Europe Travelblog

The Greatest Show on Earth

2010-03-13T15:08:00-06:00

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is Richard Dawkins's latest book, a readable review of the scientific evidence for Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. Apparently, Dawkins realized that his last several books about biology and religion assumed that the reader understood and accepted the evidence for evolution, so he decided that he needed a book to lay out the evidence. Dawkins covers a lot of ground in his discussion, weaving discoveries in paleontology, embryology, anatomy, genetics, artificial breeding and geography together to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the evidence that leads to a nearly inescapable conclusion: natural selection acting on isolated populations inevitably leads to biological diversity.

After explaining how frustrating it is to defend Evolution from those who deny it (a frustration he says is akin to a historian dealing without someone who who denies the existence of the Roman Empire), he starts by showing how powerfully artificial selection modifies pets, plants, and livestock for our human purposes. From there, he shows that the same techniques that turned ancient cabbage into both cauliflower and kohlrabi are used in nature for species to adapt to the world around them. When given enough time (he explains radiometric and other dating techniques), genetic isolation (whether geographic or by humans keeping dog breeds pure), and an environment that prefers some traits over others, speciation is inevitable.

Other chapters cover hominid evolution, the fallacy of looking for a specific "missing link", embryological development, vestigial traits that show our history as descending from fish, and molecular genetic proof of the shape of the tree of life, amongst other relevant topics.

Unlike Dawkins's previous book, this book is focused on science, not religion. However, Dawkins seemingly can't help himself from taking a few shots at religious ideas like creationism and Intelligent Design that some promote in lieu of scientifically-backed evidence. I think these asides are unfortunate, not because they are condescending (as some find them) or unamusing (they can be hilarious, as in his encounter with someone who refuses to go to a museum to see the evidence), but because it's sad that a conversation about scientific inquiry has been tainted by religious interference. If this were a book on plate tectonics, defense against religious recalcitrance would be unnecessary. I hope someday biology can get to that level of discussion.

Overall, this is an entertaining and educational book. Dawkins covers a lot of ground and gives a lot of good background for how the evidence for Darwinian evolution is broad and deep. While he covers a lot of information, he stays at a very readable level, leaving the scientific rigor available in the end notes and bibliography. He saves the footnotes for amusing anecdotes and tales of animal and human behavior that demonstrate his points.

Note: I will be presenting a review of the The Greatest Show on Earth during the St. Louis Ethical Society's Forum tomorrow morning at 9:45 (March 14, 2010). Please come see it if you're interested, and here's the presentation I'll give in case you can't make it: The Greatest Show on Earth review

The Three Strategies of the Anti-Evolution Movements

2010-02-11T12:45:00-06:00

Last night, my alma mater's Assembly Series hosted a lecture by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward Larson on the topic "From Dayton to Dover: A Brief History of the Evolution Teaching Controversy in the U.S." I really enjoyed the talk as an overview of the evolution vs. creation debate over the past century or so.

The main structure was an analysis of the three strategies that anti-Evolution activists have used over the years:

Removing evolution from the classroom
Balancing evolution with some form of creationist instruction
Teaching that evolution itself is "just a theory"

Removing evolution from the classroom

This part of the discussion was dominated by analysis of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, which Larson pointed out was not a resounding victory for the pro-evolution forces (in fact, Scopes was convicted) and was brought by the town of Dayton, TN as a publicity stunt that grew out of control. Both of those points contradict the impression of the trial given by Inherit the Wind.

More interesting for me was the revelation that the debate over teaching evolution in public schools was not initially a fight between Christians and atheists, as the debate is now generally depicted. Instead, it started out in the late 1800s as a theological debate within Christianity, between the Modernists, who adapted their traditional beliefs to scientific discovery, and the Fundamentalists, who insisted that Biblical literalism trumped any notion of discovered fact. So, before the 1947 Supreme Court decision that extended the First Amendment's Establishment Clause to the states, the debate in public schools was not whether to teach a religious viewpoint on our origins, but instead was focused on which religious viewpoint to teach. Since in the debate today you hear so much about the "evil atheists" who are trying to force evolution down everyone's throat, I was surprised to hear that it started as a Christian argument.

Balancing evolution with some form of creationist instruction

After the Supreme Court clarified that the Fourteenth Amendment extended the First Amendment to the schools in the 1940s, the debate was quiet in the schools for a while; since evolution was the only game in town that claimed the mantle of science, it was the only option for schools (actually, there was the additional option of avoiding the topic and controversy completely, which Larson said was the primary choice).

That changed in 1961, with the publication of "The Genesis Flood" by Henry Morris, which created the concept of "Creation Science". Of course, the ideas presented in the book were nonsense from a scientific perspective, but that didn't really matter. The main effect was that Creationism now had a scientific veneer, no matter how fraudulent, and that veneer was enough to lead several states to require teaching creationism along side evolution as "balance".

Fortunately, the Supreme Court again clarified the situation with the Edwards v. Aguillard decision, which prohibited teaching creationism as science because it's really just religion and not at all science.

Teaching that evolution itself is "just a theory"

Since the Supreme Court had ruled that directly teaching religion was unacceptable and that only science should be taught in public school science curricula, the next effort was to change the definition of science itself.

Here, Larson discussed the Intelligent Design (ID) movement and its further attempt to make religion look like science. Larson pointed out that ID isn't really science (it makes no predictions, it isn't falsifiable, etc.) but is really a philosophical argument. The claim of ID is that science itself is wrong because it looks only for naturalistic or materialistic answers to the questions it asks. However, this isn't a weakness of science, it's a strength. As Michael Behe, one of the main leaders of the ID movement, himself admitted on the stand in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, a definition of science expansive enough to include ID would also include astrology. With naturalism, we have Chemistry; without it, we have alchemy.

Larson discussed the Dover case (in which a public school board used church funds to buy Creationist textbooks that had been rebranded as ID books) and similar modern cases. Fortunately, in all these cases, the courts have upheld that only science be taught in science classes.

Conclusion

Larson's talk was a bit rushed, but the crowd really seemed to enjoy the history, laughing with surprise at some of the gambits that have been attempted over the years. I would suspect that the vast majority of the crowd agreed with the pro-evolution perspective, not only because this was at a top university (though Larson pointed out that a colleague at Cornell said a third of his biology class rejected evolution walking in the door), but also due to self-selection on the material.

Even if he was "preaching to the choir," I think it was an important topic, because science and engineering students need to understand more than just the facts of science; they also need to understand the context and history of the debate in America today. Evolution isn't controversial in college or in research, but it is controversial in the political arena. To be successful in that arena, information like what Dr. Larson presented is vital.

P.S. At the lecture, I bought a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Scopes Trial, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. I haven't had a chance to dig into yet, but I flipped through it a bit and noticed that the 12-page Afterword was obviously the script that he used for the lecture, with many sections of his talk lifted directly from the text. So, if you want more on this topic, that book and its afterword are a good summary.

Thoughts on the Special Election and the Senate

2010-01-19T22:35:00-06:00

I think a big part of the reason Coakley lost is that the left is mad at Obama that he wasn't able to get everything the movement wanted when he had the supermajority. Perhaps the worst thing that happened for the Democrats this past year was getting this 60th vote. It gave the appearance of complete power but not the reality of it. Because of Franken/Coleman, the supermajority was in place for only four months, and the Senate was in recess for half of that time.

We on the left are blaming Obama for not giving us everything the progressive movement wants when he had only a short time it was even possible (and enough moderates in the Senate that perhaps it wasn't ever possible). Obama is a progressive pragmatist - he's not going for the home run on every issue, and he realizes that (if that strikes you as odd, consider that the current health care reform is more conservative than what Nixon proposed). Unfortunately, we have a purist fringe on the left that doesn't accept anything short of liberal purity, and a purist fringe on the right that has taken over the entire opposition party to the point that no compromise is possible.

The Senate's filibuster isn't inherently a bad rule - it served the nation well for a long time, but only because it was accepted as an infrequent action to be taken only under extreme circumstances. Now that Senate partisanship has increased to the current level and the filibuster has become the de facto standard (it's in use for over 70% of the votes the Senate sees these days), I fear that we've reached the point of complete government inaction. The GOP is going to use the filibuster to stop anything with the merest hint of controversy, and the chance to address our nation's problems will be lost - we probably won't see financial reform or attempts to deal with Anthropogenic Global Warming. They're just off the table. And then when party control switches (as it will inevitably), the Democrats will use the tactic to stop any attempt to change Social Security or immigration.

Our country has major systemic issues that need to be addressed, but the partisanship of the Senate combined with the existing Senate rules means we won't see efforts to fix them.

Incidentally, this pleases one of my most conservative friends to no end - he loves government gridlock because he would prefer the government not do anything at all. I may be cynical, but I'm not cynical in that way.

I think that the Senate needs to change the filibuster rules. I know that this would be to the Democrat's advantage in the short term, but I think it would be good for the country as a whole in the long term. Eventually, the Republicans will control the Senate again, and if so, they should not be constrained on greater than 70% of their votes. So perhaps whatever rule change is invoked should be set up not to occur until the next Senate election cycle, or the next three cycles, or the next change in power. However it happens, I think we need it.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has an interesting idea for reforming the filibuster:

"Today, in the age of instant news and Internet and rapid travel -- you can get from anywhere to here within a day or a few hours -- the initial reasons for the filibuster kind of fall by the wayside, and now it's got into an abusive situation," Harkin said.

He and the constitutional scholars agree that the intention was never to hold up legislation entirely.

To keep the spirit of slowing down legislation, though, Harkin's proposal back in 1995 would have kept the 60-vote rule for the first vote but lessening the number required in subsequent votes.

He said for instance if 60 senators could not agree to end debate, it would carry on for another week or so and then the number of votes required to end debate would drop by three. Harkin said it would carry on this way until it reached a simple majority of 51 votes."

You could hold something up for maybe a month, but then, finally you'd come down to 51 votes and a majority would be able to pass," Harkin said. "I may revive that. I pushed it very hard at one time and then things kind of got a little better."

I don't know if this is the best idea out there, but something is needed.

Finally, there's an interesting argument that the frequent use of a filibuster makes it unconstitutional. The Constitution specifies that the Senate should work by strict majority rule, and the role of Senate tiebreaker is explicitly assigned to the Vice President. When the filibuster is used as frequently as it is, it changes the structure of the Senate to require a super majority de facto, and it strips the VP of one of his only explicit Constitutional duties.

I'm not sure how much water this argument holds (IANAL), and I'm not sure who would have the standing to bring a suit based on it (the VP?), but it could be the argument that limits the use of filibuster because of its recent overuse.

My Sister's House is Famous

2009-05-22T16:55:00-06:00

I just found out that this classic 1975 Pepsi commercial was filmed at my sister's house! They've done a huge remodel, so the porch isn't there anymore, but it's the same house.

I Guess I Could Get Used to Poutine

2009-02-22T22:35:00-06:00

Fareed Zakaria just introduced me to another pair of interesting ideas: the ease with which I could legally live outside the United States, and the artificial hurdles the United States puts up to expanding our skilled and educated workforce.

When we lived in Germany in 2005, we had to come back from that great experience earlier than I would have liked because we couldn't get long-term legal status. We looked into the possibility of getting legal status in other European countries, but all of them built their requirements on close family connections. While this makes some sense, it's not really a system designed for the future economy, is it?

Of course, I'm lucky that I don't have to worry about trying to get into the USA. Our immigration policy is just a mess, I'm glad I don't have to navigate it, and it's not designed to build our economy, either.

And then there's Canada.

As Zakaria writes, the Canadians just keep doing things right. I guess it comes from the same wellspring of common sense that led them to be the only country "in the industrialized world (that) has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors." Here's what Zakaria writes about Canada's much more sensible immigration policy:

The U.S. currently has a brain-dead immigration system. We issue a small number of work visas and green cards, turning away from our shores thousands of talented students who want to stay and work here. Canada, by contrast, has no limit on the number of skilled migrants who can move to the country. They can apply on their own for a Canadian Skilled Worker Visa, which allows them to become perfectly legal "permanent residents" in Canada�no need for a sponsoring employer, or even a job. Visas are awarded based on education level, work experience, age and language abilities. If a prospective immigrant earns 67 points out of 100 total (holding a Ph.D. is worth 25 points, for instance), he or she can become a full-time, legal resident of Canada.

Doesn't this just make sense? I just took the test, and we could live in Canada. Our combination of education, work experience, English language skills, and age puts us at 76 points on their scale. So, we are eligible to move to Canada because we would help their economy.

This just makes sense.

Unfortunately for the United States, our policies are such that Microsoft had to open up a research facility in Vancouver, BC, to accommodate the skilled and educated workers from India and China who wanted to help us build our economy, but who we wouldn't let in. Why is this, exactly?

How St. Louis Makes use of Snow

2009-01-28T10:28:00-06:00

This is right outside the Cardinals' Busch Stadium, in the area that used to be the previous stadium.

(Thanks to Matthew Porter for the image)

My Favorite word of 2008

2009-01-24T11:48:00-06:00

Recombobulation Area: An area at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee in which passengers that have just passed through security screening can get their clothes and belongings back in order.

The Reality of Vaccines.

2009-01-14T07:51:00-06:00

It's good to see the forces of reality fighting back.

Many doctors now argue that reporters should treat the antivaccine lobby with the same indifference they do Holocaust deniers, AIDS deniers and those claiming to have proof that NASA faked the Moon landings. "