Grade My Work
- From: "Donalbain" <Donalbain@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Aug 2006 11:55:39 -0700
A few weeks ago someone posted an essay they had produced for a
university course and got some comments back. I thought it miight be
interesting to do the same. The following essay was for a course
entitled "Science And Technology In Science" a final year module
towards a Bachelor of Arts in Science Education degree. The assignment
was to find a topic relevant to science education and discuss the
effects and controversies surrounding it.
CriticsFrom Darwin To Dover: Evolutionary Biology, Its Consequences And Its
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his opus "The Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in
the Struggle for Life". In this he proposed a theory to explain the
diversity of life as it is observed. In particular he based his work on
the observations he made while on his voyage aboard HMS Beagle. (Bragg
1998). On this voyage he was able to observe, catalogue and collect
examples of species from all over the world; most famously the
Galapagos Islands. This voyage along with years of careful research and
correspondence (works referenced in The Origin of Species range from
The Cottage Gardener and Country Gentleman's Companion to
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Jones 2001))
enabled him to produce a theory that has been described as "the
single best idea anybody ever had" (Professor Daniel Dennett, quoted
in Bragg 1998).
Darwin's was not the first example of a theory of evolution that
tried to explain the variety of life. For example, Jean Baptiste Pierre
Antoine de Monet Lamarck proposed a theory wherein changes to an
organism's body could then be passed down to its offspring. Thus, a
giraffe that stretched its neck to reach the higher leaves on a tree
would have longer-necked offspring than a giraffe that was content to
graze on the lower leaves of the tree (Sheppard 1978). Darwin's
theory though was not based on a completely different idea. The
fundamental building blocks of the theory are two rather obvious facts;
firstly that not all organisms are able to reproduce and secondly that
organisms are different from one another. Both of these facts can be
easily noticed by anyone, but it was the genius of Darwin to combine
the two into a theory of such scope and power that it is compared with
the Copernican Revolution that displaced man from the centre of the
solar system (Bowler 1989).
To briefly summarise the theory it may be useful to take one particular
example. If we imagine a savannah like environment populated by an
elephant-like species. Slowly, the temperature on the savannah starts
to drop, perhaps due to a coming ice age. Amongst the elephant-like
population, some individuals will, by way of random chance have longer
hair than others. This will help them survive in the cold long enough
to breed. Thus, the property of longer hair will be more likely to be
passed onto the next generation than the property of having short hair.
If this process was allowed to continue, then it is fairly easy to
suggest that in time there would be a population of mammoth-like
animals that descended from the elephant-like original stock.
Similarly, all the various forms of life on earth can be explained, in
Darwin's theory, as being the result of the survival and reproduction
of some organisms with properties that suited the environment they
found themselves in.
Ever since the first publication of the theory, there have been
objections to it. The objections have come in many forms, scientific
and otherwise. Indeed, the first person to point out problems with his
theory was Darwin himself. He devoted an entire chapter of The Origin
of Species to "Difficulties on Theory". He pointed perceived
problems such as the lack of transitional specimens (organisms that
may be part bird-like and part dinosaur-like, for example), diversity
within species and many others. (Jones 2001). Another major problem
with the theory, recognised by Darwin himself was that the actual
method of passing on traits to your offspring was little known at the
time. Mendel had produced his work on the genetics of sweet pea plants,
but it had not yet gained wide notoriety. Consequently, Darwin was
somewhat confused on the matter and at times used a blending, rather
than a binary idea of inheritance. These problems and objections to the
theory are all scientific in nature, as they deal with the evidence and
testable predictions from the evidence. This is part of the philosophy
known as Empiricism. This is a philosophy that knowledge of the
universe can only be gained from experience and not from logical
thought alone. This idea was a break from the traditions of Ancient
Greece, and forms a major part of the modern scientific method; however
sound your reasoning might be on a subject, at some point you are going
to have to test your ideas against experience, often in the form of an
experiment or an observation. (Chalmers 1982). There are other
arguments against Darwin's theory that are also based on the evidence
or lack thereof. People who disagree with the theory will point at
problems such as the percieved lack of fossils that support the theory
(http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/re1/chapter3.asp). However,
people who support the theory would disagree and say that there are
plenty of fossils to support the theory adequately (Gould 1990).
While this particular argument is unlikely to be resolved, it is at
least based on available evidence and so qualifies as being part of a
scientific discussion, there are other objections to the theory that
are not based on non scientific principles. These tend to religious in
nature, concerned with ideas such as Christian theology being, to some,
dependent on the idea of a literal reading of Genesis to make sense of
the idea of the Fall and Redemption of mankind.
(http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c013.html). However,
religious issues are not considered to be scientific, if for no other
reason than that there is no feasible way in which they can be tested
or falsified (Popper 1972). There is another form of religious argument
against evolutionary biology which, unlike some creationists, does not
deny the fact that the earth seems to be very old, and that species do
seem to have evolved. This argument states that God himself made it
look as if these things happened, but in actual fact they did not. This
argument is known as Omphalism, from the Latin for navel. Just as Adam
was created with a navel, the argument runs, indicating a past event
that never happened (the cutting of his umbilical cord), so the Earth
could have been created with artefacts and properties that indicate an
event that never happened. (Gould 1989). This argument has been applied
to observations such as the existence of fossils, to the appearance of
light having travelled millions of miles from the distant stars
(http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&page=214).
Once one starts down the road of this sort of reasoning, though, you
are most definitely leaving science behind (Gardner 1981). If we are
dealing with a "trickster deity" who can make a universe or a
planet where observations cannot be used to make predictions or
theories, then there is no way for science to operate. After all, a
simple experiment such as dropping two cannon balls from a height could
be interpreted as being the result of a god wanting both balls to
appear to fall at the same speed, while in fact the heavy one really
moved faster.
Another form of objection that certain people have towards the theory
is it's perceived impact on society. There is a belief amongst some
Christians that accepting that one is related to apes, will make it
more likely that people will act like apes, that is to say in morally
objectionable ways
(http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4340relevance7-5-2000.asp).
Anti-evolutionists are able to cite reports such as the one in the
previous reference that link acceptance of evolutionary biology with
tolerance of behaviours such as abortion that they find morally
repugnant.
There are also examples of Darwinian evolution being used to justify
behaviours on a larger scale that many might find objectionable. Some
people claim that evolution should itself provide a model for human
ethics (Barnett 1958). However, this is not a universally accepted
point, as pointed out by David Hume who said that one cannot
necessarily get from an "is" to an "ought". For example, the
fact that people fall off cliffs is not a moral justification for
pushing them. This logical problem has not entirely prevented people
from trying to apply Darwinian principles to ethics however.
Social Darwinism is an example of attempting to do this very thing.
Given that nature thrives and succeeds on competition, some people say,
surely it is logical that society itself will thrive and succeed on
just the same principles. This idea has been used in a number of ways
for example to promote individual competition, particularly in the
economic field with those who are unable (unfit) to work, being made to
take the evolutionary consequences of their inability (Bowler 1989). It
has also been used to promote international competition, with the
nations being the entities which are forced to compete, thus justifying
such things as colonialism and imperialism.(Bowler 1989).
The purely naturalistic nature of Darwin's theory was also an
influence on Karl Marx and his naturalistic theory of class struggle in
The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital (Bowler 1989). Ironically, the
Soviet Union officially rejected Darwin's theory on ideological
grounds and attempted to use a neo-Lamarckian theory devised by
Lysenko. This had disastrous effects on the harvest of the USSR and has
retarded Russian genetic research to this day (Gardner 1981).
The ideas of natural selection and the common kinship of all organisms
have also had some effect on the ideas of human rights. Richard
Dawkins, in an essay in A Devil's Chaplain, contends that it is a
fallacy to mentally separate human beings from other animals as being
deserving of special rights due to a uniqueness of our creation
(Dawkins 2004). Others to have taken up this idea include Peter Singer,
who contends that there should only be a very narrow gap between the
rights of animals and those of humans.
(http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0008/opinion/carlin.html).
Naturally, this idea has serious implications for current ethical
issues such as animal testing; if a chimpanzee is our cousin, is it
morally and ethically acceptable to test dangerous drugs on them?
Another area in which the theory of evolution impacts upon society is
in the field of education. Given that some people have moral and or
religious objections to the theory, is it acceptable to teach it as a
scientific fact? This is an issue that has surfaced regularly in the
United States, and is starting to come into focus in education in the
United Kingdom. Famously, there was the Scopes trial of 1925 in which a
teacher in Tennessee was prosecuted for teaching the theory of the
evolution of man (Bowler 1989). It was not until several decades after
this that evolution began to feature prominently in American text
books. As a response to this, Creation Science was born, which was an
attempt to establish scientific evidence for the creation of the world
in six days by the Christian God. However, in the USA, this approach
did not have any success being accepted into schools due to the court
findings that it was a religious position and thus incompatible with
the Constitution's prohibition on public endorsement of religion
(http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_site/index.htm).
However, creation science is still of interest to many people, notably
the researchers at the Institute of Creation Research
(http://www.icr.org/). This organisation claims to be scientific, but
the fact that in order to publish in their journal, one must be a
professing Christian who already accepts the tenets of their faith
(http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=research&action=index&page=research_tenets),
makes it doubtful whether they are truly willing to expose their ideas
to the test of falsification (Popper 1972) and thus that they are not
truly practicing science.
Since the failure of Creation Science to gain a foothold in education,
the emphasis has moved towards the notion of Intelligent Design. In
summary, this is the idea that certain structures are irreducibly
complex. That is to say that removal of any one of these parts will
cause the structure to be of no benefit to the organism. Therefore, the
argument runs, these structures could not have have evolved by any
natural method, and are thus evidence of a highly sophisticated
designer (Behe 1996). In effect, this is a restatement of the argument
from design from the 19th Century. Scientifically, the main problem
with this hypothesis is the question of how you rule out the
possibility of any natural process. The tentative nature of science and
our continual state of ignorance would make such a sweeping claim a
bold one. There is also the problem that, as yet, Intelligent Design is
a new formulation of an idea, and has yet to produce any predictions
that can be tested against observation. As one of the hallmarks of a
good science is the formulation of predictions that can be proved (in
the sense of tested) (Sagan 1997) it appears that, as yet, Intelligent
Design does not fit the criteria of science. This new strategy
recently hit a problem when a court in Dover, Pennsylvania found that a
policy for pupils to be told that Evolutionary biology is a theory not
a fact, and that Intelligent Design is an alternative hypothesis.
(http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2005/PA/304_dover_teachers_refuse_to_read__1_7_2005.asp),
was in fact an attempt to promote the religious notion of creation and
thus fell foul of the Constitution
(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html).
The UK however, has no such bar to the teaching of religious matters in
schools, and so some schools are beginning to suggest that Intelligent
Design and/or Creationism might have a part to play in the school
curriculum. These schools will point to the wording of the National
Curriculum as saying that pupils must be taught "how scientific
controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical
evidence [ for example, Darwin's theory of evolution ]"
(http://www.nc.uk.net/nc/contents/Sc-4-1-POS.html). This has caused
some concern amongst both scientists and non scientists, many of whom
regard Intelligent Design and Creation Science as being bad science or
even worse. Amongst those who reject the idea of teaching Intelligent
Design are people such as the atheist Richard Dawkins (Dawkins 2004)
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who also said that he did not think
creationism should be taught in schools
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4828238.stm).
The debate took a new twist when it was revealed that one exam board
would be putting a discussion of Creationism in it's syllabus for
next academic year. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4793198.stm).
However, despite early claims that it would introduce non-scientific
ideas into science education, the exam board was keen to stress that
the subject of creationism and Intelligent Design would only be treated
as part of a "historical context", and that they are not
"scientific theories"
(http://www.ocr.org.uk/OCR/WebSite/docroot/newsupdates/newslist/detail.jsp?server=PRODUKTION&site=OCR&oid=27616&anchorid=nav0&category=General%20Qualifications).
In the almost 150 years since its publication, Darwin's work has had
probably more of an effect on society than any discovery since
Copernicus' revelation that we are not at the centre of the universe.
The idea that we are, in fact just another organism, subject to the
same forces as all other species, from chimps to bacteria has led some
people to reject the theory outright, while others have embraced it
wholeheartedly using it to formulate or justify political ideas.
Despite the claims of some that Darwinian evolution is a paradigm that
is coming to a close (Behe 1996), the continued pace of evolutionary
research, and the lack of any research in the peer reviewed press from
the proposed alternative paradigms suggest that Darwin's legacy will
continue into the future, no doubt continuing to pose ethical and
social questions for future generations.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Grade My Work
- From: Dunc Harris
- Re: Grade My Work
- From: Larry Moran
- Re: Grade My Work
- Prev by Date: Re: Entropy for the unenlightened
- Next by Date: Re: Apportioning time
- Previous by thread: Apportioning time
- Next by thread: Re: Grade My Work
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
