 |
A Sturm's Eye View, Guaranteed
Free of Harmful, or Potentially Harmful Chemicals -- but Watch Out for the
Ideas! Some of them are Contagious!
A journal of sorts to record Jonathan Sturm's (and others') thoughts and observations on things worth thinking About. Feedback welcome, but be aware that unless you prominently say you want your communication kept private, I may publish it. |
|
|
Saturday, 17 December 2005
This is (probably) The Git's last Diatribe for a month; he goes away visiting absent friends for nearly a month. And it's the Silly Season.
One of the friends on The Git's visiting list, Margot Miller, is dying of cancer. The Git does not share her belief in God, but he notes that at least she has the consolation of her belief. Margot has a special place in The Git's thoughts. Many long years ago, after reading some of his writing, she remarked: "Have you checked the primary sources?" After doing so, The Git discovered a major error and learned a great lesson. Whenever possible, always check the primary sources.
One of the Git's other friends on the visiting list, Michel Henrysson is also battling the demon cancer. The Git's mother is dying of old age, but celebrating her impending eightieth birthday will hopefully occasion more pleasure than pain.
-oOo-
You will likely recall that The Git has a bee in his bonnet about random mutation being the cause of macroevolution that is the core of NeoDarwinism. Merely having a gene mutate gradually into some other gene won't do. If the gene has an important function for the organism it inhabits, then the organism would suffer from the disappearance of that function. Ohno's Hypothesis has it that the gene must first be duplicated and the duplicate gene then proceeds to mutate into the new gene with the new function. During the period of mutation, the gene is not expressed, but at some random point in time becomes expressed. For example, a plant that previously utilised the C3 photosynthetic process, overnight as it were, utilises instead the C4 photosynthetic process and is a new and distinctly different species. So the story goes, some thirty odd plant species simultaneously and randomly discovered the C4 process in the blink of an evolutionary eye.
This argument bears more than passing resemblance to the stories The Git read when he was a tadpole. At the end of an episode in The Wizard, Fearless Dick would be helplessly bound by fierce African natives looking forward to a bit of white flesh for supper. At the beginning of the next episode, one would read: "With a bound, Dick sprang free!"
This does not make the Ohno Hypothesis wrong, merely less probable. It would help, of course, if there were any evidence to support it. Despite its reputed abundance, The Git's searches have turned up no evidence that macroevolution works in this way. Here's some evidence about what does happen from Nature:
Adaptive evolution of bacterial metabolic networks by horizontal gene transfer
compared the genome of E. coli with those of its closest relatives. "Under realistic parameter settings, we estimated that 15-32 genes were transferred horizontally into the E. coli metabolic network since its divergence from the Salmonella lineage, vastly outnumbering the one (1) identified gene duplication over the same period." The duplicated gene "functions in the same enzymatic reaction" as the original. They observe, "Most changes to the metabolic network of Escherichia coli in the past 100 million years are due to horizontal gene transfer, with little contribution from gene duplicates."
And from Trends in Genetics a piece about corals and sea anemones:
"The resulting data set... implies that much of the genetic complexity commonly assumed to have arisen much later in animal evolution is actually ancestral. The most surprising implication of these analyses, however, is that anthozoans have retained a substantial number of genes not previously known in the animal kingdom. Two possibilities remain to explain the presence of these genes in the anthozoan genomes:
(i) lateral gene transfer (LGT); or
(ii) conservation of ancient genes that have been lost from those animals for which complete sequences are available.
Although we cannot rule out LGT in all cases, we favor the latter explanation for most of these matches...
In many respects, the complexity of the anthozoan gene set does not differ substantially from that of vertebrates and frequently exceeds that of the model invertebrates Drosophila and Caenorhabditis... One possible interpretation of the counterintuitive genetic complexity of cnidarians could be that they are actually highly derived deuterostomes. However, this interpretation is strongly contradicted by a large body of phylogenetic data, which indicates that cnidarians are a monophyletic group basal within the Eumetazoa and forming the sister group to the Bilateria....
Four general conclusions emerge from this work. First, a link between morphological complexity and gene number is illusory. Second, the common ancestor of cnidarians and 'higher' animals (the Ureumetazoa) was surprisingly complex at the genetic level. Third, a small percentage of genes in the two anthozoans represents preserved ancient genes that were present in the common ancestor but have been lost in the 'higher' animals so far examined... Finally, gene loss has had a major role in animal evolution, and has been particularly extensive in the ecdysozoan model organisms... The remarkable genetic complexity of anthozoan cnidarians implies that most of the qualitative genetic differences between animals and other eukaryotes are ancestral..."
Neither of these published research papers support the Doctrine of the NeoDarwinian Synthesis: that speciation is caused by genes evolving into new genes in situ. Note that this is not the same as the Creationist claim: organisms do not evolve; speciation does not occur. Funnily enough, both papers are compatible with Intelligent Design Theory. But then they are also compatible with Panspermia. And doubtless theories that have yet to be invented.
-oOo-
One of today's topics is The Consolations of Religion, a title fearlessly altered stolen from Alain de Botton. But before venturing down that path, please note the admonition above: "be aware that unless you prominently say you want your communication kept private, I may publish it."
Annoying Correspondent, a.k.a. "Professor" Robert Stikjet wrote:
"'Darwinism' is a term used by creationists. It has no scientific validity and is rarely, if ever, used to describe any biological theory. Only those ignorant of the science would use the term."
Now it is one thing to believe The Git contemptible, but quite another to treat him with contempt. The Git objected to being labelled "ignorant of the science" and a "creationist". He also objected on behalf of Ernst Mayr and many other great scientists who have used the terms Darwinist and Darwinism. "Professor" Stinkjet's response was:
"I asserted no such thing -- that is your erroneous extrapolation."
The Git extrapolates:
Therefore:
Further, "Professor" Stinkjet wrote:
"[Darwinism] is rarely, if ever, used to describe any biological theory"
However, The Oxford English Dictionary says otherwise:
Darwinism
1. The doctrine or hypothesis of Erasmus Darwin. Obs. (nonce-use.)
1856 B. W. Richardson Life T. Sopwith (1891) 256 Mr. Sopwith described the hypothesis of the development of living things from a primordial centre. That, said Reade, is rank Darwinism. It was the first time I had heard that word used it had reference to Erasmus Darwin.2. The biological theory of Charles Darwin concerning the evolution of species, etc., set forth especially in his works entitled 'The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life' (1859), and 'The Descent of Man and Selection in relation to Sex' (1871).
1864 T. H. Huxley in Nat. Hist. Rev. Oct. 567 What we may term the philosophical position of Darwinism.
1871 Athenćum 15 July 84 It is impossible to reconcile the Doctors of the Church with the Doctors of Darwinism.
1876 Ray Lankester tr. Haeckel's Hist. Creation I. 1 The scientific theory commonly called Darwinism, is only a small fragment of a far more comprehensive doctrine.
1889 A. R. Wallace (title), Darwinism, An exposition of the theory of Natural Selection with some of its applications.
So
Darwinist, a follower of Darwin, a Darwinian.
Darwinistic a., of or pertaining to Darwinism.
Darwinize v., to speculate or theorize after the manner of (Erasmus or Charles) Darwin; also trans.; so
Darwinized ppl. a.
"Professor" Stinkjet wrote:
"p = 'Darwinism' is a term used by creationists.
<snip>
The exact quote does not match your 'p'.
q = It [Darwinism] has no scientific validity
That can not be attributed to me..."
"The exact quote does not match your 'p'" is patently untrue, unless p = not p. As are the statements concerning the ignorance of those using the term Darwinism and that Darwinism "is rarely, if ever, used to describe any biological theory". As far as The Git can ascertain, no lexicographer has assigned any other meaning to the word.
So, you can believe as fervently as you wish that The Git is a Creationist and ignorant of the science. He cannot change that. But he will respond in kind to being treated with contempt.
Alain de Botton wrote:
"Every society has notions of what one should believe and how one should behave in order to avoid suspicion and unpopularity. Some of these societal conventions are given explicit formulation in a legal code, others are more intuitively held in a vast body of ethical and practical judgements described as 'common sense', which dictates what we should wear, which financial values we should adopt, whom we should esteem, which etiquette we should follow and what domestic life we should lead. To start questioning these conventions would seem bizarre, even aggressive. If common sense is cordoned off from questions, it is because its judgements are deemed plainly too sensible to be the targets of scrutiny."
The Git has referred with some frequency to his favourite Australian historian, Geoffrey Blainey. Here's a timely piece from this week's Australian.
Apologise to Blainey
Peter Ryan:
The Australian
December 15, 2005
AGHAST at their television screens as they watched Sydney's race riots, how many Australians cast their minds back 20 years to remember Geoffrey Blainey's thoughtful warning that such horrors might happen? Happen, that is, unless we reconsidered our program of almost indiscriminate immigration and the accompanying madness of multiculturalism.
I suppose very few viewers -- or newspaper readers, or radio listeners -- made the connection: if a week is a long time in politics, two decades is almost an ice age in the public memory span of history. Yet warned we were, and little heed we paid.
In mid-1984 Blainey, who then held the Ernest Scott chair of history at Melbourne University and was dean of the arts faculty, gave an address to the Rotary Club of Warrnambool, Victoria. This was hardly a commanding forum; there was no TV or radio coverage. Blainey's themes, quietly and soberly presented, were simply these: Australia each year was taking in migrants at a rate faster than the national fabric could absorb; many migrants were coming from backgrounds so starkly different from Australian norms that prospects of a social fit into our community might lie a long way off.
He went on to say that should a time come when ordinary Australians began to feel crowded or pressured by new arrivals, resentment might soon end the ready acceptance upon which migrants hitherto knew they could rely. Blainey's position was reasonable almost to the point of being obvious and appealed to the commonsense of anybody with worldly experience, and with some acquaintance with wider human nature, of whatever colour or culture.
For those who held a different view, the way was surely open to civilised debate with this most urbane and good natured of scholars.
No such thing!
Almost as if he had set a match to dry grass in summer, Blainey's few sensible words from quiet, coastal Warrnambool ignited an Australia-wide bushfire of howling criticism. The arsonists fanning the flames were his colleagues at the University of Melbourne's history department
On June 19, 1984, 23 academics published in Melbourne's The Age a letter that two decades later still holds some sad record for unctuous academic bilge, expressed with unprickable pomposity.
Drawing in their skirts and elevating their fastidious nostrils, they disowned their own professor, saying in effect that Australia's immigration program was a subject too delicate for him to be allowed to discuss, though clearly it was OK for them.
By inescapable inference, Blainey was a racist.
The issue soon surged beyond animated controversy to become a full-scale witch-hunt. There were disorders on campus, and threatened disorders if this vile man should be allowed to go on teaching. Students organised boycotts of his lectures. His colleagues hung him out to dry, at least some of them slyly conniving in the wider campus hoo-ha. Acting to perfection the part of Pontius Pilate, the university gave the mob its head.
In this impossible situation, Blainey eventually resigned from his chair and Melbourne University lost one of its most distinguished, original and publicly accessible scholars. (A few years later it conferred on him the nowadays rather perfunctory distinction of emeritus).
To reread today the 23 signatures on the letter of 1984 is a curious experience. Going down the list, the mind stops repeatedly to ask: "Who? Who?" They resemble little dogs snapping at the heels of a stately thoroughbred.
On the part of many, envy of a more successful scholar was hard at work:
When Heaven with such parts has blest him
Have I not reason to detest him?Only one of the claque reached enduring prominence in the public eye: Stuart Macintyre. In 1991, this former communist moved into the chair of history that Blainey had so thoughtfully vacated for him.
Blainey's gritty experience of the real world far exceeded that of his traducers. After taking his degree, he long avoided the sheltered workshops of academe, got out into the worlds of mining and business, and knocked about the country.
Then he wrote his books, based not only what he had read in the library but also on what he had seen and touched, and had learned from men and from managers. It was largely this quality of veracity, of actuality, that regularly made his books bestsellers, running to repeated new editions in paperback. Such success did little to diminish the glances of the green eyes of envy.
Blainey's experience of the world was what above all entitled him to express an opinion on how Australia might react to injudicious immigration, pushed too far and too fast. Compared to him, most of his colleagues in the history department were still wet behind the ears, with minds still damp in academic mental nappies.
The year after Blainey's resignation, on April 1, 1985, The Australian Financial Review devoted its editorial to a review of what by then had become a running academic scandal. Under the heading "Academic assassination", the editorial made plain its opinion that the political correctnesses of multiculturalism had suppressed proper public discussion of the undoubted disruptions being caused by some aspects of migration, and that freedom of speech was under attack from the "smelly little orthodoxies that dominate the humanities departments" in the universities.
The editorial expressed the paper's concern that the "extraordinary attack" on Blainey was "only too typical of the developing intolerance of genuine intellectual freedom in our universities, colleges and indeed schools". The motives of Blainey's critics were "to give a message to their weaker colleagues that dissent and dialogue will be punished heavily. Punished, too, would be full participation in public discussion, instead of jockeying for power in the groves of academe."
So there we had it, and not much has changed since. The dominant forces in academic history have laid down a rigid party line of accepted orthodoxy: don't expect to be promoted above the level of tutor if you don't toe it.
There may be signs that this rigid mould is cracking. It is now more than 10 years since Australia's historical charlatan-in-chief, Manning Clark, was toppled from his pedestal. It is today most unusual to hear Clark quoted as an historical authority on anything at all.
The labours of Keith Windschuttle are bringing sense and truth to our knowledge of white settlement and Aboriginal relations. Michael Connor's new book exposes the spurious doctrine of terra nullius, with which the history gang had spooked even the High Court.
But these will be mere battles by the way unless the main campaign for freedom of speech and inquiry can be won in the universities.
My own alma mater, Melbourne, is a specially sad case, having cravenly allowed one of the finest scholars of our time to be driven out by an academic lynch mob. Until amends are made to Blainey, Melbourne's claim to be an institution devoted to free inquiry will remain a joke. The very least that should be done is the creation and endowment in perpetuity within the university of a Geoffrey Blainey chair of history.
Melbourne (and not a moment too soon) has in Glyn Davis appointed a new vice-chancellor with ambitious plans to lift the university's reputation. A first step might be to establish the Blainey chair.
Nothing so adds to the standing of a university as a reputation for not evicting distinguished professors simply on the ground that they are doing their job well.
Remember, this is the man who, two decades ago, tried to warn us against what we all witnessed in Cronulla last weekend. Can a university -- can a nation -- do without such counsellors? Or should they be disposed of at the mere whim of the gruesome ideologues who still control Australian history?
Peter Ryan was director of Melbourne University Press from 1962 to 1989.
The philosophers of the Enlightenment questioned the conventions of their day: the common belief in God and His mercy in providing a better life following this one. They argued, successfully, that religion was a source of much misery among men and therefore an antidote was called for. Baron d'Holbach wrote: "The source of man's misery is his ignorance of nature". As David Stove notes, this must be one of the silliest pronouncements of all time, though those of us who have had a Western eduction will have been told this in countless ways, so many times, it is common sense to believe it. To see the patent absurdity, you must believe, as Cardinal Newman remarked, that you can comfort a dying man by teaching him chemistry and astronomy.
Religion of course deserved to be condemned by the Philosophes for its persecution of witches, St Bartholomew Day Massacres, Spanish Inquisitions and so forth. It is even true that some misery was caused by the belief in endless torment in the afterlife if one failed to live up to the religious precepts handed down in church every Sunday. It's notable though, as David Stove has pointed out, that accounts of the behaviour of ordinary folk tends to give the lie to their being overly diligent in actually believing the stories of endless torment.
What is usually omitted from such accounts is that religion provides comfort as well as being a source of misery. "Hume, for example, ignored the following response by James Beattie to his attacks on religion. People like Hume, Beattie wrote, should remember that 'in the solitary scenes of life, there is many an honest and tender heart pining with incurable anguish, pierced with the sharpest sting of disappointment, bereft of friends, chilled with poverty, racked with disease, scourged by the oppressor; whom nothing but trust in Providence, and the hope of a future retribution, could preserve from the agonies of despair. And do they [the Enlightened], with sacrilegious hands, attempt to violate this last refuge of the miserable, and to rob them of the only comfort that had survived the ravages of misfortunate, malice, and tyranny!'" [Stove]
The Git has noted on previous occasions that when it comes to being killed by the élite, it's far more likely that you will be killed by atheists than God-botherers. Atheists are not only more likely to take your life, they want to take away any spiritual comfort you might aspire to as well. For those of us with more of a philosophical than religious bent, the anti-rationalists would even like to take away the consolations of philosophy.
A Parable:
Two men are travelling together along a road. One of them believes that it leads to the Celestial City, the other that it leads nowhere; but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. Neither has been this way before; therefore, neither is able to say what they will find around each corner. During their journey they meet with moments of refreshment and delight, and with moments of hardship and danger. All the time one of them thinks of his journey as a pilgrimage to the Celestial City. He interprets the pleasant parts as encouragements and the obstacles as trials of his purpose and lessons in endurance, prepared by the king of that city and designed to make of him a worthy citizen of the place when at last he arrives. The other, however, believes none of this, and sees their journey as an unavoidable and aimless ramble. Since he has no choice in the matter, he enjoys the good and endures the bad. For him there is no Celestial City to be reached, no all-encompassing purpose ordaining their journey; there is only the road itself and the luck of the road in good weather and in bad.
During the course of the. journey, the issue between them is not an experimental one. They do not entertain different expectations about the coming details of the road, but only about its ultimate destination. Yet, when they turn the last corner, it will be apparent that one of them has been right all the time and the other wrong. Thus, although the issue between them has not been experimental, it has nevertheless been a real issue. They have not merely felt differently about the road, for one was feeling appropriately and the other inappropriately in relation to the actual state of affairs. Their opposed interpretations of the situation have constituted genuinely rival assertions, whose assertion-status has the peculiar characteristic of being guaranteed retrospectively by a future crux.
Happy Humbug to all of you.
The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton, Pantheon 2000. Well worth reading. The section on the inventor of the essay. Montaigne is alone worth the price of the book.
Against the Idols of the Age by David Stove, Transaction 1999. The Australian philosopher David Stove was none too popular, or widely read during his lifetime. Roger Kimball edited this collection of essays from several of Stove's out of print books. If you object to philosophers who make you laugh, this isn't for you. If you are politically correct, ditto.
Philosophy of Religion, John H. Hick, Prentice Hall 1973 (2nd Edition). This is the source of the parable quoted above. A short introduction to the main concepts in religious philosophy, it is concise and clearly written for those beginning philosophy, or who need to be cognisant of the more important issues. Such as students of the philosophy of science who need to be aware of them.
The Git can notify you by email when a new post is ready. Just email him to be put on the list, or removed if you are on the list and don't want to be.
Thoughts for the week:
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned. -- Bruce Ediger
-oOo-
We have witnessed a decline in scholarship, few scholars are left, and those who remain experience vexations. Their troubled times stop them from concentrating on deepening and bettering their knowledge. Most so-called scholars today mask the truth with lies.
In science, they go no further than plagiarism and hypocrisy and use the little knowledge they have for vile material ends. And if they come across others who stand apart for their love of the truth and rejection of falsehood and hypocrisy, they attack them with insults and sarcasm. -- Omar Khayyam (attrib)
-oOo-
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. -- Alfred North Whitehead
-oOo-
Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to do logic. -- Pierre Boutroux
-oOo-
If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Godel has taught us that, not only is mathematics a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one. -- W. Mark Stuckey
Current Listening:
David Bowie -- Low
David Bowie -- Outside
Tom Waits -- Alice
Home | Previous | Next | Old Ephemerides |Site Map |Top
| www.sturmsoft.com/Writing/current.htm | Use this, or the home page when suggesting people visit this site. This is where I put important notices as I feel they are needed. |
| www.sturmsoft.com/Writing/diatribe.htm | Like the old redirector but with no delay. This is for regular readers of The Daily Diatribe. |
Check out:
Franklin & Friends, a website devoted to the village where the author lives: its culture, inhabitants, and more.
The DayNotes Gang for more daily musings on Life, the Universe and Things Computerish.
© Jonathan Sturm 2005
