Tag: science

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Nature Other

Evolution, ID, Carl Zimmer, monkey-men and suchlike. Again.

I’ve just added The Loom to the linkroll. The Loom is the blog of Carl Zimmer, who wrote the excellent and rivetingly eye-opening Parasite Rex, as well as the excellent but marginally less riveting At the Water’s Edge. They’re both worth reading, but the parasite one would be my recommendation just because the subject matter is that bit more unusual. Anyway, I was reading a long discussion in the comments about how to sell evolution to the public, and it reminded me a of a point I’ve been meaning to make for a while.

The ID movement’s current Big Idea is a rather technical attack on the mechanism of natural selection. It looks good because they appear to be engaging with biologists on their own ground, rather than relying on appeals to scripture. On the other hand, the point which seems to have the most visceral appeal to the public is the question “do you believe that you are descended from an ape?”

But there are two questions here. The idea of ‘evolution’ – that all form of life on earth share common ancestors, that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are similar to Pileated Woodpeckers because they are actually related to each other, and yes, that we are descended from apes – is independent of natural selection. There were evolutionists before Darwin. And the weight of evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

An analogy: Newton said that a dropped apple falls to the ground because all objects are attracted to each other by gravity in proportion to their mass. Whether that’s true or not, the apple still falls. Someone who rejected Newtonian mechanics would not therefore expect apples to float in midair; apples definitely fall, and the only question is why.

Even if IDists have found a fatal flaw in natural selection*, it doesn’t make any of the evidence for evolution disappear. We are definitely descended from apes (and reptiles and fish and little wormy things). Natural selection is by far the best explanation we have for how it happened, but the evidence for evolution is now so strong that if natural selection was disproved, we would need another evolutionary explanation to replace it.

*they haven’t

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Nature

103 mutations of drosophila

act up (preferred name: capulet) adrift always early amalgam amnesiac anachronism arc archipelago argos armadillo armitage arrest arrow asense atonal aubergine aurora baboon bag of marbles bagpipe bantam basket bazooka Bearded beaten path bereft big brain blistered blistery boule brahma brainiac brakeless branchless breathless bric à brac Bride of sevenless brinker broad brother of odd with entrails limited bruno (preferred name: arrest) Buffy bunched buttonhead buttonless cacophony cactus cannonball canoe cap’n’collar capricious capulet castor (common alternative name: ming) caudal charlatan scylla and charybde chickadee chico chiffon Chip chromosome bows citron clift Clock clueless collier comatose coracle corkscrew courtless cramped crocodile crooked legs crumbs cup cut dachshund daughterless deadpan dead ringer Deformed Delta diaphanous diego diminutive dimmed Disabled discs overgrown discs lost dishevelled dispatched dissatisfaction dodo domeless double parked doublesex double-time dreadlocks drifter dumbfounded dunce

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Culture Nature

Hypergraphia for Poetry in an Epileptic Patient

I got this link from somewhere – Bookslut, maybe? – but anyway, it’s a letter to The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.

An epileptic patient “complained of being driven to write poetry. For 5 years, he experienced words as ‘continuously rhyming in his head’ and felt the need to write them down and show his writings to others. He did not talk in rhyme, write excessively in nonrhyme, or read poetry. The patient had not had a preoccupation with poetry until age 53 when he had the subacute onset of behavioral changes with irritability and anger.”

The brain really is peculiar. The fact that someone with brain damage would experience words rhyming in his head is remarkable but, given the extensive brain area devoted to language recognition and formation, makes some sense. The need to write it down and show it to people is what strikes me as most interesting. It suggests that the brain isn’t just exhibiting some kind of linguistic tic, but that the stimulus is somehow acting on his whole concept of poetry, including the associated ideas that you write it down and show it people.

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Nature Other

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Booby Henderson, the founder of the Church of the FSM, has produced a book, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He has decided to use the profits towards buying a missionary pirate ship to spread the word. There’s a petition you can sign to try and persudade the US government that the Church of the FSM is a real religion and deserving of tax-free status.

I actually think that the whole FSM thing is a bit annoying. It’s somewhat amusing, and the phrase ‘noodly appendage’ is a fine addition to the language, but the more it goes on, the more it becomes a satire on religion, rather than a focussed argument against the teaching of ID in schools. I have no objection to people satirising religion, but given the high percentage of church-goers in the US, the anti-ID movement needs to win over moderate Christians. Trying to be the calm voice of reason seems a better way of doing that than mocking people’s sincere beliefs.

Even more annoying, for me, is that the FSM idea doesn’t even stand up in the first place. In Henderson’s original letter, he basically said that he had an alternative explanation for life, and if they were going to teach non-scientific theories in school, his theory was just as good as ID. But the whole point of ID is that it is creationism stripped of the scriptural references as a way of getting around the consitutional separation of church and state. Once you strip away the scriptural details of FSMism – the noodliness, the heavenly beer volcano, the pirates – what you’re left with is the assertion that life was created by an intelligent designer. It’s not an alternative to ID – it *is* ID. What the satire really needs is an alternative explanation for how life came to be – however ridiculous – not just a different version of the same thing.

And yes, I do know that I’m too literal-minded for my own good.

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Nature

First, name your rock.

This story appealed to me.

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Nature Other

Ha!

A post at we make money not art made me laugh.