Wilkins pins the blame where it belongs: on on a medieval hierarchical concept that Darwin actively negated. It’s a very thorough take-down, not that fans of D. James Kennedy will even notice.
This article is part of a series of critiques of Jonathan Wells’ The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design that will be appearing at the Panda’s Thumb over the course of the next week or so. Previously, I’d dissected the summary of chapter 3. This is a longer criticism of the whole of the chapter, which is purportedly a critique of evo-devo.
Jonathan Wells is a titular developmental biologist, so you’d expect he’d at least get something right in his chapter on development and evolution in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, but no: he instead uses his nominal knowledge of a complex field to muddle up the issues and misuse the data to generate a spurious impression of a science that is unaware of basic issues. He ping-pongs back and forth in a remarkably incoherent fashion, but that incoherence is central to his argument: he wants to leave the reader so baffled about the facts of embryology that they’ll throw up their hands and decide development is all wrong.
Do not be misled. The state of Jonathan Wells’ brain is in no way the state of the modern fields of molecular genetics, developmental biology, and evo-devo.
Douglas Theobald passed along an interesting collection of quotes from that atheist evolutionist, Adolph Hitler. It’s particularly interesting the he outlawed atheist and freethought groups in 1933.
It’s a long list of quotes, so I’ll tuck it below the fold.
On this day 172 years ago, Richard Dana set sail. About 35 years ago, I discovered Two Years Before the Mast in my local library, and it turned me into a sea story junkie. I read Forester and Sabatini and Melville (of course!)—fortunately, Melville got me more interested in the biology of those creatures that lived in the sea, so I didn’t stow away in the next brigantine that docked in the Seattle harbor.
Two Years Before the Mast is still a great read, but the romance of the sea is sure buried deep beneath the appalling misery and social injustice—the tales of flogging and sudden accidental death are grim—but still…
Notwithstanding all that has been said about the beauty of a ship under full sail, there are very few who have ever seen a ship, literally, under all her sail. A ship coming in or going out of port, with her ordinary sails, and perhaps two of three studding-sails, is commonly said to be under full sail; but a ship never has all her sail upon her, except when she has a light, steady breeze, very nearly, but not quite, dead aft, and so regular that it can be trusted, and is likely to last for some time. Then, with all her sails, light and heavy, and studding-sails, on each side, alow and aloft, she is the most glorious moving object in the world. Such a sight, very few, even some who have been at sea a great deal, have ever beheld; for from the deck of your own vessel you cannot see her, as you would a separate object.
One night, while we were in these tropics, I went out to the end of the flying-jib-boom, upon some duty, and, having finished it, turned round, and lay over the boom for a long time, admiring the beauty of the sight before me. Being so far out from the deck, I could look at the ship, as at a separate vessel;-and there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas, spreading out far beyond the hull, and towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night air, to the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread out, wide and high;-the two lower studding-sails stretching, on each side, far beyond the deck; the topmast studding-sails, like wings to the topsails; the top-gallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them; still higher, the two royal studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same string; and, highest of all, the little skysail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars, and to be out of reach of human hand. So quiet, too, was the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been sculptured marble, they could not have been more motionless. Not a ripple upon the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of the extreme edges of the sail-so perfectly were they distended by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight, that I forgot the presence of the man who came out with me, until he said, (for he, too, rough old man-of-war’s-man as he was, had been gazing at the show,) half to himself, still looking at the marble sails-“How quietly they do their work!”
Slacktivist reminds us that today is the 61st anniversary of an atrocity:
I think that real patriotism, and the first step to making your country better, is the recognition of evil done in its name.
Steve Borres sent along a few shots from his Aegean vacation. Something seems to have reminded him of me, and it wasn’t bare-breasted Cretan dancers:
Very cool. If I’d been around 2500 years ago, there’s something I could have gotten into.
John Wilkins has been off visiting the ghosts of Owen, Darwin, Buffon, and Saint Hilaire, while I’m sitting in Morris. Ah, if only I had an excuse (and the means!) to escape…
This is an excellent short article by Janet Browne (the Janet Browne who wrote the best biography of Darwin I’ve read, Voyaging(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) and The Power of Place(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), both well worth reading) that discusses the reception of the theory of evolution by his contemporaries, and acknowledges the invaluable assistance of Huxley, Hooker, Gray, and Lyell. One important point is that opposition to his ideas was not driven by the crude Biblical literalism that we encounter so much today, but a more general conflict with a more enlightened religion that found no place for a personal god in a world where life was the product of rather callous and impersonal forces, and of course, with a religion that was a force for controlling people’s minds.
Scholars nowadays agree that The Descent of Man offered a far-reaching naturalistic account of human evolution but did not change many minds. The people who already accepted evolution continued to believe. Those who did not continued to disbelieve. Few readers wished to shrink the gap between mankind and animals quite so dramatically, however. If these ideas were accepted, wrote the Edinburgh Review, the constitution of society would be destroyed.
A lot of people seem to want to argue that it’s just fundamentalism that’s a problem—but that’s only one narrow aspect of the problem that’s common in the US. It was not a major issue in 19th century Britain.
(via Thoughts in a Haystack)
It’s his birthday, and Coturnix has gathered about eleventy billion links to Tesliana (Teslaniana? Is there a word for this, or am I just making things up?)
Carel Brest van Kempen has extracted a few fascinating quotes from an old book he has. It’s titled Creative and Sexual Science, by a phrenologist and physiologist from 1870, and it contains some wonderful old examples of folk genetics.
President Bush would be pleased:
“Human and animal hybrids are denounced most terribly in the Bible; obviously because the mixing up of man with beast, or one beast species with another, deteriorates. Universal amalgamation would be disastrous.”
Although, unfortunately, he then goes on to use this as an argument against miscegenation.
Another lesson is that you shouldn’t deny pregnant women anything, or their longing will mark their child.
“A woman, some months before the birth of her child, longed for strawberries, which she could not obtain. Fearing that this might mark her child, and having heard that it would be marked where she then touched herself, she touched her hip. Before the child was born she predicted that it would have a mark resembling a strawberry, and be found on its hip, all of which proved to be true.”
Don’t let them see horrible things, either.
“Mrs. Lee, of London, Ont., saw Burly executed from her window; who, in swinging off, broke the rope, and fell with his face all black and blue from being choked. This horrid sight caused her to feel awfully; and her son, born three months afterwards, whenever anything occurs to excite his fears, becomes black and blue in the face, an instance of which the Author witnessed.”
And…uh-oh. Maybe George W. Bush won’t be so thrilled with this part.
“A child in Boston bears so striking a resemblance to a monkey, as to be observed by all. Its mother visited a menagerie while pregnant with it, when a monkey jumped on her shoulders.”
I think Carel needs to get busy and transcribe the whole thing onto the web. I know I’ll find these examples useful when I teach genetics this spring.
