David Berlinski: Rebelious Intellectual Defies Darwinism

in 1973 I was a postdoc in molecular biology at Columbia University and it was a time really of a lot of intense discussion I had a lot of friends who were postdocs subjects came up naturally and I just happened to come across a copy of the Wistar symposium that was held in 1966 in Philadelphia it's a collection of essays about Darwinian theory and I read Murray Eden's article the critical article about Darwin theory and Marcel shuts and burgers critical argument about dominating theory and I started talking about it with the other postdoctoral fellows people who were working in the laboratory at the time and I discovered somewhat to my own surprise that the the arguments which seem so very credible very important went virtually unanswered among the biologists that I knew who tended to dismiss the arguments in a way that suggested they hadn't really understood them and if they had understood them we're not prepared to respond to them and that was the beginning of my skepticism about Darwinian theory when I spent a year in Paris working with shoulds and Berger of course both of us enriched each other's opinions shinsen Berger had been a long-standing critic within a French biological establishment of Darwinian theory and what he had to say reinforced what I had to say what I had to say reinforced what he had to say later I talked with Murray Eden where were a group of us who were similarly skeptical I must say in the 70s in the late 60s and in the 70s there was a much more intensive degree of opposition to Darwinian theory a much much greater willingness to examine Darwinian orthodoxies the great counter-reformation took place in the 1980s in the 1990s so when I started work when I started thinking about these issues shuttin burger and I wanted to write a book together on this note there was a very relatively liberal attitude among mathematicians people who were interested physicists people who are interested in Darwinian theory a much greater willingness to wonder whether any of this could possibly be true so that was roughly my own background on approach to it well the claim that all skeptics about Darwinian orthodoxy a Christian fundamentalist stands refuted by me it's obviously not true I'm neither Christian or a fundamentalist but lots and lots of people are skeptical in the scientific community I know dozens of mathematicians who scratch their head and say you guys think this is the way life originated it's absolutely a preposterous theory and many many very significant figures john von neumann one of the great mathematicians of the twentieth century just laughed at already in theory he hooted at it so it's it's perfectly absurd this is a point in a polemical dispute it's not a reasonable standard of criticism opposition to Darwinian theory is I wouldn't say widespread but there's a consistent group of people among mathematicians among physicists among some very good speculative biologists we simply don't don't accept it don't even regard it as a scientific theory in any reasonable sense it's tough to say because we're not dealing with the fear in any sense in which say a physicist would recognize the theory we're dealing with a collection of anecdotes a a certain point of view a series of hunches I would say that the the most outstanding the salient points are first of all the fossil record which is which is simply mystifying we can't make much sense of the fossil record it does not sustain any kind of Darwinian prediction that can be intelligently derived from Darwinian theory and it doesn't seem to sustain anything else as far as I can see it's it's a perfectly mystifying record that's one obvious point not talking just about the Cambrian explosion I'm talking about everything that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the fossil record second point we have never been able in any way theoretically to examine the central Darwinian claim that natural selection and random variation can account for a great deal of complexity if you look at the history of physics for example what it Newton knew in the 17th century he said well the planets are being attracted to the Sun by a force it's not any kind of force it's a inverse-square force and then he went and showed that if you make that assumption the result will be an orbit that conforms exactly to the observed orbit say of the of the earth or of Mars it will be a conic section and then he proved the converse that if it's a conic section the planets must be attracted to a central source by an inverse square law there is nothing like that biology in Darwinian theory a kind of a canonical demonstration that this mechanism random variation natural selection is adequate to the generation of this level of complexity from the point of view of the serious sciences without that kind of a demonstration one is completely adrift you have no idea whether the mechanism is adequate for its intended purposes this is the second point third evidential piece of the puzzle look I turn to the serious Sciences you turn to general relativity or quantum mechanics I can program a computer with the equations of general relativity with the equations of quantum mechanics and I can say all right what are the consequences i can actually see the consequences emerge in a simulation we can't do any of this in biology and that that should should prompt any reasonable person to ask why not and this is such a simple mechanism which can easily be programmed on a computer how can we can't set up a computer and create something of biological like complexity how come we cannot see the unfolding of an evolutionary process the way we can see the unfolding of an evolutionary process in physics it's a very serious question I've looked at all the genetic algorithms I'm trying to write a genetic algorithm myself and and the sheer fact is without a tremendous amount of very special manipulation and ad hoc constraints the computer is not going to generate anything realistic if it uses Darwinian mechanisms and it will generate something realistic only if it doesn't use Darwinian mechanism this is an important point fifty years after the computer revolution began we have a splendid tool for exacerbating viability of Darwinian theory and everything that we know everything that we know I think this is the uniform experience of anyone working in genetic algorithms indicates these mechanisms will not work they will not work for their intended purposes and finally there's the utter absence of laboratory evidence immune random variation natural selection we should be able to stop manipulating organisms when we look at dogs no matter how far back we go it's dogs and we look at bacteria no matter what we do they stay bugs they don't change in their fundamental nature there seems to be some sort of an inherent species limitation and we have no good explanation for this in terms of Darwinian theory we should have far more flexibility for more plasticity under laboratory conditions than we actually do if Darwin in theory or anything like that we're correct what we see in nature what we see in the laboratory is very highly bounded variation cyclic variation as for example the Finch peaks in the go op Galapagos Island that's about all we see small variations why is that if Darwinian theory is correct these are evidentiary points that I think need to be stressed need to be examined openly honest and they never are of course never all look this stuff about Finch Peaks is certainly interesting let's let's not confuse ourselves about that the question is can it be extrapolated or does it represent cyclic variation I can say here's an account of how the eagle flies look I get up I jump in the air I flap my hands a couple of times and I land a few feet from where I started thus the origin of flight now the obvious response is this is nutty you can flap your hands as long as you want you won't fly like an eagle the argument from extrapolation can work in some circumstances it fails in other circumstances plainly in the case of a human being who jumps two feet in the air and then lands two feet from where we started the argument from extrapolation fails what persuades you in the case of the Galapagos Finch that what seemed to be cyclic variations of the start the commencement of a grand process of speciation that's a step in the argument that has to be completed it's not enough to say well it's more the same it's not more of the same self-evidently it can easily be bounded variation of exactly the same sort as we see in any species experiment now the contrary may be true we may be seeing the development of entirely new species the Glocke Galapagos finches off as a Finch and within 100 million years they'll be a Galapagos elephant could be but we need a whole lot more by way of evidence than a couple of nutty journalists going down there looking at Finch beaks and writing a Pulitzer Prize winning book a whole lot more this is to be serious science and this doesn't even pass the threshold of anecdote finch beaks change in size yeah they do they change in shape too seems to be correlated with seasons it seems to be regressed back toward the mean when the season change again if this is the part of a spectacular evolutionary extrapolation let's have additional reasons for thinking that otherwise we're not even talking about a scientific hypothesis the interesting argument about the whale which is a mammal after all it belonged to the same group of organisms as a dog a human being a chimpanzee or a tiger the interesting argument about a whale is that if its origins were a land-based originally then we have some crude way of assessing quantitatively not qualitatively but quantitatively the scope of the project of transformation the project is very simple let's put it in vividly accessible terms you've got a cow you want to teach it how to live all of its life in the open ocean still retaining its air-breathing characteristics what do you have to do from an engineering point of view to change the cow into a whale this is crude but it gives you the essential idea now if the same question were raised with respect to a car and you ask what would it take to change a car into a submarine we would understand immediately it would take a great many changes the project is a massive massive engineering project of redesign and adaptation well the same question occurs with respect to that proverbial cow virtually every feature of the cow has to be changed has to be adapted but since we know that life on Earth and life in the water are fundamentally different enterprises we have some sense of the number of changes in you know anytime a science avoids coming to grips with numbers it's somehow immersing itself in perhaps an unavoidable but certainly an unattractive miasma here's a chance actually put some numbers on calculations we're not talking about genetics we're talking about simple numbers the skin has to has to change completely it has to becoming impermeable to water that's one change breathing apparatus has to has to change a diving apparatus has to be put in place lactation systems have to be designed the eyes have to be protected the hearing has to be altered celebrated organs have to be changed feeding mechanisms have to be changed after all a cow eats grass a whale doesn't as I say I've tried to do some of these calculation the calculations are certainly certainly not hard but they're interesting because I stopped at 50,000 that is morphological changes and don't forget these changes are not independent they're all linked if you change it an organism's visual system you have to change a great many parts of its cerebellum its cerebrum its its nervous system all of these changes are coordinated so when we're talking about an evolutionary sequence such as this what's interesting about the cow to whale transition I'm just using this as a easily accessible idea what's interesting about the cattle whale transition is that we can see a different environment is going to impose severe design constraints on a possible evolutionary sequence how are these constraints met if they're roughly fifty thousand if they're two million constraints how are those men and what does this suggest about what we should see in the fossil record to my way of thinking if Darwinian hypotheses are correct it should suggest an enormous plethora of animals intermediary between the ambulocetus and the next step that won't solve all problems one wants to know what's directing this change if anything but at least it will put it in the ballpark of a quantitative estimate which is hardly ever done questions about homology are really tricky because they tend to be exercises in circular definition order what do we mean by home illogical organs well in the 19th century in the early 20th century geneticists and biologists struggled to put together a criteria for homology they talked about a similarity and embryo logical development similarity and functional similarity and morphological form that's reasonable but a little vague a little unclear but what inference do you make from the fact that say the fin in a fish is structured in a way that's remarkably similar to the hand and a human or in a chimpanzee if the fact that you see some morphological significance is taken as evidence for common descent is not much additional that you need to look for by way of evidence because the issue is definitional if it's not taken as evidence for common descent what do you need to complete the inference to common descent there are plenty of plenty of examples of homo logical structures in biology which are obviously not based on uncommon descent for example take the Australian wolf which except for the reproductive system features a wide variety of organ systems that are absolutely home illogical to the North American timber wolf but there's no evidence that these home illogical structures arose because some Wolf's at some time in the past or some proto will decided first to migrate to Australia and then to migrate to North America the evolutionary lines are completely distinct and yet we see a profound degree of homology we see this throughout the animal kingdom the whole issue of homology commonality of form is riddled with a great deal of philosophical uncertainty because it's never clear what the evidence is what the evidence is for and how one is to avoid completely circular region what is clear what is clear is that within family groupings there are profound similarities in structure we can say that but whether they arise because of some constraints in the in the circumstances of life or because there's a genuine explanation in terms of a common ancestor we just don't know in many cases the entire mammalian group of animals for example all of the mammals have many many properties in common why this should be we don't know for example the the Penta pod nature of all extremities why is five preferred in the mammalian kingdom and not 7 or 13 or 52 it's an obviously interesting question if we say that it is because the mammalian million organisms were derived ultimately from fish then we have a profound number of problems in that pectoral and pelvic girdles also obey the rule of five they also obey the rule of five where did this constraint come from it's not entirely clear the idea that mutations are considered the engines of evolution has only one problem there's no evidence to support it as far as we know and that's a considerable problem not an overwhelming problem for a scientific theory there plenty of scientific theories that lasted a long time with absolutely no evidence but the idea that the mutations are the driving force encounters are fatal difficulties almost all mutations are deleterious almost all of them doing the organism absolutely no good in fact we have a devilishly hard time finding any mutations that do the organism any good whatsoever that's one problem the second problem is that by now we should be a tentative enough to look for contrived circumstances in which we can test this idea that mutations by definition random by definition random work is the engine of evolution what we have are a variety of lifelike systems books for example or computer computer codes and what we know is that unless we do a lot of careful stage management arbitrary events in either books or computer codes tend to screw the code of the book up irreparably now there's a large question here if I take a copy of Windows 2000 XP and I start introducing random changes within a very short while the code will crash the whole system will be useless why exactly is this not happening in living systems I don't want a lot of hand waving in response I want to upsize quantitative answer living systems don't experience catastrophic failure under random mutations because and if you know tell me I'll take your call day or night let's look at the thing this way what what is the Darwinian theory say what is the dahle weight domain Ian's anecdote there are arbitrary changes meaning the changes are perfectly random you have no idea when they will occur and they're not linked to changes that have occurred and after the changes have occurred there's a deterministic process which calls out those changes that are valuable and saves those changes which are not and excludes those changes which are not so the process is both one of sheer dumb luck finding the right changes and something that is not quite a matter of luck that is quite deterministic that is saving the valuable changes nonetheless Darwinian theory suggests that each such episode lock change lock change is independent it has nothing to do with the one that went before so that in the abstract it could be modelled by what mathematicians called a random variable at first cut first approximation when I talk about sheer dumb luck I mean the amazing fact that these extraordinary ineffably beautiful structures arise from what is at its heart a stochastic that is to say a random process now no one is arguing say that of a tiger a toothless tiger develops a set of splendid dentures capable of biting its prey it will improve its chances of survival that seems obvious it seems in fact so obvious that it's hard to imagine that a scientific theory is needed to explain it the pigeonhole principle explains the pigeonhole principle tells you if you have 10 letters and only 9 mailboxes one letter has to go that seems to be at work in Darwinian theory as an underlying assumption as well hardly need a hundred years of biology to tell us that but the essential point is that the structure of the theory is arguably stochastic each event each episode each bright bursting episode of change is independent of the one that went before and independent of the one that's going to come after that's what I meant by sheer dumb luck a hard time imagining that I myself from the product of sheer dumb luck I like to see think of all of evolution groaning its way toward the accomplishment of the noble and lovely thing that is me but of course is a critic of Darwinian theory I don't hold with that of course I find it difficult to imagine that any contemporary state of affairs is the result of essentially a random process not difficult for theological not difficult for religious not difficult for any reasons of the sacred but difficult because we have an enormous amount of experience with the underlying kind of processes in mathematics and statistics and we never see anything like that I imagine that Wanda Bacchus the famous writer was offering an account of the origins of every contemporary novel and as is what he argued that all novels are really one novel that is Don Quixote and that all novels would were derived from the Quixote by random copying changes in an obscure group of Cistercian French monks when I wrote that I wanted to poke fun at Darwin in theory but the more I thought about it the more perfectly reasonable that that should be the account of the origins of the novel you began with Don Quixote in the 15th century 16th century you had groups of monks who didn't speak any Spanish didn't speak any French copying it as medieval monks monks copy the Bible and they introduced copying arrows and sure enough after a certain amount of time Don Quixote changed the worn piece different language different notation different elements but essentially a process of copying errors if we find that preposterous and I certainly do little shiver could should go up our backs when we think of the analogy and analogous claim being made in the context of biology the idea that science is a uniquely self-critical institution is of course preposterous scientists are no more self-critical than anyone else they hate to be criticized and they never criticize themselves given given their enormous ly long span of human history this is a prediction that one would expect to be true and it is true there are local mechanisms of criticism and science I mean within established theories if somebody publishes data that don't work out in the right way or if they're a mathematical flaws in a certain theory these tend to get known but large global criticisms of the scientific enterprise are very very difficult to find and certainly are not being promulgated by the scientists themselves with any great of boolean sore enthusiasm look these people are only human they hate criticism me too me too it's not a surprise the idea that scientists are absolutely eager to be beaten up that's one of the myths I put out by the scientists and it works splendidly so that they can avoid criticism if somebody's got a lot of money at stake a lot of research money the words I don't have a clue are guaranteed to end his his or her funding if someone is relatively free to say exactly what they would they feel like saying yeah there are people who say we really don't know we're really in the dark about this so a lot of it depends on the institutional constraints of science itself we're asking for standards of behavior that it would be wonderful to expect but that no serious man actually does expect a hundred years of fraudulent drawing suggesting M biological affinities that don't exist that's just what I would expect if biologists were struggling to maintain a position of power in a secular democratic society let's be reasonable we're all sophisticated men and women here in the the popular myth of science is a uniquely self-critical institution and scientists as men who would rather be consumed at the stake rather than fudge their data I mean that's that's okay for a PBS special but that's not the real world that's not what's taking place I mean people fudge the data whenever they can get away with it and then they will commit themselves to fraudulent drawing just so long as they're convinced that no one's looking over their shoulder and it's it's unrealistic unsophisticated and unwise to expect people to do anything other than that think of your last traffic ticket now you bet officer I was doing 98 miles per hour in a 30 mile an hour school zone what was the last time you told the cop that and yet we expect the biologists to say exactly the same thing about drawings which have been his stock and trade for the last hundred years the much more relevant question is how how is it that we live in a society where the point of view the splendidly cynical point of view I'm a dumb rating right now is not common wisdom and we don't look more closely at what these people say one of the reasons that people embrace Darwinian orthodoxy with such an unholy zealousness is just that it gives them access to power it's as simple as that power over education power over political decisions power of a funding and power over the media no one in a society which is openly contemptuous of religious expression in any form wants to be identified with the side at which the intellectuals and the leaders of taste and opinion are going to snicker again is human human nature we would not expect the philosopher to be boisterous in his denunciation of Darwinian theory if it could cause people at the Faculty Club to whisper about them and that's exactly what we find tremendous amount of pressure in this society or any other to conform to socially accepted beliefs strategies of evidence of praise on the like well the idea that the scientific enterprise is is governed by a majority of opinion it's not entirely a foolish idea I mean we can't we can't get rid of it completely and say that the truth is so unassailable that it can be discovered by one individual inevitably running against the tide of every other individual there has to be some consensus and some points of your science and and to suggest that the fact that so many biologists are willing publicly to endorse Darwinian theory is of no account it's foolish to a certain extent I do agree with that it is important to present within an educational establishment what is the standard the mainstream the canonical view is there's no question about that but at the same time for heaven's sake let's open up the discussion a little bit and present some countervailing views at least to the extent of appraising Darwinian theory in the context that realistically portrays it for what it is a kind of amusing 19th century collection of anecdotes that is utterly unlike anything we see in the serious sciences that would be my favorite position yeah biologists do agree that this is the correct theory for the origin and and diversification of life but here are some points you should consider as well one the theory doesn't have any substance two it's preposterous three it's not supported by the evidence and four the fact that the biologists are uniformly in agreement about this issue could as well be explained by some solid Marxist interpretation of their economic interests that would satisfy me it's not asking for much is it you don't know anything progress of science as far as we can tell it depends on unique unrepeatable events the confluence of genius and inspiration and in between those unique and unrepeatable events there's a lot of patient work of accumulation of data facts theory testing assessment it's not even clear that science is progressing it might be might be moving in a circular pattern ever ever deeper entrenchment of a single set of ideas it certainly seemed to me true in physics as physics progressed beyond Newtonian mechanics well it's certainly been enriched certainly is acquired additional concepts additional powers whether the powers are due to technological development or theoretical insight is another issue I don't think we should make any large claims about the progress of science we understand science as little as we understand the cosmos I think realistically speaking 400 years away from having the same kind of understanding of living systems as we possess in parts of physics and what we understand the physics deals with a very very small range of experiences in the material world that shouldn't be forgotten also I turn on the faucet I don't have a series of equations that describe turbulent water flow I just don't have that aerodynamics is not properly understood turbulence is not property that's and that's Newtonian mechanics we certainly don't have a rock-solid understanding of the behavior of technological material objects in the contemporary world of a lot of anecdotes no reason to expect progress in biology is going to be any more rapid than developments in physics why the assumption of celerity that things should just happen bang bang bang mode will understand everything at once a very deep conceptual issues in biology very very deep very profound areas not only the ignorance but of understanding this is a country all too much civility it really is especially on important issues but look how much we've lost in this country I would encourage you this go back to the 1920's 1930's pick up anything that h on Lincoln is written for example Robert Ingersoll HL Mencken handful of critics and ask yourself could one write this way today about important issues and we've lost something in this country because we've become afraid of controversy afraid of polemics that's not a healthy thing it's invigorating the question whether name-calling is evidence of a imaginative paucity is hardly a fair question to put to me I mean because I revel in the name-calling and what I don't have an argument I tend to abuse my opponents just as easily as they tend to abuse me again I don't think too much should be made of that there is a pattern it's not a scientific balanced pattern human affairs when people haven't been criticized in a long time they react with a great deal of indignation when they're criticized for the first time it's human nature I mean put yourself in the position of a Daniel Dennett or Richard Dawkins who are used to being the regnant priests of a powerful orthodoxy and for the first time in their lives and says hey you guys are simply not credible of course they're going to react with outrage and indignation hurl imprecations of others and resort to obligations that's that's only normal if i remark the daniel dennett had had his last idea in 1936 and it was under prenatal influences what's wrong with that it just shortens the debate it puts a lot of emotional emphasis on the debate and it forces people to come up with something better that's the real point of name-calling it forces people to come up with something better there are other factors at work decline in standards of right operation America used to be a country rich in insults it really did and we lose something in literary or intellectual culture when that's that's no longer accessible you get a guy like Daniel Dennett whose greatest intellectual achievement was growing that stupid beard of his masquerading as a scientific expert on Delaney in theory staring at the camera and no one is dousing him with a bucket of water it's incredible to me Richard Dawkins accepted the great intellect and a fine Pro stylist to the guy writes them his prose resembles a string of sponges strung together on a wash line should be said should be said this isn't a question of album of hatreds it's the question of the question the effective expression of indignation no reason Democratic Society has to be afraid of that go after the guys we become very defensive very timid look the fact that we have to justify an attack on Darwinian theory is a very sad commentary on the health of American society shouldn't require a justification it shouldn't and yet a dozen very timorous very timorous aspect to american society right now it's gone to the black community and that's a wonderful thing but no community in America has mastery of the of the contemporary language of invective insult Argo as as the black community does trouble is not enough of the guys in the black community of devoting their talents to attacking Darwinian theory or quantum mechanics that's the trouble get these rappers off MTV put on to work focus direction on Darwin somebody is going to couraged in high school because he's dealing with a muttonhead as a high school biology teacher he better not go into science at all it really is a tough field there's a lot of abuse it's a very difficult enterprise and you shouldn't be discouraged easily the only thing you should take from your experience is the standing refutation of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest that every high school instructor and biology provides you know every education is experienced not only because of your teachers but in spite of your teachers I mean I remember myself as a high school student thumb is a post completely inarticulate incapable of reading certainly incapable of writing and I rather suspect my experience is pretty general and not many people are enthusiastic about contemporary high school students that's one point it's a factual point whether they are or are not capable but certainly in a democratic society the idea that the high school has to be a kind of enlarged locker room where only the coach's pep talk is considered reasonable that should be repugnant that's not really how we want an educational establishment to be run is it let's give high school students the benefit of the doubt let's say that there are a whole lot more intelligent presentable better dress better groomed smaller more sophisticated and they give every appearance of being what's the what's the loss what do we risk just what do we risk if some of the profound exciting deeply perplexing vexing issues of biology are presented honestly

Channel: IDquest

Views: 151,436

Rating: 4.7082915 out of 5

Keywords: David Berlinski, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Darwinian, Darwinism, Charles Darwin, Theory, Fact, Interview, Agnostic, Biology, Evolutionism, Science, Religion, Philosophy, Mathematics, Mathematician, Discovery Institute, Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, Naturalism, Materialism, Atheist, Atheism, Theist, Theism, Chance, Blind, Natural Selection, Random, Evolutionary

Id: S89IskZI740

Length: 37min 41sec (2261 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 30 2013