Dealing with obstreperous opposition
Dealing with aggressive and passive aggressive behavior
Winning and backlash
Dealing with pressure and nerves
Performance and delivery
Rhetoric
Carl Grant, CLE Services: http://carl-grant.net/
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Monday, May 18, 2009
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins has some definite strengths. It is clear and easy to understand. It is written with a great deal of vigor. Some atheists will doubtless enjoy his take-no-prisoners criticisms of religion. It is funny in places. I laughed a great deal when reading it. Some of the humor seems to be intentional. In discussing an experiment to study the effects of prayer for heart patients he imagines a Bob Newhart style dialogue between God and a patient in the control group who is showing no improvement. The patient asks, "Why has God put me in the placebo group?” and “Couldn't He help me anyway?" God apparently is a bureaucratic type whose hands are tied by the experimental rules.
Moving on… Dawkins likes science. It works. It has given us cars, planes, computers etc. He would presumably agree that some of its creations are pretty awful. Things like nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and cell phones. He particularly likes the fact that he is a scientist, being a college professor with a PhD and all. This, he assumes gives him the ability to speak with great authority.
He is mistaken. Like any the practitioners of any profession, some scientists are excellent, many more are fair, and too many are semi-competent to incompetent. It's not the position or degrees that determine excellence, its achievement. Einstein tried everything to get hired to teach science or work in a laboratory. He finally had to settle for a job as a clerk (third class) in a patent office. This only changed after he published four earthshaking papers in 1905. Many inventors who contributed so much to technological marvels had no advanced degrees. To skim only the top layers I'll mention a few, ignoring the countless engineers, technicians, and mechanics who contributed. Blaise Pascal had no formal schooling; Henry Beuleh with 90 plus inventions had no high school diploma; Maxine Faget, space capsule designer had only a bachelors degree; Robert Fulton had no high school diploma; George Eastman had no high school diploma; Eli Whitney had no college, Henry Ford no high school diploma, Luther Burbank elementary school only, Alexander Graham Bell no college degree, electron microscope inventor James Hilliar only a bachelor’s degree, Samuel Morse a bachelor’s degree, Marconi no formal education, Louis Tessla, probably the world's greatest inventor, no college degree, neither of the Wright brothers finished high school, Thomas Edison no high school diploma. There is a much longer list of people who made important contributions the development of radio, television, computers etc. that had no college degree. Dawkins' contribution is that he popularized the notion of the "selfish gene". This is the idea that the real actors are not humans, but their genes use bodies for their own propagation, sort of like the alien pods in the movie The Body Snatchers. Dawkins didn't come up with this uplifting idea, but acted as its publicist.
The thesis of the book, or course, is that people who believe in God are deluded. Like believing in the tooth fairy, it is incredibly stupid. Dawkins characterizes it as a symptom of mental illness on page 59. I wonder what he thinks of scientists such as Copernicus, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Galileo, Kepler, Leibnitz, Kant, Linnaeus, Lyle, Pasteur, Maxwell, Faraday, Kelvin, Mendel etc, if all believers are delusional. Poor deluded Newton actually wrote more on the subject of theology than he did on science. That acute thinker and epitome of mental health, Richard Dawkins, would presumably point out that these people were all prior to the 20th century. They would have lacked knowledge of the scientific advances of the 20th and 21st century that demonstrates how ludicrous the belief in God is. This is the tack taken by a number of atheists. Leaving aside the temporal snobbery of such a view, I still wonder precisely which scientific discoveries over the last 100 or so years have demonstrated that God doesn't exist. Maybe it's the big bang theory that does it.
The discovery that the universe is expanding, with its implication that it had a beginning was unsettling to some people. Hoyle, Bondi, and Gold came up with a steady state theory as an alternative that would avoid the necessity of a beginning. Hoyle later said that a major motivation for coming up with this theory was that the three of them, atheists all, were disturbed by the theological implications of the big bang theory. The steady state hypothesis was quite popular for a while until it collided with the evidence and sank like a rock. It was quickly replaced by the oscillating universe with much the same motivation; the oscillating universe suffered the same fate. The latest move by the religious skeptics (frequently skeptical only of adverse views) was to postulate multiple universes. Our universe could then have a beginning, but only as a child of the eternal multiverse. This idea has two big advantages. First it does double duty as a way around that other noxious discovery that the constants of nature must be constrained to extremely small parameters for life to develop, making it look like someone tinkered with them. Second the multiverse postulate avoids the possibility of an embarrassing refutation by factual evidence. It would be impossible to prove that there aren't a large or infinite number of universes, all with different physical constants, wandering around in other dimensions, which does away with the necessity of a Tinkerer. The big bang and fine tuning discoveries seem if anything to support the idea of a God.
A number of discoveries about the nature of atoms and sub atomic particles would seem to support theism, though indirectly. Philosophic materialism, the handmaiden of atheism, was first written about by the epicureans who postulated that the only things that exist are atoms and the void. Further they said that atoms are tiny indivisible particles (atom meant indivisible) that when packed tightly together formed all solid objects and when loosely packed made air. This was a bedrock materialist premise prior to the 20th century. One obvious advantage to the theory was its simplicity in describing what it means to exist. Entities like mind spirit etc. were thought to be imaginary due to to their lack of hard physicality. Then it was discovered that the particles in the atom occupied 1 part in 10,000 of the space. Compress the atoms in the human body to where they are all contiguous and it would be the size of a speck of dust. The hardness is produced by force fields. It was also discovered that matter can be transformed into energy (E=MC2). Matter is really congealed energy. This doesn't prove materialism is false, but it robs it of its major intuitive support. Another discovery that undermines materialism is quantum entanglement. One particle can influence another at any arbitrary distance. This is called non-locality, and cannot take place if materialism is true.
I could go on, but I think it's safe to say that scientific discoveries do not reduce the likelihood of God's existence. Dawkins seems to come from a strange and rather bitter place, which makes it seem that he has some psychological problems, especially in connection to religion. He is highly critical of not only the religious fundamentalists, but also the liberals. He is also quite critical of agnostics. "Don't give me that I don't know stuff; you do know that the likelyhood of God’s existence is vanishingly small. Don't be agnostic; be something." He's still not done. He even criticizes some of his fellow atheists for being insufficiently hostile to the believers. Far from being the quintessential objective scientist, the man has issues.
Moving on… Dawkins likes science. It works. It has given us cars, planes, computers etc. He would presumably agree that some of its creations are pretty awful. Things like nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and cell phones. He particularly likes the fact that he is a scientist, being a college professor with a PhD and all. This, he assumes gives him the ability to speak with great authority.
He is mistaken. Like any the practitioners of any profession, some scientists are excellent, many more are fair, and too many are semi-competent to incompetent. It's not the position or degrees that determine excellence, its achievement. Einstein tried everything to get hired to teach science or work in a laboratory. He finally had to settle for a job as a clerk (third class) in a patent office. This only changed after he published four earthshaking papers in 1905. Many inventors who contributed so much to technological marvels had no advanced degrees. To skim only the top layers I'll mention a few, ignoring the countless engineers, technicians, and mechanics who contributed. Blaise Pascal had no formal schooling; Henry Beuleh with 90 plus inventions had no high school diploma; Maxine Faget, space capsule designer had only a bachelors degree; Robert Fulton had no high school diploma; George Eastman had no high school diploma; Eli Whitney had no college, Henry Ford no high school diploma, Luther Burbank elementary school only, Alexander Graham Bell no college degree, electron microscope inventor James Hilliar only a bachelor’s degree, Samuel Morse a bachelor’s degree, Marconi no formal education, Louis Tessla, probably the world's greatest inventor, no college degree, neither of the Wright brothers finished high school, Thomas Edison no high school diploma. There is a much longer list of people who made important contributions the development of radio, television, computers etc. that had no college degree. Dawkins' contribution is that he popularized the notion of the "selfish gene". This is the idea that the real actors are not humans, but their genes use bodies for their own propagation, sort of like the alien pods in the movie The Body Snatchers. Dawkins didn't come up with this uplifting idea, but acted as its publicist.
The thesis of the book, or course, is that people who believe in God are deluded. Like believing in the tooth fairy, it is incredibly stupid. Dawkins characterizes it as a symptom of mental illness on page 59. I wonder what he thinks of scientists such as Copernicus, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Galileo, Kepler, Leibnitz, Kant, Linnaeus, Lyle, Pasteur, Maxwell, Faraday, Kelvin, Mendel etc, if all believers are delusional. Poor deluded Newton actually wrote more on the subject of theology than he did on science. That acute thinker and epitome of mental health, Richard Dawkins, would presumably point out that these people were all prior to the 20th century. They would have lacked knowledge of the scientific advances of the 20th and 21st century that demonstrates how ludicrous the belief in God is. This is the tack taken by a number of atheists. Leaving aside the temporal snobbery of such a view, I still wonder precisely which scientific discoveries over the last 100 or so years have demonstrated that God doesn't exist. Maybe it's the big bang theory that does it.
The discovery that the universe is expanding, with its implication that it had a beginning was unsettling to some people. Hoyle, Bondi, and Gold came up with a steady state theory as an alternative that would avoid the necessity of a beginning. Hoyle later said that a major motivation for coming up with this theory was that the three of them, atheists all, were disturbed by the theological implications of the big bang theory. The steady state hypothesis was quite popular for a while until it collided with the evidence and sank like a rock. It was quickly replaced by the oscillating universe with much the same motivation; the oscillating universe suffered the same fate. The latest move by the religious skeptics (frequently skeptical only of adverse views) was to postulate multiple universes. Our universe could then have a beginning, but only as a child of the eternal multiverse. This idea has two big advantages. First it does double duty as a way around that other noxious discovery that the constants of nature must be constrained to extremely small parameters for life to develop, making it look like someone tinkered with them. Second the multiverse postulate avoids the possibility of an embarrassing refutation by factual evidence. It would be impossible to prove that there aren't a large or infinite number of universes, all with different physical constants, wandering around in other dimensions, which does away with the necessity of a Tinkerer. The big bang and fine tuning discoveries seem if anything to support the idea of a God.
A number of discoveries about the nature of atoms and sub atomic particles would seem to support theism, though indirectly. Philosophic materialism, the handmaiden of atheism, was first written about by the epicureans who postulated that the only things that exist are atoms and the void. Further they said that atoms are tiny indivisible particles (atom meant indivisible) that when packed tightly together formed all solid objects and when loosely packed made air. This was a bedrock materialist premise prior to the 20th century. One obvious advantage to the theory was its simplicity in describing what it means to exist. Entities like mind spirit etc. were thought to be imaginary due to to their lack of hard physicality. Then it was discovered that the particles in the atom occupied 1 part in 10,000 of the space. Compress the atoms in the human body to where they are all contiguous and it would be the size of a speck of dust. The hardness is produced by force fields. It was also discovered that matter can be transformed into energy (E=MC2). Matter is really congealed energy. This doesn't prove materialism is false, but it robs it of its major intuitive support. Another discovery that undermines materialism is quantum entanglement. One particle can influence another at any arbitrary distance. This is called non-locality, and cannot take place if materialism is true.
I could go on, but I think it's safe to say that scientific discoveries do not reduce the likelihood of God's existence. Dawkins seems to come from a strange and rather bitter place, which makes it seem that he has some psychological problems, especially in connection to religion. He is highly critical of not only the religious fundamentalists, but also the liberals. He is also quite critical of agnostics. "Don't give me that I don't know stuff; you do know that the likelyhood of God’s existence is vanishingly small. Don't be agnostic; be something." He's still not done. He even criticizes some of his fellow atheists for being insufficiently hostile to the believers. Far from being the quintessential objective scientist, the man has issues.
Friday, January 09, 2009
The Darwin Conspiracy
The Darwin Conspiracy - Origins of a Scientific Crime; by Roy Davies
Reviewed by Carl Grant
The Darwin Conspiracy, by Roy Davies, examines the way that Darwin came to a theory of descent with modification by natural selection. Davies claims that Darwin plagiarized major ideas from Alfred Russell Wallace. My own reaction to the claim is strongly colored by my thoughts on the subject when I first heard the story of Wallace's involvement in the theory of evolution. Darwin said that he received a manuscript from Wallace that precisely duplicated his own theory, and that the subsections even corresponded to his own chapter headings. Of course I knew of a few cases where claims to the same theory or invention were made by two parties at about the same time. The invention of calculus claimed by both Newton and Leibnitz comes to mind. In that case as in others there was an acrimonious dispute in which one party or both claimed theft. The coincidence invites suspicion and usually cannot be fully resolved. The disputants in the Newton/Leibnitz affair continued the argument throughout their lives, though most historians seem to assume that the discovery was made independently. In the case of Darwin/Wallace I was more than somewhat surprised by the way people, including Wallace blandly accepted Darwin's claim. This claim seems to be several orders of magnitude more coincidental even than is usual among co-discovery cases. So, are we to believe that Wallace just happened to send the copy of his manuscript to the one person on the planet who had a duplicate of his theory? If it were possible to find out the truth for sure, I would bet big money, giving considerable odds on plagiarism versus coincidence. I started looking into the matter to see if there were considerations in favor of Darwin's honesty or vice versa.
Dealing first with the considerations that made me suspicious of Darwin's version, I vaguely remembered that Darwin was accused failing to mention the contributions of prior authors to evolutionary theory. A number of people pointed out that in the first edition of On The Origin Of Species he continuously referred to evolution as "my theory". There was also no mention of even well known predecessors such as Lamarck, Buffon, Blyth, Chambers, or his own great grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Samuel Butler was particularly strong in his criticism of Darwin's proprietary approach to the subject of evolution. Darwin, to his credit corrected this to some extent in later editions. A number of later writers virtually accuse Darwin of plagiarism. The eminent and respected geneticist C. D. Darlington wrote "Darwin was able to put over his ideas not so much because of his scientific integrity, but because of his opportunism, his equivocation, and his lack of historical sense. Though his admirers will not like to believe it, he accomplished his revolution by personal weakness and strategic talent rather than scientific virtue. ... he used a flexible strategy which is not to be reconciled with even average intellectual integrity."
According to the astronomer Fred Hoyle in the book Evolution from Space "Darwin was a voracious reader of others work...it was not in his character to make a return for what he received...the evidence does not permit any other conclusion except that the omissions were deliberate." Biologist Loren Eisely in his book Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X, documents a number of examples where Darwin claimed as his own ideas previously published by Edward Blyth. According to Eisely "quite substantial portions of Darwin's writing were nearly word for word identical between Darwin and Blyth." He also shows that Darwin’s own notes demonstrate that he was very familiar with Blyth's work. Eisely hypothesizes that Darwin forgot where the material came from and thought the ideas were his own, when many years later he incorporated them in his own work.
Another example from the new book by Davies, involves the Harvard scholar Dov Ospovat. He discovered a box in the university library of Cambridge containing a mass of notes spanning Darwin's life that had largely been ignored by Darwin scholars. He found that well into the 1850's Darwin continued to believe that organisms were perfectly adapted to their environment and only became extinct or exhibited variations when geological forces changed the world in which they operated. Davies says, "Ospovat found a note indicating that Darwin had suddenly recognized a system for the division of labor in the animal world and was convinced that at that moment the elements of Darwin's theory fell into place. The date of that note seemingly meant nothing to Osvopat, but it was written three weeks after the publication of Wallace's paper, which involved the very concept on which Darwin drew...he concluded that Darwin's claim that he had understood natural selection almost twenty years before Wallace was false."
Another area that supports the plagiarism thesis has to do with Darwin's correspondence. In his letters Darwin employed copious flattering of the addressees. However, in many cases his references to the same people were quite negative in letters addressed to others. In connection to Wallace he was invariably positive in his statements. In letters to Wallace Darwin frequently referred to Wallace's scientific abilities, but his published compliments invariably referred to personal qualities; Wallace was generous, open minded, amiable, etc.
When Sherlock Holmes brings up the curious incident of the dog that didn’t bark, Dr. Watson exclaims "The dog did nothing during the night!" Holmes replies "That's the curious incident." In reading through Darwin's correspondence I noticed an interesting pattern in the letters missing from those Darwin received during the critical period both before and after the time he said he received Wallace's manuscript. All of Wallace's letters are missing. We know that Wallace sent many because they are referenced in Darwin's letters to Wallace. The same thing can be said for a number of letters sent to Darwin by Charles Lyle and Joseph Hooker on the question of what to do about Darwin's priority.
Another item in Davies’ book is the issue of when Darwin received Wallace's manuscript. Darwin said in one place that he received it on June 18, 1858, and in another place June 21, 1858. It's more difficult to believe that Darwin was mistaken about the actual date of the manuscripts reception than that he forgot the date he earlier claimed. Davies managed to run down the postal receipt for the package from the English postal service which shows a much earlier date for the package's arrival. Finally there is the fact that Darwin claims his theory was fully developed for twenty years before he actually got around to publishing it. This is surprisingly foolish behavior for someone who was obviously concerned about priority and had published numerous unrelated works in the interim.
There are a number of considerations in favor of Darwin's version of events. It should be noted that Wallace himself did not question Darwin's version. In fact he even named a book Darwinism. Wallace was evidently an extremely trusting person. He never questioned Darwin's version, even from the beginning. He seemed barely capable of entertaining doubts about anyone's honesty. In later years when he was attending spiritualist séances, he felt he had witnessed psychical phenomenon in large measure because he couldn't believe that these nice people would deceive him. Even if Darwin's version of the situation was true, he was still lucky to have such an unsuspicious person to deal with.
Another question that might be asked is: why did Darwin pass Wallace's paper along? If he wanted to steal the ideas, wouldn't he simply have tossed the manuscript out after publishing its contents himself? The answer here is that Darwin was too canny a strategist to make that mistake. Even Wallace would have realized what had happened when he found out. Not knowing Wallace very well, Darwin would assume that there would be some nasty accusations when this happened. Even then, Darwin had a very strong reputation within the scientific community. Why risk blemishing it? Furthermore, Darwin had no way of knowing to whom else Wallace had sent his manuscript or if he might have already published it. If he were to be accused of plagiarism, his reputation would be worse than blemished; it would be destroyed.
The last argument in favor of Darwin has to do with the only hard evidence I know of to support Darwin's claim. He produced a letter to Asa Gray, the well known American scientist, dated some months before the earliest possible arrival of Wallace's manuscript. The letter contained an outline of the theory and was published along with Wallace's paper at the Linnaean Society meeting later that year. This seemed like a very strong point that at first contradicted the plagiarism idea. After thinking it through, I don’t believe it is conclusive. The problem is that I have not been able to find any unambiguous confirmation, or for that matter any confirmation, from Gray that he received the letter from Darwin, let alone receiving it in a time frame that would authenticate Darwin. What's more, in the only two letters I found from Gray to Darwin dated between September 5, 1857(the date on Darwin's letter) and July of 1858, there is no mention of Darwin's brand new theory. Since Gray was asked to read it and comment it is astounding that Gray doesn't refer to it at all. Assuming for arguments sake that Darwin wrote the letter after receiving Wallace's paper and simple pre-dated it, there are at least two things he might have done. One, he didn't mail it. Darwin might have reasoned that Gray might never find out about the letter or its significance. I've never seen any reference to this letter in any of Gray's correspondence, even though I've looked for it in books of both his and Darwin's letters. Given his location across an ocean, even if he did find out, it would be months or even years after the crucial time period. Even then would he make it public? The worst case scenario would still leave the argument that it was lost in the mail—suspicious, but not conclusive. Darwin’s supporters, many of whom would swallow a porcupine if Darwin's name was attached, would give him the benefit of the doubt. A second possibility might be that Darwin sent the letter with its earlier date in June of 58. Here the possibilities include Gray not noticing the date or assuming the letter was delayed in the mail. If he did notice it and eventually realize its possible significance, it is unlikely that he would mount a public campaign or even know what to think of it.
The letter to Gray could actually be viewed as further circumstantial evidence against Darwin. His theory remained unpublished and none of his correspondence reveals his ideas to any of a long list of possible recipients. Why not Lyle, Hooker, Henslow, Huxley, or even Wallace. Instead Darwin sends the only copy to someone he met once casually, and with whom he had shared only a couple of letters. Of course, if you are looking for a way to run a con, then Gray is an excellent choice. He is an influential American. Being well known will give more weight to the letter, while being on another continent means his information will be greatly delayed and sketchy. Is Davies right? I think he was. Is it important? Only if you think justice is important. Wallace was a first rate scientist, as well as a first rate human being. His magnanimous trust led him into error, probably as a result of his own complete honesty. He contributed mightily to the theory of evolution. Not only is there his application of the principle of natural selection to evolution, but he had some great insights on sexual selection and mimicry. He did great work on the distribution of species. Finally, he was one of the first to argue for what was later referred to as continental drift. Even if Davies and I are wrong about the Darwin conspiracy, Wallace deserves much more credit than he ever got.
Davies' book is book is now going for $99.00 used at Amazon. For a book out-of-print six months after publication, this seems an inordinate demand. http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Conspiracy-Roy-Davies/dp/0952310953
The book is supposedly available from Amazon.co.uk for about £20. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwin-Conspiracy-Origins-Scientific-Crime/dp/0952310953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231520274&sr=8-1
Reviewed by Carl Grant
The Darwin Conspiracy, by Roy Davies, examines the way that Darwin came to a theory of descent with modification by natural selection. Davies claims that Darwin plagiarized major ideas from Alfred Russell Wallace. My own reaction to the claim is strongly colored by my thoughts on the subject when I first heard the story of Wallace's involvement in the theory of evolution. Darwin said that he received a manuscript from Wallace that precisely duplicated his own theory, and that the subsections even corresponded to his own chapter headings. Of course I knew of a few cases where claims to the same theory or invention were made by two parties at about the same time. The invention of calculus claimed by both Newton and Leibnitz comes to mind. In that case as in others there was an acrimonious dispute in which one party or both claimed theft. The coincidence invites suspicion and usually cannot be fully resolved. The disputants in the Newton/Leibnitz affair continued the argument throughout their lives, though most historians seem to assume that the discovery was made independently. In the case of Darwin/Wallace I was more than somewhat surprised by the way people, including Wallace blandly accepted Darwin's claim. This claim seems to be several orders of magnitude more coincidental even than is usual among co-discovery cases. So, are we to believe that Wallace just happened to send the copy of his manuscript to the one person on the planet who had a duplicate of his theory? If it were possible to find out the truth for sure, I would bet big money, giving considerable odds on plagiarism versus coincidence. I started looking into the matter to see if there were considerations in favor of Darwin's honesty or vice versa.
Dealing first with the considerations that made me suspicious of Darwin's version, I vaguely remembered that Darwin was accused failing to mention the contributions of prior authors to evolutionary theory. A number of people pointed out that in the first edition of On The Origin Of Species he continuously referred to evolution as "my theory". There was also no mention of even well known predecessors such as Lamarck, Buffon, Blyth, Chambers, or his own great grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Samuel Butler was particularly strong in his criticism of Darwin's proprietary approach to the subject of evolution. Darwin, to his credit corrected this to some extent in later editions. A number of later writers virtually accuse Darwin of plagiarism. The eminent and respected geneticist C. D. Darlington wrote "Darwin was able to put over his ideas not so much because of his scientific integrity, but because of his opportunism, his equivocation, and his lack of historical sense. Though his admirers will not like to believe it, he accomplished his revolution by personal weakness and strategic talent rather than scientific virtue. ... he used a flexible strategy which is not to be reconciled with even average intellectual integrity."
According to the astronomer Fred Hoyle in the book Evolution from Space "Darwin was a voracious reader of others work...it was not in his character to make a return for what he received...the evidence does not permit any other conclusion except that the omissions were deliberate." Biologist Loren Eisely in his book Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X, documents a number of examples where Darwin claimed as his own ideas previously published by Edward Blyth. According to Eisely "quite substantial portions of Darwin's writing were nearly word for word identical between Darwin and Blyth." He also shows that Darwin’s own notes demonstrate that he was very familiar with Blyth's work. Eisely hypothesizes that Darwin forgot where the material came from and thought the ideas were his own, when many years later he incorporated them in his own work.
Another example from the new book by Davies, involves the Harvard scholar Dov Ospovat. He discovered a box in the university library of Cambridge containing a mass of notes spanning Darwin's life that had largely been ignored by Darwin scholars. He found that well into the 1850's Darwin continued to believe that organisms were perfectly adapted to their environment and only became extinct or exhibited variations when geological forces changed the world in which they operated. Davies says, "Ospovat found a note indicating that Darwin had suddenly recognized a system for the division of labor in the animal world and was convinced that at that moment the elements of Darwin's theory fell into place. The date of that note seemingly meant nothing to Osvopat, but it was written three weeks after the publication of Wallace's paper, which involved the very concept on which Darwin drew...he concluded that Darwin's claim that he had understood natural selection almost twenty years before Wallace was false."
Another area that supports the plagiarism thesis has to do with Darwin's correspondence. In his letters Darwin employed copious flattering of the addressees. However, in many cases his references to the same people were quite negative in letters addressed to others. In connection to Wallace he was invariably positive in his statements. In letters to Wallace Darwin frequently referred to Wallace's scientific abilities, but his published compliments invariably referred to personal qualities; Wallace was generous, open minded, amiable, etc.
When Sherlock Holmes brings up the curious incident of the dog that didn’t bark, Dr. Watson exclaims "The dog did nothing during the night!" Holmes replies "That's the curious incident." In reading through Darwin's correspondence I noticed an interesting pattern in the letters missing from those Darwin received during the critical period both before and after the time he said he received Wallace's manuscript. All of Wallace's letters are missing. We know that Wallace sent many because they are referenced in Darwin's letters to Wallace. The same thing can be said for a number of letters sent to Darwin by Charles Lyle and Joseph Hooker on the question of what to do about Darwin's priority.
Another item in Davies’ book is the issue of when Darwin received Wallace's manuscript. Darwin said in one place that he received it on June 18, 1858, and in another place June 21, 1858. It's more difficult to believe that Darwin was mistaken about the actual date of the manuscripts reception than that he forgot the date he earlier claimed. Davies managed to run down the postal receipt for the package from the English postal service which shows a much earlier date for the package's arrival. Finally there is the fact that Darwin claims his theory was fully developed for twenty years before he actually got around to publishing it. This is surprisingly foolish behavior for someone who was obviously concerned about priority and had published numerous unrelated works in the interim.
There are a number of considerations in favor of Darwin's version of events. It should be noted that Wallace himself did not question Darwin's version. In fact he even named a book Darwinism. Wallace was evidently an extremely trusting person. He never questioned Darwin's version, even from the beginning. He seemed barely capable of entertaining doubts about anyone's honesty. In later years when he was attending spiritualist séances, he felt he had witnessed psychical phenomenon in large measure because he couldn't believe that these nice people would deceive him. Even if Darwin's version of the situation was true, he was still lucky to have such an unsuspicious person to deal with.
Another question that might be asked is: why did Darwin pass Wallace's paper along? If he wanted to steal the ideas, wouldn't he simply have tossed the manuscript out after publishing its contents himself? The answer here is that Darwin was too canny a strategist to make that mistake. Even Wallace would have realized what had happened when he found out. Not knowing Wallace very well, Darwin would assume that there would be some nasty accusations when this happened. Even then, Darwin had a very strong reputation within the scientific community. Why risk blemishing it? Furthermore, Darwin had no way of knowing to whom else Wallace had sent his manuscript or if he might have already published it. If he were to be accused of plagiarism, his reputation would be worse than blemished; it would be destroyed.
The last argument in favor of Darwin has to do with the only hard evidence I know of to support Darwin's claim. He produced a letter to Asa Gray, the well known American scientist, dated some months before the earliest possible arrival of Wallace's manuscript. The letter contained an outline of the theory and was published along with Wallace's paper at the Linnaean Society meeting later that year. This seemed like a very strong point that at first contradicted the plagiarism idea. After thinking it through, I don’t believe it is conclusive. The problem is that I have not been able to find any unambiguous confirmation, or for that matter any confirmation, from Gray that he received the letter from Darwin, let alone receiving it in a time frame that would authenticate Darwin. What's more, in the only two letters I found from Gray to Darwin dated between September 5, 1857(the date on Darwin's letter) and July of 1858, there is no mention of Darwin's brand new theory. Since Gray was asked to read it and comment it is astounding that Gray doesn't refer to it at all. Assuming for arguments sake that Darwin wrote the letter after receiving Wallace's paper and simple pre-dated it, there are at least two things he might have done. One, he didn't mail it. Darwin might have reasoned that Gray might never find out about the letter or its significance. I've never seen any reference to this letter in any of Gray's correspondence, even though I've looked for it in books of both his and Darwin's letters. Given his location across an ocean, even if he did find out, it would be months or even years after the crucial time period. Even then would he make it public? The worst case scenario would still leave the argument that it was lost in the mail—suspicious, but not conclusive. Darwin’s supporters, many of whom would swallow a porcupine if Darwin's name was attached, would give him the benefit of the doubt. A second possibility might be that Darwin sent the letter with its earlier date in June of 58. Here the possibilities include Gray not noticing the date or assuming the letter was delayed in the mail. If he did notice it and eventually realize its possible significance, it is unlikely that he would mount a public campaign or even know what to think of it.
The letter to Gray could actually be viewed as further circumstantial evidence against Darwin. His theory remained unpublished and none of his correspondence reveals his ideas to any of a long list of possible recipients. Why not Lyle, Hooker, Henslow, Huxley, or even Wallace. Instead Darwin sends the only copy to someone he met once casually, and with whom he had shared only a couple of letters. Of course, if you are looking for a way to run a con, then Gray is an excellent choice. He is an influential American. Being well known will give more weight to the letter, while being on another continent means his information will be greatly delayed and sketchy. Is Davies right? I think he was. Is it important? Only if you think justice is important. Wallace was a first rate scientist, as well as a first rate human being. His magnanimous trust led him into error, probably as a result of his own complete honesty. He contributed mightily to the theory of evolution. Not only is there his application of the principle of natural selection to evolution, but he had some great insights on sexual selection and mimicry. He did great work on the distribution of species. Finally, he was one of the first to argue for what was later referred to as continental drift. Even if Davies and I are wrong about the Darwin conspiracy, Wallace deserves much more credit than he ever got.
Davies' book is book is now going for $99.00 used at Amazon. For a book out-of-print six months after publication, this seems an inordinate demand. http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Conspiracy-Roy-Davies/dp/0952310953
The book is supposedly available from Amazon.co.uk for about £20. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwin-Conspiracy-Origins-Scientific-Crime/dp/0952310953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231520274&sr=8-1
Sunday, July 16, 2006
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science
Tom Bethell; Regnery Publishing Inc., Washington, D.C. 2005.
Review by Carl Grant
Tom Bethell has some criticisms of the way science is currently done. The dominant points of view in various disciplines have become almost immune from criticism. This is disturbing because, of all disciplines, science should be most open to new evidence and subject to revision. A number of factors can be cited as contributing to bureaucratic tendencies in science. First, science has increasingly become dependent on government funding, and those who control the purse-strings determine what projects are pursued and what results are acceptable. Second, increasing specialization means that within each specialization there are fewer “experts.” Scientists tend to be reluctant to make criticisms outside their own areas of expertise and may not be taken seriously if they do. Third, there is an increased emphasis on consensus within the scientific community. The phrase, “most reputable scientist agree ....” is heard often enough. For political reasons those who control the funding are more interested in results than research, so they seek the consensus view. But in the historical view it is easy to find innumerable scientific consensuses that have been overturned.
Science depends on the unfettered search for knowledge, and if Bethell is right, consensus is the enemy of science. The bulk of his book is devoted to criticizing a number of consensus views, most of which have a left-ward bias. Some of the more prominent scientific myths are, according to Bethell: global warming is caused by humans; human cloning and embryonic stem cell research are the keys to health and happiness; Darwinian evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence; religion is the enemy of science; and AIDS is an equal opportunity epidemic on which we need to spend a great deal more money. My own views tend to be in agreement with Bethell's. I think science has become a sacred cow and that scientists are often treated as if they are the final authority on nearly everything. Scientists, like other groups, have biases, conflicts of interest, hidden agendas, and are not always completely truthful. Their credentials in no way guarantee their expertise or even their competence. As among other specialists, some of the practitioners are incompetent, and most of the rest fall on a continuum between semi-competent and reasonably good at what they do. At most about ten percent are really top-not, but, even the scientific superstars should be evaluated by their work and their arguments not by their status. This is doubly important when they are opining about matters outside their field.
So I find myself agreeing with Bethell’s views regarding the problems of how science is conducted, and I am mostly in agreement with his thinking about the interface between religion and science. For example, I think he is correct that the evidence for naturalistic evolution is under-whelming. Much of what passes for evolutionary theory is only a series of ad-hoc explanations to cover the poor fit between the facts and Darwin’s theory. In spite of my general agreement, I am troubled by Bethell’s methods. His use of references is unsatisfactory. While using references in some places, in others he fails to provide them even where context requires them. For instance, while arguing that AIDS is not a heterosexual epidemic, he says, “careful U.S. studies have already shown that at least a thousand sexual contacts are needed to achieve heterosexual transmission of the virus.” [p.113] No reference are given for these, presumably, important studies, or any discussion of the quality of the studies or their conclusions. In attempting to establish that the Catholic church was open to the possibility of the Copernican view, he quotes Galileo as follows, “He soon found that his Jesuit friends in Rome had already verified the actual existence of the new planets, meaning the moons of Jupiter, and had constantly been observing them for two months: we compared notes, and I found they agreed exactly with my own.” No reference. He might have let us in on the source of this information. A letter? Book? A reported conversation? It would be impossible to prove or disprove that Galileo ever said this, or for that matter anything else, from the information Bethell provides. When he goes on record without any reference to his sources, he impairs his credibility.
Another problem with Bethell's style is his tendency to overstate his case. On page 212, where he attacks evolution, he says “molecular biologists don't have any idea how the mechanisms they study came into existence.” This is clearly an overstatement. Talking with molecular biologists, I've learned that they have many ideas on how the mechanisms they study came into existence. Their ideas may be right or wrong, but they certainly have them. Overstatements like this, found throughout the book, dilute its credibility. At other times Bethell concedes too much. On page 202 he introduces the following argument against intelligent design: “If the advocates of intelligent design can invoke an invisible designer, or God, who can prevail over all difficulties any time He wants, then we are more in the realm of magic than science.” He counters this by saying that a comparable criticism can also be leveled at Darwinism. The criticism itself, he lets stand. Why? A strength of intelligent design is that the designer is not identified. That’s a player-to-be-named-later approach that only tries to show the improbability that organisms evolve by chance. Richard Dawkins comments that “invoking God as a designer just pushes the problem back and we still have to explain God's existence.” But, acknowledging the evidence of design in nature does not have to enter into the separate theological questions about the designer. A person who knows nothing about airplanes and has never seen one, who then sees an airplane land, and examines it, will probably conclude that it was designed. The fact that he doesn't know how it works, who designed it, or anything about the designer, is of little importance to his conclusion that it is not the product of chance. Working on one problem at a time is perfectly legitimate in science.
Bethell is also too glib in his dismissal theistic evolution. Here he simply quotes approvingly a number of people from both sides who say that theistic evolution is inherently atheistic and has little to commend it. So a whole continuum of views is not admitted for discussion; we are told that all views along this line are inconsistent theism. Why? G. K. Chesterton says that an atheist must embrace A to Z evolution, while the theist is free to follow the evidence and believe in any amount of evolution or none. This is too similar to the people who arrogantly claim to know precisely how God operates and condemn anyone who doesn't go along with their explanations. Young earth creationists sometimes insist that anyone who disagrees with them is not a Christian. The atheists have got to love these guys. They are such an easy target; their version of the argument and is the end of any intellectual engagement with the evidence that the earth is millions of years old. People who have been instructed in on-all-or-nothing doctrines, at some point, often find they no longer believe doctrines C, F, and Q, and drift into reluctant agnosticism. To summarize, Bethell has written a moderately useful book. If one ignores its frequent shrillness, it provides an introduction to a number of important issues from a conservative point of view.
This piece was originally published in The New Oxford Review.
Review by Carl Grant
Tom Bethell has some criticisms of the way science is currently done. The dominant points of view in various disciplines have become almost immune from criticism. This is disturbing because, of all disciplines, science should be most open to new evidence and subject to revision. A number of factors can be cited as contributing to bureaucratic tendencies in science. First, science has increasingly become dependent on government funding, and those who control the purse-strings determine what projects are pursued and what results are acceptable. Second, increasing specialization means that within each specialization there are fewer “experts.” Scientists tend to be reluctant to make criticisms outside their own areas of expertise and may not be taken seriously if they do. Third, there is an increased emphasis on consensus within the scientific community. The phrase, “most reputable scientist agree ....” is heard often enough. For political reasons those who control the funding are more interested in results than research, so they seek the consensus view. But in the historical view it is easy to find innumerable scientific consensuses that have been overturned.
Science depends on the unfettered search for knowledge, and if Bethell is right, consensus is the enemy of science. The bulk of his book is devoted to criticizing a number of consensus views, most of which have a left-ward bias. Some of the more prominent scientific myths are, according to Bethell: global warming is caused by humans; human cloning and embryonic stem cell research are the keys to health and happiness; Darwinian evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence; religion is the enemy of science; and AIDS is an equal opportunity epidemic on which we need to spend a great deal more money. My own views tend to be in agreement with Bethell's. I think science has become a sacred cow and that scientists are often treated as if they are the final authority on nearly everything. Scientists, like other groups, have biases, conflicts of interest, hidden agendas, and are not always completely truthful. Their credentials in no way guarantee their expertise or even their competence. As among other specialists, some of the practitioners are incompetent, and most of the rest fall on a continuum between semi-competent and reasonably good at what they do. At most about ten percent are really top-not, but, even the scientific superstars should be evaluated by their work and their arguments not by their status. This is doubly important when they are opining about matters outside their field.
So I find myself agreeing with Bethell’s views regarding the problems of how science is conducted, and I am mostly in agreement with his thinking about the interface between religion and science. For example, I think he is correct that the evidence for naturalistic evolution is under-whelming. Much of what passes for evolutionary theory is only a series of ad-hoc explanations to cover the poor fit between the facts and Darwin’s theory. In spite of my general agreement, I am troubled by Bethell’s methods. His use of references is unsatisfactory. While using references in some places, in others he fails to provide them even where context requires them. For instance, while arguing that AIDS is not a heterosexual epidemic, he says, “careful U.S. studies have already shown that at least a thousand sexual contacts are needed to achieve heterosexual transmission of the virus.” [p.113] No reference are given for these, presumably, important studies, or any discussion of the quality of the studies or their conclusions. In attempting to establish that the Catholic church was open to the possibility of the Copernican view, he quotes Galileo as follows, “He soon found that his Jesuit friends in Rome had already verified the actual existence of the new planets, meaning the moons of Jupiter, and had constantly been observing them for two months: we compared notes, and I found they agreed exactly with my own.” No reference. He might have let us in on the source of this information. A letter? Book? A reported conversation? It would be impossible to prove or disprove that Galileo ever said this, or for that matter anything else, from the information Bethell provides. When he goes on record without any reference to his sources, he impairs his credibility.
Another problem with Bethell's style is his tendency to overstate his case. On page 212, where he attacks evolution, he says “molecular biologists don't have any idea how the mechanisms they study came into existence.” This is clearly an overstatement. Talking with molecular biologists, I've learned that they have many ideas on how the mechanisms they study came into existence. Their ideas may be right or wrong, but they certainly have them. Overstatements like this, found throughout the book, dilute its credibility. At other times Bethell concedes too much. On page 202 he introduces the following argument against intelligent design: “If the advocates of intelligent design can invoke an invisible designer, or God, who can prevail over all difficulties any time He wants, then we are more in the realm of magic than science.” He counters this by saying that a comparable criticism can also be leveled at Darwinism. The criticism itself, he lets stand. Why? A strength of intelligent design is that the designer is not identified. That’s a player-to-be-named-later approach that only tries to show the improbability that organisms evolve by chance. Richard Dawkins comments that “invoking God as a designer just pushes the problem back and we still have to explain God's existence.” But, acknowledging the evidence of design in nature does not have to enter into the separate theological questions about the designer. A person who knows nothing about airplanes and has never seen one, who then sees an airplane land, and examines it, will probably conclude that it was designed. The fact that he doesn't know how it works, who designed it, or anything about the designer, is of little importance to his conclusion that it is not the product of chance. Working on one problem at a time is perfectly legitimate in science.
Bethell is also too glib in his dismissal theistic evolution. Here he simply quotes approvingly a number of people from both sides who say that theistic evolution is inherently atheistic and has little to commend it. So a whole continuum of views is not admitted for discussion; we are told that all views along this line are inconsistent theism. Why? G. K. Chesterton says that an atheist must embrace A to Z evolution, while the theist is free to follow the evidence and believe in any amount of evolution or none. This is too similar to the people who arrogantly claim to know precisely how God operates and condemn anyone who doesn't go along with their explanations. Young earth creationists sometimes insist that anyone who disagrees with them is not a Christian. The atheists have got to love these guys. They are such an easy target; their version of the argument and is the end of any intellectual engagement with the evidence that the earth is millions of years old. People who have been instructed in on-all-or-nothing doctrines, at some point, often find they no longer believe doctrines C, F, and Q, and drift into reluctant agnosticism. To summarize, Bethell has written a moderately useful book. If one ignores its frequent shrillness, it provides an introduction to a number of important issues from a conservative point of view.
This piece was originally published in The New Oxford Review.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Enigma in Human Form
by Carl Grant
Standard evolutionary theory, by which I mean naturalistic Darwinism (ND),faces an enigma in human form. ND works mostly through a random search for improved reproductive performance, where slight modifications that produce improved fitness are preserved through natural selection. The human in a state of nature has no tools, clothing, or mechanical weapons. In looking at him, one wonders what lucky modifications produced the following attributes:
1. Children, produced mostly one at a time, with the longest, highly vulnerable infancy, followed by the longest childhood of any mammal.
2. No organic weapons such as antlers or claws, The teeth being uniquely small and even, with no muzzle are not much of a weapon, except in the hands of a true expert such as Mike Tyson.
3. His bipedal locomotion makes him much slower than any predator over a short distance, while making him particularly vulnerable to injury after a fall. Comparing him to his closest relative, the chimp, his climbing ability is pathetic. The chimp has been variously estimated to be from four to seven times as strong. The chimps bones are thicker, the skin is thicker and stronger, and the chimp has a coat of fur to insulate and protect.
The converse is also enigmatic. Humans have many capabilities which would seem to be of little value in the survival reproduction race. There are numerous examples of this. I'll give two of them in some depth. The first is the way some of us are able to go beyond speech in the use of the voice. When I first took a singing lesson the instructor told me to match a pitch from the piano. I was very surprised when I found I could do this the first time, pedestrian example, but I was impressed. I am far from a great singer(although I think my voice is much better then it sounds), but when I have attempted to imitate professionals, such as Bing Crosby, it does sound somewhat like him, and is certainly better quality then my normal voice. I'm not sure how incremental improvements in this arena would be of much aid in survival, except perhaps in front of a live audience. I've noticed that some performers are able to imitate an incredible variety of sounds. Here is a partial list of some I have heard. All of the following were somewhere between adequate and astounding. A few of them required amplification. People can imitate most musical instruments including the flute, trumpet, sax, clarinet, French horn(the French call it a German horn), banjo, bass, harp, violin, and various drums. I've also heard good imitations of hot rods, Mercedes, gunfire, bottles being opened, bird songs, whale songs, running and dripping water, helicopters, creaking floors and doors, various alarms, packages being opened etc. My second set of examples involves the use of that most incredible all purpose tool, the human hand.
As a high school student I took beginning typing. Every Friday we took a test. We typed furiously and at the end counted the number of words. We then counted our mistakes and subtracted 5 words for each mistake, a very unfair ratio, I thought. On a bad day I would owe them words. Inept as I was, I did have flashes of mediocrity. I could rattle along pretty well; I just made too many mistakes. Still the speed and dexterity, with each finger working independently and hitting the right key over 50% of the time is an achievement beyond the reach of even a highly motivated chimp. There was one girl in our class who could type a disturbing seventy three words per minute. She was no beginner. I'm sure her parents started teaching her to type when she was a fetus. Our teacher told us that a top professional typist could type about 200 words per minute. Where did this ability come from? A somewhat similar skill is required of a pianist. What a skilled pianist can do requires speed, dexterity, touch, flexibility, and hand and eye coordination that seems magical. We usually take the hands for granted. Since there were few pianos around 50 million years ago what caused this latent capability to be developed? The materialist calls this a pre-adaptation, but details are not forthcoming. Impressive in a different way are the skilled use of the hands by a sleight of hand magician. To make playing cards appear or disappear she will use a back palm. To do this yourself take a number of cards, grasp one corner of the short edges with the 2nd and 3rd fingers, curl them around the backs of the third and 4th fingers to grasp the other corner holding your hand naturally so that from the front the hand looks empty. Next you simply rotate one of the cards around grasping it with the thumb and index finger so it blocks the audience's view of the remaining cards. Next you throw away the newly produced card, while simultaneously rotating the rest of the cards back behind your hand. Sounds easy enough doesn't it? Continue in this fashion until all the cards have been produced. To make the cards vanish just reverse the process. There are many more moves involving equal amazing but different skills in manipulating cards. Then there are slights with ropes, balls, coins and innumerable other objects. Perhaps our distant ancestor could increase her chance of survival by making her companions bananas disappear, if she didn't get caught.
Mechanics, surgeons, painters and a host of others make extraordinary use of their hands. The enigma then results from a combination of facts. We aren't strong, swift, or well protected. We do not reproduce rapidly, and when we do our young are extremely vulnerable for an exceptionally long period of time. However, none of this matters once we have civilization going for us. Our infants have little to fear from predators once they are safely ensconced in their cribs inside the house and mom and dad have weapons at their disposal. So did nature know this was going to happen? If so, she would not have to waste time on these seeming weaknesses, but could busy herself pre-adapting us for the above mentioned skills. It seems we had anatomical structures and developmental tendencies in place long before the abilities became operative. Many of the apparent weaknesses resulted in structures that later came together harmoniously to allow our latent abilities to flourish.
Bipedal locomotion frees the forelimbs for tool use. It also allows us to carry things without using the mouth, which in turn is freed up for the development of speech. It is also more efficient in in terms of respiration. Most mammal's breathing is tied to locomotion. This is in part caused by having to support the head in front of the body, adding to energy expenditure. Since the human head is lined up over the center of gravity of the whole body, which in turn is directly over the feet our breathing is decoupled from standing, walking, or running, This is a big aid to speech. Our relative hairlessness also aids in speech. Most mammals have to pant to cool down. Humans' lack of fur combined with their uniquely efficient sweat glands allow them to forego panting. We can also take a cold shower. The reason our teeth are not good weapons is that they are small, all of about the same height, very close together, and we have no muzzle. The mouth is relatively small, which makes the voice more resonant. The structure and positioning of the dentition allows clear enunciation. Our long infancy allows language to develop. We have time to become educated. It allows time for closer ties to develop between family and community. It also allows time for the continued growth of the brain. Humans are the only creature in which the brain grows significantly after birth.
All this suggests some sort of purposive or directive factor. What that factor is cannot be inferred from this type of evidence. Whether it involves a deistic, pantheistic, or theistic God, or perhaps an elan vital or vital force, or super aliens, or something totally novel must be adjudicated in other arenas. The objection might be raised that this solves nothing. It just pushes the problem back to another entity or force that must be explained. That is true, but realizing the nature of the problem, and discarding unproductive approaches, e.g. materialistic naturalism, is well worth the effort. If we landed on some distant planet and found structures clearly evidencing purpose, we shouldn't spend all our resources looking for "natural" causes. If an aborigine found a Geiger counter she would infer that it wasn't a product of random forces, even though she might have no idea what created it or explain how that entity came to be.
A series of experiments over the last 120 years demonstrate some remarkable human visual abilities which present difficulties for neodarwinian theory. I'll consider only one series of experiments (published in Psychological Issues, Vol. III, no.4 monograph 12. The Formation and Transformation of the Perceptual World by Ivo Kohler International University Press, New York, N.Y. 1964.) Ivo Kohler Phd., is head of the Department of Psychology, Institute for Experimental Psychology, Innsbruck Austria. In 1962-1963 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Using specially designed spectacles or goggles to invert the image sent to the subject eyes The world appeared upside down, but this changed over the next few days and more and more images appeared rightside up. The subject was able to function normally and was tested for motor coordination. He was able to ride a bicycle and engage in fencing and was able to parry an opponents blows. When the goggles were removed after nine days the world appeared upside down for a few days and then his vision returned to normal. These experiments have been replicated by at least two other qualified researchers. Trying to imagine how this capacity arose through a series of fortuitous mutations, preserved through natural selection is not easy. However I know that Darwinism is an incredibly flexible theory, whose advocates will surely rise to the challenge. I will submit my own thoughts on how it might have occurred. If it has some trifling defects at least it might provide food for thought. I picture our hominid ancestors wandering around in the forest primeval wearing inversion goggles.
One can easily imagine one of these hominids having been born with a mutation causing his field of vision to be rotated 75 degrees from the norm. This would enable him to view things in about their normal (pre-goggle) form by tilting his neck 105 degrees around his shoulder. Thank God for those yoga classes. Now he would be able to realize that that yellow blob hanging down from the ground is a tiger. This would allow him to rush off in the general direction of someplace else. This would place his unmutated companions at a disadvantage in the survival sweepstakes. First to attain the equivalent view they would need to do a handstand. Second they would either have to right themselves, or make their get-away walking on their hands. Their only hope would be that the tiger was so bemused by their antics that he would forget to give chase. Some might argue that hominids not wearing goggles would have a big edge over our hero. This is nonsense, since we can presume that like current teenagers, the hominids would all affect the same look.
Standard evolutionary theory, by which I mean naturalistic Darwinism (ND),faces an enigma in human form. ND works mostly through a random search for improved reproductive performance, where slight modifications that produce improved fitness are preserved through natural selection. The human in a state of nature has no tools, clothing, or mechanical weapons. In looking at him, one wonders what lucky modifications produced the following attributes:
1. Children, produced mostly one at a time, with the longest, highly vulnerable infancy, followed by the longest childhood of any mammal.
2. No organic weapons such as antlers or claws, The teeth being uniquely small and even, with no muzzle are not much of a weapon, except in the hands of a true expert such as Mike Tyson.
3. His bipedal locomotion makes him much slower than any predator over a short distance, while making him particularly vulnerable to injury after a fall. Comparing him to his closest relative, the chimp, his climbing ability is pathetic. The chimp has been variously estimated to be from four to seven times as strong. The chimps bones are thicker, the skin is thicker and stronger, and the chimp has a coat of fur to insulate and protect.
The converse is also enigmatic. Humans have many capabilities which would seem to be of little value in the survival reproduction race. There are numerous examples of this. I'll give two of them in some depth. The first is the way some of us are able to go beyond speech in the use of the voice. When I first took a singing lesson the instructor told me to match a pitch from the piano. I was very surprised when I found I could do this the first time, pedestrian example, but I was impressed. I am far from a great singer(although I think my voice is much better then it sounds), but when I have attempted to imitate professionals, such as Bing Crosby, it does sound somewhat like him, and is certainly better quality then my normal voice. I'm not sure how incremental improvements in this arena would be of much aid in survival, except perhaps in front of a live audience. I've noticed that some performers are able to imitate an incredible variety of sounds. Here is a partial list of some I have heard. All of the following were somewhere between adequate and astounding. A few of them required amplification. People can imitate most musical instruments including the flute, trumpet, sax, clarinet, French horn(the French call it a German horn), banjo, bass, harp, violin, and various drums. I've also heard good imitations of hot rods, Mercedes, gunfire, bottles being opened, bird songs, whale songs, running and dripping water, helicopters, creaking floors and doors, various alarms, packages being opened etc. My second set of examples involves the use of that most incredible all purpose tool, the human hand.
As a high school student I took beginning typing. Every Friday we took a test. We typed furiously and at the end counted the number of words. We then counted our mistakes and subtracted 5 words for each mistake, a very unfair ratio, I thought. On a bad day I would owe them words. Inept as I was, I did have flashes of mediocrity. I could rattle along pretty well; I just made too many mistakes. Still the speed and dexterity, with each finger working independently and hitting the right key over 50% of the time is an achievement beyond the reach of even a highly motivated chimp. There was one girl in our class who could type a disturbing seventy three words per minute. She was no beginner. I'm sure her parents started teaching her to type when she was a fetus. Our teacher told us that a top professional typist could type about 200 words per minute. Where did this ability come from? A somewhat similar skill is required of a pianist. What a skilled pianist can do requires speed, dexterity, touch, flexibility, and hand and eye coordination that seems magical. We usually take the hands for granted. Since there were few pianos around 50 million years ago what caused this latent capability to be developed? The materialist calls this a pre-adaptation, but details are not forthcoming. Impressive in a different way are the skilled use of the hands by a sleight of hand magician. To make playing cards appear or disappear she will use a back palm. To do this yourself take a number of cards, grasp one corner of the short edges with the 2nd and 3rd fingers, curl them around the backs of the third and 4th fingers to grasp the other corner holding your hand naturally so that from the front the hand looks empty. Next you simply rotate one of the cards around grasping it with the thumb and index finger so it blocks the audience's view of the remaining cards. Next you throw away the newly produced card, while simultaneously rotating the rest of the cards back behind your hand. Sounds easy enough doesn't it? Continue in this fashion until all the cards have been produced. To make the cards vanish just reverse the process. There are many more moves involving equal amazing but different skills in manipulating cards. Then there are slights with ropes, balls, coins and innumerable other objects. Perhaps our distant ancestor could increase her chance of survival by making her companions bananas disappear, if she didn't get caught.
Mechanics, surgeons, painters and a host of others make extraordinary use of their hands. The enigma then results from a combination of facts. We aren't strong, swift, or well protected. We do not reproduce rapidly, and when we do our young are extremely vulnerable for an exceptionally long period of time. However, none of this matters once we have civilization going for us. Our infants have little to fear from predators once they are safely ensconced in their cribs inside the house and mom and dad have weapons at their disposal. So did nature know this was going to happen? If so, she would not have to waste time on these seeming weaknesses, but could busy herself pre-adapting us for the above mentioned skills. It seems we had anatomical structures and developmental tendencies in place long before the abilities became operative. Many of the apparent weaknesses resulted in structures that later came together harmoniously to allow our latent abilities to flourish.
Bipedal locomotion frees the forelimbs for tool use. It also allows us to carry things without using the mouth, which in turn is freed up for the development of speech. It is also more efficient in in terms of respiration. Most mammal's breathing is tied to locomotion. This is in part caused by having to support the head in front of the body, adding to energy expenditure. Since the human head is lined up over the center of gravity of the whole body, which in turn is directly over the feet our breathing is decoupled from standing, walking, or running, This is a big aid to speech. Our relative hairlessness also aids in speech. Most mammals have to pant to cool down. Humans' lack of fur combined with their uniquely efficient sweat glands allow them to forego panting. We can also take a cold shower. The reason our teeth are not good weapons is that they are small, all of about the same height, very close together, and we have no muzzle. The mouth is relatively small, which makes the voice more resonant. The structure and positioning of the dentition allows clear enunciation. Our long infancy allows language to develop. We have time to become educated. It allows time for closer ties to develop between family and community. It also allows time for the continued growth of the brain. Humans are the only creature in which the brain grows significantly after birth.
All this suggests some sort of purposive or directive factor. What that factor is cannot be inferred from this type of evidence. Whether it involves a deistic, pantheistic, or theistic God, or perhaps an elan vital or vital force, or super aliens, or something totally novel must be adjudicated in other arenas. The objection might be raised that this solves nothing. It just pushes the problem back to another entity or force that must be explained. That is true, but realizing the nature of the problem, and discarding unproductive approaches, e.g. materialistic naturalism, is well worth the effort. If we landed on some distant planet and found structures clearly evidencing purpose, we shouldn't spend all our resources looking for "natural" causes. If an aborigine found a Geiger counter she would infer that it wasn't a product of random forces, even though she might have no idea what created it or explain how that entity came to be.
A series of experiments over the last 120 years demonstrate some remarkable human visual abilities which present difficulties for neodarwinian theory. I'll consider only one series of experiments (published in Psychological Issues, Vol. III, no.4 monograph 12. The Formation and Transformation of the Perceptual World by Ivo Kohler International University Press, New York, N.Y. 1964.) Ivo Kohler Phd., is head of the Department of Psychology, Institute for Experimental Psychology, Innsbruck Austria. In 1962-1963 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Using specially designed spectacles or goggles to invert the image sent to the subject eyes The world appeared upside down, but this changed over the next few days and more and more images appeared rightside up. The subject was able to function normally and was tested for motor coordination. He was able to ride a bicycle and engage in fencing and was able to parry an opponents blows. When the goggles were removed after nine days the world appeared upside down for a few days and then his vision returned to normal. These experiments have been replicated by at least two other qualified researchers. Trying to imagine how this capacity arose through a series of fortuitous mutations, preserved through natural selection is not easy. However I know that Darwinism is an incredibly flexible theory, whose advocates will surely rise to the challenge. I will submit my own thoughts on how it might have occurred. If it has some trifling defects at least it might provide food for thought. I picture our hominid ancestors wandering around in the forest primeval wearing inversion goggles.
One can easily imagine one of these hominids having been born with a mutation causing his field of vision to be rotated 75 degrees from the norm. This would enable him to view things in about their normal (pre-goggle) form by tilting his neck 105 degrees around his shoulder. Thank God for those yoga classes. Now he would be able to realize that that yellow blob hanging down from the ground is a tiger. This would allow him to rush off in the general direction of someplace else. This would place his unmutated companions at a disadvantage in the survival sweepstakes. First to attain the equivalent view they would need to do a handstand. Second they would either have to right themselves, or make their get-away walking on their hands. Their only hope would be that the tiger was so bemused by their antics that he would forget to give chase. Some might argue that hominids not wearing goggles would have a big edge over our hero. This is nonsense, since we can presume that like current teenagers, the hominids would all affect the same look.
Friday, January 13, 2006
The Copernican Principle
by Carl Grant
The Copernican Principle (CP) is frequently encountered in science writing and TV commentary. It is the view that humans with their inherent tendency to self aggrandizement, with the aid of religion, overstate their own significance to an incredible degree. The prime example of this is the belief that the earth is the center of the universe, and man has dominion over it. Science, it is said, has destroyed this cozy self-centered picture. The earth has been shown to be a smallish planet, circling a star located on the out skirts of a galaxy containing a hundred billion such stars. The galaxy itself is just one of hundreds of millions galaxies in the known universe. Science has shown, further, that humans, far from being at the apex of creation, are just one more life form out of the several million on this particular planet. Cats are as good at being cats as humans are of being human. Even our "special abilities" are far from unique. Our much vaunted use of tools is achieved by numerous other species. Chimps, for example, break branches off trees, pull off the leaves, and use them to dig in crevasses for ants, termites, etc. Religion (especially Judaism and Christianity) are seen as supporting and pandering to this self indulgent human tendency. In fact the CP is usually brought up in connection with a direct or indirect critique of religion. While the CP may have its uses, the history and psychology behind it are nonsense.
The reason Christians during the medieval period, the Greeks, and just about everyone prior to Galileo thought the earth was at the center are pretty straight forward and from their perspective quite reasonable. A sun centered earth would have to be rotating at around 1,000 mph, and moving about the sun much faster. Yet they felt no sense of movement. No wind, no centrifugal force, if something was dropped from a height it landed straight down, as opposed to landing behind the direction of motion as Aristotelian physics said it should. Most conclusive was that no parallax (change in apparent position of an object due to change in position of the observer) for any of the fixed stars in summer and winter. Even in Kepler and Galileo's time instruments were not sophisticated enough to measure a stellar parallax. While being at the center of attention or power may be valued by some, it doesn't automatically mean better or favored. In both the Greek and early Christian view the earth was a place of decay and death. It was the heavens that were perfect, timeless and the dwelling place of God or the gods. For Christians the real center was the location of hell. In a similar way the elevation of humans above animals was fairly reasonable. We do have a kind of dominion over the earth. We go to the zoo, we don't reside there. Creatures as large and diverse as horses, camels and elephants do our work. To take an extremely general term, such as communication, and apply it to both humans and animals can be misleading. Eagles and dogs both have the ability to lift themselves off the ground unaided and land someplace else, but dogs jump and eagles fly. Some animals use tools just as do people, but there's a notable difference between grubbing for insects with a stick and laser-beam ophthalmology. Humans and animals both play, but if you need a fourth for bridge don't pick a chimpanzee. Their declarer play is terrible, and they tend to hog the bidding. My point is that the ancients, when they put humanity in a separate category, were not being totally unreasonable. Another point to be noted is that Christians did not put themselves at the apex of the chain of being; that was reserved for God. There were also other beings who were believed to be higher on the scale than humans, such as archangels, angels, fairies Cherubim etc. When you add concepts like original sin you might conclude that humans have a tendency for self-abasement rather then self aggrandizement.
The Copernican Principle (CP) is frequently encountered in science writing and TV commentary. It is the view that humans with their inherent tendency to self aggrandizement, with the aid of religion, overstate their own significance to an incredible degree. The prime example of this is the belief that the earth is the center of the universe, and man has dominion over it. Science, it is said, has destroyed this cozy self-centered picture. The earth has been shown to be a smallish planet, circling a star located on the out skirts of a galaxy containing a hundred billion such stars. The galaxy itself is just one of hundreds of millions galaxies in the known universe. Science has shown, further, that humans, far from being at the apex of creation, are just one more life form out of the several million on this particular planet. Cats are as good at being cats as humans are of being human. Even our "special abilities" are far from unique. Our much vaunted use of tools is achieved by numerous other species. Chimps, for example, break branches off trees, pull off the leaves, and use them to dig in crevasses for ants, termites, etc. Religion (especially Judaism and Christianity) are seen as supporting and pandering to this self indulgent human tendency. In fact the CP is usually brought up in connection with a direct or indirect critique of religion. While the CP may have its uses, the history and psychology behind it are nonsense.
The reason Christians during the medieval period, the Greeks, and just about everyone prior to Galileo thought the earth was at the center are pretty straight forward and from their perspective quite reasonable. A sun centered earth would have to be rotating at around 1,000 mph, and moving about the sun much faster. Yet they felt no sense of movement. No wind, no centrifugal force, if something was dropped from a height it landed straight down, as opposed to landing behind the direction of motion as Aristotelian physics said it should. Most conclusive was that no parallax (change in apparent position of an object due to change in position of the observer) for any of the fixed stars in summer and winter. Even in Kepler and Galileo's time instruments were not sophisticated enough to measure a stellar parallax. While being at the center of attention or power may be valued by some, it doesn't automatically mean better or favored. In both the Greek and early Christian view the earth was a place of decay and death. It was the heavens that were perfect, timeless and the dwelling place of God or the gods. For Christians the real center was the location of hell. In a similar way the elevation of humans above animals was fairly reasonable. We do have a kind of dominion over the earth. We go to the zoo, we don't reside there. Creatures as large and diverse as horses, camels and elephants do our work. To take an extremely general term, such as communication, and apply it to both humans and animals can be misleading. Eagles and dogs both have the ability to lift themselves off the ground unaided and land someplace else, but dogs jump and eagles fly. Some animals use tools just as do people, but there's a notable difference between grubbing for insects with a stick and laser-beam ophthalmology. Humans and animals both play, but if you need a fourth for bridge don't pick a chimpanzee. Their declarer play is terrible, and they tend to hog the bidding. My point is that the ancients, when they put humanity in a separate category, were not being totally unreasonable. Another point to be noted is that Christians did not put themselves at the apex of the chain of being; that was reserved for God. There were also other beings who were believed to be higher on the scale than humans, such as archangels, angels, fairies Cherubim etc. When you add concepts like original sin you might conclude that humans have a tendency for self-abasement rather then self aggrandizement.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Skeptics and True Believers; The Exhilarating Connection between Science and Religion
by Chet Raymo; Walker and Co., New York, NY 1998.
Reviewed by Carl Grant.
Raymo is a professor of astronomy and physics at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He divides the world into two types of people. Skeptics, like himself, and true believers. Skeptics accept things on the basis of evidence and reason. Their conclusions are evolving and tentative. They tend to be optimistic, creative, and confident of progress. Skeptics are tolerant of cultural and religious diversity. True believers, for Raymo, seek simple and certain truths, provided by authorities that are more reliable than the human mind. They look for help from outside--from God, spirits, or extraterrestrials. They are repulsed by diversity, comforted by dogma, and see things as black or white.
As indicated by the subtitle, Raymo says he wants to reconcile science and religion. To do this both sides need to make some changes. Science must recognize the human need for a sense of connection, the importance of ritual, and a sense of wonder and poetry. Religion must cede to science authority to determine fact. Religion should also give up some superstitious holdovers from its intellectual infancy. Trifles such as a belief in God, free will, the objectivity of morals, life after death and the idea that there is a special meaning to existence. A Christian, for instance, need only jettison the essentials of the faith and embrace a thorough going naturalism, while maintaining poetry and a sense of wonder. My own sense of wonder is certainly engaged by the lunacy of the suggestion.
Before proceeding to debunk various irrational beliefs he offers a quiz to determine if the reader is scientific--skeptical--material or a true believer--hopelessly irrational. It is a 20 question true or false test. "I believe: 1. in a God who answers prayers; 2. astrology; 3. life after death; 4. angels; 5. ESP; 6. ufo's; and so on. I took the quiz myself and found to my chagrin, that with 9 trues, I am a hopelessly irrational true believer. I also applied a modified version of the quiz, allowing for their historical period, to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton and was astounded by the results. None of them would qualify as a scientific materialist. Raymo uses the word science a lot, but leaves it unclear what he means by the term. Does it refer to all scientists, a consensus of "qualified scientists", the results of science, "naturalism", or a sort of reified entity. Two things he seems quite sure of are that it's good, and that he is eminently qualified to speak for it.
Raymo's debunking methodology is straight forward. Pick an easy target, the Jonestown cult, criticize it in depth, and then speak disparagingly about all religion, assuming it's the same. Another example, pick a particularly bad ESP experiment to critique and go on to assume ESP is bunk. I think of it as the Santa Clause technique. There's no Santa because: reindeer can't fly; chimneys are too narrow; and Santa would have to cover each house in 1 three millionth of a second. Therefore there is no God. His reasoning, if you'll forgive the overstatement, is filled with tacit assumptions. He assumes that philosophic materialism is true and is part of the scientific world view. He assumes that true believers, i.e. people who disagree with him, believe what they want to believe, and any belief that is optimistic is almost certainly false. That naturalists atheists agnostics etc. are the most objective thinkers.
Raymo claims to be a friend to both science and religion, but at every turn he undermines, what most of us would call religion. So what does he offer us? Science can help us with the "big questions". Who am I? Where did I come from" Why am I here? Could I speak to the manager? Oop's scratch the last one. The answers at first blush are not what we want to hear: We are staggeringly complex electrochemical machines. There is no ghost in the machine, no soul that will survive the bodies disintegration. Our bodies minds and consciousness evolved over hundreds of millions of years from primitive organisms. We are contingent throw offs of organic evolution. And why are we here? "We are here to make copies of our genes." Phew, for a minute I thought this was going to be depressing.
After the author had used the word skeptic or a variation 78 times, I stopped counting. Skeptics, we are told, accept things only with strong evidence. They hold their opinions tentatively, always willing to modify them on the basis of new evidence. They examine all assumptions, and are particularly wary of accepting things on authority or just because they are commonly accepted. With these criteria in mind, Raymo could serve as a model of what a skeptic should avoid. The average cult devotee could derive a great deal of hilarity at his incredible credulity. People such as Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson and Francis Crick, are treated as unimpeachable authorities. "Science" is first reified then deified. The book is very largely a compendium of tacit assumptions followed by evidence-free assertions about controversial questions. For instance the existence of ESP is treated as too silly for words, and in contradiction to the scientific point of view.
Here are a number of comments showing Raymo's take on parapsychology--study of ESP, etc. "In schools we teach kids astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics; at home we follow private visions of astrology, creationism, health fads, and parapsychology. We live in the world six days of the week and out of the world on Sunday." (pg.266) and "Before we abandon skepticism for true belief, and turn to horoscopes, parapsychology, newa-ge superstitions, and religious fundamentalism, let me speak for science."
The only passage in the book and actual reason for rejecting parapsychology (pg. 45): "Such things as UFOs.or ESP cannot be ruled out a priori, however. I don't dismiss them quickly. The purported evidence has been subjected to exhaustive scrutiny: it is unconvincing." Subjected to scrutiny by whom, Larry, Moe, and Curly? Unconvincing to whom? Richard Dawkins? Jerry Lewis? A few reasons why the dismissal of parapsychology so hastily is the opposite of skeptical: 1. ESP phenomenon has been reported, in so far as we know, in every culture past and present; 2. Polls in the U.S.A. and other western countries show that a hefty majority of people not only believe in the phenomenon, but report it; 3. Third-world countries have even larger majorities.
For those who assume that the opinions of the common rabble carry no weight--an opinion that a skeptic should defend in depth--the only scientists whose opinion should be consulted are the parapsychologists. They are the specialists. All others are out of their area. The vast majority of parapsychologists accept ESP. If they aren't experts, no one is. The assumption that ESP is inherently unlikely is true only if philosophical materialism is true. The truth or falsity of materialism is a subject hotly debated by biologists, psychologists, philosophers, and neurophysiologists, at least 2 who are dualists are also Nobel laureates. If substance dualism were true ESP would not only be possible, but likely. If the mind interacts with the body, maybe there's some slippage allowing it to interact with other material bodies. Philosophical idealism would be another plausible scenario. Even if materialism were true ESP might still be possible. Charles Richet, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, was a materialist, who also conducted ESP experiments that were positive.
Reviewed by Carl Grant.
Raymo is a professor of astronomy and physics at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He divides the world into two types of people. Skeptics, like himself, and true believers. Skeptics accept things on the basis of evidence and reason. Their conclusions are evolving and tentative. They tend to be optimistic, creative, and confident of progress. Skeptics are tolerant of cultural and religious diversity. True believers, for Raymo, seek simple and certain truths, provided by authorities that are more reliable than the human mind. They look for help from outside--from God, spirits, or extraterrestrials. They are repulsed by diversity, comforted by dogma, and see things as black or white.
As indicated by the subtitle, Raymo says he wants to reconcile science and religion. To do this both sides need to make some changes. Science must recognize the human need for a sense of connection, the importance of ritual, and a sense of wonder and poetry. Religion must cede to science authority to determine fact. Religion should also give up some superstitious holdovers from its intellectual infancy. Trifles such as a belief in God, free will, the objectivity of morals, life after death and the idea that there is a special meaning to existence. A Christian, for instance, need only jettison the essentials of the faith and embrace a thorough going naturalism, while maintaining poetry and a sense of wonder. My own sense of wonder is certainly engaged by the lunacy of the suggestion.
Before proceeding to debunk various irrational beliefs he offers a quiz to determine if the reader is scientific--skeptical--material or a true believer--hopelessly irrational. It is a 20 question true or false test. "I believe: 1. in a God who answers prayers; 2. astrology; 3. life after death; 4. angels; 5. ESP; 6. ufo's; and so on. I took the quiz myself and found to my chagrin, that with 9 trues, I am a hopelessly irrational true believer. I also applied a modified version of the quiz, allowing for their historical period, to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton and was astounded by the results. None of them would qualify as a scientific materialist. Raymo uses the word science a lot, but leaves it unclear what he means by the term. Does it refer to all scientists, a consensus of "qualified scientists", the results of science, "naturalism", or a sort of reified entity. Two things he seems quite sure of are that it's good, and that he is eminently qualified to speak for it.
Raymo's debunking methodology is straight forward. Pick an easy target, the Jonestown cult, criticize it in depth, and then speak disparagingly about all religion, assuming it's the same. Another example, pick a particularly bad ESP experiment to critique and go on to assume ESP is bunk. I think of it as the Santa Clause technique. There's no Santa because: reindeer can't fly; chimneys are too narrow; and Santa would have to cover each house in 1 three millionth of a second. Therefore there is no God. His reasoning, if you'll forgive the overstatement, is filled with tacit assumptions. He assumes that philosophic materialism is true and is part of the scientific world view. He assumes that true believers, i.e. people who disagree with him, believe what they want to believe, and any belief that is optimistic is almost certainly false. That naturalists atheists agnostics etc. are the most objective thinkers.
Raymo claims to be a friend to both science and religion, but at every turn he undermines, what most of us would call religion. So what does he offer us? Science can help us with the "big questions". Who am I? Where did I come from" Why am I here? Could I speak to the manager? Oop's scratch the last one. The answers at first blush are not what we want to hear: We are staggeringly complex electrochemical machines. There is no ghost in the machine, no soul that will survive the bodies disintegration. Our bodies minds and consciousness evolved over hundreds of millions of years from primitive organisms. We are contingent throw offs of organic evolution. And why are we here? "We are here to make copies of our genes." Phew, for a minute I thought this was going to be depressing.
After the author had used the word skeptic or a variation 78 times, I stopped counting. Skeptics, we are told, accept things only with strong evidence. They hold their opinions tentatively, always willing to modify them on the basis of new evidence. They examine all assumptions, and are particularly wary of accepting things on authority or just because they are commonly accepted. With these criteria in mind, Raymo could serve as a model of what a skeptic should avoid. The average cult devotee could derive a great deal of hilarity at his incredible credulity. People such as Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson and Francis Crick, are treated as unimpeachable authorities. "Science" is first reified then deified. The book is very largely a compendium of tacit assumptions followed by evidence-free assertions about controversial questions. For instance the existence of ESP is treated as too silly for words, and in contradiction to the scientific point of view.
Here are a number of comments showing Raymo's take on parapsychology--study of ESP, etc. "In schools we teach kids astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics; at home we follow private visions of astrology, creationism, health fads, and parapsychology. We live in the world six days of the week and out of the world on Sunday." (pg.266) and "Before we abandon skepticism for true belief, and turn to horoscopes, parapsychology, newa-ge superstitions, and religious fundamentalism, let me speak for science."
The only passage in the book and actual reason for rejecting parapsychology (pg. 45): "Such things as UFOs.or ESP cannot be ruled out a priori, however. I don't dismiss them quickly. The purported evidence has been subjected to exhaustive scrutiny: it is unconvincing." Subjected to scrutiny by whom, Larry, Moe, and Curly? Unconvincing to whom? Richard Dawkins? Jerry Lewis? A few reasons why the dismissal of parapsychology so hastily is the opposite of skeptical: 1. ESP phenomenon has been reported, in so far as we know, in every culture past and present; 2. Polls in the U.S.A. and other western countries show that a hefty majority of people not only believe in the phenomenon, but report it; 3. Third-world countries have even larger majorities.
For those who assume that the opinions of the common rabble carry no weight--an opinion that a skeptic should defend in depth--the only scientists whose opinion should be consulted are the parapsychologists. They are the specialists. All others are out of their area. The vast majority of parapsychologists accept ESP. If they aren't experts, no one is. The assumption that ESP is inherently unlikely is true only if philosophical materialism is true. The truth or falsity of materialism is a subject hotly debated by biologists, psychologists, philosophers, and neurophysiologists, at least 2 who are dualists are also Nobel laureates. If substance dualism were true ESP would not only be possible, but likely. If the mind interacts with the body, maybe there's some slippage allowing it to interact with other material bodies. Philosophical idealism would be another plausible scenario. Even if materialism were true ESP might still be possible. Charles Richet, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, was a materialist, who also conducted ESP experiments that were positive.
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