Friday, October 20, 2006

Evolution and the Myth of Creationism - Book

What does the word "Theory" as in say "Theory of Evolution" mean to you? Have you used the word in your conversations and if yes what was the context? Was it something like --

"The Redskins are great defensively (or offensively, I don't care really), my theory is that they will run the table and be on top of NFC East" (yeah right and I just won a million dollars at the lotteries) or "Pakistan is a victim of terrorism not the brain behind it. They are in fact doing their best to catch Osama, my theory is Osama is not in Wazirstan, but in fact moved out of South Asia" (sure and they had no hand in shipping North Korea a fully disassembled bomb with an instruction manual).

I am sure we all have our various "pet theories". Unfortunately the word theory is a very overloaded word that means one thing to a layman (I am not fond of the word "layperson", it sounds so PC. But that is a topic for another discussion) and something entirely different to men and women of science (which includes us).

Usually when we use it, it means a hunch, a gut feeling, an instinct, not necessarily backed by reason or facts. When used in science, it means a "Theory" with a CAPITAL "T", it is in fact quite the opposite of gut feeling. For scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition.

So what is the point? Well it leads to a book, I like so much, I feel it should have been the subject of my first blog.

Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, by Tim M. Berra

When I came to this country in 1989, I was not aware of any controversy on the subject of Evolution. I had taken it as a fact since that was how science was taught at school. I would say for a third world country our teaching methodology was first rate and for a first world country knowledge of science and scientific methodology amongst the people in US is abysmal especially in the Bible belt. (Most Indians also have no clue about scientific methodology, at least religion thank fully had not entered the classroom when we were students. Our parents did not insist that the schools teach us the Dasavatara as facts of science!!)

To go back to the word Theory, I am taking a quote from this book (the emphasis are from the book)

The scientific method involves the observation of a phenomena or events in the real world, the statement of a problem, some reflection and deduction on the observed facts and their possible causes and effects, the formation of a hypothesis, the testing of the hypothesis (experimentation or prediction) and - where the tests repeatedly confirm the hypothesis - the erection of a theory.

I really liked this description, I am ashamed to say I did not know this was how one came up with a scientific theory. This book is a point by point rebuttal of Creationism. It is a very easy read (about 150 pages with lot of illustrations). It is meant for people like us who have a studied some science but not a lot of biology but are familiar with the scientific methodology. The preface and first chapter can be read standalone just to get an insight into this book.

On the other hand The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that

..intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own...

If we are going to raise our children in this country, I feel, we need to be particularly aware of this issue. There are enough initiatives that attempt to push Creationism or its variant Intelligent Design on our children masquerading as science. Although the movement received a major blow in Pennsylvania recently, unfortunately the political landscape is such that we have to keep slaying this demon repeatedly!!

Unlike hot-button subjects such as "Abortion Rights" or "Gun Control", where there is scope for having different opinions, Evolution is as much a fact as Gravitation. Scientist may debate on a nuance but since they are people with their own agenda and ego, their shrill arguments sometimes gives the impression to the average person that there is scope for doubts. There are none. So in the future if you mention "Theory or Evolution", you could say "Facts about/of Evolution".

More than any other book on this subject, please read this one, if not for your personal edification, but for the sake of your children.

Now let us add the usual caveat; there are no certainties. Newton's Corpuscular theory was well established till it was shown that light to be a wave. This lasted till the end of 19th century when it was shown to have dual nature. All Theories exists till a better one takes its place. Sometimes the new one completely demolishes the old one, at other times, it enhances it.

There are several other such examples that rather than casting a doubt on science or scientific method, demonstrates its ability to be self correcting. A theory can come into existence for various reasons, but its longevity depends only on its quality.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Blind Watch Maker - Book

More than a decade ago, a colleague of mine gave me a hard copy containing an argument that has for more than two centuries been the bulwark of Creationism or Intelligent Design. I unfortunately do not have that paper, but I will try to recall the substance of it from memory. The argument goes somewhat as follows:

A man was walking along the beach and came across this rock. As he was looking at it it was hit by a bolt of lightning which melted the rock. Now a part of it formed a round concave metal disc, the inside face had inscription which looked liked number 1 through 12 spaced evenly. Other pieces of molten metal formed into various shapes, such as Click Spring, Winding Wheel, Stud, Fourth Wheel etc. One part of the rock was made of quartz like material that resulted in a round transparent piece that somehow fitted exactly on top of the original round metal. All these pieces then serendipitously fell in such a manner that in the end it looked like a watch. While this was happening a cow happened to fall near the rock and piece of its skin tore off and shaped itself like the strap and attached itself to the watch. The man then waited for the watch to cool and when he wound the watch, lo behold it worked as any watch would!!

There are various version of this story and various other variants too (imagine an empty Boeing factory, a tornado rips through it and when it leaves, instead of mayhem, a fully finished functional 747 is ready!!) All such arguments can be summed up like this: a watch or an airplane or any other such human artifact show design, which means there was a designer.

The watch analogy is attributed to an 18th century philosopher William Paley. It may be interesting to note that Charles Darwin was deeply affected by his views and yet went on to propound the Theory of Evolution. Why are we talking about William Paley and his famous analogy? Well it, not surprisingly, leads to another perennial favorite of mine (and yes I have read this book many times too, in fact let us assume I have read all the books I recommend many times) which is

The Blind Watch Maker by Richard Dawkins

Dawkins is, in my opinion, one of the most influential scientist of the last few decades. He is an even better writer which can be seen by the popularity of his books starting with his seminal book The Selfish Gene (which I will surely inflict on you in the future).

Coming back to the book, the central thesis of this book is simply this: Evolution is a mindless algorithmic process that over millions and billions of years creates complicated structures that give the appearance of purposeful design. Yes evolution is a watch maker but astonishingly, it is not trying to make a watch, in fact it is not even trying to make anything!! It has no foresight, in fact he has no sight. It is the Blind Watch Maker. Other times, it starts out on the path of making a watch and ends up making a microwave oven instead!!

Dawkins starts with the eye. The eye, even a child can tell, shows amazing engineering. It can detect shades of brightness, colors, shapes. On the contrary Dawkins shows how the human eye is a hack, a biological hack.

Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of the retina, to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called ‘blind spot’) to join the optic nerve. This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer!). I don’t know the exact explanation for this strange state of affairs. The relevant period of evolution is so long ago.

If we model the world as having optimal solutions for various engineering problems, with the optimal solution representing a global maxima, the problem is, evolution never looks for global maximas. All an organism is trying to do is get that immediate advantage that helps it have enough babies before it dies. It has no time for global maximas, it needs merely a small advantage that will help it replicate more than its siblings and cousins (contrary to popular myth, a wildebeest's competitor is not a Lion it is in fact another wildebeest). But we all know what happens when we choose that small change, we are stuck in a sub-optimal solution and once a step in a particular direction is taken that gives its owner an advantage, he is propelled in a path which may preclude taking an alternate path. To go back means leaving a local maxima, which leads to creatures which are poorer in design than the current ones!! So at some point the eyes of ancestor of all vetebrates took a turn which led us to this eye of ours with all its limitations.

There are several other examples taken up in the book. The author copies Paley's style in describing amazing number of engineering problems that nature has solved. He describes echolocation (how bats naviage in the dark using sonar). In fact he takes the engineering problem of sonar and describes the problem in detail and explains how bats solve the same problem.

Bottom line Intelligent Design and Creationism is psuedo-science and Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the only one capable of explaining life in all its variety as we see it today.

Please read this book.

Other references
Darwin and Paley Meet the Invisible Hand, by Stephen J Gould
Inverted Human Eye a Poor Design? and its rebuttal
Evolutional Theory Misunderstood

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Book

TIll today I have never blogged although I daily read blogs by various technical folks who write about Java and Ruby. I have always wanted to blog but did not feel comfortable with the idea till now. I felt that I had no interesting thoughts to share. Besides it seemed to me that everthing interesting had already been written by someone else!!

So what has changed, since then? Have I any remarkable insights to offer? Nope. Why else does this blog exist? Because I wanted it to. Whim. That is all there is to my motivation.

Most of my blog contain links to articles in wikipedia. Nature recently conducted a survey comparing of the quality of science articles in Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. Although it is not surprising that there were errors in the articles published in both, what is interesting is that quality of wikipedia articles was very high. I personally feel that when one restricts oneself to topics that are non-controversial, topics were the author's opinion are not relevant, the quality of information available can be very high.

That said, I have chosen to start my blog with a perennial favorite of mine (yes I have read this book more than once).

Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meanings of Life - by Daniel Dennett

Rather than write a review myself, I refer the reader to one by John Maynard Smith in NY Times.

If you are a Darwinist and have any doubts or are unable to articulate a good argument when confronted by religious people with the usual set of questions or comments, please read this book and also refer them to this book. What I particularly like about this book (besides the content of course) is the title "Evolution and the Meaning of life". A great book with a grand title. I particularly liked another reviewer's comments "As long as I can remember, I've been a Darwinist ...... The problem with convictions is, however, that without a basis in knowledge, they become dogma - perhaps unshakable, but certainly immune to learning. As a non-biologist, it follows that Darwinism for me is more an article of faith than a feature of my intellectual landscape. Daniel C. Dennett undertakes to give people like me a more secure grounding....."

A very interesting analogy that he makes is between "skyhooks" and "cranes". A "skyhook" is feature used in old greek plays when gods would magically descend into the scene and save the hero. This usually meant that the author ran out of ideas and decided to invoke a miracle. Most mythologies are full of skyhooks. Now "cranes" are structures that permit the construction of entities of greater complexity but which are themselves founded solidly "on the ground" of physical science. You are allowed to use "cranes" in any scientific explanation, but "skyhooks" are verboten.

Using several thought experiments, Dr.Dennett demonstrates that there can be no distinction between "real" meaning and "artificial" meaning, that ultimately all meaning emerges from meaningless processes. This thought helped me a lot, I used to agonize over the purpose of life, mine naturally. We may have been born with a purpose in life, but that reason is always assigned in my opinion in hind sight after one's life is over. Purpose in life I feel evolves over time and is always due to continuous interaction with life itself!! Pardon me if this is all sophomoric.

A person familiar with computer science will find it interesting when Dr. Dennett refers to Natural Selection as a algorithmic process.

If you are a fan of the following authors; Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, John Searle, E.O. Wilson, and Roger Penrose (their scientific as opposed to their political views) this book will force you to re-evaluate your earlier opinions.

List of reviews and other related links
  1. John Maynard Smith
  2. Danny Yee
  3. Helge