the big media but home sweet home.”
Compare Darwin’s 19th Century attitudes toward women to Huckabee’s 21st Century calls for wifely submission. No orgy for you, Byers!
“let’s estimate a couple of funky parameters” is not “highly mathematical” :)
I would call that classical mechanics as opposed to Newtonian mechanics, as it is based on some variational principle instead of Newton’s postulates.
Interesting point, but I’m not sure I agree that Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics rests on a different postulatory basis. You can derive the Lagrange equations from Newton’s laws, and then you can derive Hamilton’s principle from the Lagrange equations. I’d be inclined to say that these are simply powerful mathematical methods of expressing Newtonian mechanics.
But even if you disagree, it’s still quite valid for me to claim that Newtonian mechanics has advanced since Newton’s time. Even writing Newton’s second law as a differential equation represents an improvement over Newton’s geometrical methods, as I see it. And then there are the myriad practical applications, in engineering and elsewhere.
Mathematically, the variational principles are undoubtedly a whole lot deeper. As you observe, the analogue of Hamilton’s principle is indispensible in quantum mechanics. But I’m unconvinced that the postulatory basis of Lagriangian and Hamiltonian classical mechanics is in any significant way different from that of Newtonian mechanics.
Toby @ 71 Fine comment on one of my favorite people. I have read and own much of Darwin and it is always stated that he was a decent and compassionate man. And when his beloved daughter Annie had died, it left him devastated and so moved with compassion that he wrote a little memoir on her life and passing, and put it away for himself and Emma to read in the passing years. “Free of all taint and bitterness it was the most beautiful- and certainly the most intensely emotional piece he would ever write”. I quote from the book, “DARWIN: THE LIFE OF A TORMENTED EVOLUTIONIST”, by Adrian Desmond & James Moore Warner Books 1991 Pages 378 to 387 I quote from the most emotional passages, the second full paragraph on page 386.
“He portrayed Annie as an example of all the highest and best in human nature. Physically, intellectually, and morally she was all but perfect: her movements ‘elastic & full of life & vigor’, her mind ‘pure & transparent’, her conduct ‘generous, handsome & unsuspicious;… free from envy & jealously; good tempered & never passionate’. He repeated that ‘she hardly ever required to be found fault with, & was never punished in any way whatever’. A single glance of my eye, not of displeasure(for I thank god I hardly ever cast one on her,) but of want of sympathy would for some minutes alter her whole countenance.’ It was this fine sensitivity that left her ‘crying bitterly… on parting with Emma even for the shortest interval’ and that made her exclaim when very young, ‘Oh Mamma, what should we do, if you were to die’. Indeed, ‘every expression in her countenance beamed with affection & kindness, & all her habits were influenced by her loving disposition’. Charles remembered Annie’s face above all, her tears and kisses, her ‘sparkling eyes & brindled smiles’, her ‘dear lips’. Again and again he summoned the innocent features before his mind, comparing them with the daguerreotype taken two years before. “Oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still & shall ever love her dear joyous face,’ he ended. Blessings on her.
Annie had not deserved to die; she had not even deserved to be punished- in this world, let alone the next. “Formed to live a life of happiness,’ as charles put it, she had stumbledon ill health and nature’s check fell upon her, crushing her remorselessly. The struggle was ‘bitter & cruel’ enough without the prospect of retribution. Yet, against the odds, he still longed that she might survive. He was haunted by her face, her loving kisses, and her tears when leaving Emma. Eventually he must part from Emma too.
Annie’s cruel death destroyed Charle’s tatters of belief in a moral, just universe. Later he would say that this period chimed the final death-knell for his christianity, even if it had been a long, drawn-out process of decay. Charles now took his stand as an unbeliever.”
I can imagine the unfathomable grief Darwin was suffering while watching his beloved daughter suffer and die, and can put myself inside him and feel the inconsolable ending for Annie. Like Darwin, it is beyond comprehension that a god of any sort would make an innocent child suffer the cruelities of nature of which it has created and directed.
My admiration for Charles Darwin is not only for what he has honestly transcribed for the process of evolution, but also because he was a compassionate and decent human being.
A compassionate and decent human being indeed.
I’m pleased that the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, Australia is putting together a major Darwin exhibition to mark the anniversary.
Agreed.
What I meant by my not so clear comment was that the theory is different, as you introduce paths which are conceptually different. It makes out for new methods to solve problems and opens up the connection to QM.
The axiom set makes more sense (or not :-P), and as you note connects to deeper math.
Working with Newton’s laws you wouldn’t see that, unless you purposefully derived Hamilton’s principle and introduced the paths. Newtons mechanics is by history a smaller subset of classical mechanics.
I guess we will have to disagree on the terminology and why it come about.
[Heh! Just to check if my notion of terminology was outdated, I googled and the “scientific source” Wikipedia surfaced. It starts:
FWIW its motivation is:
Oh, well. I’m sure there are actual science sources that will say otherwise too, as always in definitional cases.]