why learn Evolution?
Jan. 26th, 2005 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearA poster on talk.origins asked the honest question, in light of how the curricula for most American biology classes treat evolution as some "separate section" irrelevant to the main text, why bother.
"In what way? What, besides evolution, requires evolution to understand?"
answer the following questions, where "why?" doesn't mean "what was the intent" as philosophy understands it -- it means what it means in science: "what sequence of events led to this state that we see today?"
having taken only one high school biology class (rushed through summer school at that) and not a single collegiate class, I can answer or at least theorize an answer for every single one of those questions: because I understand evolution (and a little bit about continental drift). these are BASIC, simple questions that any child might ask. with the knowledge of evolution, even a child can understand the answer. with it, the jigsaw of the biological world is complete.
with it, the answer to the current events question, "why did the stem cells the scientists were permitted to use become corrupted" exists. without it, there would be no way of understanding the genetic puzzle involved.
without it, the patterns are there, but no way to connect them or extrapolate from them. the similarities are there between species, but not the relationships. the ecological niches are there, but with no way of understanding how they got to be that way when the land or water was very different tens, hundreds, thousands, or milllions of years ago. without it, "because God made it that way" is an answer. but repeat that answer to children long enough and you'll end up with an extremely disillusioned child. "Because i said so" is NEVER an answer to the inquiriing mind, and so should never be an answer to a question of science.
with evolution, as with any truly scientific theory, one can predict. one can predict the impact of a geological catastrophe. one can predict the impact of a man-made catastrophe. one can realize what *might* happen, not just in terms of those creatures that die out (that's the *easy* part), but what will become of those that live through it.
even if we're wrong (of course we will be; nature is FAR more interesting than anything *humans* can dream up), we can predict, we can test, we can wait.
without it, there would be no way life itself would ever survive a catastrophe the magnitude of a nuclear war or asteroid collision, or even another ice age or global warming. if the species that exist today are all that is, this planet will die. and yet at any point in this planet's history, one could have said that.
yet life survived. the few survivers lived and bred; many of their children died, but a few didn't -- maybe those few had something special about them, something slightly different -- something as simple as slightly thicker skin, or thicker fur, or less fur, or ever so slightly better vision, or slightly more webbed feet, or the ability to glide for longer distances by giving just a little "push" up with a wing.
or maybe one particular tribe could survive a massive drought by being able to take hollow gourds, fill them with water from the one remaining source, and leave them behind buried in the sand along the hunting path so that they could drink the water later, surviving the long walk from the hunting grounds back to the original water source with the food the rest of the tribe needed to eat...
little, tiny, changes, and isolation from interbreeding with others that might restore the dominant genes to the next generation. that's all it takes. one thing lives, another dies. a tiny difference. almost unnoticeable.
but add up tiny changes over even the few generations between 15000 years ago and now, and the differences are astounding -- "artificial" selection has created ALL of the varieties, the "breeds", of dogs today from a single wolf-like ancestor. only 15000 years and a weinerdog is almost utterly incompatible in our minds with a st. bernard.
no obvious "mutation", no change in the children seemingly any better or worse than any other, yet the varieties evolved. they're here today.
do that over 600,000,000 years and tell me what a dog might look like.
we don't know. but we can guess!
without evolution, we couldn't even do that. without evolution, biology ceases to be a science; it would be only a classification system, requiring no creative thought, only rules and policies. "''cause God made it that way."
an easier life, sure, but true science was never easy. simple, elegant, almost artistic. but not easy.
"In what way? What, besides evolution, requires evolution to understand?"
answer the following questions, where "why?" doesn't mean "what was the intent" as philosophy understands it -- it means what it means in science: "what sequence of events led to this state that we see today?"
- 2 species of the same type of animal on separate islands in the galapogos are still slightly different, seemingly for no reason other than cosmetics. why?
- some moth species have the exact same color patterns on them as butterflies in the same region, yet their wings are chemically completely different, even to the point of reflecting completely different patterns in the ultraviolet spectrum. why?
- australia is full of marsupials, a type of mammal that otherwise only exists in *one* species outside of that region, here in north america. why? the fossil record shows an animal much like that one, only the size of a VW Bug, having lived 3 milllion years ago in south america. how did that happen? is there any connection at all?
- chickens carry the genetic instructions for growing teeth, and they also contain instructions that actually supress the hormone that triggers that growth -- reintroduce that hormone, and a reptile tooth grows. why?
- outside of the influence of man or disease, most ecological niches reach a state of equilibrium, where predator-prey ratios reach a point of stability. though the predators and prey may be different, the ratios are generally consistent throughout the world (and throughout the fossil record). why?
- mountain goats are able to climb what appears to be a 90 degree rock-face, and yet mountain lions are still able to hunt them. why?
- hunting animals tend to have forward-facing eyes, big ears, and an incredible sense of smell; nocturnal creatures tend to be colorblind; rabbits and many rodents, in spite of being extremely social animals, don't make much noise with their vocal chords; why?
- wales and dolphins are obviously mammals, with hair (whiskers), mammary glands, live birth, caring for young; what is their connection with the rest of the earth-born mammals with legs, feet, forward-facing nostrils?
- pandas have this stub of a digit, a *6th* finger, growing on the side of their paws, which they use for stripping leaves off bamboo. studies over the last 200 years of western presense in china has shown that this "thumb" is bigger in the current generation of pandas by almost an inch over 200 years ago when biologists first did their studies. why?
having taken only one high school biology class (rushed through summer school at that) and not a single collegiate class, I can answer or at least theorize an answer for every single one of those questions: because I understand evolution (and a little bit about continental drift). these are BASIC, simple questions that any child might ask. with the knowledge of evolution, even a child can understand the answer. with it, the jigsaw of the biological world is complete.
with it, the answer to the current events question, "why did the stem cells the scientists were permitted to use become corrupted" exists. without it, there would be no way of understanding the genetic puzzle involved.
without it, the patterns are there, but no way to connect them or extrapolate from them. the similarities are there between species, but not the relationships. the ecological niches are there, but with no way of understanding how they got to be that way when the land or water was very different tens, hundreds, thousands, or milllions of years ago. without it, "because God made it that way" is an answer. but repeat that answer to children long enough and you'll end up with an extremely disillusioned child. "Because i said so" is NEVER an answer to the inquiriing mind, and so should never be an answer to a question of science.
with evolution, as with any truly scientific theory, one can predict. one can predict the impact of a geological catastrophe. one can predict the impact of a man-made catastrophe. one can realize what *might* happen, not just in terms of those creatures that die out (that's the *easy* part), but what will become of those that live through it.
even if we're wrong (of course we will be; nature is FAR more interesting than anything *humans* can dream up), we can predict, we can test, we can wait.
without it, there would be no way life itself would ever survive a catastrophe the magnitude of a nuclear war or asteroid collision, or even another ice age or global warming. if the species that exist today are all that is, this planet will die. and yet at any point in this planet's history, one could have said that.
yet life survived. the few survivers lived and bred; many of their children died, but a few didn't -- maybe those few had something special about them, something slightly different -- something as simple as slightly thicker skin, or thicker fur, or less fur, or ever so slightly better vision, or slightly more webbed feet, or the ability to glide for longer distances by giving just a little "push" up with a wing.
or maybe one particular tribe could survive a massive drought by being able to take hollow gourds, fill them with water from the one remaining source, and leave them behind buried in the sand along the hunting path so that they could drink the water later, surviving the long walk from the hunting grounds back to the original water source with the food the rest of the tribe needed to eat...
little, tiny, changes, and isolation from interbreeding with others that might restore the dominant genes to the next generation. that's all it takes. one thing lives, another dies. a tiny difference. almost unnoticeable.
but add up tiny changes over even the few generations between 15000 years ago and now, and the differences are astounding -- "artificial" selection has created ALL of the varieties, the "breeds", of dogs today from a single wolf-like ancestor. only 15000 years and a weinerdog is almost utterly incompatible in our minds with a st. bernard.
no obvious "mutation", no change in the children seemingly any better or worse than any other, yet the varieties evolved. they're here today.
do that over 600,000,000 years and tell me what a dog might look like.
we don't know. but we can guess!
without evolution, we couldn't even do that. without evolution, biology ceases to be a science; it would be only a classification system, requiring no creative thought, only rules and policies. "''cause God made it that way."
an easier life, sure, but true science was never easy. simple, elegant, almost artistic. but not easy.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 01:49 pm (UTC)The middle ground is, evolution and God can co-exist. It doesn't need to be an either or proposition.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 02:38 pm (UTC)in *science*, yes.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:44 pm (UTC)yes its possible for the two to exist in the same philosophy. i'm "proof" of that, such as proof is needed, as are a majority of scientists who accept evolution as the most likely explanation for the differentiation in species today, yet believe strongly in a personal God and that Jesus was his Son who died for our sins.
the point is the specifics -- at what point should science *stop* looking for a naturalistic explanation and just say "God did it"?
the church(es) have asserted that at a great many points, from the formation of the sun, to the formation of the continents, to the uniqueness and supposed "perfection" of man. these things were all once "Fixed". "God Did It". Science isn't in the practice of capitulating to the church -- science is in the practice of asking How and Why, where Why doesn't mean "why did God do it", but in the sense of "What circumstances led to it being the way it is, to be what we see". any time we've looked for a cause-and-effect relationship surrounding some aspect of the universe or life, we've found it. almost EVERY time. where we haven't found one yet, we still look, we don't just give up and say "God did it".
do we stop trying to figure out what causes the Forces we see, like Gravity and Electro-magnatism, and just say "they're just part of God's creation, believe and it will be enough".
no.
so why stop when it comes to biology and just say "god did it"?
that's not how science works.
and (in my personal philosophy/faith) that's not what God wants us to do, either.
however, when it comes to evolution and the origins of life, *specifically* the origins of man, that's exactly what the extreme creationists want us to do. no matter how much pseudo-science they want to hide it behind, that's what they're demanding science to -- capitulate to their view that God did it and we can't know how.
science itself is attacked when that happens.
and we and a civilized nation suffer for it.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 08:45 pm (UTC)It's unfortunate that there are those on the extreme fringes...both the rabid, fundamentalist, conservative, right wing religious folk who won't let the thing go, and the equally rabid atheists who basically worship science as their religion and are against near *any* kind of religious acknowledgment within the school systems (to include after school, student organized clubs, which are a constitutionally protected right of the student).
You and I are, obviously, more middle ground, though I think this issue bugs you more than it does me.
For me, I just keep in mind that I have a say as to what will and will not be taught to my kid. But, trust me when I say, if they mess with *that*, I'll be right alongside you fighting it tooth and nail.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 09:31 pm (UTC)the jigsaw shape the pieces of the universe are cut as if they were a fractal -- the more detail you look into, the more infinite the ingredients and causal relationships that make up that details, and at the same time, the more familiar the pattern of the details and their interactions.
mathematically, a fractal perfectly represents my view of Nature and the reason I marvel at it so.
at one level, the pattern is recognized repeatedly and given a name, "evolution" -- with that named pattern we find, over and over again, the pattern repeat itself and the macroscopic and microscopic. not only does the evolution pattern repeat within and among species, it even plays itself out in the tissues they're made from, the enzymes their cells produce, the cells themselves and their complexity. when a pattern is seen that doesn't quite fit evolution, where the detail is just a bit off, a new pattern for the catalog, a modified form of evolution ("punctuated equilibrium" for example) is created. the modern evolutionary theory itself has its own shape growing increasingly fractal-like in order to remain applicable to the world we see.
but its application is only so far as we can see. some things we still can't see -- but that doesn't mean we won't in the future. and the pattern will change.
the evidence does contradict a literal interpretation of the Bible, yes. event at the first-stage metafore ("how long were the days") it doesn't quite hold up because birds came after land creatures, and there were flying reptiles before birds, and Genesis doesn't mention bugs at all.
at the level of a true "myth", a story that points to a deeper Truth, the first genesis story holds up remarkably well -- it establishes as a Truth that creation was not instantaneous, that it was a process, a series of events that happened in a particular sequence, from a dramatic single moment to the present we have. this fits cosmology beautifully.
(the adam and eve story, the *second* genesis story, has some serious philosophical flaws when taken literally OR metaforically when the new testament is applied. i'm not going there now, but i've brought the issue up in talk.origins already).
that there are those so determined to prove their *isn't* a God so as to misapply scientific fact and words to the detriment of their fellow man, i do have problems with that. its akin to the same abuse of science we call "social darwinism" and the horrors that created (robber barons, fascism, and marxism, all were derived from social darwinism justifications), and i abhor it.
science contradicts a literal reading of just about any religious text out there, but as such, it only hurts the faith of those who can't see beyond words (even The Word) to find what the real Truth is.
they are only blind who choose not to see.
transposed: the only illiterates are those who choose not to truly read.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 09:56 pm (UTC)those that use evolution and other things to, by contradicting a literal reading of the bible, assert that science "proves' there is no god and those who believe (no matter WHAT the specifics of their belief) are irrational pinheads. they are abusers of science.
those that counter them by perverting the interpretations of science, feeling the need to attempt to contradict science itself simply to "prove" that god DOES exist, even to the point of lying (and as such, violating God's Law) to do it. and yes, MANY of them do lie. they are abusers of science.
finally, those who support science and don't believe it is in any way incompatible with faith (other than blind literalism), are sick of seeing it abused this way, and are extremely concerned that its mis-use will become institutionalized.
THAT is why scientists object to "theory not a fact" -- it is a mis-use of science to *corrupt* the minds of children who should be taught science for what it truly is, the most reliable process for discovering facts, placing them in context, and predicting the future. especially in the fact that evolution is singled out for exception when there are so many other conclusions of science that contradict literal readings of The Bible.
undermining children's education in science and learning of its reliability and accuracy for *solely* religious reasons, particularly affecting children who do not follow the same religion as those undermining their education, is an abuse of the worst kind. and its an abuse i won't tolerate.