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An Evolutionary Golden Oldie

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.

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21 Comments

Paul Milenkovic wrote:

Did Adam have a naval?

That is one of the classic questions posed to Creationists. It doesn't mean that we worry whether the first man who came into existence had an umbilicus because he was born of a mother of an evolving precursor species or if he was created according to Genesis and not born of a mammalian placental mother and didn't need a naval.

The question is a proxy for, "If the natural order was created and not evolved, why does it give the appearance of evolution -- fossil record, simpler creatures earlier in the fossil record, more elaborate creatures later in the fossil record, once a particular creature becomes extinct, you never see it again, and so on." Then there is the Carl Woese thing of those close genetic connections between all forms of life.

Without getting wrapped up in people's religious beliefs, from a scientific perspective I would argue that evolution is "just a theory" and a fairly speculative one at that. From that perspective, gravitation is "just a theory" -- that gravity exerts a pull g m M/r^2 is an undeniable, testable, measurable fact, and yes, General Relativity has held up to tests, but no one really understands gravity from first principles until we discover the Higgs particle and validate one of the string theory models.

So with evolution and the origins of life, there are many holes. One hole is the spontaneous origin of life out of nonlife. Yes, the Harold Urey/Stanley Miller experiment and the amino acids, but there is now controversy as to whether that was the original Earth atmosphere.

At one time we thought that life -- flies, meal worms, mold -- arose spontaneously out of decaying organic matter, but we now know this never happens but requires an egg, seed, spore, or some manner of germ cell to get that life to appear. There are all of these highly, highly speculative theories of "RNA world", "self-replicating clay crystals" and other ideas of how life got jump started but how we never see those life precursors or ultra-primitive forms in today's world.

The second gap in knowledge is how we get to bridge between discrete species if evolution is this slow, steady, inperceptable process. The original Darwinian view is that there is natural random variation and a slow drift so that creatures evolve one into the other with almost miniscule changes between the intermediate forms. Darwin knew nothing about DNA and discrete numbers of chromosomes, although chromosome number may be plastic to a certain degree. There is also the question of gaps in the fossil record along with the issue of how do you go from non-winged non-flying to winged and flying -- does a precursor to a wing confer any advantage.

One possibility is in recent research showing that a small number of genes present in everything from us to fruit flies is capable of some great change in body plan with minor shift in the genes. It is almost as if we have "evolved" fairly early on a system that allows us to evolve but generating "hopeful monsters" -- mutations that are fairly large leaps from their parent organisms to bridge these gaps.

I think that with Evolution we are at the stage of planetary science at the Copernican Revolution -- there is strong evidence that the Sun is at the center around which the Earth and other planets move, but Kepler's work on the elliptical orbits has yet to be published let alone Einstein's General Relativity and the curve-space explanation of gravity, let alone the still-speculative Mach's theories on the origin of the inertial reference frame.

To argue that "Evolution is scientific fact not just theory" is one of these "airline Captain, don't scare the passengers with an explanation of how tenuous flight is on account of the stall of an airplane wing." It is as if elementary grade students are too stupid to deal with a field of science still being in a formative stage that everything has to be cut and dried and authoritative.

What is wrong with presenting the Copernican Revolution as an example of science moving from the realm of pre-conceived beliefs motivated by religious teachings and philosophical principles to the modern rationalist view? What is wrong with saying that Evolution is a much more recent development, that scientists are still at an early stage of nailing down the details, that moralists and philosophers are still wrestling with the consequences of people being just another kind of animal, that the direction things are going is towards a rationalist explanation of life origins and evolution, but that there are rare examples of where the direction of scientific discovery has taken an unexpected turn.

It seems the science people are so full of themselves with rationalist explanations of everyone that they cannot bring themselves to admit gaps in knowledge in school textbooks, and that the Creationist side of things is bent on bringing religious dogma to all of the gaps in current science.

February 21, 2008 8:18 PM

David wrote:

I believe we live in a created universe, that was patterned after another one, dinasoars and all. So I believe that evolution is probably a good description of how everything got started originally - subject to future revisions, of course.

Faith in God is not necessarily in opposition to belief in evolution, and I definately find it humorous how worked up everyone gets over how "science" is taught in schools. Personally, I am more concerned about how "liberalness" is taught in schools... (such as drowning polar bears in need of rescue) but regardless, I take responsibility for the propper teaching of my daughter - I don't expect the state to do a propper job.

February 21, 2008 9:47 PM

ken anthony wrote:

My opinion is that creationism has no place in a science class; however, if they never taught evolution in grade school do you doubt that every high school graduate would be familiar with the subject? It's become propaganda rather than science (just my own opinion which I've held since my own grade school experience) which I think also has no place in the classroom. Teachers and parents ought to be on the same team and students need to taught, understand and be able to apply critical thinking along with a solid foundation in the basics. We're doing a really bad job nationwide, with some notable exceptions, regarding this.

Bringing back the golden oldies makes me think about how we mature and change. I've always enjoyed your blog and it's consistent high quality, especially when you so often put your finger on just the right issues. You have an uncommon ability to focus on the heart of a thing and to explain things with a clarity that I greatly envy. I wish my son's teachers would take note.

So, with the passage of time Rand, have you revised your list of questions? Here are my thoughts regarding them...

Does all life seem to be related at some level?
This is a settled question. If we found some life not based on the same 20 left-handed amino acids would that falsify anything? (With regard to evolution I mean; It would certainly falsify an entirely different question.)

Is there a mechanism by which small changes can occur in reproduction? Of course yes, so how does this (or could this) falsify evolution?

Does this mechanism allow beneficial changes? 'Beneficial' is a real can of worms. Is there perhaps a better question or way of phrasing that is better subject to testing?

Can these changes in turn be passed on to the offspring? Again settled. How do you falsify a settled question? Could any new evidence suddenly invalidate this observation? After seeing mutations being sexually transmitted, how do you then say no, they can't be? I admit, I'm a bit confused on this point.

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

IMHO, this is your best question with regard to being on point and falsifiable, but paradoxically very unlikely to be accepted as falsified even if it were.

As an aside... On the first day of my formal education (first grade) they asked the class how high they could count. The consensus was 12, however I knew that in theory I could count to 999 billion, 999 million, 999 thousand, 999 (I didn't know the next number after that at that tender age.) I'm very comfortable with big numbers (even infinities) and there implications, although calculus was my last math class. I only relate this because it's not uncommon to be the butt of snide comments about an ability to understand long periods of time (not pointing at you Rand.) This is not to say I don't occasionally make some bone-headed statement or say million when I mean billion. I just think people should respect each other and not assume that a lack of ability to express oneself equates to a lack of intelligence. I lost my full scholarship to Harvey Mudd those many years ago, and regret my lack of formal education. But I've always loved truth. I've always felt that to be criticized with respect is to be praised. Yeah, I'm weird but still kickin'. I will not go gently into that good night. Not to embarrass, but the older I get the more passionate I become about that. I've seen too many people that do not share your integrity or honesty and it disgusts me. People can disagree. They should. Even on subjects that some people consider settled. The history of the world is that settled questions often get shaken up. I know. I say too much. Sorry.

So what revisions or additions might you make to this list?

In any case, thanks for all the free ice cream. I really admire what you do. I wish I had the talent.

(I normally delete these over long rants without posting, --who wants to be considered mentally unbalanced? and yes, you're welcome ;) but I really do want to see if you have a new list.)

February 21, 2008 10:57 PM

Jethro wrote:

@Ken Anthony:
"Again settled. How do you falsify a settled question?"

Quoting Rand:
"If I were coming to the problem fresh, with no data [emphasis added], and someone proposed the theory of evolution to me, I would ask things like:
...
Can these changes in turn be passed on to the offspring?
...
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."

Rand presupposed that we were approaching this as one hypothetically ignorant of the theory of common descent and how one would go about falsifying it from there.

It doesn't matter that the answer is known to be true, the fact that the answer could have been false is enough to make the theory falsifiable. Christ, the impression you give is that as a theory's prediction are proved it becomes less falsifiable and thus, less scientific.

February 22, 2008 12:27 AM

cjm wrote:

if evolution is science, what can you predict with it, how can it be used ? yes offspring inherit from their parents which the first sentient creature probably realized, but after that obvious point what does Darwin have to offer ? Creationism and Darwinism are competing belief systems, not competing theories.

February 22, 2008 1:53 AM

Tony Zafiropoulos wrote:

Evolution and Creation can co-exist.

Assuming you believe in God, assuming God created all beings with a navel even, cause it can happen.

Then after the initial cration evolution caused the various species to evolve.

What is so hard about that?

What if God is an extra-dimensional being that has a laissez fare policy since it is too boring to make everything happen.

Sort of like playing video games with cheat codes.
What is the fun in that?

February 22, 2008 4:59 AM

Jethro wrote:

Everyone of those hypothetical from-the-start questions Rand asked concern predictions of evolution:
To reiterate:
Evolution predicts all life on earth to be related.

Evolution predicts there will be mutations that give an advantage and some mechanism by which this occurs and is passed on to offspring.

Evolution predicts that the world must be a certain age in order for life to have branched out as it has today.

You may quibble that these are "retrodictions," but as far as science goes, that's fine.

If you want more specific see:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA210.html

I kind of like this one:
"Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005)."

How can any of this be used? To make more predictions to further the study. Science is a method of learning. It makes no claim that the knowledge gained will be useful outside of the field.

But it could be. Most mammals make vitamin c themselves, humans must consume it. It was predicted that humans are descended from mammals that could produce it, so people went looking for a gene that expressed that ability and found it, turned off. A lot of people think producing vitamin c would be beneficial. Because we know where it is, we could just turn the gene on. Maybe that would be useful.

A more concrete example would be the use of refugia in agriculture. Refugia are sanctuaries for non-resistant pests (like a field where pesticides aren't sprayed). Beause resistant pests breed with them these refugia relieve the selection pressure on non-resistant strains and slow the switch over to complete resistance.

February 22, 2008 5:05 AM

mz wrote:

Nice, Rand.

If only you had science-based views on anthropogenic global warming and other environmental issues too, but you just keep on posting some loony stuff on them.

February 22, 2008 5:38 AM

Rand Simberg wrote:

If only you had science-based views on anthropogenic global warming and other environmental issues too...

I do. It's a shame that you don't have economics-based views on them.

February 22, 2008 5:59 AM

mz wrote:

I do.

You linked to Alexander Cockburn in an agreeing tone on January 30. He says right there in the beginning of the page:

"there is zero evidence that the rise in CO2 levels has anthropogenic origins."

And you think you have a science based view on anthropogenic global warming by agreeing with that statement?

February 22, 2008 7:31 AM

Rand Simberg wrote:

You linked to Alexander Cockburn in an agreeing tone on January 30.

I don't necessarily agree with everything in anything that I link to. I provide links because I think that readers may find them of interest, not because I necessarily agree with them, either in whole or in part. Sometimes I comment on the link, sometimes I don't. If you want to delude yourself that I never link to anything without agreeing with every word of it, that's your problem, not mine. I will continue to provide interesting links, regardless.

February 22, 2008 8:43 AM

mz wrote:

Now you're just changing your mind - Cockburn proved to be totally wrong (what's with everybody simply being wrong or lying now claiming they're being persecuted?), and you're trying to distance yourself from the whole thing. It's not that you have to agree with every tiny bit, but the main point?

You keep posting anti-AGW and anti-environmental links that turn out to be counterfactual or even downright fabricated and then you just say "I didn't support the idea, I just linked to it".

Take some responsibility.

Back somewhen you used to at least do correction updates to posts saying something like "it turns out the story is not correct" or something in that vein.

February 22, 2008 11:45 AM

Rand Simberg wrote:

It's not that you have to agree with every tiny bit, but the main point?

Nowhere in that post, or comments, did I say that I agreed with Cockburn in any way, let alone with regard to his assessment of the science. I simply linked to his post with a description of it.

You seem to have missed the entire point of my post, which was that even many on the left don't buy into the global warming religion. Work on your reading comprehension.

February 22, 2008 12:13 PM

ken anthony wrote:

Jethro, finding the right questions matter. Old questions that have already been answered contribute little. A point which many people have justifiably directed toward critics of evolution.

For those that have made evolution their faith, there are no falsifiable questions. You're just an idiot if you don't believe it. That's the case with much of science, but evolution isn't there yet because the questions (legit. falsifiable questions) have not yet been asked and answered. Making any progress at this point requires that we figure out what those questions are.

@Ken Anthony:
"Again settled. How do you falsify a settled question?"

Let me answer my own question. You can't, unless you show the earlier observations to be erroneous. Might point then is, what are the good questions today where we have not yet made or analysed the observations. I and many others believe these questions still exist which is a good thing for science and evolution.

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."
This is not correct. It may have been correct in the past, but it is not correct today. It's a strawman. Science is about the unsettled questions. Good science has been conducted with regard to evolution in the past and continues today. We know a lot more today than Darwin did.

Rand presupposed that we were approaching this as one hypothetically ignorant of the theory of common descent and how one would go about falsifying it from there.
Suppose so, and this can be a useful mental exercise; however we aren't ignorant are we. So we should proceed forward.

It doesn't matter that the answer is known to be true, the fact that the answer could have been false is enough to make the theory falsifiable.
This is the fundamental flaw with your argument. It does matter. If the right questions do exist and we don't ask them it is no longer science.

Christ, the impression you give is that as a theory's prediction are proved it becomes less falsifiable and thus, less scientific.
You've actually hit upon a truth here and truth trumps science. Science is a search for truth. We don't have to search for what we've already found unless errors or fraud exist. Science becomes faith when we stop asking questions.

Does adaption produce new species of animals? This is a legitimate unanswered question.

These examples just show that "species" is not as clean a concept as we'd like (though it's a lot better than "race.")

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 23, 2002 12:06 PM

I agree with this, so in order to not be talking in circles regarding adaption, we have to deal with what a species is (and the dictionary won't do it for you, no matter how much faith you put in it.)

So is evolution science with current falsifiable questions. Absolutely! Are we asking the right questions? Mostly yes. Is it ok for people to believe that evolution is established truth? Of course (as long as they realize they've just left the science reservation.) Faith is not a dirty word. We all have faith.

February 22, 2008 1:01 PM

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

You seem to have missed the entire point of my post, which was that even many on the left don't buy into the global warming religion.

I thought the point had been that the kind of pseudoscientific crackpottery that is displayed in rejection of the scientific consensus around anthropogenic global warming is not limited to the right. Do you really think flat-earth level errors like the quote given earlier are really supportive of his skeptical position?

February 22, 2008 1:11 PM

Rand Simberg wrote:

I thought the point had been that the kind of pseudoscientific crackpottery that is displayed in rejection of the scientific consensus around anthropogenic global warming is not limited to the right.

Well that's certainly a possible point, but it wasn't the one that I had in mind when I wrote the post.

Do you really think flat-earth level errors like the quote given earlier are really supportive of his skeptical position?

No, but that doesn't change my point.

February 22, 2008 1:51 PM

Karl Hallowell wrote:

Ken, you are peddling nonsense. One of the goals of science is to not just describe reality, but also to justify your description to others. The falsifiable questions remain so because someone can start from scratch, repeat the observations we made, and decide for themselves whether that was sufficient to support the description we claim.

As I see it, the key reason a lot of evolution critics aren't taken seriously is because they ignore the supporting evidence, often giving really dumb rationalizations in the process. In your case, it appears to me that you are claiming that the act of collecting evidence for a theory invalidates the evidence. Or perhaps that confidence in a theory is "faith" (as far as I can tell from your argument, fully equivalent in a scientific context to unsubstantiated belief in the tooth fairy) because we haven't yet expended enough effort to find some flaw in the theory.

These sorts of distinctions appear unuseful to me.

February 22, 2008 2:34 PM

ken anthony wrote:

Karl: Ken, you are peddling nonsense. Don't hold back Karl, what do you really think? ;-)

...it appears to me that you are claiming that the act of collecting evidence for a theory invalidates the evidence. No. I am not making any such claim.

Facts are facts and independent observers lend their credibility to everyone's belief in those facts. In theory all observations are subject to refutation (and so are falsifiable) but you can't just disregard context. While in theory nothing is absolutely settled, in practice people do tend to agree to agree on what the facts are.

So when I say you can't falsify a settled question, in theory, I'm wrong. In practice I don't think I'm spouting nonsense.

Yes, I understand that Rand's questions were in response to someone claiming that evolution is not science because it's not falsifiable. I'm not the person making that claim. Those were questions from 2002. In 2008, we might have new questions. Don't you think that's possible? I happened to have an interest in what those questions might be and provided reasons why I found his old questions less than satifying (to me) today. So Karl, are you going to pull the sword out or twist it further? Would you specify the statement that I made that was nonsense?

February 22, 2008 6:24 PM

Karl Hallowell wrote:

Ken, way back when you wrote:

Again settled. How do you falsify a settled question? Could any new evidence suddenly invalidate this observation? After seeing mutations being sexually transmitted, how do you then say no, they can't be? I admit, I'm a bit confused on this point.

You falsify a settled question by finding evidence of sufficient quality that contradicts previous evidence. You claim to be "confused", but we then read

In theory all observations are subject to refutation (and so are falsifiable)

Where's the confusion? In practice, it works the same way. The problem is that there is a lot of noise from non-scientific sources trying to make scientific claims. For example, perpetual motion machines still are frequently invented even though no one has yet to present a convincing example of a violation of the laws of thermodynamics aside possibly from the creation of the universe. Due to the high noise, it is difficult to determine whether someone has come across a legitimate contradiction or merely is wrong due to error, ignorance, or fraud.

later

You've actually hit upon a truth here and truth trumps science. Science is a search for truth. We don't have to search for what we've already found unless errors or fraud exist. Science becomes faith when we stop asking questions.

But what of what we've found? It doesn't count because we found it. The question becomes "settled" and science becomes "faith" no matter what was done or learned.

Science is an aggregation of knowledge. Even if we suddenly got bored with science and ceased to poke at what we didn't know, we'd still have those old observations and deductions. Those old models would still apply as much as they ever did. The world changes, but not because we stopped investigating it.

February 22, 2008 8:40 PM

ken anthony wrote:

Well said Karl, I find we agree with one another which is not perhaps that we understand one another. Let me try to answer your question...

But what of what we've found? Yes, what we find counts.

If you believe in science (and I have no choice, I'm an INTJ) then everything you know is provisional. You can approach 100% certainty, but if you believe that everything is potentially falsifiable then the only way to know anything with 100% certainty (which is generally what we mean when we say we know something) is faith (we believe something to be true.)

Faith without evidence is gullibility. Too many people confuse their gullibility with the assured expectations of faith. My faith has to be based on evidence. Scientific faith is based on evidence. So for me, it is no slander to say that science becomes faith at certain points. Does that help?

February 22, 2008 10:58 PM

ken anthony wrote:

This seems like some common sense getting back to the original subject..

February 24, 2008 10:34 PM

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An Evolutionary Golden Oldie

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