In this provocative history of contemporary debates over evolution, veteran journalist Tom Bethell depicts Darwin’s theory as a nineteenth-century idea past its prime, propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and empirical evidence that is all but disintegrating under an onslaught of new scientific discoveries. Bethell presents a concise yet wide-ranging tour of the flash points of modern evolutionary theory, investigating controversies over common descent, natural selection, the fossil record, biogeography, information theory, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, and the growing intelligent design movement. Bethell’s account is enriched by his own personal encounters with of some our era’s leading scientists and thinkers, including Harvard biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin; British paleontologist Colin Patterson; and renowned philosopher of science Karl Popper.
Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates
Of course, no real skeptic will want to read this book.
Published by The Discovery Institute Press Evolution News and Views is all over it.
Not a religious apologist or a cheerleader for any competing view, but rather an old-fashioned skeptic, Bethell has been doubting Darwin since he was an undergraduate at Oxford University.
Who do they think they are fooling, right?
He concludes that while confidence in the pillars of Darwinism — common descent and innovation through natural selection — hit their high-water mark at the celebration of the Origin of Species in 1959, the evidence has steadily and increasingly gone against the theory. The whole edifice rested on a 19th century faith in Progress, propped up by a dogmatic commitment to materialism. As the former falters, the whole structure is in danger of collapse.
And an anti-anti-ID PRATT Bombshell?
A unique feature of the book is its interviews. Philosopher of science Karl Popper, for example, spent time at the Hoover Institution at Stanford when Bethell was there and explained that despite reports, he never really recanted his rap on Darwinism (“…not a testable scientific theory,” “There is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this”).
And of course over at Uncommon Descent, News weighs in.
Get your copy before it gets burned in some stupid anti-Trump frenzy!
I think that you’re playing games with the definition of “Darwinism”, whether you have notice it or not. What Larry means by the term and what you mean by the term are quite different.
Evidence please
Yet at the DI site, I read:
You disagree that the text is the same or you disagree that the DI site is the DI site?
Not to the DI book-shill site but in any event the paragraph is copy pasted and blockquotes would make that clear how much original material Mung is providing. Which, as he has not yet read this book, can’t be much.
No, I don’t agree.
I’m quite certain that Larry Moran is not abandoning Darwinism. Larry has been critical of Darwinism for some time. So your present tense “abandoning” is clearly wrong as applied to Larry.
Mung provided a link to what was not in quotes. But yes Mung made an irrelevant mistake- such is life and according to evolutionism mistakes are the stuff of life.
Darwinism has been superseded at least a few times over. Larry’s argument is drift is more prevalent than natural selection when it comes to genetic variations within a population. And Larry thinks that constructive neutral evolution can bring about the appearance of design- ie it can produce multi-protein machines.
Darwin spoke briefly of drift but understood it wasn’t an important factor to his point, that natural selection is a designer mimic. Even Larry doesn’t think drift is a designer mimic but he has an alleged replacement.
John Harshman,
Can you explain further. You recently made the comment that there was no ‘Theory of evolution” only evolutionary theory’s. Isn’t Darwinism considered a Theory of Evolution?
Neil Rickert,
Are you aware that Larry calls Neo-Darwinian theory a straw man argument.
Frankie,
An alleged replacement?
Did you miss the part before the quote:
And Larry thinks that constructive neutral evolution can bring about the appearance of design- ie it can produce multi-protein machines.
I don’t know that I have heard him say that. However, Larry was already disagreeing with neoDarwinism back in the 1980s (on the usenet group “talk.origins”). I’ve been disagreeing with neoDarwinism for almost as long.
But so what? Larry is still an evolutionist. He just disagrees with the neoDarwinian account and leans more toward the neutral theory.
I don’t know. When you say “Darwinism”, what do you mean? I don’t think you know. Darwin had two main theories of evolution: the theory of common descent and the theory of natural selection. Both those theories are strongly supported, though he was wrong about various other things, such as the mode of inheritance. Is any of that what you mean by “Darwinism”? If so, I don’t think Larry rejects it at all.
Could we clarify what is meant by neo-Darwinism? It simply indicates to me the incorporation of genetics into Darwin’s ideas on natural selection.
I don’t see genetic drift as other than a fact of life. I like Joe Felsenstein’s analogy with Brownian motion. Without selection, there can be no adaptation, in my view.
What do you mean that natural selection is strongly supported? Darwin thought it could produce systems like the vision system. What is the support for that?
And without being able to account for the anatomical and physiological differences observed Darwin’s thoughts on Common Descent are not supported with anything but personal bias.
Neil Rickert,
What do mean by evolutionist?
Alan Fox,
So you don’t consider the adaptive immune system adaption?
I consider the immune system evolved. Adaptation is a process.
But natural seelction is a process of elimination. So what you are actually saying is:
But that sounds like gibberish.
Natural selection isn’t even the survival of the fittest. It is the survival of the good enough
Nope, a process of differential reproduction. Organisms better adapted to the niche they occupy will, on balance, produce more offspring.
What I am saying is what I have written. Your misrepresentation is a misrepresentation of what I wrote.
Your misrepresentation could be described as gibberish. I’d call it a misrepresentation.
It’s differential reproductive success. As you say, you only need to be better than your rivals at reproducing.
The first paragraph isn’t a quote. And it’s not from the ENV article. Click on the link that is there at the end of the first paragraph to see for yourself. This is the best you have to offer? Seriously.
Alan Fox,
You don’t consider the work of the adaptive immune system a process?
A process has a repeatable output. What do you consider the repeatable process of adaption.
Did you like that one? I was channeling my inner Frankie.
LoL. Too bad I couldn’t just post a link to a youtube video.
I didn’t say it was from the ENV article. I linked to where it came from. So you wrote the blurb and the DI site copied you?
Mung:
Yes, it is. You didn’t write it.
Jesus, Mung.
I consider immune responses are processes. Things aren’t processes.
I’m not sure about that. I’m not a strict determinist.
It is not necessarily repeatable. Identical niches will produce convergent designs. Adaptations to the pelagic environment produce efficient swimmers, for example.
When I say “original material” I mean your own work. Chrissake, you admit yourself you haven’t read the book yet. You don’t consider posting puffery you haven’t written about a book you haven’t read somewhat disingenuous?
Typically, neo-Darwinists see natural selection as something of a creative force. I tend to be skeptical of that. I’m not quite sure of Larry’s exact thinking, but he wants to give less importance to NS than does Dawkins, and he wants to give more weight to neutral drift.
A proponent of the broad picture of evolution — common descent with change over time.
I’m okay with there being no adaptation.
You remind me that Professor Moran posted some reading material I need to catch up on. Regarding selection as a creative process, it’s the only game in town that explains adaptation. I recall Larry querying whether eye colour (it was in an exchange of comments at his Sandwalk blog) could possibly be an adaptation in ethnic European humans. Allan Miller pointed out the possibility of sexual selection.
But look at any organism and [how]* it survives in its niche. Fish don’t do well in the desert and golden moles struggle at sea.
*ETA
Alan Fox,
While adaption in the evolution sense does not involve steps to a particular end the adaptive immune system does. So does DNA repair, cell division and the transcription translation mechanism.
Neil Rickert,
Wouldn’t everyone fit into this description?
Experimental finding?
Glen Davidson
Organisms are purposeful but they live in the now. Same for cellular processes.
Why not just make a positive statement and it might be clearer for me to see whether I can agree or disagree with it.
Indeed. But you get that if a population carves out a niche to which it is already adapted.
No! Pure speculation on noting their general absence from the World’s oceans.
Was the reptilian egg neutrally evolved, with the layers of leathery eggs just moving to dry areas?
There seem to be things that evolved to fit a niche.
Glen Davidson
I think of selection as like the gravity that causes water to follow the contours of the bottom of a pond. It’s not creative. It’s just the contour of what gene sequences are viable.
I don’t get the argument. Neutral mutations are selected. They just aren’t differentially selected when compared to equally viable sequences. They are selected when compared to the majority of mutations.
Retrospective adaptation. Retrospective designedness.
I’m sure there must be a reason why things went this way and not that way.
Niche construction (naked mole-rats, termites, humans) is fascinating. I’m not sure if that is what you are referring to.
Neil:
That’s batshit.
Perhaps Mung just accidentally outed himself as an employee of the DI.
I’m okay with that view of natural selection.
I’m not sure how the term “niche construction” is used by professionals.
From my point of view, what’s important is that a population maintain as much variation as possible. Sexual reproduction (meiosis) is important here (as is mutation, and possibly junk DNA). That allows a population to continually attempt to expand its niche. At the same time, other forces of nature are tending to contract niches.
Perhaps they are on the bottom
Generally, “niche construction” refers to cases where the organism’s behavior modifies its environment to the extent that it constructs the niche it also occupies. Beavers are a well-known example: the ways that beavers extract food from their environments depends on the dam, which in turn is built by the beavers themselves. There have been several fascinating attempts to extend niche construction theory to hominids. In particular I recommend Sterelny’s The Evolved Apprentice. Sterelny argues at length that obligate cooperative foraging is a uniquely hominid constructed niche, and that the evolution of language and culture makes much more sense when seen in those terms. Bickerton, in More Than Nature Needs, argues that the evolution of language cannot be understood without the idea of niche construction.
But natural selection is a process of elimination.
From “What Evolution Is” Ernst Mayr page 117:
The differential reproduction has to be due to heritable random variations (mutations):
and
“Organisms better adapted” is too vague to be of any use. Is that the fastest, the slowest, the middle of the pack, the tallest, the shortest, the best sight, no sight, fatter, thinner, breathing through the tip of the snout or the top of the head? It is all contingent serendipity.
There isn’t any selection going on, Alan. As Mayr explains on page 118:
So?
The amazon page didn’t use quote marks either. Neither did the the DI page. But it’s a quote, sez keiths. It needs quote marks!
No. I linked to all my sources, everything was up front, and now you’re moving the goal posts. What part of my OP led you to think I was being disingenuous? Because I certainly never claimed to have read the book.
Seriously Alan, you can’t do any better than that?