#9945: — 11/29  at  05:14 PM

'Course, I can't say I seen London, and I never
been to France, and I ain't never
seen no queen in her damn undies as
the fella says. But I'll tell you
what, after seeing Los Angeles and
thisahere story I'm about to unfold--
well, I guess I seen somethin' ever'
bit as stupefyin' as ya'd see in any
a those other places, and in English
too, so I can die with a smile on my
face without feelin' like the good
Lord gypped me.

I've been surprised by Dawkins. He's much more considerate of the same stupefying questions than I would be by this point.
I think he's in a different situation than we are in America. I think the IDiots will probably win here, and ID will become part of public school curricula. 35% of people think the bible is the literal truth? The majority think creationism should be taught? We should be happy that we had a few decades of untainted biology teaching. It was the result of a few smart judges, and I bet it won't last. Especially if Bush gets 3 SCOTUS appointments.
Will it matter? So few Americans go into science that I doubt it. Oh, but the average American will understand science less, you say. So what? They have effectively zero understanding now. Who cares if we tell them that rainbows are generated by cancer-causing electromagnetic fields from UFOs? Take a look at that Freeper evolution thread. Can people get any stupider? I'm not sure they can.

#9946: — 11/29  at  05:31 PM

Even within evolutionary theory itself, the popular perception of what Dawkins actually means is importantly wrong. From his early books — The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype — people concluded that Dawkinsism was the view that genes were everything.

Hmmmm. Now, what might have possibly lead us to think that?

Other than that whole "I've been defending the same obviously false argument with the same obviously silly boating analogy for the last 30 years" thing, of course. He may be a great popularizer of science, but he's a pretty lousy scientist himself.

On the other hand, it took George Williams nearly 40 years to admit his mistake. Maybe Dawkins will come around yet. But I'm not holding my breath.

#9955: Steve-o — 11/29  at  11:49 PM
It’s nonsense to claim we need to teach creationism. It’s like saying you can’t teach chemistry without reviewing alchemy first, or that you can’t understand physics unless you are also taught the misconceptions of kindergarten kids.

Although I admit we don't generally try to teach alchemy to our kids, it's a nearly universal practice to begin astronomy instruction by talking about early models of the universe, and even the development of those early models as they were refined to better match observations. So, we do the equivalent in some disciplines. Most intro astronomy books devote an entire chapter to Greek and early European ideas about the structure of the universe, all of which are, of course, completely wrong.

Additionally, as a physics education researcher, I would argue that talking about laymen's misconceptions about motion is an important part of effective teaching in mechanics. Repeated studies have indicated that the misconceptions with which our students come into physics classes are incredibly resistant to change. Rather than reconciling what they learn in class with their naive models of motion, students typically just build a second intellectual framework which they use (sometimes) in the context of physics class, and ignore in favor of their "everyday physics" framework in other contexts. Overwriting misconceptions without explicitly targeting them for destruction is very, very difficult.

That said, I don't know if I'd call "creationism" a "misconception". It's more like an alternative model, one which provides no mechanisms and ignores most of the data. Destroying it, also, would require explicitly targeting its parts. But, I doubt many high school students come into bio with a robust notion of creationism in their heads... I doubt it's worth the class time to try to disprove it in that sense.

I do think, though, it's worth *mentioning* at the beginning of the story, for historical context. Before several independant lines of evidence began to indicate that the Earth was very old, most people (in the Western/Christian world at least) believed the church's line, did they not? Isn't that relevant? If you're only talking about the ideas of evolutionary theory itself, and not talking at all about how it was arrived at, sure... ignore the history. But the "story" of biology would seem incomplete to me if you didn't, when bringing in Darwin, make some sort of mention of it. Maybe even spend a few paragraphs on it. I mean, I remember my Jr. High bio textbook talked a little bit about Lamarck as it introducted the topic. What's wrong with that?

--Steve-o

#9962: — 11/30  at  06:56 AM
Steve-o, you wouldn't introduce a discussion of the physical mechanism of lightening with a short presentation on Zeus or Thor would you?

#9963: Bryson Brown — 11/30  at  07:49 AM
I teach a course in the philosophy of earth and life sciences that takes a largely historical approach to explaining how we wound up with our current world view. The idea is to explain the evidence and arguments that changed the scientific view of these things-- so we look at the development of views about fossils, stratigraphy, glaciation, the age of the earth, and continental drift/plate tectonics.

We also spend time on creationism, explaining Aristotelian ideas about living kinds and the problems posed for older views by the recognition of extinction and the history of life in the 18th/ early 19th centuries. I think it is helpful to a lot of the students-- It's even changed the minds of a few declared creationists, persuading them that a respectable Christianity (no, it didn't change that) requires a serious engagement with real science, not a ridiculous charade. And I think even the other students tend to essentialist thinking when it comes to species (some linguistics studies seem to indicate essentialist ideas are part of how young children think about living things, even though they don't think of tools or artifacts that way). So I think it can be worthwhile to come at things this way-- working to emphasize the arguments and the evidence in the course of telling the story.

In connection with creationism, I spend a little time on the Genesis story & point out both that it's not 'accurate' at all about the order of 'creation' (as the day-age types often insist) and that many of the 'arguments' you see in creationist attacks are complete confusions of descriptive and normative claims that don't stand examination on either side.

It works-- but I don't think many school teachers would be able to handle the combination of history, science and philosophy (and I know our politicians-- even up here in Canada-- wouldn't be up for such a direct approach in the school curriculum).

#9964: — 11/30  at  07:53 AM
Speaking of judges, did you guys hear that Scalia thinks that orgies are the remedy for any social strain or tension? He actually told someone that during an interview. Maybe that's the God-fearing conservative values that are praised by Pat Robertson and his ilk. BTW, Dawkins is an absolutely horrible human being. One of my professors spent some time with him a few years back. Dawkins favorite thing is by far his own intellect.

#9965: PZ Myers — 11/30  at  07:59 AM
I tend to give a bit of historical background in my classes, too. What I object to in Appleyard's smug claim is the idea that teaching creationism is necessary; it's not. For one, you can teach a good, strong class without even mentioning the egregious errors of long ago, so it's really just an option. And for another, creationism is not part of our history or the context of science. The crap we're dealing with is the legacy of more recent crackpots and has nothing to do with the default position of 19th century thinking people like Owen and Cuvier and Lamarck.

They're more comparable to cranks like Gene Ray of TimeCube fame -- it's just not relevant to our history or our current thinking.

#9967: PZ Myers — 11/30  at  08:04 AM
And gosh, I thought I was kind of an anti-fan of Dawkins, disliking his limited view of evolution, but you guys are just plain mean.

To say something nice, I think Dawkins writing is excellent and strong, and has been a good force for promoting general ideas about evolution, even if I think the specifics of his views are wrong. And I actually like the vigor of his speech against religion and right-wing politics.

#9985: — 11/30  at  11:41 AM
I've never been a big fan of Dawkins. I believe that public acceptance of evolution will come about because of people like Kenneth Miller who demonstrate that one can be both an "evolutionist" and a Christian.

Well-known evolution proponents who are outspoken atheists and denigrate anyone who disagrees with them do not help in the battle to win public support. They perpetuate the stereotype of the know-it-all atheist/evolutionist who will call you an idiot for disagreeing with him.

Folks like Dawkins rarely, if ever, win anyone over to our side and actually probably turn many fence-sitters away with their rhetoric.

#9992: Bryson Brown — 11/30  at  01:26 PM
I recall one story about Dawkins being quized at a faculty (or post-talk) get-together. Asked what he meant by calling genes 'selfish' he point blank insisted he meant it literally. But that kind of bloody-minded intransigence doesn't fit well with this vague & even over-tolerant interview: I wonder if he's actually mellowing?

Back to teaching history & creationism: Part of my aim is to teach them how some forms of creationism went from being more or less respectable to being scientifically untenable. There's still room for a remote, deistic view, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing-- but an active, interventionist role for God is methodologically useless and increasingly pointless as an explanatory gap-filler too. So I agree that contemporary creationism is interesting only for contrast: it can teach us a few things about what isn't science.

#9994: — 11/30  at  02:04 PM

And gosh, I thought I was kind of an anti-fan of Dawkins, disliking his limited view of evolution, but you guys are just plain mean.

I wouldn't mind him (or, rather, his gene-centric viewpoint) so much if he wasn't so vocal about it. When non-biologist scientists talk about which evolution books they've read, Dawkins' stuff comes up over and over again. That's what our quasipeers think evolutionary biology is all about.

It's even worse, of course, in the hands of slightly less knowledgable people. Dawkins started the movement that has produced crap like Hamer's "God Gene" and the entire second half of Susan Blackmore's career. And it's not like he's at all repentant for any of it. Bah!

#10000: PZ Myers — 11/30  at  02:25 PM
This is kind of a novel experience for me, to run into all these people who detest Dawkins. Usually I have to struggle with mobs who think he's wonderful.

But to continue my contrarian trend of saying nice things about the guy...

You can't really blame him for genecentrism. That's more the fault of the molecular biologists who have these incredibly useful tools and have succumbed to the belief that since they study genes, all that matters are genes. Dawkins has popularized the idea among people who have never cracked open an issue of Cell, I suspect Brenners and Gilberts and Cricks and Watsons were more influential.

I like Ken Miller's writing, and I like his science. But I am not a fan of his Catholicism. I find the double standard endlessly annoying: Miller's beliefs about god are used to praise him and add value to his contribution, while Dawkins beliefs about god are used to damn him and are called a detriment to the cause of science. Let's be consistent. If we're going to cuss out Dawkins' use of his standing as a scientist to be an advocate for atheism, let's also condemn Miller for dragging religion into science. Or maybe, if we're going to appreciate Miller's support for one of the dominant superstitions on this planet, we should also appreciate Dawkins' outspoken advocacy for the minority rational view on the same issue.

#10008: Steve-o — 11/30  at  03:11 PM
RS wrote:
Steve-o, you wouldn't introduce a discussion of the physical mechanism of lightening with a short presentation on Zeus or Thor would you?

No, I wouldn't. I wasn't trying to say that all discussions of current scientific thinking must begin with a history of all previous models. I was simply disagreeing with what I took Paul to be saying, namely, that doing so is worthless. I pointed out examples of subjects in which talking about old, incorrect models, is seen as both desirable and even important. There are also topics where doing so is not worth the time. I think the teaching of evolution would, like my examples, benefit from some comparison with other models. I didn't mean to imply I felt that the same for all topics.

(Honestly, spending a little time to talk about modern creationism, and show some of the more glaring flaws, or to address some of the common anti-evolution arguments, seems to me like a socially responsible course of action, lest students be scammed into buying creationism at some point.)

Paul wrote:
I tend to give a bit of historical background in my classes, too. What I object to in Appleyard's smug claim is the idea that teaching creationism is necessary; it's not.

Thanks for the clarification. I am in agreement.

(Incidentally, I tried to italicize the second quote here, but can't get it to render right in the preview. The engine keeps eating everything up to the word "object" and tries to write an HTML OBJECT element instead of an I element. Then I had a hell of a time getting the preview to actually update when I changed things. I have to completely close my browser and restart to get the preview to change. Very weird.)

#10009: — 11/30  at  03:22 PM
I am a big fan of Dawkins, but I admit I am not a scientist. I only read about science as a hobby.

Still, I'm surprised by all the criticism. Can anybody explain exactly what you object to? "His gene-centric" view has been mentioned, but that doesn't explain it to me, because I don't think his focus on genes has any effect on how you can appreciate natural selection on any other level. He goes out of his way to explain as much.

Also, the "story" about his saying that he meant "selfish" literally sounds like just that -- a story. Or at least a misunderstanding. There is just absolutely NO WAY Dawkins said that. I've read everything he has written and he has consistently gone out of his way to explain that words like "selfish" are never meant literally. Really, he couldn't be more clear on that.

It sounds exactly like the phenomenon he has complained about: that many of his critics have criticized his books after only reading the title. You can get in an uproar about "selfish genes" if you just read the title, but there is no possible way to maintain that reaction after reading the book.

I have also found his criticisms of Gould very convincing, and Gould's criticisms of Dawkins entirely unconvincing. I noticed that Mr. Myers had two Gould books on his "desert island" list.

So can anyone enlighten me as to what's wrong with Dawkins' gene-centered way of thinking?

#10031: Lindsay Beyerstein — 11/30  at  10:02 PM
What an offensive and inept review. Here's a little blurb about its author, Bryan Appleyard:

A science and philosophy columnist for the Sunday Times of London, Bryan Appleyard is looked upon by many as one of today's most outspoken and articulate critics of science. When Understanding the Present appeared in 1992, it topped the bestseller lists in England amid a storm of controversy. The scientific journal Nature called it "dangerous" and an "assault on reason" and Time magazine noted that the book was partly to blame for a rising tide of antiscience in the West.

http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/appleyard.html

#10062: ben — 12/01  at  12:00 PM
Slate has posted an interview with Dawkins. I liked this bit at the end:

"You've called religion a 'dangerous collective delusion' and a 'malignant infection,'" I said. "Don't you think you're underplaying it a bit?"

Dawkins turned, smiled a small fox smile, and said, "Yes!"

#10151: — 12/02  at  11:26 AM
As for my own religion, which sort of a vague "Say what?" agnosticism, I can only express mild spiritual curiosity. But I am intrigued and rather surprised that in the wake of Godless Communism, Catholocism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam have rebounded in the former Combloc nations. Just like that, after 70 years of hard-core repression, old-timey religion popped back up like a cold sore. I asked someone to 'splain it and they said that in a place of political, economic and climactic oppression, when you can get out, you have to go deep inside. As the opiate of the masses, religion seems to be a darned good pain-killer. Also, 70 years of emphasis on science education the USSR didn't do them squat good, because the yeoman's sense of religiously-based ethics was absent and in the end, petty corruption crushed them.

Is this Dawkins worth reading?

#10189: — 12/02  at  07:23 PM
Steve is that from the Big Lebowski?

#10893: Nick (Matzke) — 12/12  at  04:47 PM
Appleyard's 1992 book Understanding the Present really was pretty dumb, basically the "science removes meaning from life" schtick, one of the early books with the weird combination of pomo and neocon.

His proposed solution seemed to be a kind of naive cultural triumphalism.

Quoth Bryan Appleyard:

Modern Western Society, which I shall call 'liberal' society (...), is a realization of this scientific method. Government is neutral. It provides a secure arena of law and order in which, within certain limits, people can pursue their own meanings. So a modern democracy can be expected to include a number of contradictory religious faiths which are obliged to agree on a number of general injunctions, but no more. They must not burn each other's places of worship, but they may deny, even abuse each other's God. This is the effective, scientific way of proceeding.

Get this: Appleyard thinks all this is bad. (Calling traditional western liberalism "scientific" is another can of worms we won't get into.) He apparently yearns for old-fashioned absolutism where one religion dominated, everything was simple, and any dissenters got their churches burned.

Here's his solution in his own words (the last page of the book):

What we are is what we ordinarily are. This is what we do. We are our own embodiment. If you are possessed by the suspicion at this point that I have told you nothing that you do did not know already, that is precisely my point.

I am born and I shall die and, in between, these visions are what they most obviously are: mine. This is the only timespan I have and the only one in which my virtue and purpose may be found. I choose not to be written into some history of the future or beguiled by the technological demands of the as-yet-unborn [I think this is part of his anti-environmentalist chapter]. This is not selfishness, it is the ultimate unselfishness because it means I know what myself is - an expression and creation of my culture, a culture that has come close to sacrificing itself on the altar of one small aspect of itself. But I owe myself to *all* that culture and it must clearly be defended with my life because it is my life.

Such an avowal means the end of the rule of science because it denies the infinite open-endedness and willingness to change that science needs for its continued invasion of our souls. It also means an insistence that my soul be put back where it belonds -- in my body -- rather than the remote realm to which, 400 years ago, science consigned it. This realization alone may not make that soul immortal, nor will it promise me an afterlife or salvation. So you may say it leaves me exactly where I was before -- mortal, suffering and lost as ever. I will reply that there is one vital difference: I shall not be, at the last, alone. (p. 250)

If you can make any definite heads or tails of this, you're doing better than I. But it basically seems to be saying "stuff science, stuff reason, and stuff disagreeing cultures, I'll believe what I want, nyah nyah nyah."

Carl Sagan addressed Appleyard's argument (first quote, above) about liberal "scientific" democracy, etc., in Pale Blue Dot.

But what is the alternative? Obdurately to pretend to certainty in an uncertain world? To adopt a comforting belief system, no matter how out of kilter with the facts it is? If we don't know what's real, how can we deal with reality? For practical reasons, we cannot live too much in fantasyland. Shall we censor one another's religions and burn down one another's places of worship? How can we be sure which of the thousands of human belief systems should become unchallenged, ubiquitous, mandatory?

These quotations betray a failure of nerve before the Universe -- its grandeur and magnificence, but especially its indifference. Science has taught us that, because we have a talent for deceiving ourselves, subjectivity may not freely reign. This is one reason Appleyard so mistrusts science: It seems to reasoned, measured, and impersonal. Its conclusions derive from the interrogation of Nature, and are not in all cases predestined to satisfy our wants. Appleyard deplores moderation. He yearns for inerrant doctrine, release from the exercise of judgement, and an obligation to believe but not to question. He has not grasped human fallibility. He recognizes no need to institutionalize error-correcting machinery either in our social institutions or in our view of the Universe. (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 48