The Panda's Thumb Legacy Archive — pandasthumb.net

Here it comes...EuroScopes!

Posted 30 October 2006 by Nick Matzke

Well, if you needed any more evidence that creationists are doing their best to drag Europe down to America's level, here you go:

St. Petersburg court starts investigation of a schoolgirl's civil suit against teaching of Darwin's theory

26 October 2006, 12:10 St. Petersburg, October 26, Interfax - Oktyabrsky district court started Wednesday considering a civil suit brought by a senior pupil who complained about the teaching of Darwin's theory, a court source told Interfax. After the sides listened to each other, the court requested opinion of experts in religion, theology and Marxist-Leninist ideology. Experts from the St. Petersburg University will be asked to elucidate some problems. The next court session will take place on December 13. The suit against the teaching of Darwin's theory in school was brought to the court by a senior pupil Maria Shraiber and her father, Kirill Shraiber. The Russian Ministry of Education and Science is named a defendant. Maria is a minor, and her father represents her interests. The declaration says that the teaching of Darwin's theory in school as the only correct teaching violates her right of choosing her philosophy of life and insults her religious feelings. According to the plaintiffs, they seek restriction on the teaching of the theory of evolution and the indication in the curriculum that science has proved no theory of the origin of man.

Heck, if the court is going to call experts in Marxism/Leninism and theology, but no scientists, the Schraibers might have a shot. I hope somebody over there is paying attention. I have heard that fundamentalist churches (usually started by American missionaries) have been taking off in Eastern Europe in the last decade or two. Whaddya wanna bet there is a connection? Google reveals no details of any sort, but my spidey sense is acting up.

77 Comments

Sir_Toejam · 30 October 2006

After the sides listened to each other, the court requested opinion of experts in religion, theology and Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Marxists? whaaa? no biologists, i note as well.

greg · 30 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

oneguy · 30 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

tgr · 30 October 2006

there is an extra ; in the link.

Nick (Matzke) · 30 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Dude, observe this: http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/fun_with_homini_1.html How much clearer could it possibly be?

Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab · 30 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Beg to differ, sir. There are a lot of criminals who think your way...and they're behind bars.

We go where the evidence leads.

Reed A. Cartwright · 30 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.
Someone doesn't watch CSI.

sinned34 · 30 October 2006

Posted by greg on October 30, 2006 5:05 PM (e)

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Posted by oneguy on October 30, 2006 5:07 PM (e)

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Well, if we needed any evidence that Greg and Oneguy are the same person, this should do. One more exact same post under a third name and we could make the assumption that he is a Trinity.

Oh, wait - the act of posting those comments happened in the past, so there is simply no way to observe or repeat experimentally the manner in which these posts were made. God himself must have posted these two comments!

Sir_Toejam · 30 October 2006

so, when everyone is hooking themselves on the bait the troll left, does anybody have any thoughts on why experts on marxist ideology are being sought for this trial?

are they going back to Lysenko, or what?

Shalini, BBWAD · 30 October 2006

[Oh, wait - the act of posting those comments happened in the past, so there is simply no way to observe or repeat experimentally the manner in which these posts were made. God himself must have posted these two comments!]

Oh, no! Creationism must be true after all! Proof of divine intervention.

But wait....since there is no way to observe what happened in the past, we have no proof that divine intervention was involved.

Darn it, there goes an evidence of creationism.

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 30 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Let everyone be reminded that creationuts have been spouting out this "were you there?" crap for forty years now, and it's just as idiotic now as it was way back then. (shrug)

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 30 October 2006

so, when everyone is hooking themselves on the bait the troll left, does anybody have any thoughts on why experts on marxist ideology

Hang on there -- they're looking for LENINISTS. There's a difference. ;)

are being sought for this trial?

They think 1991 never happened?

Bruce Thompson GQ · 30 October 2006

Will it be as entertaining as EuroDisney?

Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)

GuyeFaux · 30 October 2006

...creationuts have been spouting out this "were you there?" crap for forty years now...

I thought "were you there?" was traditionally an argument used against skeptics of the crucifiction/resurection. In other words, it can be an argument for or against an event that was claimed to have happened.

ofro · 30 October 2006

No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.
Looks like oneguy on October 30, 2006 5:07 PM repeated exactly what greg posted 2 minutes earlier.

Bruce Thompson GQ · 30 October 2006

Will it be as entertaining as EuroDisney?

Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)

LaurenTheFish · 31 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

In the immortal words of Spock, "Fascinating." I rather suspect a number of archaeologists and paleontologists, among others, will soon be smacking their foreheads and saying, "NOW you tell us!"

C.W · 31 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

— greg
Ah, but how can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?

wolfwalker · 31 October 2006

Sir Toejam asked:
[[ does anybody have any thoughts on why experts on marxist ideology are being sought for this trial? ]]

They may be trying to link Darwin to Marx. In a lot of Eastern Europe, there's no better way to discredit somebody than to link them to communism. Especially in a religious dispute, because everybody over there knows how hostile communism was to organized religion.

Somewhere recently I saw an op-ed column about current trends in philosophy that said there were three great "isms" that came out of the 19th Century: Marxism, Freudism, and Darwinism. The first two are discredited; the third (the writer hoped) is soon to follow.

Sir_Toejam · 31 October 2006

Somewhere recently I saw an op-ed column about current trends in philosophy that said there were three great "isms" that came out of the 19th Century: Marxism, Freudism, and Darwinism. The first two are discredited; the third (the writer hoped) is soon to follow.

yeah, we've been hearing the exact same thing for 40 years now. It's not a "new" saying, and it's no more accurate now than it was when it was first uttered. I see there is some serious backward thinking over there, too. I do hope this attempt to test creationism in european courts gets emphatically stomped on with all due alacrity. If asked, you should always point out that even here in the US, where fundernutties graze the open prairies of politics, they have NEVER EVER won any federal court case they have tried. the judicial system is literally the only thing that has kept the US from turning into an inbred backwater of Ann Coulter fans.

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 31 October 2006

Somewhere recently I saw an op-ed column about current trends in philosophy that said there were three great "isms" that came out of the 19th Century: Marxism, Freudism, and Darwinism. The first two are discredited; the third (the writer hoped) is soon to follow.

This is standard creationist boilerplate. Henry Morris was writing the same thing decades ago. As usual, it seems as if the Russian creationists are doing nothing more than parroting thirty-year-old ICR tracts.

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 31 October 2006

They may be trying to link Darwin to Marx. In a lot of Eastern Europe, there's no better way to discredit somebody than to link them to communism.

Of course, creationuts in the US try to do the very same thing. Apparently they are unaware that the Soviet Union opposed Darwinian evolution as "bourgeois" and outlawed teaching it, in favor of the "proletarian" biology of Lysenko. But then, fundies have never been ones to let silly little things like 'facts' get in the way of a good emotionally-based argument. (shrug)

Raging Bee · 31 October 2006

Maria is a minor, and her father represents her interests.

Semantic Quibble: denying a kid the up-to-date science education he/she needs to get a decent job in today's tough global economy is not "representing his/her interests."

Not that Russia, as a whole, was ever all that interested in engaging, or keeping up with, the rest of the world anyway...

pwe · 31 October 2006

Semantic Quibble: denying a kid the up-to-date science education he/she needs to get a decent job in today's tough global economy is not "representing his/her interests."

— Raging Bee
Not to be too difficult; but in what way is "Darwin's theory" relevant to "get a decent job in today's tough global economy"? Many rich people are creationists, so job-and-economy-wise Darwin's theory is hardly needed.

Not that Russia, as a whole, was ever all that interested in engaging, or keeping up with, the rest of the world anyway...

— Raging Bee
Ooh, it was claimed that the revolution started in Russia, because it was the most backward country - Marx had expected it would happen in the most adcanced country, Germany.

Flint · 31 October 2006

Many rich people are creationists, so job-and-economy-wise Darwin's theory is hardly needed.

True enough. For most people, knowledge of ToE is like the ability to read musical notation - absolutely critical for a tiny minority, irrelevant to the rest. Given the astounding degree to which humans can compartmentalize, one has to wonder just how much religious idiocy (see Kent Hovind for an illustration) one can partition off and still function competently in the economy. Seems to me Hovind is right on the borderline. He displays an enviable ability to make money and live comfortably, but the law gives him some problems for what appear to be reasons rooted in the same soft of questionable sanity as his creationism. Maybe Hovind's compartment is just a little too big... But for AFDave, and Sal Cordova, and maybe even Dembski (though his delusions have had important career impact), these people get by quite successfully, and sometimes actually accomplish a great deal of real utility outside the boundaries of their internal nuthouse.

geography lesson · 31 October 2006

Well, if you needed any more evidence that creationists are doing their best to drag Europe down to America's level, here you go:

Sorry professor, Russia is not part of Europe.

ben · 31 October 2006

Sorry professor, Russia is not part of Europe.
According to the peer-reviewed journal of geography known as Wikipedia, 23% of Russia's territory and 74% of its population are in Europe...

zam · 31 October 2006

That editorial was in the Wall Street Journal.
(The one about -isms)

Also, Western Russia IS part of Europe.

Glen Davidson · 31 October 2006

Sorry professor, Russia is not part of Europe.

Sorry, 'geography lesson', a good portion of Russia, including Moscow, is in Europe. "West of the Urals" is the accepted definition for continental Europe. Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Peter Henderson · 31 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Now, where have I heard that one before ? Ken Ham, AIG president of course. Either Greg is being sarcastic, or he's read/listened to AIG's material. Perhaps the court case is a result of this: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0520russia.asp

Peter Henderson · 31 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Now where have I heard that one before ? Either Greg is only joking or he's been well indoctrinated by AIG's material. Perhaps the court case is a result of this type of event: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0520russia.asp

Peter Henderson · 31 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

Now where have I heard that one before ? Either Greg is only joking or he's been well indoctrinated by AIG's material. Perhaps the court case is a result of this type of event: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0520russia.asp

Peter Henderson · 31 October 2006

events that have happened in our past.

Now where have I heard that one before ? Either Greg is only joking or he's been well indoctrinated by AIG's material.

Perhaps the court case is a result of this type of event:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0520russia.asp

Christopher Letzelter · 31 October 2006

Sir Toejam said:
"I do hope this attempt to test creationism in european courts gets emphatically stomped on with all due alacrity.

If asked, you should always point out that even here in the US, where fundernutties graze the open prairies of politics, they have NEVER EVER won any federal court case they have tried.

the judicial system is literally the only thing that has kept the US from turning into an inbred backwater of Ann Coulter fans."
Unfortunately, I fear that their judicial system requires different standards of evidence than ours, and may not rule against the student. As Lenny noted, this is especially worrisome since no mention is made of requesting expert opinion from actual scientists. I realize that the Russian court system is secular and that some science was well-supported in the U.S.S.R., but nowadays with the growing infestation of Christian missionaries . . .
. . . I hope the Oktyabrsky court recognizes the difference between teaching science and teaching philosophy in this case. If not, the evangelical/YEC/IDiots will be trumpeting this left and RIGHT. Of course, how that will affect what I imagine is their beleif that the U.S. Supreme Court should not decide law based on the laws of other countries is probably negligible.
Chris

David B. Benson · 31 October 2006

Precisely, the somewhat arbitrary division of Eurasia into Europe and Asia occurs along the line of the Ural Mountains in Russia.

Warren · 31 October 2006

The declaration says that the teaching of Darwin's theory in school as the only correct teaching violates her right of choosing her philosophy of life and insults her religious feelings.

Shell of nut, really --- There's obviously a confusion in this girl's mind as to what constitutes a "philosophy of life" versus facts. Her suit would be no less absurd were she to insist that "2 + 2 = 4", being taught as the "only correct teaching", is in violation of "her right of choosing her philosophy of life". Until this kind of absurdity is understood by a larger number of people, the idiocy of creationism will continue.

melatonin · 31 October 2006

"Somewhere recently I saw an op-ed column about current trends in philosophy that said there were three great "isms" that came out of the 19th Century: Marxism, Freudism, and Darwinism. The first two are discredited; the third (the writer hoped) is soon to follow."

Freud is gonna rise again and bite these guys on the butt...

Well, according to some anyway. There will be a special issue of a neuropsychology journal soon devoted to Freud and how some of his ideas are being supported by findings in this area (particularly unconscious emotion/motivation.

Glen Davidson · 31 October 2006

Somewhere recently I saw an op-ed column about current trends in philosophy that said there were three great "isms" that came out of the 19th Century: Marxism, Freudism, and Darwinism. The first two are discredited; the third (the writer hoped) is soon to follow.

I suppose if you're too stupid to think of electromagnetism, you're stuck thinking only of ideologies, and whatever Freud's writings are, to compare with "Darwinism". Ignoring (mostly) the difficulties in calling modern evolutionary theory "Darwinism" (I note that the Brits are especially prone to continue to do so, native son and all that), indeed the most appropriate "ism" to compare to Darwinism is electromagnetism. Both are solid and productive sciences, allowing us to correlate physical and biological phenomena, respectively, and guiding us to further discoveries. Paleyism (ID) is the "ism" that deserves to be on the dustheap of history, along with dialectical materialism (Marx's critical writings are still worthy of reading) and any Freudianism that doesn't understand Freud to be a useful, if quite flawed, starting point to more comprehensive psychologies. Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Raging Bee · 31 October 2006

Not to be too difficult; but in what way is "Darwin's theory" relevant to "get a decent job in today's tough global economy"?

Why don't you ask the Russians? They're quite familiar with the consequences of perverting and suppressing science for both political and religious ends (and not just in the Soviet era either -- the last few Tsars had some eye-popping examples too). It's not just "Darwin's theory" that's at stake here, it's freedom of thought.

Anton Mates · 31 October 2006

Let everyone be reminded that the past, and our origins are NOT true science. "Science" deals with things that are observable and repeatble. No one yet has found a way to observe or repeat the events that have happened in our past.

— greg
Greg, hon, everything that's happened so far is in the past. What else could science deal with?

GuyeFaux · 31 October 2006

... indeed the most appropriate "ism" to compare to Darwinism is electromagnetism...

Point taken, but this is taking things a bit too far. Evolutionary theory requires a pretty substantial amount of historical evidence to work. This is simply not the case for electromagnetism. Pretty much all of Maxwell's equations can be derived and verified by anyone, any time (in theory). Fossils, on the other hand, are only ever going to be found once each. And within the field there is tremendous amount of debate about the relative forces of its causes. The theory of plate tectonics, string theory, and cosmology are I think closer to evolutionary theory in the sense mentioned. I suppose the distinction here is between the "hard" sciences and the rest. Reminds me of a joke: An astronomer, a physicist, and a mathematician were on vacation in Scotland. From a train window, they saw a black sheep in the middle of a field. "How interesting", observed the astronomer, "all Scottish sheep are black." To which the physicist replied "No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!" The mathematician gazed heavenward, then intoned, "In Scotland, there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."

Torbjörn Larsson · 31 October 2006

"Whaddya wanna bet there is a connection?"

Nuthin', you're on the money. The free church tradition has always had its fundy places, but the fundevangelists are a new plague unto the land. Infestations are still contained, but no antifundal recipy is known except confinement of their schools and proper taxation to keep the cancerous growth properties in check.

This story seems solid. The last one to make the rounds, on the polish EU parlament creo holding a creo/evo seminar for th EU parlament, never got robustly confirmed AFAIK.

greg/oneguy who fakes two guys:
"the past, and our origins are NOT true science"

Smell the burn? Don't be alarmed, it isn't your pc. It is your strawman on spontaneous combustion.

Try to tell this to the particle physicists or astronomers who have to record litterarily billions of events and then sieve the enormous amount of fossilized data for the type of specimens that they are currently interested in. Not because live processing is too overwhelming (after discarding most of them) but because they have no model to predict and explain each individual event in every detail. (If they had, they would not do the experiments. Simple, really.)

Many sciences are historical in this sense, yet true as sciences. In fact, considering the finite speed of light, *all* sciences are properly historical, only in varying degree, in your naive sense.

Torbjörn Larsson · 31 October 2006

"Paleyism (ID) is the "ism" that deserves to be on the dustheap of history, along with dialectical materialism (Marx's critical writings are still worthy of reading) and any Freudianism that doesn't understand Freud to be a useful, if quite flawed, starting point to more comprehensive psychologies."

Interestingly, the knowledge that Freud faked his data seems to be unevenly spread among countries. I wouldn't know about it if not my local skeptic magazine at last took up the subject. They mentioned that US is about twenty years ahead on this discussion. (OTOH I believe the letters that confirm earlier suspicions were rather recently released.)

normdoering · 31 October 2006

Anton Mates wrote:

... everything that's happened so far is in the past. What else could science deal with?

Science could deal with what will happen in the future. Will the Earth's climate change? Can we stop an asteriod from hitting us? Can we go to Mars? Can we make an artificial intelligence that passes the Turing test? Can we evolve more sophisticated programs with genetic algorithms?

normdoering · 31 October 2006

"In Scotland, there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."

Then a psychologists responded from the other isle and said; "In Scotland, when riding on a certain train, a certain astronomer, a certain physicist, and a certain mathematician could observe at least one field, containing what appeared to be one sheep, at least one side of which appeared to be black in the lighting conditions of that time."

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 31 October 2006

Many rich people are creationists, so job-and-economy-wise Darwin's theory is hardly needed.

Hmmmm. The richest man in the US (Bill Gates) is an atheist. So . . . job-and-economy-wise, God is hardly needed. Right? By the way, can you name five successful large bio-businesses in the US that are based on creation 'science' or intelligent design 'theory'? Any bio-tech companies that base their research on creationism or ID? Can you name any scientific discovery, of any note, in any area of biology, made at any time in the past 100 years, as the result of creation 'science' or intelligent design 'theory'? Any oil or coal companies that hire creationist geologists? Me neither. I wonder why that is . . . . . . . . . . . ?

normdoering · 31 October 2006

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank noted:

... richest man in the US (Bill Gates) is an atheist.

Make that at least the three richest men in the US, Gates, Buffett and Soros are all atheists. Paul Allen, maybe? The Waltons -- you finally get some Christians I think. Atheists may be only 10% US population but they dominate money and science positions and have been completely unrepresented in government.

normdoering · 31 October 2006

Whoops, George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, is only 24th on the Forbes 400 (richest people in the United States) list with U.S.$7 billion.

Mike Z · 31 October 2006

Does anyone have any idea if there is something equivalent to the U.S.'s Establishment Clause in Russia's...ummm...Constitution, or whatever they call their document that sets out the rules for their government? The competency of the court is one question, but if the rules, as stated, say the girl's father has a valid case, then it may be CORRECT for the judge to rule in their favor.

Anyway, it seems like a potentially good strategy for the fundamentalists (at least their missionaries) to get ID-C into public classrooms in countries that don't explicitly ban it, rather than keep losing in US or European courts.

Glen Davidson · 31 October 2006

Point taken, but this is taking things a bit too far. Evolutionary theory requires a pretty substantial amount of historical evidence to work. This is simply not the case for electromagnetism. Pretty much all of Maxwell's equations can be derived and verified by anyone, any time (in theory). Fossils, on the other hand, are only ever going to be found once each. And within the field there is tremendous amount of debate about the relative forces of its causes.

I'm not one to distinguish much between the "hard sciences" and the "soft sciences". That's for internecine academic squabbles. And there were some real problems left over after Maxwell came up with his equations, notably the apparent need for an absolute frame of reference for the velocity of light. Meaning that although Maxwell's equations undeniably worked and were hardly in question or in need of a great deal of interpretation in their particular manifestations, the "general theory" had its problems (the most glaring problems since being resolved, famously), much as Darwinism had significant problems in roughly the same time period. The important distinction is to be made between science and non-science. Electromagnetism and "Darwinism" are on the "science side", Paleyism, Freudianism, and Marxism are more or less on the other side (Freud somewhat straddles the divide, however). Whatever the differences between electromagnetic theory and evolutionary theory, both rest upon empirical methods and facts, with Paleyism and dialectical materialism resting in non-empirical 19th century philosophical conceptions. Fossils are not found only one each, not in the sense of "scientific repeatability". The recent Tiktaalik finds were of several specimens, and archaeopteryx is up to at least 10 total specimens. True, we may rely upon single specimens without apology, but repeatability is often important for the sake of authenticity and to show that a single fossil is not somehow anomalous (out of order for some reason, or perhaps a diseased or deformed specimen). The "causes" of electromagnetism are also a matter of at least some controversy, hence the battles over string theory and loop quantum gravity. Of course physics and biology are significantly different in the nature of their controversies and subject matters, yet the affinities between the two sectors of science are much greater than any affinities between Darwinism and Paleyism, or Darwinism and dialectical materialism. The quantitative methods, statistics, predictivity, and correlative force of scientific theories are in many ways similar across scientific disciplines, while the non-scientific ideologies (plus whatever Freudianism is) are often little more than speculation, or at best a kind of set of heuristic methods. It seems a bit odd to have to point this out to anyone on our side. Mostly the official word from physical journals is almost exactly as I have made it out to be (no matter how much some individual physicists may disagree, which would not surprise me), and physicists like Lawrence Krauss see themselves defending physics along with evolution by fighting against ID. Even though there are differences between biological and physical methods, essentially biology may be interpreted as a sort of extension of physics. Someone like Heidegger (or Husserl, if one prefers a more scientific mind) would not flinch in deriving both Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism, and Darwinism, from Newton's methods, and actually even more primordially to Galileo and his abstractions. From within science the differences between biology and physics can seem substantial, while from a philosophical/historical understanding the differences are fairly slight variations on a set of ideas for quantifying and abstracting models of the world. Historical sciences have practical problems not found in the equations for electromagnetism, yet the same essential approach to empirical data and kinds of repeatability are de rigeur in both sorts of science. Paleyism (ID), dialectical materialism, and to a lesser extent, Freudianism, make claims which are foreign to biology and to physics, while physics and biology recognize each others' legitimacy largely without question. Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

GuyeFaux · 31 October 2006

I think this is key here:

...essentially biology may be interpreted as a sort of extension of physics.

If biology is a consequence of physics, then we should arrive at evolution. I wonder, though, if we're being a bit too harsh on Paleyism. I think up till Darwin, it was a teneble (and testable) scientific hypothesis.

Anton Mates · 31 October 2006

Anton Mates wrote: ... everything that's happened so far is in the past. What else could science deal with? Science could deal with what will happen in the future. Will the Earth's climate change? [etc].

— normdoering
Sure, but its only way of justifying claims about the future is to point to existing observations and experiments, which unfortunately (for greg/oneguy) all lie in the past. If you deny their validity, as he does, then scientific predictions have nothing more backing them than tea leaves.

I wonder, though, if we're being a bit too harsh on Paleyism. I think up till Darwin, it was a teneble (and testable) scientific hypothesis.

— GuyeFaux
So far as I can tell, Paley's hypothesis is, "Living organisms contain structures and systems too perfectly suited to their lifestyle to be the work of any natural process." How would you test that?

Glen Davidson · 31 October 2006

I wonder, though, if we're being a bit too harsh on Paleyism. I think up till Darwin, it was a teneble (and testable) scientific hypothesis.

I am harsher on Paleyism a posteriori than a priori. Dialectical materialism might somehow have turned out to accurately predict economic events, and Paleyism might have turned out to have had some value as well. Neither did, however, which is why both should be on the dustheap of history. Nevertheless, Paleyism was rightly criticized by Hume, as well as by people who understood biology as well as one might at the time. Worst of all is the fact that there was no causal explanation in Paleyism, and one had to use the familiar double-talk of ID to say that things "obviously look designed", and that the fact that things don't look like human designs is that "we don't understand God (or aliens) and His purposes". Or in other words, organisms look designed except that they don't really look designed, which is fine because God isn't a designer like ourselves. Theologically this may be sound, but scientifically it is nothing but nonsense. At best it is apologetics, at worst it is hopeless equivocation. Under the old understandings of "Cause" and the need for every thing to have a "Cause", a certain kind of Paleyism seemed reasonable enough, especially since a greater Cause was thought to produce a lesser effect, therefore only a greater intelligence could be the cause of a lesser intelligence. It was a reasonable and logical belief, it just happened not to have anything to do with observed cause and effect once Newtonian (or at least Galilean) physics existed. I do not think that Paleyism can really be based on anything but a pre-scientific point of view, for "intelligence is the cause of intelligence" is only metaphysics, not physics, and it is a familiar refrain in ID/Paleyism. Many people did think that Paleyism was reasonable because they had no scientific explanation for life. But since there was never any entity known to be capable of creating life, and there is no true analogy between human creations and organisms, the whole set of cause-effect requirements in the classical sciences was missing. Paleyism was never proper science, it just seemed reasonable enough to many via the human propensity toward sympathetic magic. Glen D http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Popper's ghost · 1 November 2006

I wonder, though, if we're being a bit too harsh on Paleyism. I think up till Darwin, it was a teneble (and testable) scientific hypothesis.

Paleyism was not tenable, was not testable, was not scientific, and was not a hypothesis -- it was an argument by analogy. Paleyism is fallacious reasoning, not scientific hypothesis, and is fallacious on several levels. The original argument, given by Cicero, was

When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?

Aside from being argumentum ad ignorantiam, this is a fallacy of composition -- a fallacious inference that the whole has the qualities of its parts.

Peter Henderson · 1 November 2006

The theory of plate tectonics, string theory, and cosmology are I think closer to evolutionary theory in the sense mentioned.

Am I right in thinking Guy, that plate tectonics is no longer a theory but an observable fact ? Even Ken Ham has accepted this one although his interpretation of it is complete nonsense. As for String Theory, the last I heard was, that it was verging on philosophy with no hard evidence. I think cosmologists were looking for a sub-atomic which would confirm the theory as being fact. Things could have moved on in the last year or two of course.Maybe someone could correct me if I'm wrong.

Carol Clouser · 1 November 2006

There is a significant difference between the work of physicists and that of biologists and between their respective disciplines. Physics is generally more idea/theory driven, with empirical data playing a decisive but supporting role, whereas biology is primarily data driven, with the ideas/theories providing a supporting, thematic framework within which the data can be better managed.

This usually is revealed in the order of how things develop in the respective subjects. Very often in physics the theories come first and supporting data is sought and obtained (or not obtained as the case may be) only later. Of course the ideas sprout from some data, but the big breakthroughs occur so frequently with theories leading the way. This happened, for example, with electromagnic waves (first proposed by Maxwell's equations), relativity (first developed by Einstein's theoretical efforts), and many many others. String theory is now a developing theory in search of supporting data. In biology, on the other hand, the usual sequence for breakthroughs is experimentation and data first, then theories are develoed based on those data. Evolution is a good example of this process.

Another way to put this: physics is 80% imagination and 20% perspiration, whereas biology is 80% perspiration and 20% imagination.

Sir_Toejam · 1 November 2006

tremendously oversimplified, and the use of the ToE to support your contention is incorrect.

haven't you been reading any of the literature in evolutionary biology or paleontology that is frequently the subject of contributions on this very site?

Carol, your grasp of biology is non-existent, as usual.

You'd think with all the time you have spent here over the last year or so, you might have actually grasped the predictive power of evolutionary theory as well as its explanatory power.

go save some zebras from hyenas or something, would ya?

Glen Davidson · 1 November 2006

Well said, Sir TJ. Biologists usually have to deal with a good many more facts in their theories and models, yet in the end the imaginative abstract conceptions which usefully correlate the data are as important in biology as they are in physics, and both are driven by observation to begin with (this is easier to forget in physics than in biology, thanks to the fewer facts which often are considered at a greater remove, yet it is just as wrong to forget in physics as in biology).

Were it otherwise, biology would only be stamp collecting, that is to say, ID.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

GuyeFaux · 1 November 2006

So far as I can tell, Paley's hypothesis is, "Living organisms contain structures and systems too perfectly suited to their lifestyle to be the work of any natural process." How would you test that?

Test all the natural causes that you know of, and if you come up empty... Yes, it's the argument from ignorance. But it's still testable.

Worst of all is the fact that there was no causal explanation in Paleyism, and one had to use the familiar double-talk of ID to say that things "obviously look designed", and that the fact that things don't look like human designs is that "we don't understand God (or aliens) and His purposes".

Yeah, I was trying to come up with some pre-Darwin support for Paleyism. I think the best I can do is the observation that critters look mostly like their ancestors, which is evidence that species have not changed signifficantly over time. Which implies that they were always there, having exactly what is sufficient survival. (Yes, I know this sounds exactly like PBH's ramblings). And as far as selective breeding goes, "a dog is still a dog", blah blah. In particular, the premise that organisms don't really change is a testable, scientific hypothesis; so is the premise that animals are always adaptable to their environment (fossils of extinct species offer a refutation).

doyle · 1 November 2006

Mike Z makes the key point. ID fails in America because of the US Constitution, not because it is really really stupid. I have no idea what legal framework will apply in Russia and so won't care if the girl wins. I do know we don't have a "right of choosing a philsophy of life" and it's okay to hurt my religious feelings. If those are actual legal concepts in Russia, good luck to them.

Sir_Toejam · 1 November 2006

ID fails in America because of the US Constitution, not because it is really really stupid.

it's a happy coindidence then, that it both fails constitutional muster AND is really, really stupid. maybe the really, really stupid aspect will weigh more in european courts?

the pro from dover · 1 November 2006

If Torbjorn is looking for an effective antifundal agent he should try flimflamisil.

the pro from dover · 1 November 2006

If Torbjorn is looking for an effective antifundal agent he should try flimflamisil.

GvlGeologist, FCD · 1 November 2006

Posted by Peter Henderson on November 1, 2006 5:58 AM (e) Am I right in thinking Guy, that plate tectonics is no longer a theory but an observable fact ? Even Ken Ham has accepted this one although his interpretation of it is complete nonsense.
Plate tectonic theory is indeed a fact; it is repeatedly observed, can make useful predictions (measurable movement verified by GPS, sediment thicknesses on the ocean floor, similar fossils, rocks, minerals, and other geological features on different continents, and many, many others). It however is a scientific theory: it is an explanation for previous observations (a hypothesis), well-tested and accepted by consensus, and, it is still, after all this time, falsifiable. How does this differ from evolution?

Anton Mates · 1 November 2006

So far as I can tell, Paley's hypothesis is, "Living organisms contain structures and systems too perfectly suited to their lifestyle to be the work of any natural process." How would you test that?

— GuyeFaux
Test all the natural causes that you know of, and if you come up empty...

...then you know it wasn't one of those. But there remain an infinite number of possible natural causes you haven't tested yet. Many of them could explain adaptation--heck, you could simply define an "Adapting Force" into existence, as some "progressive evolution" advocates did, without identifying that force with the supernatural creator of the universe. And post-Paley, various other testable theories were developed, such as Lamarck's and of course Darwin's. Paley's not responsible for foreseeing their development, but he had no good reason to rule out that possibility. Paley's hypothesis is the worst kind of universal negative, because it applies not only to the universe but to every conceivable set of laws governing the universe. It says that none of those laws, whatever they are, can possibly produce the phenomena we see, thus we should conclude that something outside those laws is responsible for them. That's not even theoretically testable.

Yes, it's the argument from ignorance. But it's still testable.

The argument from ignorance only makes testable claims about our ignorance.

Henry J · 1 November 2006

So far as I can tell, Paley's hypothesis is, "Living organisms contain structures and systems too perfectly suited to their lifestyle to be the work of any natural process." How would you test that?

Maybe statistically - make one list of the features that are "perfectly suited", and another list of the features that are only marginally suited or that are way inefficient at what they do. Would there be a way to calculate what fraction of features would be expected to be "perfect" (or nearly so) under the current theory vs how many would be wasteful, risky, or only barely effective? Henry

fnxtr · 2 November 2006

Is this the right room for a Euroscopy?

Torbjörn Larsson · 2 November 2006

"And there were some real problems left over after Maxwell came up with his equations, notably the apparent need for an absolute frame of reference for the velocity of light."

Excellent point. One can also note that when applied to elementary particles, singularities in field and selfenergy cropped up too. Also famously solved since then.

"Fossils are not found only one each, not in the sense of "scientific repeatability"."

Another excellent point. It is also a predictive, causally ordered material (as you note), with measurable quantities such as dimensions of features. Social sciences including history can hardly become like natural sciences since they often see singular, complex, hard to predict events and becomes mostly descriptive instead. Like the strawman IDists surrect around evolution and what they like to call 'just-so' theories.

Torbjörn Larsson · 2 November 2006

Peter:
"As for String Theory, the last I heard was, that it was verging on philosophy with no hard evidence. I think cosmologists were looking for a sub-atomic which would confirm the theory as being fact."

It would be more appropriate to call it a mathematical subject, as long as its predictions can't be falsified. So far its math has systematised and connected theories while being consistent with older results.

The latest I heard is that string theory has made a low energy prediction on particle jets that deviates from earlier methods and may be seen in the LHC accelerator in a few years.

pro:
:-) Actually I'm looking for a taxative, since I don't like being reamed every year.

GuyeFaux · 2 November 2006

"Fossils are not found only one each, not in the sense of "scientific repeatability"." Another excellent point. It is also a predictive, causally ordered material (as you note), with measurable quantities such as dimensions of features.

I realize this; and the points about plate tectonics are well taken. However, to me there's still a pretty big difference between 10 fossils of archaeopteryx (all of them slightly different) versus the nth confirmation of Gauss's Law. The differences are: 1) Accessibility. Anybody can test Maxwell's laws, anywhere. It's another matter entirely to find that rabbit in pre-cambrian strata. 2) Accuracy. Even when good transitional fossils are found, we're still a bit fuzzy on direct ancestry. Also, organisms come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, so there's simply a lot of variability which is not found with electromagnitism.

Stephen Jones · 2 November 2006

Somewhere recently I saw an op-ed column about current trends in philosophy that said there were three great "isms" that came out of the 19th Century: Marxism, Freudism, and Darwinism. The first two are discredited; the third (the writer hoped) is soon to follow.

Freudianism was a 20th century phenomenum. 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was first published in 1900.

Incidentally it is said that Marx wished to dedicate the first edition of 'Das Kapital' to Darwin, but Darwin declined the honor. There was a lot of intellectual permeability between economics and evolutionary theory; Smith to Malthus to Darwin to Marx.

Sir_Toejam · 2 November 2006

It's another matter entirely to find that rabbit in pre-cambrian strata.

please, please tell me you aren't seriously postulating the "rabbit in the pre-cambrian" to be a viable (and only???) method of falsifying any specific aspect of the ToE?

Henry J · 2 November 2006

Re "It would be more appropriate to call it [string theory] a mathematical subject, as long as its predictions can't be falsified."

I'd call string theory a proposal for a new theory. Or maybe "hypothesis" might be better there. It's not technically a theory - calling it that is using the colloquial meaning of the term rather than the scientific, which is a nuisance when an antievolutionist brings that up during a discussion of the meaning of the word "theory" in science.

Henry

Anton Mates · 2 November 2006

"So far as I can tell, Paley's hypothesis is, "Living organisms contain structures and systems too perfectly suited to their lifestyle to be the work of any natural process." How would you test that?" Maybe statistically - make one list of the features that are "perfectly suited", and another list of the features that are only marginally suited or that are way inefficient at what they do.

— Henry J
How would you quantify degrees of perfection, though? How much more suited to our lifestyle is the human eye than a snail's or an eagle's eye to their lifestyle? How perfect could a human eye be--could we have Superman-like vision if we hit the mutation jackpot? How more or less effcient is our eye than our kidney?

Would there be a way to calculate what fraction of features would be expected to be "perfect" (or nearly so) under the current theory vs how many would be wasteful, risky, or only barely effective?

I don't think so, even if you did manage to quantify perfection--not without knowing the total space of all possible genomes, then computing the likelihood of each evolutionary path. Moreover, even if you could build the galaxy-sized computer to do that, you'd still only be addressing the current theory; you wouldn't have touched the question of what other natural theories could provide. You'd never get to Paley's conclusion that it must be something supernatural.

Anton Mates · 2 November 2006

However, to me there's still a pretty big difference between 10 fossils of archaeopteryx (all of them slightly different) versus the nth confirmation of Gauss's Law. The differences are: 1) Accessibility. Anybody can test Maxwell's laws, anywhere. It's another matter entirely to find that rabbit in pre-cambrian strata.

— GuyeFaux
Methinks that's not so much a difference between physics and biology, as between testing claims about the past and present. Evolutionary theory makes lots of present predictions that can be tested almost as easily as Maxwell's laws--Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the random distribution of mutations, and so forth. Conversely, if you had to prove that Maxwell's laws were the same a billion years ago, your standard university physics lab wouldn't do the trick. Certainly there've been quite a few papers on whether or not the fine-structure constant has changed over the history of the universe, and the reasoning required there is IMO just as tricky and indirect as that used by paleontologists. But most creationists either don't know what the fine-structure constant is, or find physicists too intimidating (after all, they speak in funny European accents and have funky hair and make lasers and nukes and things) or irrelevant (quantum theory doesn't say my grandpa's a monkey!) to attack.

Torbjörn Larsson · 2 November 2006

"Accessibility. Anybody can test Maxwell's laws, anywhere. It's another matter entirely to find that rabbit in pre-cambrian strata."

This is called setting up an experiment. There is only one LHC accelerator, only one Hubble, et cetera, and you need large groups of people and computer resources. While you can test and falsify evolution in an ordinary lab, with a few people and no computers. Which is hardest to set up?

"Accuracy. Even when good transitional fossils are found, we're still a bit fuzzy on direct ancestry. Also, organisms come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, so there's simply a lot of variability which is not found with electromagnitism."

True, mostly. But this goes for any biological science, and there is certainly fuzzy and variable aspects of physics as well. Solid state or fluid physics can be a mess.

We don't refuse medical science and the treatments because they can't achieve 13 digits precision.

We don't refuse to do science because it is hard - on the contrary, the successes of evolution and its predictions in spite of variability is so much more awesome and sweeter.

Torbjörn Larsson · 2 November 2006

Henry:

"I'd call string theory a proposal for a new theory. Or maybe "hypothesis" might be better there."

Hmm. I was parroting what some string physicists said somewhere a while ago - that if it doesn't make predictions it is still useful to calculate unpredictive stuff that other methods can't. It is in my usage of words beyond being a proposal, since it has been shown to be compatible with old physics, for example giving the same black hole entropy as semiclassical methods.

A hypothesis is more of an isolated idea or prediction. "The scientific method requires that one can test a scientific hypothesis. Scientists generally base such hypotheses on previous observations or on extensions of scientific theories." (Wikipedia)

A theory is more of a larger description for a set of phenomena. It doesn't need to be verified yet, it only needs to be predictive and testable. (Earlier I have seen the term "prototheory", but it has been dropped.) String theory is both. But the energy demanded is usually too high yet.

"It's not technically a theory - calling it that is using the colloquial meaning of the term rather than the scientific, which is a nuisance when an antievolutionist brings that up during a discussion of the meaning of the word "theory" in science.""

Wikipedia isn't the best material, but this is what I can do in a haste:
"In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation.
...
The term theory is occasionally stretched to refer to theoretical speculation that is currently unverifiable. Examples are string theory and various theories of everything."

About calling it a theory, I don't get your idea of colloquiality. It is the physicists that call it string/M-theory.

Such wellgrounded (meshes with other theory) and wellresearched (much work since it looks promising) theoretical methods (math) and speculations (physics) are still a far cry from the colloquial meaning of an unsupported or (probably) unpredictive isolated ad hoc or sets of ad hocs.