Comments on Niamh Middleton on Evolution

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21

That’s not what I am talking about here. I said nothing about denying evolution. I merely pointed out that it’s clear that evolutionary biologists disagree over things, and air their disagreements. I’ve seen Larry Moran air his disagreements with other scientists regarding the mechanism of evolution, on his blog site. In plain English, he is debating some of their claims.

In the past, when you have mocked the idea of science involving any “debate”, you have made it as a general statement, not restricted to evolution or even to biology. You have said that in science everything is about data, and that debate has no place. (Yes, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the sense, that is what has clearly come across.) And you’ve said this in discussions where it’s quite clear that “evolution denialism” is not being asserted, but only “X and Y disagree about evolutionary mechanisms, and give reasons for their disagreement.” On BioLogos I said that while data was important in science, even more important was the interpretation of the data. A pile of data with no interpretive framework means nothing. That’s the difference between the Baconian notion of science, which never got anywhere, and Galileo’s notion of science, which was productive. And when evolutionary biologists disagree, it’s usually not over the data, but over what it means, what it proves, etc. Those disagreements are debates, in the normal English meaning of the term.

I don’t think very many evolutionary biologists deny the data that Shapiro points to, but rather what he draws from it. The debate is over whether he has established that “organismal self-engineering” is an important factor in evolutionary change, not over whether the changes in microbes that he documents have occurred. But there is a debate. Every negative book review or blog post on his work constitutes a debate with him.

I have not seen one case where I have used the term “debate”, here or on other sites, where you have not shown hostility to the use of the term, even though it’s plain from context that I have meant only the “reasoned public disagreements over mechanism between evolutionary theorists.” Nobody but you has made a big deal about the word “debate”. Nobody. You’ve got an unnecessary bee in your bonnet about the word. Hence my playful elbow. If you can’t take a playful nudge like that, regarding one of your pet peeves, then it’s best that we not converse with each other at all. Which I think both of us already knew, and everyone else here as well. :slight_smile:

22

I don’t know exactly what @Mercer has said so I won’t comment on the history, but in the interest of clarity about English word usage… Scientists frequently debate issues with one another. They almost never hold debates – in close to 40 years in science I’ve seen one debate. This means they settle things by debate but do not settle things by debates.

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23

Of course, there are questions that are debated and on which there isn’t something approaching a universal consensus. One of those is to what extend natural selection explains the attributes of life. One problem that pervades this discussion is always what attributes we’re talking about, and how to put quantities on the relative influences of different mechanisms.

How do you compare, in a quantitative way, the relative influence of mutation versus the influence of selection? What is the unit of magnitude of evolutionary influence, and how do you compare two different mechanisms such as mutation and selection so a comparison becomes meaningful?

I’ve always felt like this argument is largely mental masturbation. There is no objective unit of magnitude for “evolutionary influence”, so anyone can always come up with some other perspective from which to perceive a greater or lesser influence. And should we be comparing those influences at the molecular or phenotypic leve, and what is the resolution of comparison? Total number of atoms? Nucleotides? Number of limbs and organs? Their weight?

Yawn.

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24

That doesn’t justify making the simply false statement that scientists don’t debate things. I was just giving Mercer a playful elbow, indicating that, after the scores of times here and on BioLogos he has insisted that there are no debates in science, and that scientists don’t debate things, he implied the existence of a debate here in this very discussion. No need to make any more of my remark than that.

25

I don’t think John has made this claim before. Scientists debate all the time, especially when data is insufficient or of poor quality. Provide robust, high quality data and scientific questions are basically resolved with no debates.

26

No, Eddie. You manufactured quotes. Is that ethical?

I would also note with glee that your assessment of what has “clearly come across” is at odds with reality.

From a mere month ago:

I’m not sure how “peptidyl transferase is not a protein” could come through more literally and clearly, yet only 13 days ago, you claimed that it was a protein!

Did I make such a statement? Your evasions clearly come across as an admission that you fabricated quotes to that effect and falsely attributed them to me.

27

As a relative newcomer to these sites, your memory does not go back nearly as far as mine (about 10 years) regarding John Mercer’s various statements, statements I have good motive to remember as I have so frequently been the object of his criticism, including criticism regarding my use of the word “debate.”

However, to avoid endless argument on what John Mercer has actually said over the past 10 years – argument which can never be resolved by exact quotations, because neither Peaceful Science nor BioLogos maintains an internal search engine capable of finding every occurrence of a word or phrase across all content on the site (and in an age where computer programs are as sophisticated as they are, I can’t understand why all websites don’t have such an internal search engine) – let us refocus.

The question, “What Mercer said about debate in science and what he meant by it” is logically separable from the question "Do scientists debate about things? (Note: “debate” here does not refer primarily to standing up on a podium opposite another speaker and engaging in a “formal debate”, but more generally to “disagreeing with other scientists and expressing that disagreement through logical arguments, arguments based on empirical evidence drawn from observation or experiment.”) So let’s leave aside the first question, and focus on the second.

Everyone here seems to be agreeing that scientists debate things, i.e., dispute the conclusions of other scientists, making use of reason and appealing to empirical evidence. Thus, we see:

“Scientists debate all the time” (Okoko)

Scientists frequently debate issues with one another. They almost never hold debates – in close to 40 years in science I’ve seen one debate. This means they settle things by debate but do not settle things by debates. (Glipsnort)

“I think we are all sensitive to how debates have been misconstrued [implying that the debates have existed]” (T. aquaticus)

“Geologists debate the fine points of geology” (T. aquaticus)

“Of course, there are questions that are debated and on which there isn’t something approaching a universal consensus.” (Rumraket)

Note the lack of hesitation to use the word “debate” to describe disagreements among scientists. There is the qualification that formal debate (stage and podium) doesn’t often occur in science (a qualification I agree with), but beyond that, the word “debate” is regarded by scientists and science students here as unobjectionable.

So, John Mercer: Do you agree with the statements I’ve quoted here from your fellow scientists about the existence of debate within science? If not, state where you disagree; if so, then the matter of substance has been resolved, and hopefully we will never need to return to it.

28

It would be inaccurate to say that scientists debate whether evolution occurred. That’s the main point. Scientists do debate how evolution occurs, but not if it occurs or if it has occurred.

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29

Which I have never said, so I’m clear of that charge.

Which is always what I have been referring to, when I speak about the differences among people such as James Shapiro, Andreas Wagner, Dawkins, Coyne, Turner, Conway Morris, Gould, Newman, Jablonka, Denton, etc. All accept common descent but each has his or her own particular account of how things proceed, what causes are more weighty, etc. That’s what I have always meant when I have spoken about debates about evolution. Never have I said, “There’s a scientific debate between Duane Gish and Jerry Coyne over whether evolution occurred,” or anything parallel to that.

As far as I can tell, Niamh Middleton is not claiming that scientists dispute over whether or not evolution occurs, but only that they dispute over how it occurs. In any case, I’m not here speaking for her, but only for myself. And my point was a side-point, i.e., that even John Mercer seems to allow that scientists debate over evolutionary mechanisms – whether he would prefer the term “debate” or not. So I think we can end this side-discussion here.

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30

I think you are well aware that there are many creationists (not you) who make the false claim that evolution is controversial within science. It is a feature of many pseudoscientific movements to create doubt around well established science or well established facts. The other step of the pseudoscientific two-step is to make poorly supported or completely unsupported science appear to be more solid than it is. This would be the case with evolutionary psychology.

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31

There is a still unresolved debate in science as to which is the main mechanism of evolution. Highly controversial.

32

Nup. Bootless: it is uncontroversial that there are multiple mechanisms. Different ones predominate in different circumstances, and the question of which predominates net over all is just not that scientifically interesting.

Refuting my statements above would require referencing the scientific literature, not science popularisers. Dawkins is an excellent scientist, but a not-very-good science populariser, for example.

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33

Do you admit that you fabricated quotations?

My point is that unlike in the humanities, scientific disagreements are never resolved by debates. They are resolved by evidence, to which you and the IDcreationist movement appear to have a severe aversion.

34

He’s a genius populariser. I’ve read one of the most important books he has popularised, The Narrow Roads of Gene Land by WD Hamilton. Well if you think Dawkins is an excellent scientist, you must respect his view that ns is the mechanism of evolution that has shaped human behaviour. That is a controversial issue in evolutionary science, There are Darwinian gradualists and those like Gould and Ian Tattersall who are punctuationists. Gould was a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist. Palaeontologists tend towards the sudden speciation view, and cultural moral progress. He was opposed to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. He was into evo devo. That’s the controversy. As a matter of interest, I agree with Tattersall that the sudden appearance of Homo sapiens’ cognitional abilities cannot be explained by Darwinian gradualism. But as a Darwinian gradualist who is also a theist the sudden qualitative difference that emerged between us and other hominid species is for me indicative of divine intervention. We were ensouled, a form of direct creation, Of course a scientific explanation may emerge to explain it. But neuroscience still has not succeeded in explaining human consciousness

35

It would be quite inaccurate to say I am a newcomer to sites similar to PS. I have been an avid reader of Larry Moran’s Sandwalk and Jerry Coyne’s WEIT blogs as well as Pandas Thumb for over 3 years. I knew John Harshman, Faizal Ali and SCD long before coming to PS through their comments on Sandwalk.

That means you don’t have any evidence to support your assertions about John. I may not have been on PS as long as you, but I have never seen John say what you claim he has said with regards to science and debates, so even if your claims are true, they are very unlikely. John correctly states in many places that debates don’t solve scientific issues, only data.

Yes this happens until sufficient data strongly supports a particular hypothesis. Robert Koch’s hypothesis that germs cause disease was strongly debated during his time and he was strongly criticized by other prominent scientists. Years of experimental verification eventually established Koch’s hypothesis elevating it to the powerful theory it is today. Today, there is no disagreement among (the majority of) scientists over the fact that germs cause disease.

IMO, this discussion about science and debates is moot. Anyone who does science or is deeply interested in how it works, would know what resolves scientific questions is data. Without good and objective data, scientists are nothing more than screaming moral philosophers :wink:

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36

There is no doubt that natural selection played an important role in shaping our behaviour, but there is some uncertainty as to the extent it did. It could have dominated in some instances, or had marginal influence in others. Blindly assuming it was all natural selection like the Darwinists of old could land you in trouble with future findings.

37

I’m not as familiar with Tattersall’s views, but your idea of Gould is seriously flawed. In PE, speciation isn’t sudden. It’s only short compared to the lifetime of the species. Nor do I see any correlation between his paleontology and his views on moral progress, sociobiology, and such. Or evo devo. So I have no idea what you think the controversy is here.

What sudden appearance? How do you determine this?

Nor has theology, unless you think “God did it” is an explanation.

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38

All the comments John Mercer has made on the subject were either here, preceding your time here, or on BioLogos, where you weren’t present, or elsewhere, where you weren’t present. None of them were on any of the blogs you name. I don’t question your participation elsewhere, but it’s not relevant.

I would produce a rigorous proof almost instantly, if the computer programmers who programmed the software features for this site and for BioLogos were competent enough and sensible enough to put in a simple function like searching all the posts for words or phrases. Think of it: you have a site that runs for years, featuring hundreds or thousands of OPs, and thousands or tens of thousands of comments on the OPs, and hundreds to thousands of words per comment. Now, who among us has such a good memory as to say, "Yes, I remember, he said that exact phrase in comment number 47, under an OP 18 months ago entitled “…”? Who is going to be able to find such statements quickly? And the answer is, “No one, without the help of a search engine.” If there were a very basic search-on-word function on these sites, instead of spending half an hour or an hour trying to dig up something someone said to prove something, one could find the phrase in at most a few minutes, and probably in a few seconds. As it stands, I’m not about to invest a hour of my life to prove that John Mercer said something.

Because I can’t prove the exact phrases used, I gave paraphrases in scare quotes. If people think I’m misremembering, that’s fine. I admit I have no textual proof. I suspect not very many people closely follow all the details of the sniping between certain individuals here, and I suspect very few have been keeping track of John Mercer’s obsession with the word “debate,” which has been visible in scores of comments addressed specifically to me for nearly 10 years now. But I have, since I’ve been the target. If people don’t think my memory is reliable, then fine, don’t believe me. It’s not germane to the main point anyway, which is that whatever John Mercer thinks, scientists here have affirmed that scientists do debate things.

That implies dishonesty. I was honestly paraphrasing what I remembered, not fabricating. And I indicated that I was paraphrasing by putting in qualifiers, i.e., indicating that what was said was words to that effect, or the like. And quotation marks are not always meant to indicate verbatim quotations. They can be used for approximate quotations, if the context clearly identifies them as such. Which in this case, it did. If I was quoting exactly, I would have provided a source to prove that I was quoting exactly. But I indicated that I was not quoting exactly.

(emphasis added)

Well, then, you are in partial disagreement at least with Glipsnort, who wrote:

(emphasis added)

Are you going to cavil over some supposed difference between “settle” and “resolve”?

I’m sure, of course, that Glipsnort has in mind that the debate will include the presentation of evidence. But “evidence” is only “evidence” for something in the context of a reasoned account of something. There has to be linking reason, a line of argument showing that this fact implies this conclusion, makes that conclusion impossible, etc. When a scientist expresses such reasoning from evidence against the reasoning-from-evidence of other scientists, he is “debating” their conclusions. That’s a perfectly normal use of the English word. If you don’t think it is, we disagree about everyday English usage, and nothing more can be said.

Of course it is; it’s a silly thing to make such a big deal about. I made a playful jab to Mercer about his obsession with the word “debate”. He knew what I meant, from past discussions, and he could have taken it and given me a playful wink back. An appropriate response would have been a short one-liner from him, along the lines of my original jab, with everyone else saying to themselves, “Well, if these two want to keep trading old in-jokes from BioLogos days, we’ll just ignore them and talk about more important things.” But no, here, everything becomes overblown.

I agree. Dawkins is a good writer of popular science. But from what most scientists say these days, he hasn’t been much of a practicing scientist for decades, so he’s currently a better writer than scientist.

(Not that everything he writes is good; content-wise, some of it is rubbish, especially his stuff on religion, which embarrasses even fellow-heathens like Michael Ruse because of its low intellectual level. But he is marvelous at giving simplified laymen’s explanations of things like natural selection.)

39

I’ll just leave this here:

“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” - William Sayre

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40

I have read Gould extensively. It’s you who doesn’t understand And the salient point for me is he thinks that our morality is no longer impacted by natural selection and we can take cultural control of our moral progress, which can be rapid analogous to punctuated equilibrium, whereas many on the other side think genetic engineering and/or medicines the only solution to our moral problems. And when I mention the sudden emergence of our cognitive abilities I mean sudden in a gradualist evolutionary context. And punctuated equilibrium literally means a situation of stasis that’s punctuated (broken by) short periods of rapid change resulting in the emergence of new species. Evolution not slow and gradual as in Darwinism, And in this view significant evolutionary change happens at species, not at individual level as in Darwinism. Evo devo has shown how in certain cases environmental factors can bypass the genes themselves by influencing gene expression, and the resulting changes can be passed on to offspring. More compatible with pe as the main mechanism of evolution than ns depending on the level of its impact.