Letters from Vienna #110
The Dogma of Darwinism
A Letter to Marcus Aurin
“We all know that eugenics is problematic for ideological & political reasons” Marcus Aurin replied to my letter #102. “This is why the Eugenics Institute changed its name to the Galton Institute: because eugenics is bad PR. But it is important to note that eugenics is seriously problematic on scientific grounds: it is based on basic misapprehensions of evolutionary theory which remain widespread. For example, many textbooks to this day cite the example of peppered moths (Biston betularia), which adapted to the sooty environment produced by the coal smoke of the industrial revolution by becoming black, such that to this day there exist black varieties of the pepper moth in Northern England; this is presented as evidence of Darwinian evolutionary selection, despite the fact that it demonstrates adaptation, NOT evolution: these moths are still pepped moths, they have not evolved, they have simply adapted (& are arguably no longer adapted to their relatively soot free environment today). Citing the peppered moth in this way is a textbook conflation, which presumes that because a phenomenon well known from selective breeding (i.e., the selection of particular traits through controlled breeding) can be found “in nature,” this proves that it is an “evolutionary” phenomena, which it does not. Another key distortion built into eugenics is the conflation of “race” (or nation, or population) with species. Eugenics theory posits race as analogous to species in a deeply misleading way, by suggesting that evolution occurs at the level of races within the species. We’re all familiar with the way this notion lead to ideologically motivated racial dehumanization of groups in various contexts (e.g., blacks in the US, Jews in Nazi Germany). But this notion is also scientifically invalid: evolution occurs among species, not races, or any other sub-species groupings. The idea that it could is still a category error, whether it's called eugenics or transhumanism.”
Richard Dawkins
Many, such as Richard Dawkins, seem to regard Darwinism as a form of religion: “This book (“The Blind Watchmaker” (1986)) is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet. I wrote the book because I was surprised that so many people seemed not only unaware of the elegant and beautiful solution to this deepest of problems but, incredibly, in many cases actually unaware that there was a problem in the first place!”[1]
“All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”[2]
“Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”[3]
This is in stark contrast to Paul Davies who wrote, just a few years before (1983): “Although we may be able to find a cause for every event (unlikely in view of quantum effects), still we would be left with the mystery of why the universe has the nature it does, or why there is any universe at all.”[4] And, of course, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who pointed out that: “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course, there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.”[5]
Yet, there are not merely philosophical and scientific problems with the dogma of Darwinism. The ideology (or perhaps theology) itself has been called into question.
Darwinism
“Since 1980,” Stephen C. Meyer once wrote “when Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould declared that neo-Darwinism “is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy,” the weight of critical opinion in biology has grown steadily with each passing year.”
“A steady stream of technical articles and books have cast new doubt on the creative power of the mutation and selection mechanism. So well established are these doubts that prominent evolutionary theorists must now periodically assure the public, as biologist Douglas Futuyma has done, that “just because we don’t know how evolution occurred, does not justify doubt about whether it occurred.” Some leading evolutionary biologists, particularly those associated with a group of scientists known as the “Altenberg 16,” are openly calling for a new theory of evolution because they doubt the creative power of the mutation and natural selection mechanism.”
“The fundamental problem confronting neo-Darwinism, as with chemical evolutionary theory, is the problem of the origin of new biological information. Though neo-Darwinists often dismiss the problem of the origin of life as an isolated anomaly, leading theoreticians acknowledge that neo-Darwinism has also failed to explain the source of novel variation without which natural selection can do nothing — a problem equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information. Indeed, the problem of the origin of information lies at the root of a host of other acknowledged problems in contemporary Darwinian theory—from the origin of new body plans to the origin of complex structures and systems such as wings, feathers, eyes, echolocation, blood clotting, molecular machines, the amniotic egg, skin, nervous systems, and multicellularity, to name just a few.”
“At the same time, classical examples illustrating the prowess of natural selection and random mutations do not involve the creation of novel genetic information. Many biology texts tell, for example, about the famous finches in the Galápagos Islands, whose beaks have varied in shape and length over time. They also recall how moth populations in England darkened and then lightened in response to varying levels of industrial pollution. Such episodes are often presented as conclusive evidence for the power of evolution. And, indeed they are, depending on how one defines “evolution.” That term has many meanings, and few biology textbooks distinguish between them. “Evolution” can refer to anything from trivial cyclical change within the limits of a preexisting gene pool to the creation of entirely novel genetic information and structure as the result of natural selection acting on random mutations. As a host of distinguished biologists have explained in recent technical papers, small-scale, or “microevolutionary,” change cannot be extrapolated to explain large-scale, or “macroevolutionary,” innovation. For the most part, microevolutionary changes (such as variation in color or shape) merely utilize or express existing genetic information, while the macroevolutionary change necessary to assemble new organs or whole “body plans requires the creation of entirely new information. As an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have noted, natural selection explains “only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.” The technical literature in biology is now replete with world-class biologists routinely expressing doubts about various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory, and especially about its central tenet, namely, the alleged creative power of the natural selection and mutation mechanism.”
“Nevertheless, popular defenses of the theory continue apace, rarely if ever acknowledging the growing body of critical scientific opinion about the standing of the theory. Rarely has there been such a great disparity between the popular perception of a theory and its actual standing in the relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature. Today modern neo-Darwinism seems to enjoy almost universal acclaim among science journalists and bloggers, biology textbook writers, and other popular spokespersons for science as the great unifying theory of all biology. High-school and college textbooks present its tenets without qualification and do not acknowledge the existence of any significant scientific criticism of it. At the same time, official scientific organizations—such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS “the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT)—routinely assure the public that the contemporary version of Darwinian theory enjoys unequivocal support among qualified scientists and that the evidence of biology overwhelmingly supports the theory. For example, in 2006 the AAAS declared, “There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution.” The media dutifully echo these pronouncements. As New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean asserted in 2007, “There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth.”
“The extent of the disparity between popular representations of the status of the theory and its actual status, as indicated in the peer-reviewed technical journals, came home to me with particular poignancy as I was preparing to testify before the Texas State Board of Education in 2009. At the time the board was considering the adoption of a provision in its science education standards that would encourage teachers to inform students of both the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories. This provision had become a political hot potato.”[6]
Popper
As I have written before (see letter #6), we must be cautious when talking of scientific “certainties”. To quote Popper (once more):
“…even for the empirically most successful theory T1 (that is, for an allegedly certain and inductively justified or established – or confirmed – theory), there may well be a competing theory T2 such that, on the one hand, T2 is logically inconsistent with T1 (so that at least one of the two must be false) and, on the other hand, T2 has been corroborated by all the previous experiments corroborating T1. In other words, though mutually inconsistent, T1 and T2 may nonetheless lead to empirically indistinguishable predictions within arbitrarily large regions and within any such region, both may be highly corroborated.”
“Since the two theories T1 and T2 are mutually inconsistent, evidently they cannot both be “certain”. Thus, even the most thoroughly corroborated theory can never be certain: our theories are fallible and will remain fallible, even when exceedingly well-corroborated.”
“At that time, I read through Einstein’s writings, hoping to find this consequence of his revolution in his work. What I did find was his paper Geometrie und Erfahrung, in which he wrote: “In so far as the statements of mathematics speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.””
“At first, I generalised from mathematics to science in general: “In so far as scientific statements speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.”[7]
[1] p.4 The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
[2] p.14 Ibid
[3] p.50 Ibid
[4] p.43 God and the New Physics, Paul Davies
[5] 6.52 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
[6] pp. 11-14 Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer
[7] pp.36-37, The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge by Karl Popper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF03FN37i5w&ab_channel=AfterSkool