So it turns out that Bill Gates owns the rights to the recordings of Richard Feynman giving some general lectures on science and physics. If you have Silverlight installed, you can watch them here.
I watched the first lecture - in which Feynman describes the nature of gravity and orbits, both topics dear to my heart - during my lunch break on Friday. It's great to see how Feynman was able to be entertaining while actually teaching physics. He even writes an equation on a blackboard. By comparison, the kind of science shows on television at the moment seem both intellectually bankrupt and boring.
And it's also great to hear how the man often described as the second greatest physicist of the twentieth century (after Einstein) sounds very much like a regular guy, with his fantastic Brooklyn accent.
Anyway, if you want to get some real science in you, please check out at least the first lecture. Captions for the hearing impaired come as standard.
Showing posts with label Scepticism and Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scepticism and Science. Show all posts
19.7.09
19.5.08
I am not my DNA
I have to breathe a sigh of relief that religious distaste for mixing human DNA and animal cells has failed to result in a ban on promising medical research - by a huge margin of votes.
Lots of pompous orators have been keen to go on about how this is 'plainly immoral', 'tampering with life' and 'Frankenstein science'. Fortunately, it seems that our MPs understand that mixing unfeeling chemicals and cell structures in a petri dish hurts no-one (except vein-popping anthropocentrists) and may potentially ease the suffering of living, breathing human beings.
Lots of pompous orators have been keen to go on about how this is 'plainly immoral', 'tampering with life' and 'Frankenstein science'. Fortunately, it seems that our MPs understand that mixing unfeeling chemicals and cell structures in a petri dish hurts no-one (except vein-popping anthropocentrists) and may potentially ease the suffering of living, breathing human beings.
19.3.08
Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)
Clarke said not that long ago that 2001: A Space Odyssey - oft cited as an over-optimistically named novel - really did come to pass, and to a far greater extent than he had expected. But because we used robots, instead of human beings, nobody noticed...
20.10.07
Uncertainty
You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.
Richard P. Feynman in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
20.9.07
Couple O' Quotes
[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
Isaac Asimov, in this essay.
All our ideas may be wrong. But some are definitely more wrong than others. (Via Phil.)
I have a dream. Someday, I really want to doodle on a dog.
Can I draw on whiskers?
Can I make him look like a panda?
I've asked many times to draw on the pets of my friends, but nobody ever lets me. “Get your own dog to draw on,” they say. Are they crazy?
I wouldn't want a weird-looking dog like that.
Eiichiro Oda
From the foreword to this book.
13.8.07
Tricks of the Mind
I've always thought that Richard Dawkins was a much better voice for presenting the wonders of science rather than railing against the shortcomings of nonsense, but the first half of his new two-episode TV series, Enemies of Reason - this time tackling superstition and pseudoscience - has nicely set me straight.
There were, though - as there usually are with Dawkins - still a few points where I thought he wasn't getting his point across as well as he could. For example, we started by tackling astrology, which we are told is accepted by more Britons than believe in 'any one god'. As we delved into things, an astrologer told us that the stars and planets don't cause things to happen, but rather signify events. Dawkins responded by saying that he didn't see how they could be signifiers, and I thought yes, quite right. The planets move in a very orderly, regular fashion. It's difficult to accept that the bubbly, surprising mass of events in history and everyday life could be predicted for the next few billion years by the clockwork, repetitious movements of the Solar System. But the astrologer interrupted and said that Dawkins didn't like it because he didn't know how they could be signifiers and that it was a deep mystery as to how it worked. Dawkins agreed and we moved on to the next segment. No, I thought, don't agree with him!
That is exactly the wrong side of the debate to be on. People like astrologers always want to claim the romantic aura of mystery, while at the same time clinging to unsupported superstitions rather than admitting that they don't have any better an understanding of why things happen than the rest of us do. Or to put it another way: when I lose a sock, I don't know where it is or what happened to it. It's a mystery! But an astrologer knows exactly what's going on (or so he or she thinks): the sock has gone missing because Venus is in retrograde - no mystery there! And of course, I've written before about how astrology ignores the countless mysteries of the Solar System in favour of a geocentric system of moving lights in the sky - in fact the line "astrology is an aesthetic affront" is one, to my knowledge, coined by Dawkins.
So no, I don't like letting the astrologer act as if sceptics are balking at a mystery, at not understanding how it works. As Carl Sagan once pointed out: it doesn't matter if we know how it works or not. There are plenty of phenomena we have evidence for, but which we don't understand. What matters is that there is no evidence astrology works, plenty that it does not, and much more contradicting its geocentric world view. In this case we favour mystery over a trite, clockwork, small and oversimplified world view. (Although a discussion of how astrology might work is an interesting way to see just how vague and self-contradictory it is, as Phil Plait demonstrates here.)
But aside from that one niggle, I was surprised to see the rest of show put such a powerful case forward, indeed I now realise that Dawkins ultimately went on to make a similar argument to the one I did above: that superstition is a way of taking refuge from a complicated and apparently random world. He also did a nice job of dispelling a lot of the peculiar prejudices that people seem to acquire about science - for example, pointing out to a post-modernist that science is very much against 'experts' claiming special authority, or relating how scientists came to understand the way that bats 'see' in the dark. The idea that they used sonar was initially very unpopular, it turns out, but it came to be supported by multiple lines of corroborating evidence. Compare to that, Dawkins suggested, the vague and paltry offering of evidence that is supposed to convince us of psychic powers in humans.
Perhaps the best constructed sequence involved everyone's favourite illusionist, Derren Brown (coming soon to American TV screens, I believe). We saw him 'contacting' the dead relatives of his show's audience, and then explaining how he did it. Flash forward to Dawkins attending a spiritualist church, where we saw exactly the same thing happening, only this time everyone was believing it - desperately. Psychics taking advantage of the bereaved is the most often cited evil of superstition, but Dawkins was keen to point out the many other dangers that arise from shoddy thinking, from racist conspiracy theories to unvaccinated children. Acknowledging that verifiable evidence is a better way of perceiving the Universe than personal feeling is the only way to protect ourselves from dangerous lies and untruths, Dawkins concluded. Roll on episode two.
There were, though - as there usually are with Dawkins - still a few points where I thought he wasn't getting his point across as well as he could. For example, we started by tackling astrology, which we are told is accepted by more Britons than believe in 'any one god'. As we delved into things, an astrologer told us that the stars and planets don't cause things to happen, but rather signify events. Dawkins responded by saying that he didn't see how they could be signifiers, and I thought yes, quite right. The planets move in a very orderly, regular fashion. It's difficult to accept that the bubbly, surprising mass of events in history and everyday life could be predicted for the next few billion years by the clockwork, repetitious movements of the Solar System. But the astrologer interrupted and said that Dawkins didn't like it because he didn't know how they could be signifiers and that it was a deep mystery as to how it worked. Dawkins agreed and we moved on to the next segment. No, I thought, don't agree with him!
That is exactly the wrong side of the debate to be on. People like astrologers always want to claim the romantic aura of mystery, while at the same time clinging to unsupported superstitions rather than admitting that they don't have any better an understanding of why things happen than the rest of us do. Or to put it another way: when I lose a sock, I don't know where it is or what happened to it. It's a mystery! But an astrologer knows exactly what's going on (or so he or she thinks): the sock has gone missing because Venus is in retrograde - no mystery there! And of course, I've written before about how astrology ignores the countless mysteries of the Solar System in favour of a geocentric system of moving lights in the sky - in fact the line "astrology is an aesthetic affront" is one, to my knowledge, coined by Dawkins.
So no, I don't like letting the astrologer act as if sceptics are balking at a mystery, at not understanding how it works. As Carl Sagan once pointed out: it doesn't matter if we know how it works or not. There are plenty of phenomena we have evidence for, but which we don't understand. What matters is that there is no evidence astrology works, plenty that it does not, and much more contradicting its geocentric world view. In this case we favour mystery over a trite, clockwork, small and oversimplified world view. (Although a discussion of how astrology might work is an interesting way to see just how vague and self-contradictory it is, as Phil Plait demonstrates here.)
But aside from that one niggle, I was surprised to see the rest of show put such a powerful case forward, indeed I now realise that Dawkins ultimately went on to make a similar argument to the one I did above: that superstition is a way of taking refuge from a complicated and apparently random world. He also did a nice job of dispelling a lot of the peculiar prejudices that people seem to acquire about science - for example, pointing out to a post-modernist that science is very much against 'experts' claiming special authority, or relating how scientists came to understand the way that bats 'see' in the dark. The idea that they used sonar was initially very unpopular, it turns out, but it came to be supported by multiple lines of corroborating evidence. Compare to that, Dawkins suggested, the vague and paltry offering of evidence that is supposed to convince us of psychic powers in humans.
Perhaps the best constructed sequence involved everyone's favourite illusionist, Derren Brown (coming soon to American TV screens, I believe). We saw him 'contacting' the dead relatives of his show's audience, and then explaining how he did it. Flash forward to Dawkins attending a spiritualist church, where we saw exactly the same thing happening, only this time everyone was believing it - desperately. Psychics taking advantage of the bereaved is the most often cited evil of superstition, but Dawkins was keen to point out the many other dangers that arise from shoddy thinking, from racist conspiracy theories to unvaccinated children. Acknowledging that verifiable evidence is a better way of perceiving the Universe than personal feeling is the only way to protect ourselves from dangerous lies and untruths, Dawkins concluded. Roll on episode two.
28.6.07
As****ogy
I really do not like astrology. I've mentioned it before as a pet peeve of mine, and I'm afraid that I can't help but rise to the bait with this week's prompt at Sunday Scribblings. In the first part of this post, I'm going to lay out why I dislike it so much. But if you love astrology, be sure to stick around for the second half, where I help you to find out what your sign is. No, those dates are wrong. Sorry.
"Astrology is an Aesthetic Affront"
Over the past two thousand years, we have learned a staggering amount about the Universe around us. We've found it to be more beautiful, more mystifying and far grander than we ever imagined. My chief complaint with astrology is simply that it ignores all of that.
Thousands of years ago, with no telescopes, space probes or Mars rovers, the planets were just points of light in the sky. 'What are they?', people wondered. Could their arcane movements be a kind of writing on the celestial sphere? The stargazers of that era weren't wrong to wonder, but we now know that Mars is not a symbol. It's another world, just like the Earth (only somewhat chillier). Despite being named after the Roman god of war, it's actually the most hospitable planet we know of apart from the Earth (Venus vies with Io for least pleasant). You could go and stand on Mars, and to you the Earth would be a blue star in the sky. Clouds would pass overhead (as would two moons), a feeble wind would push against you, your feet would sink into a magnetic soil with the texture of wet sand.
Astrology presents itself as a means to achieving awareness of the Universe, but in fact it teaches nothing that is supported by evidence, and instead reduces glorious, complex, mysterious worlds to nothing more than symbols. I can't help but see it as something sinister, a spectre seeking out people who look at the night sky and wonder, and palming them off with a cheap, two-dimensional forgery.
My Sign is Ophiuchus, the Snake Handler
Well, no, it isn't. But it would have been if I'd been born a couple of weeks later. One of those things that we've learned about the Universe in the last two thousand years is that we are not at the centre of it. This certainly hints that the Heavens are not merely a blanket of symbols there for our edification – that in fact, most of the Universe has nothing to do with us. It also leads to understanding a few things which directly affect the way astrology is (or should be, rather) practised.
As the Earth moves around the sun, the axis on which it rotates is at an angle to the plane that the Earth moves through (known as the ecliptic). This angle is the cause of the Earth's seasons. Due to a number of factors (the rotation of the sun on its own axis, the pull of the moon) the Earth's rotational axis also moves in a circle. This is known as precession, and it was probably first figured out by an ancient Greek guy called Hipparchus. Ptolemy is another ancient Greek guy, perhaps best known for coming up with (at the time, quite compelling) reasons supporting the idea that the Earth did not move around the sun, and for coming up with the (much too small) estimate of the Earth's circumference used by Columbus when he planned to sail right round it. Despite that, he was actually a very proficient astronomer, being aware of all sorts of aspects of the Heavens that are ignored by modern astrologers – one obvious example being the precession of the Earth's axis (Ptolemy would have considered it to be a precession of the celestial sphere), as noted above.
Because of this precession, the signs that the sun passes through steadily change over thousands of years. And, of course, the dates for your sign as given in the newspaper horoscope are those for two thousand years ago. Presumably astrologers had a real blow-out party back then and insist on partying like it's 99AD – or 140AD, more precisely, as it is poor Ptolemy's table of dates that astrologers use.
So, if I had been born on the 21st of November 140, I would be a Scorpio. However, I was in fact born on the 21st November 1983, and so am a Libra. Here's the actual table of dates for the 21st Century. If you really, really feel that your (old) sign fits you perfectly, you may be a little disturbed to discover how well you have fooled yourself. Please don't shoot the messenger.
Also, if you're Ophiuchus, consider yourself so very, very lucky! Now every time someone asks you what your sign is, you can let them in on a little piece of the Universe's beauty. The Earth moves - and the way it moves, moves as well!
References:
What is your sign, really.
Bad Astronomy: Astrology
"Astrology is an Aesthetic Affront"
Over the past two thousand years, we have learned a staggering amount about the Universe around us. We've found it to be more beautiful, more mystifying and far grander than we ever imagined. My chief complaint with astrology is simply that it ignores all of that.
Thousands of years ago, with no telescopes, space probes or Mars rovers, the planets were just points of light in the sky. 'What are they?', people wondered. Could their arcane movements be a kind of writing on the celestial sphere? The stargazers of that era weren't wrong to wonder, but we now know that Mars is not a symbol. It's another world, just like the Earth (only somewhat chillier). Despite being named after the Roman god of war, it's actually the most hospitable planet we know of apart from the Earth (Venus vies with Io for least pleasant). You could go and stand on Mars, and to you the Earth would be a blue star in the sky. Clouds would pass overhead (as would two moons), a feeble wind would push against you, your feet would sink into a magnetic soil with the texture of wet sand.
Astrology presents itself as a means to achieving awareness of the Universe, but in fact it teaches nothing that is supported by evidence, and instead reduces glorious, complex, mysterious worlds to nothing more than symbols. I can't help but see it as something sinister, a spectre seeking out people who look at the night sky and wonder, and palming them off with a cheap, two-dimensional forgery.
My Sign is Ophiuchus, the Snake Handler
Well, no, it isn't. But it would have been if I'd been born a couple of weeks later. One of those things that we've learned about the Universe in the last two thousand years is that we are not at the centre of it. This certainly hints that the Heavens are not merely a blanket of symbols there for our edification – that in fact, most of the Universe has nothing to do with us. It also leads to understanding a few things which directly affect the way astrology is (or should be, rather) practised.
As the Earth moves around the sun, the axis on which it rotates is at an angle to the plane that the Earth moves through (known as the ecliptic). This angle is the cause of the Earth's seasons. Due to a number of factors (the rotation of the sun on its own axis, the pull of the moon) the Earth's rotational axis also moves in a circle. This is known as precession, and it was probably first figured out by an ancient Greek guy called Hipparchus. Ptolemy is another ancient Greek guy, perhaps best known for coming up with (at the time, quite compelling) reasons supporting the idea that the Earth did not move around the sun, and for coming up with the (much too small) estimate of the Earth's circumference used by Columbus when he planned to sail right round it. Despite that, he was actually a very proficient astronomer, being aware of all sorts of aspects of the Heavens that are ignored by modern astrologers – one obvious example being the precession of the Earth's axis (Ptolemy would have considered it to be a precession of the celestial sphere), as noted above.
Because of this precession, the signs that the sun passes through steadily change over thousands of years. And, of course, the dates for your sign as given in the newspaper horoscope are those for two thousand years ago. Presumably astrologers had a real blow-out party back then and insist on partying like it's 99AD – or 140AD, more precisely, as it is poor Ptolemy's table of dates that astrologers use.
So, if I had been born on the 21st of November 140, I would be a Scorpio. However, I was in fact born on the 21st November 1983, and so am a Libra. Here's the actual table of dates for the 21st Century. If you really, really feel that your (old) sign fits you perfectly, you may be a little disturbed to discover how well you have fooled yourself. Please don't shoot the messenger.
| Pisces | March 14 - April 19 |
| Aries | April 20 - May 15 |
| Taurus | May 16 - June 21 |
| Gemini | June 22 - July 21 |
| Cancer | July 22 - August 10 |
| Leo | August 11 - September 17 |
| Virgo | September 18 - October 31 |
| Libra | November 1 - November 24 |
| Scorpius | November 25 - November 30 |
| Ophiuchus | December 1 - December 18 |
| Sagittarius | December 19 - January 20 |
| Capricornus | January 21 - February 16 |
| Aquarius | February 17 - March 13 |
Also, if you're Ophiuchus, consider yourself so very, very lucky! Now every time someone asks you what your sign is, you can let them in on a little piece of the Universe's beauty. The Earth moves - and the way it moves, moves as well!
References:
What is your sign, really.
Bad Astronomy: Astrology
18.4.07
Preconceptions Challenged
One thing you'll see from time to time on the Innernats, is someone waving their IQ around to try and impress people. Now, if your IQ is high enough that you want to tell people about it, then you're probably not stupid, but you are ignorant. Mensa are people who know a thing or two about IQ tests, and as they put it:
Better to quote where your score came relative to the rest of the population. This also reduces the scorn I will feel for you.
It's also not uncommon to hear uninformed people discussing biology and using terms like 'more evolved' - often to mean 'more human like'. This little piece of hubris has perhaps received it's final nail in the coffin. As New Scientist reports, chimps are 'more evolved' than humans:
This result makes sense to biologists. The human population has been quite small compared to that of chimps until somewhat recently (in evolutionary terms), and we would expect genetic drift to have had more of an effect.
As different IQ tests were developed, each was given its own scoring system. Therefore, an IQ of 150 is a meaningless claim unless you know the actual test which was used.
Better to quote where your score came relative to the rest of the population. This also reduces the scorn I will feel for you.
It's also not uncommon to hear uninformed people discussing biology and using terms like 'more evolved' - often to mean 'more human like'. This little piece of hubris has perhaps received it's final nail in the coffin. As New Scientist reports, chimps are 'more evolved' than humans:
Zhang's team found that 233 chimp genes, compared with only 154 human ones, have been changed by selection since chimps and humans split from their common ancestor about 6 million years ago.
This result makes sense to biologists. The human population has been quite small compared to that of chimps until somewhat recently (in evolutionary terms), and we would expect genetic drift to have had more of an effect.
11.2.07
Thought of the Day
Freedom of speech is exactly the opposite of freedom from criticism.
It is spectacularly hypocritical to claim that someone who criticises your views should shut up because they're infringing on your right to freedom of speech. You have a right to espouse whatever offensive, racist, misogynistic, homophobic or merely incorrect crap you want - and others have a right to call you out on it.
It is spectacularly hypocritical to claim that someone who criticises your views should shut up because they're infringing on your right to freedom of speech. You have a right to espouse whatever offensive, racist, misogynistic, homophobic or merely incorrect crap you want - and others have a right to call you out on it.
21.12.06
Holidays
The holiday edition of New Scientist is out. The headline article is 'Party ferrets to the rescue', and there's a wealth of light-hearted, festive articles - one about kissing, another predicting that developments in recycling toilets will require men to sit down to pee in the near future. One article on bad internet habits is available online. This bit in particular leapt out at me:
The article focuses on the possible negative aspects of this, quite rightly I suppose - but I can't help but wonder about the possible positive benefits as well. I certainly know many bloggers who feel that blogging has helped them to make positive changes in their lives and gain in confidence. Like most technologies, the internet can be used for good and ill.
Best out of the lot (not including the summary of the year in science) is an article on calendrics:
My first brush with calendrics was reading Stephen Jay Gould's Questioning the Millennium. Interestingly, since Gould was chiefly concerned with the irrational importance with which we imbue the (arbitrary) specifics of dates, the New Scientist article is actually a more thorough explanation of the specifics of how we keep the date in tune with the seasons. Strikingly, we can now measure the length of the solar year with greater precision than the regularity of the Earth's orbit, with the result that almost every year 'leap seconds' are added to make up for the differences. This problem would dissolve, of course, if we were to eschew dates altogether and measure our passage through the year by the Earth's solar longitude.
According to Jeff Hancock, who specialises in computer-mediated communication at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, the way we act and emote online has implications for our offline selves. In a study to be published shortly, he and colleagues asked subjects to pretend to be extroverted either on a live blog or in a Microsoft Word document they knew would not be made public, and then ran the participants through a personality test. Hancock says the group that blogged emerged as more extroverted than the Word group. He says that acting out a particular personality online reinforces the behaviour, making it more likely to be followed in real life.
The article focuses on the possible negative aspects of this, quite rightly I suppose - but I can't help but wonder about the possible positive benefits as well. I certainly know many bloggers who feel that blogging has helped them to make positive changes in their lives and gain in confidence. Like most technologies, the internet can be used for good and ill.
Best out of the lot (not including the summary of the year in science) is an article on calendrics:
In 46BC, the "Year of Confusion", Caesar made the changes necessary to switch to a solar calendar. He added two temporary months and extended the length of the existing 12 to make that year 445 days long. The jubilant public believed that their lives had been extended by 90 days. More importantly, when 45BC arrived it was back in phase with the seasons.
My first brush with calendrics was reading Stephen Jay Gould's Questioning the Millennium. Interestingly, since Gould was chiefly concerned with the irrational importance with which we imbue the (arbitrary) specifics of dates, the New Scientist article is actually a more thorough explanation of the specifics of how we keep the date in tune with the seasons. Strikingly, we can now measure the length of the solar year with greater precision than the regularity of the Earth's orbit, with the result that almost every year 'leap seconds' are added to make up for the differences. This problem would dissolve, of course, if we were to eschew dates altogether and measure our passage through the year by the Earth's solar longitude.
20.12.06
Carl Sagan
Ten years after his death to the day (and almost 30 years after Sagan filmed this), much has changed. Some things are better, some worse, some just the same.
Sagan would certainly be glad to see that nuclear weapons are no longer a problem. At least, I assume so, otherwise we'd all be talking about them, wouldn't we?
December 20 is the 10th anniversary of the day we lost Carl Sagan. From its founding in 1980 until the day he died in 1996, Carl served as Chairman of the Board of The Planetary Society. The organization lost a brilliant and charismatic leader. I lost an inspirational boss and a good friend.
Louis D. Friedman writing at the Planetary Society Blog.
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the day we lost Carl Sagan. He was a true skeptic; a man whose mind was open to possibilities, yet able to cut away the chaff of pseudoscience and blind alleys. Even when facing death — a slow, painful, wasting death — he was able to turn it into a series of lessons on science, medicine, and critical thinking. Many people, perhaps most people, would have clung to any idea, no matter how irrational, to make themselves feel better. Carl didn’t do that. He couldn’t. He not only relied on science, he reveled in it.
Phil Plait writing at Bad Astronomy.
The choice is stark and ironic. The same rocket boosters used to launch probes to the planets are poised to send nuclear warheads to the nations. The radioactive power sources on Viking and Voyager derive from the same technology that makes nuclear weapons. The radio and radar techniques employed to track and guide ballistic missiles and defend against attack are also used to monitor and command the spacecraft on the planets and to listen for signals from civilisations near other stars. If we use these technologies to destroy ourselves, we surely will venture no more to the planets and the stars. But the converse is also true. If we continue to the planets, and the stars, our chauvinisms will be shaken further. We will gain a cosmic perspective. We will recognise that our explorations can be carried out only on behalf of all the people of the planet Earth. We will invest our energies in an enterprise devoted not to death but to life: the expansion of our understanding of the Earth and its inhabitants and the search for life elsewhere.
[…]
For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars,; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
Carl Sagan, writing in the final chapter of Cosmos, a chapter entitled: Who speaks for Earth?
19.12.06
The Trouble with Rod Liddle
I watched Rod Liddle's The Trouble with Atheism last night. It makes me sorry that I missed Richard Dawkins' The Root of All Evil? as this show was clearly intended as a response to it. I caught the end of the first part of Root where, after a series of encounters with religious nutjobs, Dawkins explained he was going to speak to a more moderate religious voice: a Jewish Israeli who had converted to Islam, and who Dawkins expected to have a sensible insider's view of religious conflict. Instead, Dawkins found himself sitting across a table from the most memorable lunatic of that year in television, a man who responded to one of Dawkins' questions with one of his own: "Why don't you [in the west] sort out your women?"
Liddle's show was an attempt to show that faith is not a problem and that disbelief can be as dogmatic and dangerous as the religions it opposes. I think that Liddle's attempts in this regard can be left as they are. "Atheism is a peculiar thing," Liddle told us early on, "it's a belief in a negative." No, it's just not believing in any gods. It's not peculiar: it's the way you're born. What I really want to tackle here is the reason that I watched the show in the first place, Liddle's rather embarrassing argument against 'Darwinism'.
Thankfully, Liddle, while ignorant, is clearly not stupid. He didn't take a creationist stance at all, instead an eminently sensible (but shamefully ignorant) scientific view of things. Darwin's The Origin of Species is atheism's 'sacred text' Liddle told us. After explaining how Darwin's fantastic intuitive leap described the natural process that shapes the variety of life on Earth, Riddle then claimed that 'Darwinism' is the keystone of atheism - atheists using it as dogma rather than science.
This would come as a surprise to population geneticist George Price. An atheist, Price was one of the main scientists responsible for our understanding of the evolution of altruism. Price was so astounded to see that goodness arose from natural law that it convinced him of the existence of God and he became a devout Christian. It also comes as a surprise to me. I lost my shred of religion while reading Carl Sagan muse about why we felt the need to invent supernatural and mystical ideas with no evidence to support them when such beautiful natural phenomena exist right in front of us.
So why does Liddle assert that Darwinism is such a big part of atheism? The obvious answer is that Darwin showed how natural law could lead to the beauty of the world, without recourse to a creator. This much, I'll agree, is correct. But, before Darwin came along, the lack of evidence for natural processes wasn't evidence for gods. And if we take Price's tack, evidence for natural processes isn't evidence against gods either. Liddle went further, asserting that Darwinism is the 'only' such natural law, and therefore is of fundamental importance to atheism. But what about continental drift? It explains how breathtaking mountain ranges were created by natural processes. Does that mean that before we had evidence for continental drift, that was evidence that Thor chiselled out the Himalayas with his hammer? And does it mean that continental drift is now an important part of atheism?
Liddle also asserted that atheists are taking Darwinism too far. He certainly got a few talking heads - philosophers and historians - to say that, yes, Darwinism is now being applied to things where it has no relevance. What exactly? Liddle gave us only one example: that Darwinism is being used to explain the existence of religions. Specifically, that religions are 'memes': viral ideas that propagate by a kind of 'survival of the catchiest'. Liddle rebutted this by speaking to a Christian immunologist who thought it was preposterous that religions were like 'viruses that infect you in your sleep'. While he was clearly being humorous here, it isn't much of an argument. If Liddle wanted to show that religion isn't viral he should perhaps have shown us how people choose religions by weighing up their pros and cons, rather than just being inculcated with the same one as their parents or culture. I wonder why he didn't? More seriously, he could have looked at the world's main religions and seen which one's have viral characteristics, for example which ones say that you'll go to Hell if you don't believe in them. I don't know, perhaps those ones are actually in the minority. I certainly didn't find out from Liddle.
Most embarrassing was Liddle's attempt to argue that Darwinism is dogma. It's '147 years old', Liddle tells us, implying that it hasn't changed in all that time. He failed to show us images of biologists in labs and jungles looking at nature, then consulting the Origin of Species and going, "Ah yes! It's really all in here!" Again, I wonder why.
It was when Liddle claimed that 'many scientists' believe that there are holes in Darwinism that I expected him to visit the Discovery Institute or something similar. Imagine my surprise when he spoke to an evolutionary biologist, and I realised that he was quite right. The problem is that he was also enormously ignorant. The biologist (who Liddle keenly told us was 'agnostic') argues that while Darwin explained how adaptions propagate, there is another (natural, genetic) explanation for where the adaptions come from. As near as I could tell, Liddle has been confused by one of the genuine controversies about evolution - the respective importance of natural selection and genetic drift. This scientist clearly felt that the latter was the more important - but did not dispute the fact of the former.
Liddle took the information that Darwin doesn't have the whole story as evidence of atheist dogma. Darwin will eventually be 'superseded' by a better understanding of evolution, Riddle asserts, as is the nifty way of science - thus flying in the face of atheists. And therein lies the spectacular ignorance - an ignorance whose perspective I've been writing from since the third paragraph. Liddle must be living in a cave, or have very, very old biology textbooks. 'Darwinism' has already been superseded by better science. In fact, our understanding of evolution is now properly called Neo-Darwinian evolution.
Lets go back to Dawkins. Dawkins acquitted himself very well in the show, but strangely didn't feature at all during Liddle's attack on Darwinism. Dawkins, when writing on evolution (he is an evolutionary biologist, lest you forget), asserts that, from the standpoint of evolution, all that matters are genes*. But hang on: Darwinism is 147 years old… and we've only known about genes for half a century or so! What's going on? Time travel? Perhaps Darwin wrote about genes, but no-one noticed it until recently? Or is Dawkins an anti-Darwinist himself? The fact is, Darwin didn't write about genes, because he didn't know about them. There were also things that he got wrong, and there are some aspects of evolution that Darwin proposed which are now under debate (such as sexual selection). The Origin of Species is not the holy book that Liddle would like us to believe. It's a scientific book, and as such has been tested, altered and expanded upon - by both atheist scientists and scientists of many different religions (although most scientists are atheists). No religion does this with their 'sacred text'.
To summarise:
Liddle says that Darwinism is a fundamental tenet of atheism.
-This is false. The only tenet of atheism is not believing in any gods.
Liddle implies that Darwinism is dogma.
-This is false. We have a much better and considerably different understanding of evolution than Darwin did.
Liddle says that Darwinism will be superseded by better science.
-This is sort of true and sort of false. It has already been superseded by better science.
What exactly was the point of that? I really don't understand what Liddle thought that this would achieve. I half believe that Liddle originally intended to launch a creationist assault on evolution, realised how stupid that would be and then tried to create a more nuanced, (mostly) scientific attack on 'Darwinism'. On the plus side, he may have given some religious crazies a mildly better understanding of biology. I can only hope that someone does the same for him.
*This is of course from the standpoint of evolution. From the standpoint of, say, everyday life, genes aren't important at all, instead things like kindness, sense of humour and taste in movies are what matters. In the same vein, from the standpoint of shampoo what matters is whether you're greasy, dry or frizzy, but this in no way implies that we should segregate people by their hair-type or something. More on this in my next post.
Liddle's show was an attempt to show that faith is not a problem and that disbelief can be as dogmatic and dangerous as the religions it opposes. I think that Liddle's attempts in this regard can be left as they are. "Atheism is a peculiar thing," Liddle told us early on, "it's a belief in a negative." No, it's just not believing in any gods. It's not peculiar: it's the way you're born. What I really want to tackle here is the reason that I watched the show in the first place, Liddle's rather embarrassing argument against 'Darwinism'.
Thankfully, Liddle, while ignorant, is clearly not stupid. He didn't take a creationist stance at all, instead an eminently sensible (but shamefully ignorant) scientific view of things. Darwin's The Origin of Species is atheism's 'sacred text' Liddle told us. After explaining how Darwin's fantastic intuitive leap described the natural process that shapes the variety of life on Earth, Riddle then claimed that 'Darwinism' is the keystone of atheism - atheists using it as dogma rather than science.
This would come as a surprise to population geneticist George Price. An atheist, Price was one of the main scientists responsible for our understanding of the evolution of altruism. Price was so astounded to see that goodness arose from natural law that it convinced him of the existence of God and he became a devout Christian. It also comes as a surprise to me. I lost my shred of religion while reading Carl Sagan muse about why we felt the need to invent supernatural and mystical ideas with no evidence to support them when such beautiful natural phenomena exist right in front of us.
So why does Liddle assert that Darwinism is such a big part of atheism? The obvious answer is that Darwin showed how natural law could lead to the beauty of the world, without recourse to a creator. This much, I'll agree, is correct. But, before Darwin came along, the lack of evidence for natural processes wasn't evidence for gods. And if we take Price's tack, evidence for natural processes isn't evidence against gods either. Liddle went further, asserting that Darwinism is the 'only' such natural law, and therefore is of fundamental importance to atheism. But what about continental drift? It explains how breathtaking mountain ranges were created by natural processes. Does that mean that before we had evidence for continental drift, that was evidence that Thor chiselled out the Himalayas with his hammer? And does it mean that continental drift is now an important part of atheism?
Liddle also asserted that atheists are taking Darwinism too far. He certainly got a few talking heads - philosophers and historians - to say that, yes, Darwinism is now being applied to things where it has no relevance. What exactly? Liddle gave us only one example: that Darwinism is being used to explain the existence of religions. Specifically, that religions are 'memes': viral ideas that propagate by a kind of 'survival of the catchiest'. Liddle rebutted this by speaking to a Christian immunologist who thought it was preposterous that religions were like 'viruses that infect you in your sleep'. While he was clearly being humorous here, it isn't much of an argument. If Liddle wanted to show that religion isn't viral he should perhaps have shown us how people choose religions by weighing up their pros and cons, rather than just being inculcated with the same one as their parents or culture. I wonder why he didn't? More seriously, he could have looked at the world's main religions and seen which one's have viral characteristics, for example which ones say that you'll go to Hell if you don't believe in them. I don't know, perhaps those ones are actually in the minority. I certainly didn't find out from Liddle.
Most embarrassing was Liddle's attempt to argue that Darwinism is dogma. It's '147 years old', Liddle tells us, implying that it hasn't changed in all that time. He failed to show us images of biologists in labs and jungles looking at nature, then consulting the Origin of Species and going, "Ah yes! It's really all in here!" Again, I wonder why.
It was when Liddle claimed that 'many scientists' believe that there are holes in Darwinism that I expected him to visit the Discovery Institute or something similar. Imagine my surprise when he spoke to an evolutionary biologist, and I realised that he was quite right. The problem is that he was also enormously ignorant. The biologist (who Liddle keenly told us was 'agnostic') argues that while Darwin explained how adaptions propagate, there is another (natural, genetic) explanation for where the adaptions come from. As near as I could tell, Liddle has been confused by one of the genuine controversies about evolution - the respective importance of natural selection and genetic drift. This scientist clearly felt that the latter was the more important - but did not dispute the fact of the former.
Liddle took the information that Darwin doesn't have the whole story as evidence of atheist dogma. Darwin will eventually be 'superseded' by a better understanding of evolution, Riddle asserts, as is the nifty way of science - thus flying in the face of atheists. And therein lies the spectacular ignorance - an ignorance whose perspective I've been writing from since the third paragraph. Liddle must be living in a cave, or have very, very old biology textbooks. 'Darwinism' has already been superseded by better science. In fact, our understanding of evolution is now properly called Neo-Darwinian evolution.
Lets go back to Dawkins. Dawkins acquitted himself very well in the show, but strangely didn't feature at all during Liddle's attack on Darwinism. Dawkins, when writing on evolution (he is an evolutionary biologist, lest you forget), asserts that, from the standpoint of evolution, all that matters are genes*. But hang on: Darwinism is 147 years old… and we've only known about genes for half a century or so! What's going on? Time travel? Perhaps Darwin wrote about genes, but no-one noticed it until recently? Or is Dawkins an anti-Darwinist himself? The fact is, Darwin didn't write about genes, because he didn't know about them. There were also things that he got wrong, and there are some aspects of evolution that Darwin proposed which are now under debate (such as sexual selection). The Origin of Species is not the holy book that Liddle would like us to believe. It's a scientific book, and as such has been tested, altered and expanded upon - by both atheist scientists and scientists of many different religions (although most scientists are atheists). No religion does this with their 'sacred text'.
To summarise:
Liddle says that Darwinism is a fundamental tenet of atheism.
-This is false. The only tenet of atheism is not believing in any gods.
Liddle implies that Darwinism is dogma.
-This is false. We have a much better and considerably different understanding of evolution than Darwin did.
Liddle says that Darwinism will be superseded by better science.
-This is sort of true and sort of false. It has already been superseded by better science.
What exactly was the point of that? I really don't understand what Liddle thought that this would achieve. I half believe that Liddle originally intended to launch a creationist assault on evolution, realised how stupid that would be and then tried to create a more nuanced, (mostly) scientific attack on 'Darwinism'. On the plus side, he may have given some religious crazies a mildly better understanding of biology. I can only hope that someone does the same for him.
*This is of course from the standpoint of evolution. From the standpoint of, say, everyday life, genes aren't important at all, instead things like kindness, sense of humour and taste in movies are what matters. In the same vein, from the standpoint of shampoo what matters is whether you're greasy, dry or frizzy, but this in no way implies that we should segregate people by their hair-type or something. More on this in my next post.
10.12.06
Opinions
G[eorge]: This is where... This is where you're wrong, I, I don't know how to make this any clearer. Let's try this. Write down 1 cent. How do you write down 1 cent?
A[ndrea]: Point zero one.
G: How do you write down half a cent?
A: Uhhh, that would be point zero zero five of a cent.
G: Okay.
A: [laughing] I don't know, I'm not a mathematician. All I'm telling you is I can tell you that with the calculator...
G: Yep.
A: ...and we take the .002 as everybody has told you that you've called in and spoke to...
G: Yes, but...
A: ...and as our system bill accordingly, is correct.
G: But you said .002 *cents*. Why don't you just write it down on a piece of paper. You have .002 *cents* not dollars. .002 *cents*...
A: Right
G: ...times my 35,893. It's a number, but it's still in *cents*. If you quoted me .002 *dollars*, everything is correct. If you quoted me .002 dollars, which represents two tenths of one cent - per kilobyte, then everything is fine. But I wasn't quoted two tenths of one cent, I was quoted two one-thousandths of one cent. I was quoted .002 cents. It's a terminology problem. You guys are quoting .002 dollars as if it's cents, simply because there's a decimal point involved.
A: We're not quoting .002 dollars, we're quoting .002 *cents*
G: Ah, God.. Honestly.
A: I mean the computer is calculating the, the figure here...
G: I know it is, it's... it's a terminology issue...
A: ...and we are calculating the figure here, and we're all coming up with the same thing - except for you.
G: .002 cents is different than .002 dollars. I'm being charged .002 dollars per kilobyte. .002 dollars is one tenth of one... I mean, two tenths of one cent.
A: Okay, well, I mean it's obviously a difference of opinion...
G: It's not opinion! This is.. this is..
A: ...the amount that you're billed for the data usage is entirely correct.
G: [exasperated] Ah, God.. Okay, well, you know what, I'm gonna post this recording on my blog, and...
A: And that's, if that's what you want to do, that's fine.
And lo, he did.
23.11.06
16.9.06
Climate Contrarianism: A Disease in Five Stages
Stage One
"Global warming is a myth."
Stage Two
"Global warming is caused by natural processes."
Stage Three
"Global warming is caused by human activity, but it isn't harmful."
Stage Four
"Global warming is caused by human activity, and it is harmful, but it will be solved by inevitable technological advancements without anyone having to do anything."
Stage Five
"Global warming is caused by human activity, and it is harmful, and tackling it will be painful, so there's nothing we can do about it."
"Global warming is a myth."
Stage Two
"Global warming is caused by natural processes."
Stage Three
"Global warming is caused by human activity, but it isn't harmful."
Stage Four
"Global warming is caused by human activity, and it is harmful, but it will be solved by inevitable technological advancements without anyone having to do anything."
Stage Five
"Global warming is caused by human activity, and it is harmful, and tackling it will be painful, so there's nothing we can do about it."
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