Bastardising history in the service of dogma 11 Jun 2008 History is one of those things that the venal mine to serve their special interests, with no concern for truth or accuracy. But it takes real stupid to say this: Contrary to popular belief, as historian David Barton points out, the theory of evolution was around long before Charles Darwin. As far back as the 6th century B.C., Greek writers Thales and Anaximander had propounded the theory centuries before the birth of Christ. Aristotle, influenced by his intellectual forbears, also advocated a form of evolution. Other ancient writers like Diogenes, Empedocles, Democritus, and Lucretius, all writing before the time of Christ, added variations to the theory, including such things as survival of the fittest, natural selection, and mutability of the species. Philosophers Renee Descartes in the 17th century and Immanuel Kant in the 18th century had argued for the theory of a gradual origin of the solar system as an alternative to instantaneous creation. According to Dr. Henry Osborn, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, the Founding Fathers lived in what he calls the third of history’s four periods of evolution. Osborn lists almost three dozen influential writers of the colonial period who supported evolutionary theory to one degree or another. All, you will note, prior to the advent of Darwin. All through the history of human thought, the debate over the origins of man has been a debate between two competing theories: a theistic and non-theistic explanation. Theism attributes origins to God, while non-theism attributes it to nature. The point here is that the Founders were not in fact ignorant of the theory of evolution. It had been around for 2400 years by the time they produced the Declaration of Independence with its flat and unambiguous proclamation that man is a created being, not an evolved one, and that there is a Creator who is the source of our civil rights. David Barton is a historian like Dick Cheney is a civil rights activist. Where to begin? Well, for a start, Henry Fairfield Osborn wrote in 1894. Yes, that isn’t a typo, not 1984, but 90 years earlier. Osborn, a well-known neo-Lamarckian, was concerned, like Samuel Butler before him, to denigrate the originality of Darwin’s theory. The neo-Lamarckians wanted to say something like “evolution is all right, but the mechanism is will, not luck”. His book is a series of “Look at this! If you squint just right, you can read this as if it were an evolutionary view! It looks like [transmutation/natural selection/sexual selection, etc.], therefore Darwin was not original.” And in every case but a couple, which I document here, Osborn is wrong. Oddly, it doesn’t undercut Barton’s foundation, but I’ll get back to that. Empedocles and Diogenes had no evolutionary theory. Let’s define “evolution” broadly enough so it is applicable to these older writers, in order to assess the claim: evolution is a change of living kinds, either by natural selection or some other process, over time. That is barely enough to identify modern theories, but it will do. Empedocles’ view, for example, is that bits of organs floated around and linked up by chance so that the ones that worked remained. Does that sound like natural selection or evolution to you? To a creationist, perhaps, but not to an honest reader. Lucretius, like many others, believed in spontaneous generation of new life from dead matter. This is not evolution. It isn’t even required by modern evolutionary biology (it’s a different topic – origins of life rather than biological evolution). So did Aristotle. This is what Osborn identifies as “evolutionary” thinking. René (not Renee – a misspelling of that magnitude indicates we aren’t dealing with a historian here even if the rest was fine; it’s like naming Jorge Washington) Descartes’ vortex theory of the solar system has nothing to do with biological evolution. Neither does Kant (who almost did come up with an evolutionary theory, but missed out; see Temkin 1959). And so on for the whole thing. You can read Osborn’s book at the Internet Archive. One case that clearly was an evolutionary theory is that of Pierre Maupertuis, a French polymath physicist who also independently and a century before Mendel discovered the 1:2:1 ratio on inheritance, but was ignored. He was also ignored for his theory of evolution in 1745, ably discussed in a recent book by Mary Terrall. Maupertuis argued (without a mechanism as such) that species would change over time. Given that this is roughly contemporaneous with Linnaeus’ claim that species were as they had been created (in various writings, an assertion he simply makes), it is clear that the rise of creationism immediately drew forth evolution as an alternative. Now it would be startling if Franklin and Paine did not know this work – it was a cause célebre in its day, and was roundly attacked by no less than Voltaire and Diderot (who also didn’t have an evolutionary theory). But here’s the kicker: so friggin’ what? The founders did not mention Newtonian physics, Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood, nor Copernicanism. Neither did they mention the as yet un-developed theory of contagion, etc. They were not writing either a religious document, nor were they writing a scientific document. As Founding Fathers they were trying to constitute a new nation. They weren’t prophets, nor were they infallible (and nor were most of them Christians, but that’s for someone else to debate as I Really Don’t Care). The constitution of the new United States doesn’t mention God or science, nor should it. Evolution as a theory was not acceptable until the mid-19th century, well after the constitutional convention for a simple reason: lack of evidence. The first dinosaur hadn’t been discovered and described. Knowledge of fauna in the new World was incomplete, and as late as the 1790s, taxonomists were still trying to force Old and New World avians into the same genera. There wasn’t enough to speak for evolution until the 1840s at the earliest, at which point, someone did. Finally, and this ought to be obvious to anyone whose forebrain is operational, it really doesn’t matter what people thought about science in the 18th century, as science is not based on authority, but the present state of data (most of the time; scientists are human after all). Even if every single scientist alive during the convention was a fundamentalist (something that didn’t exist until the 1920s anyway), it is the state of knowledge now that makes evolution a scientific theory. History is not a barrel full of moral lessons waiting for the religious or political to come along and hold them up. Truth matters too. Temkin, Oswei. 1959. The idea of descent in post-Romantic German biology, 1848-1858. In Forerunners of Darwin 1745-1859, edited by B. Glass, O. Temkin and W. L. Straus Jr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press: 323-355. History Politics Religion
Quotes A quote 30 Mar 2010 Well I’ve always said, There’s nothing an agnostic can’t do if he really doesn’t know whether he believes in anything or not. [Monty Python’s The Final Rippoff album] Read More
Humor Carlin on the state of the US 25 Jun 2008 Here’s a somewhat different take on the late great George Carlin, in an interview with Keith Olberman last year: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UVXj8F9Fmk&hl=en] For me, though, he’ll always be the hip Catholic Archbishop who brings about the end of the world in Dogma. Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design God acts in mischieveous ways 21 Apr 2010 Hot on the heels of Rush Blowhard declaring that the Iceland volcano is God’s apocalyptic response to the healthcare bill (God, it seems, is Maxwell Smart, missing the target by this much, and hitting Europe instead of the US) comes an Iranian cleric who declares that the cause of earthquakes… Read More
… it doesn’t undercut Barton’s foundation … Just what the hell “foundation” does Barton have, anyway? (Aside from his little political-money-laundry “Wallbuilders” project, that is.) Here’s the Barton essay which Fischer probably used as his starting point – the favorable citation of Bertrand Russell may be hazardous to your irony meters…
Bryan Fischer is the Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance, whose mission is to make Idaho the friendliest place in the world to raise a family. He has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (from Stanford University) and a graduate degree in theology Further evidence, if any were needed, that possession of degrees is no guarantee that the holder isn’t a complete prat.
Bryan Fischer is the Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance, whose mission is to make Idaho the friendliest place in the world to raise a family. He has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (from Stanford University) and a graduate degree in theology Further evidence, if any were needed, that possession of degrees is no guarantee that the holder isn’t a complete prat.
Fixed. You do know I lost my left index finger and this has ruined my typing skills? That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. It’s not nice to mock the cripple. Why yes, I was a 120wpm touch typist with an error rate of 1/1000 or less, sure I was.
Aristotle has an interesting couple of paragraphs in his Physics Book II, Chapter 8. The problem thus arises: why should we suppose that nature acts for something and because it is better? Why should not everything be like the rain? Zeus does not send the rain in order to make the corn grow: it comes of necessity. The stuff which has been drawn up is bound to cool, and having cooled, turn to water and come down. It is merely concurrent-that, this having happened, the corn grows. Similarly, if someone’s corn rots on the threshing-floor, it does not rain for this purpose, that the corn may rot, but that came about concurrently. What, then, is to stop parts in nature too from being like this-the front teeth of necessity growing sharp and suitable for biting, and the back teeth broad and serviceable for chewing the food, not coming to be for this, but by coincidence? And similarly with the other parts in which the ‘for something’ seems to be present. So when all turns out just as if they had come to be for something, then the things, suitably constituted as an automatic outcome, survived; when not, they died, and die, as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves. This, or something like it, is the account which might give us pause. It is impossible, however, that this should be how things are. I read that 1st paragraph as a pretty primitive, but decent, articulation of a law-based theory of selection. The laws that we might posit are those of the physical world, and the selection is that which allows ‘survival’. It’s a shame Aristotle goes on to reject this view and articulate a “purpose” in each thing. But at least this view was “around” and people certainly read Physics centuries. (Quotes from A New Aristotle Reader, J.L.Ackrill)
Aristotle has an interesting couple of paragraphs in his Physics Book II, Chapter 8. The problem thus arises: why should we suppose that nature acts for something and because it is better? Why should not everything be like the rain? Zeus does not send the rain in order to make the corn grow: it comes of necessity. The stuff which has been drawn up is bound to cool, and having cooled, turn to water and come down. It is merely concurrent-that, this having happened, the corn grows. Similarly, if someone’s corn rots on the threshing-floor, it does not rain for this purpose, that the corn may rot, but that came about concurrently. What, then, is to stop parts in nature too from being like this-the front teeth of necessity growing sharp and suitable for biting, and the back teeth broad and serviceable for chewing the food, not coming to be for this, but by coincidence? And similarly with the other parts in which the ‘for something’ seems to be present. So when all turns out just as if they had come to be for something, then the things, suitably constituted as an automatic outcome, survived; when not, they died, and die, as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves. This, or something like it, is the account which might give us pause. It is impossible, however, that this should be how things are. I read that 1st paragraph as a pretty primitive, but decent, articulation of a law-based theory of selection. The laws that we might posit are those of the physical world, and the selection is that which allows ‘survival’. It’s a shame Aristotle goes on to reject this view and articulate a “purpose” in each thing. But at least this view was “around” and people certainly read Physics centuries. (Quotes from A New Aristotle Reader, J.L.Ackrill)
I meant that Barton’s basic claim, that evolution was known at the time of the convention, is not false, that’s all. On Aristotle,the idea that some sort of winnowing process was responsible for traits is, I reckon, traceable to Epicurus at least, but that is not the same as natural selection. While selection is a sorting or sieving process, it doesn’t thereby follow that all sieving processes are natural selection (think of a bubble sort or the Sieve of Eratosthenes). Winnowing views of variance are common throughout the history of western thinking. Natural selection as a motivator of change is not. I discuss this in the linked FAQ.
I meant that Barton’s basic claim, that evolution was known at the time of the convention, is not false, that’s all. On Aristotle,the idea that some sort of winnowing process was responsible for traits is, I reckon, traceable to Epicurus at least, but that is not the same as natural selection. While selection is a sorting or sieving process, it doesn’t thereby follow that all sieving processes are natural selection (think of a bubble sort or the Sieve of Eratosthenes). Winnowing views of variance are common throughout the history of western thinking. Natural selection as a motivator of change is not. I discuss this in the linked FAQ.
I meant that Barton’s basic claim, that evolution was known at the time of the convention, is not false, that’s all. On Aristotle,the idea that some sort of winnowing process was responsible for traits is, I reckon, traceable to Epicurus at least, but that is not the same as natural selection. While selection is a sorting or sieving process, it doesn’t thereby follow that all sieving processes are natural selection (think of a bubble sort or the Sieve of Eratosthenes). Winnowing views of variance are common throughout the history of western thinking. Natural selection as a motivator of change is not. I discuss this in the linked FAQ.
I’ve heard this “evolution goes back to the Greeks – it’s nothing new!” explanation from Creationists before. If you look around the AnswersInGenesis site, you can even dig up an article where they make that claim. (I’m too lazy to look it up or link to it, but I’ve seen it on their website.) It is, of course, a completely ignorant claim that relies on using an extremely loose definition of evolution.
Coming from the other angle… didn’t Locke (I think it was Locke, must check) demolish the Argument From Design from pretty much every conceivable logical and empirical angle at about the end of the 18th century? I tend to think of natural selection as one of those ideas whose time has come. There’s no question that Darwin was a genius, but sooner or later the idea would have been thrashed out.
John – I agree that creationists’ efforts to pooh pooh Darwin’s achievements as an innovative thinker are trash. And I agree that prior to Darwin there was no proper theory that combined descent with modification and the “mechanism” of natural selection. But there’s a reason for the scare quotes around ‘mechanism.’ We’re still trying to sort out just what is distinctive about natural selection as conceived by Darwin; for example, in what sense NS is a “motivator of change” in contrast to a “mere” process of winnowing out less fit specimens. Does the combination of winnowing and descent with modification fundamentally change how the winnowing bit is conceived?
John – I agree that creationists’ efforts to pooh pooh Darwin’s achievements as an innovative thinker are trash. And I agree that prior to Darwin there was no proper theory that combined descent with modification and the “mechanism” of natural selection. But there’s a reason for the scare quotes around ‘mechanism.’ We’re still trying to sort out just what is distinctive about natural selection as conceived by Darwin; for example, in what sense NS is a “motivator of change” in contrast to a “mere” process of winnowing out less fit specimens. Does the combination of winnowing and descent with modification fundamentally change how the winnowing bit is conceived?
Chris L: It was Hume, in the Dialogues. Bob: I don’t think NS is a mechanism, actually. Instead, and with all due deference to Roberta Millstein, Carl Craver and those who think it really is, I believe NS is an explanatory template into which we plug real values and processes. But for the purposes of history and in lay terms (i.e., non-philosophese), it is mechanism enough.
Chris L: It was Hume, in the Dialogues. Bob: I don’t think NS is a mechanism, actually. Instead, and with all due deference to Roberta Millstein, Carl Craver and those who think it really is, I believe NS is an explanatory template into which we plug real values and processes. But for the purposes of history and in lay terms (i.e., non-philosophese), it is mechanism enough.
Truth matters too, pretty catchy tag line for an incisive post. But, careful! When you use the word “truth” this way, referring I suppose to historical “truth”, you don’t mean the same thing as scientific “truth”. You might want to pull your horns in a little and say something like, accuracy matters. When someone presents an historical “truth” you can bet they’re talking ideology. Even historical accuracy has its limits, for the historical record is of course created by the victors in historical struggles of all kinds, military, political, intellectual, economic. Being accurate to such a record is worth trying, especially if one reads the record for evidence of the losing views as well, but to call that “truth”, well, it’s a big stretch if you ask me.
Truth matters too, pretty catchy tag line for an incisive post. But, careful! When you use the word “truth” this way, referring I suppose to historical “truth”, you don’t mean the same thing as scientific “truth”. You might want to pull your horns in a little and say something like, accuracy matters. When someone presents an historical “truth” you can bet they’re talking ideology. Even historical accuracy has its limits, for the historical record is of course created by the victors in historical struggles of all kinds, military, political, intellectual, economic. Being accurate to such a record is worth trying, especially if one reads the record for evidence of the losing views as well, but to call that “truth”, well, it’s a big stretch if you ask me.
Truth matters too. Not to Barton or to the merry band of Dominionists who take his garbage as … well … gospel. It was Hume, in the Dialogues. And Kant was demolishing the watchmaker argument in The Critique of Judgement before Paley even published Natural Theology.
Ron Gejman: The discussion in “Physics” is about chance events. So, Empedocle?s narrative may be an analogy for emergence of life and not evolution of life; mutation is rather modification by chance than random combination (IMHO). Actually, Aristotle considered human-cattle interbreeding improbable given the different nature of the two genera. He also supposed that an eventual hybrid embryo may not be able to develop because of the different gestation times in humans and cattle. Therefore, he concluded that a much better explanation for the seeming similarity of the head of some kids to that of a bull is accidental ? as we see shapes in clouds. I find Aristotle?s arguments against Empedocle?s hypothesis very reasonable. And don?t forget that the ?purpose? is build in the living things. Iant
Ron Gejman: The discussion in “Physics” is about chance events. So, Empedocle?s narrative may be an analogy for emergence of life and not evolution of life; mutation is rather modification by chance than random combination (IMHO). Actually, Aristotle considered human-cattle interbreeding improbable given the different nature of the two genera. He also supposed that an eventual hybrid embryo may not be able to develop because of the different gestation times in humans and cattle. Therefore, he concluded that a much better explanation for the seeming similarity of the head of some kids to that of a bull is accidental ? as we see shapes in clouds. I find Aristotle?s arguments against Empedocle?s hypothesis very reasonable. And don?t forget that the ?purpose? is build in the living things. Iant
Ron Gejman: The discussion in “Physics” is about chance events. So, Empedocle?s narrative may be an analogy for emergence of life and not evolution of life; mutation is rather modification by chance than random combination (IMHO). Actually, Aristotle considered human-cattle interbreeding improbable given the different nature of the two genera. He also supposed that an eventual hybrid embryo may not be able to develop because of the different gestation times in humans and cattle. Therefore, he concluded that a much better explanation for the seeming similarity of the head of some kids to that of a bull is accidental ? as we see shapes in clouds. I find Aristotle?s arguments against Empedocle?s hypothesis very reasonable. And don?t forget that the ?purpose? is build in the living things. Iant
Ron Gejman: The discussion in “Physics” is about chance events. So, Empedocle?s narrative may be an analogy for emergence of life and not evolution of life; mutation is rather modification by chance than random combination (IMHO). Actually, Aristotle considered human-cattle interbreeding improbable given the different nature of the two genera. He also supposed that an eventual hybrid embryo may not be able to develop because of the different gestation times in humans and cattle. Therefore, he concluded that a much better explanation for the seeming similarity of the head of some kids to that of a bull is accidental ? as we see shapes in clouds. I find Aristotle?s arguments against Empedocle?s hypothesis very reasonable. And don?t forget that the ?purpose? is build in the living things. Iant
Unfortunately, Bryan Fischer’s column does not allow comments. Tsk, tsk. I guess his point is that the fact that evolution has occurred has been obvious for a very long time. Too bad his background in theology did not provide him with an understanding of what a theory of evolution entails. If “stupid” means “friendly,” he may succeed in his mission.
rats, I was going to say, Barton is an historian much as Ghengis Khan was a pacifist, but you coopted the metaphor! Bob
rats, I was going to say, Barton is an historian much as Ghengis Khan was a pacifist, but you coopted the metaphor! Bob
rats, I was going to say, Barton is an historian much as Ghengis Khan was a pacifist, but you coopted the metaphor! Bob
Oh curse you for making me aware of Bryan Fischer. His columns also include “Defeating Darwin in 4 easy steps”, in which Step 1 is the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, Step 2 is the 2nd Law, and in Step 3 he cites to Carl Dunbar of Yale University who stated that the fossil record is the only hard evidence of evolution. Carl Dunbar having lived, of course, from 1891 to 1979. I didn’t make it to Step 4 as my head hurt too much from hitting my desk. Interestingly enough, if you go to Fischer’s Idaho Values Alliance website and look at his bio, his son graduated from Whitman College with a degree in molecular biology. *boggle* I wonder when he’ll be disowned.