Category Archives: Education

Education, General Science, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Mystery “Solved”

9 Comments

Scientists now have a plausible, and likely theory for what created the Burgess Shale:

By looking over hundreds of micro-thin slices of rock taken from the famous shales, the researchers have reconstructed the series of catastrophic underwater landslides of “mud-rich slurry” that killed tens of thousands of marine animals representing hundreds of species, then sealed them instantly – and enduringly – in a deep-sea tomb.

The mass death was “not a nice way to go, perhaps, but a swift one – and one that guaranteed immortality (of a sort) for these strange creatures,” said University of Leicester geochemist Sarah Gabbott, lead author of a study published in the U.K.-based Journal of the Geological Society.

I use the scare quote because that’s the word used in the headline. This kind of language, I think, is (at least partly) what bothers people who continue to rebel against evolution, and science. It is a certainty of language (like “fact,” rather than “theory”) that they consider hubristic, and arrogant. After all, when Sherlock Holmes “solved” a case, it generally was the last word, case closed.

In this case, what the word means is that scientists have come up with a plausible explanation for an event for which they’d been struggling to come up with one for a long time, and it is sufficiently plausible that there are few scientists who argue against it, thus presenting a consensus. Does it mean that they have “proven” that this is what happened? No. As I’ve written many times, science is not about proving things–scientists leave that to the mathematicians. What scientists do (ideally) is to posit theories that are both reasonable and disprovable, yet remain undisproved.

There may be some other explanation for what happened up in what is now Yoho National Park that corresponds better to what really happened, but until someone comes up with one that makes more sense, or comes up with some inconvenient indisputable fact that knocks this one down, it (like evolution itself) is what most scientists, particularly the ones who study such things for a living, will believe.

And of course, I won’t even get started on how upset some anti-science (and yes, that’s what they are, even if they don’t recognize it) types will get over the statement that one of the ancestors of humans is in that shale.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oh, the main point about which I put up this post. This is an excellent illustration of how rare are the circumstances in which we find the keys to our biological past. Those that demand that we cannot know the history of life until every creature has died on the body of its parents, perfectly preserved, are being unreasonable. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, we do science with the (rare) evidence that we have, not the evidence we’d like to have. There will always be many huge holes in the fabric of the evidence, barring the development of a time machine to the past. We simply do the best we can with what we have, and put together theories that best conform to it. To say that God (or whoever) did it isn’t science–it’s just a cop out. And that is true completely independently from the existence (or not) of God (or whoever).

Education, General Science, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Mystery “Solved”

Scientists now have a plausible, and likely theory for what created the Burgess Shale:

By looking over hundreds of micro-thin slices of rock taken from the famous shales, the researchers have reconstructed the series of catastrophic underwater landslides of “mud-rich slurry” that killed tens of thousands of marine animals representing hundreds of species, then sealed them instantly – and enduringly – in a deep-sea tomb.

The mass death was “not a nice way to go, perhaps, but a swift one – and one that guaranteed immortality (of a sort) for these strange creatures,” said University of Leicester geochemist Sarah Gabbott, lead author of a study published in the U.K.-based Journal of the Geological Society.

I use the scare quote because that’s the word used in the headline. This kind of language, I think, is (at least partly) what bothers people who continue to rebel against evolution, and science. It is a certainty of language (like “fact,” rather than “theory”) that they consider hubristic, and arrogant. After all, when Sherlock Holmes “solved” a case, it generally was the last word, case closed.

In this case, what the word means is that scientists have come up with a plausible explanation for an event for which they’d been struggling to come up with one for a long time, and it is sufficiently plausible that there are few scientists who argue against it, thus presenting a consensus. Does it mean that they have “proven” that this is what happened? No. As I’ve written many times, science is not about proving things–scientists leave that to the mathematicians. What scientists do (ideally) is to posit theories that are both reasonable and disprovable, yet remain undisproved.

There may be some other explanation for what happened up in what is now Yoho National Park that corresponds better to what really happened, but until someone comes up with one that makes more sense, or comes up with some inconvenient indisputable fact that knocks this one down, it (like evolution itself) is what most scientists, particularly the ones who study such things for a living, will believe.

And of course, I won’t even get started on how upset some anti-science (and yes, that’s what they are, even if they don’t recognize it) types will get over the statement that one of the ancestors of humans is in that shale.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oh, the main point about which I put up this post. This is an excellent illustration of how rare are the circumstances in which we find the keys to our biological past. Those that demand that we cannot know the history of life until every creature has died on the body of its parents, perfectly preserved, are being unreasonable. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, we do science with the (rare) evidence that we have, not the evidence we’d like to have. There will always be many huge holes in the fabric of the evidence, barring the development of a time machine to the past. We simply do the best we can with what we have, and put together theories that best conform to it. To say that God (or whoever) did it isn’t science–it’s just a cop out. And that is true completely independently from the existence (or not) of God (or whoever).

Education, General Science, Popular Culture, Science And Society

An Evolutionary Golden Oldie

21 Comments

In light of the decision of my current home state, Florida, to teach evolution as “only a theory” (as though there’s something wrong with that), I thought that I’d repost a post from early on in the blog. You can no longer comment on it there, but you can here, if anyone is inclined. Here is the repost:

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The Jury Is In

In a post last week, amidst a lot of discussion of evolution, Orrin Judd made the mistaken claim that evolution is not a falsifiable theory (in the Popperian sense), and that (even more bizarrely and egregiously) defenders of it thought that this strengthened it.

On a related note, he also added to his list of questions about evolution a twelfth one: What would it take to persuade me that evolution was not the best theory to explain life? What evidence, to me, would disprove it? I told him that it was a good question, and that I’d ponder it.

Well, I did ponder it, and here is my response.

First of all, the theory is certainly falsifiable (again, in the theoretical Popperian formulation). If I were coming to the problem fresh, with no data, and someone proposed the theory of evolution to me, I would ask things like:

Does all life seem to be related at some level?

Is there a mechanism by which small changes can occur in reproduction?

Does this mechanism allow beneficial changes?

Can these changes in turn be passed on to the offspring?

Is there sufficient time for such changes to result in the variety of phenotypes that we see today?

There are other questions that could be asked as well, but a “No” answer to any of the above would constitute a falsification of the theory. Thus the theory is indeed falsifiable, as any useful scientific theory must be.

The problem is not that the theory isn’t falsifiable, but that people opposed to evolution imagine that the answer to some or all of the above questions is “No,” and that the theory is indeed false.

But to answer Orrin’s question, at this point, knowing the overwhelming nature of the existing evidentiary record, no, I can’t imagine any new evidence that would change my mind at this point. Any anomalies are viewed as that, and an explanation for them is to be looked for within the prevailing theory.

And lest you think me close minded, consider an analogy. An ex-football player’s wife is brutally murdered, with a friend. All of the evidence points to his guilt, including the DNA evidence. There is little/no evidence that points to anyone else’s guilt. Had I been on the jury that decided that case, it would have at least hung. I might have even persuaded a different verdict, but that’s unlikely, because I’m sure that the jury had members who were a) predisposed to acquit regardless of the evidence and/or b) incapable of critical thinking and logic, as evidenced by post-trial interviews with them.

But for me to believe that ex-football player innocent, I would have to accept the following (which was in fact the defense strategy):

“I know that some of the evidence looks bad for my client, but he was framed. And I can show that some of the evidence is faulty, therefore you should throw all of it out as suspect. I don’t have an alternate theory as to who did the murders, but that’s not my job–I’m just showing that there’s insufficient evidence to prove that my client did it. Someone else did it–no one knows who–it doesn’t matter. And that someone else, or some other someone else, also planted evidence to make it look like my client did it. It might be the most logical conclusion to believe that my client did it, but that would be wrong–the real conclusion is that it is a plot to confuse, and it just looks like he did it. Therefore you shouldn’t believe the evidence.”

Is this a compelling argument? It was to some of the jury members. And it apparently is to people who don’t want to believe that life could evolve as a random, undirected process.

The only way that I could believe that OJ Simpson is innocent at this point would be for someone else to come forward, admit to the crime, and explain how he planted all of the abundant evidence that indicated Orenthal’s guilt.

The equivalent for evolution, I guess, would be for God (or whoever) to reveal himself to me in some clear, unambiguous, and convincing fashion, and to tell me that he planted the evidence. At which point, of course, science goes right out the window.

But absent that, the evidence compels me to believe that OJ Simpson murdered his wife (as it did a later jury in the civil suit), and the evidence compels me to believe that evolution is as valid a theory as is universal gravitation.

Education

An Argument For Home Schooling

3 Comments

Here we have something that might happen more often than you think: a retired teacher who was illiterate until the age of forty eight:

“When I was a child I was just sort of just moved along when I got to high school I wanted to participate in athletics. At that time in high school I went underground. I decided to behave myself and do what it took. I started cheating by turning in other peoples’ paper, dated the valedictorian, and ran around with college prep kids,” said Corcoran.

“I couldn’t read words but I could read the system and I could read people,” adds Corcoran.

He stole tests and pursuaded friends to complete his assignments. Corcoran earned an athletic scholarship to Texas Western College. He said his cheating intensified, claiming he cheated in every class.

“I passed a bluebook out the window to a friend I painstakingly copied four essay questions off the board in U.S. government class that was required, and hoped my friend would get it back to me with the right answers,” Corcoran said.

In 1961, Corcoran graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education, while still illiterate he contends. He then went on to become a teacher during a teacher shortage.

“When I graduated from the university, the school district in El Paso, where I went to school, gave almost all the college education graduates a job,” said Corcoran.

What does this say about:

  • His primary school?
  • His high school?
  • The college that accepted him?
  • Schools of “Education” in general?
  • The school in which he taught for seventeen years?

He isn’t impressed:

In retrospect, Corcoran said, his deceit took him a long time to accept.

“As a teacher it really made me sick to think that I was a teacher who couldn’t read. It is embarrassing for me, and it’s embarrassing for this nation and it’s embarrassing for schools that we’re failing to teach our children how to read, write and spell!”

No kidding.

Education, General Science, Science And Society

Losing His Marbles

31 Comments

I have to agree with Derb:

I’ve always liked Ben’s stuff — used to read his diary in The American Spectator way back in the 1970s. Smart, funny, worldly guy, with just that endearing streak of eccentricity. I’m sorry to see he’s lost his marbles.

Me, too. Some conservatives have this very strange blind spot when it comes to evolution.

[Update a few minutes later]

Derb eviscerates Stein’s thesis. As is usually the case, his attack on evolution (or as he calls it, “Darwinism”) is founded on a profound ignorance of the subject.

[Late afternoon update]

Well, this is a heck of a way to celebrate the old man’s 199th birthday:

Florida’s department of education will vote next week on a new science curriculum that could be in jeopardy, because some conservative counties oppose it.

Nine of Florida’s 64 counties have passed resolutions over the last two months condemning the new curriculum that explicitly calls for teaching evolution. The resolutions, passed in heavily Christian counties in the state’s northern reaches, demand that evolution be “balanced” with alternative theories, mainly creationist.

That’s not really Florida. It’s more like deep southern Georgia, culturally…

Education

Cranking Out Code Monkeys

I’d been wondering about this. Apparently, computer “science” degrees are no longer teaching computer science. There’s no doubt that there isn’t as much demand for actual CS types as there is for programmers, but if that’s the case, they should shrink the CS departments and start up a different one, perhaps called computer applications, to teach the programmers. As it is now, I’d consider it academic fraud.

This is a generic problem, to me. The word “science” has gotten too watered down, even (especially?) in academia. Of course, it all started when someone came up with the oxymoronic major, political science…

Education

Pet Peeve

It’s not as bad as “lose”/”loose,” but I see quite a few people, including people who write for a living, mistakenly hyphenating “no one,” as in “No-one believes that.” It looks very strange to my eye, and irritates me. Where does that come from?

Education

The Real Debate

Perry de Havilland discusses the real issue in the creation-evolution wars, that never gets discussed, because it’s taken as a given that the government will fund education:

I have no problem with people believing whatever wacko things they want (and for me that includes all religion), but the evolution vs. creationism debate should be a non political one and the only way that can ever be true is when the state is no longer involved in education.

I think creationism is nuts and it makes me think less of Ron Paul that he has a religious objection to the theory of evolution. But frankly this should not be a matter for political concern and he at least is highly unlikely to force state schools to teach it (or anything else for that matter). The fact that it is a political matter shows something it very wrong and the correct ‘something’ that needs debating is not evolution, it is state schooling. Return all schooling to the private sector and the whole issue goes away from the political sphere. Let the market decide if there is demand for schools that teach creationism, I have no problem with that at all.

Nor do I.