Book Review: Living with Darwin

It has taken awhile for me to write this review, mostly due to lack of time. Philip Kitcher’s book, contrary to the title, is mostly about the intersection between Creationism and science. His main thesis is that it is incorrect to call Creationism in its various forms pseudo science or non-science, because so many historical scientists were Creationists of one sort or another. He would prefer to classify it as dead science, because it has been widely recognized as being incorrect and has been discarded because it was contradicted by the evidence.

He divides Creationism into three basic groups and then devotes an entire chapter going back over the reasons that scientists decided that the particular theory was incorrect. Young earth creationism was discarded in the 1830s due to advances in the field of geology. This was later confirmed by the discovery of radiometric dating, so that we now know that the earth is over 4 billion years old. Next the view of special creation (typical view point of most old earth creationists) was discarded in the 1870s with the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.” The last form of creationist is the non-adaptionist. An example of this would be most of the more “technical” writings of the Discovery Institute. Their belief is that natural selection is not a strong enough force to explain the diversity of life or complexity of certain structures. This view was discarded by scientists in the 1930s with the advent of the modern synthesis. To be quite honest, I see the last two viewpoints as being shades of the same.

In total he only devoted one chapter to the implications of “Living with Darwin” and I wish he would have spent more space discussing this. This is the discussion that those who are religious should be having. God, if he exists, created using an evolutionary process. Now what does that mean for us today. I think Philip is correct that most traditional notions of God are incompatible with the evidence we have. However he seems to be open to the existence of a god.

Overall the book is quite readable and I think that the most effective evidence-for-evolution book retraces the course of science and could be thought of a history of science book. In this type of book the arguments and counter arguments of scientists are presented and it is clear that the side that one had the most evidence on their side.

Book Review - The Greatest Show on Earth

Richard Dawkin's is a prolific science writer and I have always enjoyed his prose. The extensive vocabulary and creative word play are simply enjoyable. This book had plenty of that, however I found the scientific content a little shallow. I have read several books that discuss evidence for evolution recently and I am sad to say that Dawkin's latest effort falls disappointingly flat. His book, "The Ancestors Tale" is miles better (of course it is also miles longer.)

Did Scientists discover a new hominid species

Carl Zimmer has been writing about the latest discovery in human evolution. You can read about the details here. Scientists have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of a 40,000 year old finger that was found in Siberia. Basically what they discovered was that the genetic differences were to great for the finger to belong to our species. But it was also significantly different from Neanderthal DNA as well. Some researchers were quick to point out that there haven't been many genetic studies on Neanderthals so we don't know just how diverse there mitochondrial DNA is. We will have to wait for more testing before this can be settled.

In the mean time, this story reminded me of one of the Creationist arguments about Neanderthals. The typical claim is that the Neanderthals are Homo Sapiens but have some sort of disease like Rickets. Unfortunately in the face of genetic evidence, that argument no longer works. The differences between Neanderthal and Human are too great.

Nothing in biology makes sense ...

except in the light of evolution. This was the title of article that was published by Theodosius Dobzhansky in the 1970s. Dr. Dobzhansky is one of the leading American Biologists of the early 20th century. He was also a Christian of the Russian Orthodox variety. I have been aware of the quote for awhile, but I was prompted by this post on learning about the joys of science after leaving fundamentalist Adventism to look up the actual quote. The paper is considered a classic so it is fairly easy to find. I have included a link to a copy on the NOVA evolution site.

It is an interesting essay. He starts the article with a story about a sheik who was trying to ban the teaching of the Copernican theory in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s. He used this episode as an example of the scientific meaning of a theory (hint: it isn't some wild speculation without evidence.) He then goes on to give descriptions of several compelling lines of evidence.

My favorite quote from the article is:

Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole.

This matches my experience in biology. When I took biology in high school, my feeling was that it was just a bunch of facts that had to memorized. I learn best when I can see how the bits of knowledge are connected. I found the whole excerise to be quite boring. Once I understood evolution, the pieces started to fall together. If you want specific examples, I would highly recommend "Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin. He talks about the gill structures that are present in human embryos as well as why human males frequently suffer from hernias. (Have you ever wondered why you had to do the "cough test" at the doctor?) Now I find biology to be one of the most fascinating sciences and the majority of science book wish list is books about biology.

Accreditation and Academic Freedom

So I periodically check to see what is going on at the educatetruth site. I noticed something interesting today. According to their twitter feed on the right they had posted an article about WASC threatening to pull La Sierra's accreditation. The post itself was gone, but they did have a retraction notice. They decided to remove the post because they did not want to create problems for Larry Blackmer, the VP of Education for the North American Division. He had said some stuff and I guess he got some blowback once educate truth had posted his remarks. It was not removed because they had gotten some fundamental fact wrong (like what happened with Carlos Cerna's Biology paper awhile back.)

So, me, being the curious sort, decided to find out exactly what they had posted. Thank goodness for Google Cache. The quotes were from a Q&A session at an education summit for teachers in the Lake Union Conference in Michigan. In it, Larry Blackmer is quoted as saying, "Now WASC at La Sierra has contacted La Sierra and said, “”We believe in academic freedom as an accreditation agency. And if the church is going to meddle in what goes on in the classroom, then we will pull your accreditation.”" Later on, he discusses the results of a loss of accreditation. "No federal financial aid to any of the students. None of the credits from La Sierra would transfer to any other university. They would not be accepted into the University of California system for graduate programs. Just minor things like that."

This is why educatetruth will ultimately lose. Either evolution will be taught on campus or La Sierra as a university will be destroyed financially. This is actually something that I expected. The same issue came up when I was at Walla Walla College. The school board had started to meddle and micromanage the professors in the Theology department. I suspect the church administration will say some soothing words. Some meaningless action will be proposed to appear like there is action and the whole thing will blow over.

Barriers to finding that important fossil

Carl Zimmer has an interesting post about the discovery of a large filter feeding fish. Filter feeding today is used by several species of shark and also more famously, whales. In the search for fossils there are many barriers to finding those important fossils that illustrate some aspect of evolution. It is very rare that fossils are formed and only a small area has actually been seached are two that we could name. Here is another barrier. The fossil was actually found, but its significance wasn't understood at the time and it was put into storage. Well Matt Friedman has been scouring museum collections and has plugged a 80 million year hole in the evolution of filter feeding fish with several specimans that had been gathering dust.

Hypothesis: An idea you can test

Recently Nova ran a special biographical film on Charles Darwin, called Darwin's Darkest Hour. One of my favorite parts was how it showed him and his children exploring and learning together. Basically he made a game out of learning and he taught his children how to do scientific experiments.

Last night Alejandro wanted to put his leftover pear slice into the refrigerator. At first I was reluctant, because I know about oxidation and pears. I told him that the pear would get yucky. He was sure I was wrong. So I decided to emulate Charles Darwin. We came up with a hypothesis. Alejandro actually knows what it means from one of his favorite shows, Dinosaur Train. Buddy, the T-Rex, really likes the word "hypothesis." According to his adopted sister, "it means an idea you can test." So we came up with a hypothesis, Alejandro decided that it would turn into a yummy apple slice.

The next morning, we opened the fridge to find a slightly browned pear slice. He decided that it was an apple slice. I cut up an apple slice so that way he could taste if they were the same. When he actually tasted it, he turns to me and says. "Daddy, the apple slice turned back into a pear." So much for science.

It's about time

I found in my e-mail inbox an update from Adventist Today. The faculty senate at La Sierra University have voted to affirm the concept of academic freedom and the biology faculty. It is a strong statement of support for education and science. Much better than the vaguely worded press releases and articles in the Pacific Union Recorder. I suspect that the denizens of educate truth are not happy. Or maybe they are since they now have clear evidence that supports their position. But here is the problem. If they were actually successful, La Sierra's accreditation would be in jeopardy. If La Sierra loses that, it would close its doors shortly afterward.

Book Review: Genesis - The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins

Some science books are good because of the quality and quantity of the information. But in order for science book to be a compelling read for the lay person, it needs more to be a great book. Robert Hazen is not only a scientist; he is a story teller and he told a great story in his book Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins. When he talks about his colleagues, it is with enough detail that you can visualize them as you read. The science is described in a logical building fashion, but the book also includes biographical elements of the researchers that draws in the reader. It includes conflict, rejection, and successes.

The current state of origins research has many good theories about how the raw building blocks of life can be created chemically, including cell membranes. Once RNA is created they know fairly well how these simple organisms evolved to what we see today. However there is a large gap between the building blocks and a microbe with RNA that is not well understood. There are several ideas, but so far they haven't been supported by experimental evidence.

One of the most compelling stories in the book relates how a grad student that worked in his lab came up with an idea on how RNA could be created. This particular student had been working on a PhD for almost five years. He was easily distracted by new concepts, so he hadn't made any progress. His visa was running out and he had no degree and no job lined up. Just a few short weeks before his scheduled defense, he came up with an intriguing proposal. After some late nights, he had fleshed the idea out, defended his dissertation, gotten his idea rejected for publication, and had a job lined up so that he could run the required experiments to prove or disprove his idea. The book was written a couple of years ago, so it might be worth doing a literature search to find out if there was any success or not.

It isn't often that science authors will use a cliff hanger as a literary device. Dr. Hazen was telling a story about his first foray into origins research. He described the hypothesis, the experimental setup, and then just before he got to the review of the results, he ended the chapter. I had to wait for several chapters before I learned the chemical make up of his brown goop.

Because the book discusses an interesting and not well known field of science and because of the compelling writing, I would rate this book as one of my five favorite science books. Of course I may have more than five books in my list of five favorite science book, but I would prefer not to quibble with such details.