Reply to: Google Celebration

[techno]

No you are not. You are using the tedious "science makes mistakes, therefore all science is invalid" argument. Which is silly and unproductive.

No I am not trying to use that argument, I am sorry you have interpreted it that way.

I believe in science.

I also believe that what science holds as true now may not be true in hundereds of years time after further development and understanding (hence the centre of the universe argument).

As for the Earth is flat, I once read a science journal that this is nothing but a modern myth and medievil people did not ever hold this belief. I simply threw it as a pitiful comment.

I think my post was against your "because of scientific evidence/fact now" it can never be.

[Alf W]

Yep and also because some of the source sites might be blocked by client's internet policies for being rude or of a rabidly extreme political persuarsion (eg Daily Mail).

[PM-Junkie]

I wonder, do people copy and past the article as well as the link because they think people are too thick to click on a hyperlink?

[expat]

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17064

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There is a vast literature on the implications of Darwin’s biological ideas for left wing politics.

I was afraid there might be.

[Alf W]

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17064

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. It is also 150 years since the publication of the book that made him world famous, indeed notorious – On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection.

For a man who consciously cultivated scholarly obscurity and whose real claim to our attention is as a natural scientist, Darwin’s image is extraordinarily contested.

On the one hand, we have the benign sage portrayed in David Attenborough’s recent BBC special, Charles Darwin And The Tree Of Life. On the other, you have the Darwin who is under constant attack from the Christian right.

The Guardian recently trumpeted an opinion poll commissioned by the religious think-tank Theos. According to this “only” half the British population think that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is definitely or probably true.

Some 22 percent accept either creationism or “intelligent design” – in other words, they think that God directly created all the complex variety of living beings.

This is one reason why Darwin’s legacy is disputed. It has come under fire from those who campaign for “intelligent design” to be taught on equal terms with evolutionary theory at schools.

This is presumably why Attenborough devoted so much of his programme to carefully and vividly demonstrating how subsequent scientific research has confirmed the theory of evolution.

Suspected

But Darwin is also suspected by many on the left. They fear that his ideas have served to legitimise a succession of reactionary ideologies.

These start with “Social Darwinism” in the 19th century – the attempt by various ideologues to prove that biological evolution justifies capitalist competition and the imperialist domination of “inferior” races.

Then, much more recently, there has been the development of sociobiology. This involves reducing the behaviour of human beings in society to the demands supposedly put on them by their genes.

The reactionary implications of this kind of approach are well brought out by Richard Dawkins’ portrayal of people as “lumbering robots” driven unconsciously by the “selfish genes” that use them as means for their reproduction.

None of this has much to do with Darwin. Social Darwinism was developed before The Origin Of Species was published, notably by the liberal sociologist Herbert Spencer, who coined the slogan “survival of the fittest”.

It usually relies on the very different, indeed incompatible, conception of evolution developed earlier by the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

Nor was Darwin a racist. Adrian Desmond and James Moore, the authors of an outstanding biography of Darwin, have just published a new study, Darwin’s Sacred Cause.

They document how disgusted he was when confronted with slavery in South America during his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle in the 1830s.

Darwin developed the idea of evolution by natural selection after returning to England. In his notebooks he attacked the idea that black people belonged to a different species from whites: “Do not slave holders wish to make the black man other kind? From our origin in one common ancestor we may be all netted together.”

Indeed, at the core of Darwin’s theory is the idea that, not just human beings, but all living organisms, are “netted together” through the evolutionary process.

The Origin Of Species seeks to establish two basic claims. The first is that evolution, what he calls “descent by modification”, happens.

The Christian orthodoxy of Darwin’s day held that all the different kinds of plants and animals were “special creations”. In other words, God designed all the different species as we know them today.

Geology

The implication was that nature has no history. But by the middle of the 19th century this had ceased to be credible.

The development of geology revealed that the earth itself had a history, and also exposed, often buried deep in rock strata, the fossilised remains of extinct plants and animals.

It was an obvious conclusion that these were the ancestors of the present day array of plants and animals. But if living organisms evolved – developed and changed from one kind into another – how did this happen?

Enter Darwin’s second great claim, the theory of evolution by natural selection itself. This explained how evolution worked on the basis of three assumptions.

The first is that, according to Darwin, “many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive... consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence”. An organism’s chances of survival will depend on how well adapted it is to its environment.

Second, the individual members of a species differ slightly from one another. Moreover, they are able to pass these variations on to their offspring. Third, some of these differences will allow the organisms that possess them, in a given environment, to reproduce better than others.

What do these assumptions imply? Take a population of organisms belonging to the same species and living in a common environment.

The descendants of those organisms that develop variations that fit them better to that environment will become, over time, a larger proportion of the population.

Or, as Darwin puts it: “Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to any other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.

“The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.”

One of the most important things about natural selection is that variations do not develop because they may fit the affected organism better to its environment. A creationist would say, for example, that the human eye was designed by God to allow us to see.

For Darwin, the eye develops through the “very slow, intermittent action of natural selection” – an almost endless process of minor modifications in different organisms each of which adapts the organism better to its environment.

The reason why each variation takes place is nothing to do with any conscious or unconscious purpose of increasing the organism’s chances of survival.

We now know that variations are caused by small, random changes in the genetic code – the strings of DNA modules that govern the manufacture of proteins as plants and animals develop – when they are passed on from parents to offspring. It is purely a matter of good or bad luck whether or not a variation helps or hinders the organism cope with its environment.

So evolution is blind, according to Darwin. It is the constant interplay between genetic mutations and environmental changes that leads to the proliferation of different species each representing a specific niche in the struggle for survival.

Tendency

Darwin took the idea of the “struggle for existence” from the writings of Thomas Robert Malthus, the early 19th century economist. Malthus argued that there was a natural tendency for the human population to grow faster than the production of food. This made the division of society into rich and poor inevitable.

Darwin’s great contemporary Karl Marx commented: “It is remarkable how Darwin recognises among beasts and plants the English society of his day with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions’ and the Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’.”

Darwin in fact said he used the idea of a struggle for existence in “a large and metaphorical sense”. Thus he argued that it may pit animals or plants not necessarily against each other, but against their environment:

“There must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life.”

Despite his criticisms of Darwin, Marx wrote that The Origin Of Species “is very important and serves me as a natural-scientific basis for the class struggle in history”. Indeed, at Marx’s funeral in 1883, his great friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels compared the two men.

He was right to do so. Marx dethroned all the kings and queens, the great men and women of history. He showed how societies change as a result of the conflicts that develop in the way in which they organise production.

Darwin dethroned God. He allowed us to see all the variety and richness of life as nothing to do with divine purpose, as the result of a blind process of natural selection. As he puts it in the final paragraph of The Origin Of Species, “There is grandeur in this view of life.”

There is a vast literature on the implications of Darwin’s biological ideas for left wing politics.

Viren Swami wrote a three column series for Socialist Worker examining evolution and society. You can read them at » There’s no ‘intelligent design’ for life

Also well worth reading is Paul McGarr’s overview of the work of biologist Stephen Jay Gould, which surveys contemporary debates in evolutionary theory.

It appeared in the International Socialist journal and can be found online at » www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=6&issue=100

[PM-Junkie]

The evolution theory is fine....but what I am struggling to understand is how we can devolve back to a lower form of life known as "the Politician"?

[BrowneIssue]

BTW - I am not a believer in God, but just putting an argument back to yours.

No you are not. You are using the tedious "science makes mistakes, therefore all science is invalid" argument. Which is silly and unproductive.

Science comes up with theories based on evidence which get checked out. If they do not stand up, they get discarded. If it looks good, it remains and gets revised.

Newton's work on motion was a great piece of work, but has been revised a little because of more recent work. Einstein's work on relativity has been revised and tweaked a little. The 'laws of thermodynamics' required tweaks when atomic energy became understood. This does not make then wrong, we just add to the knowledge and revise it.

The evolution of species idea has been examined very, very thoroughly. There are a few theories suggesting ways in which it could be tweaked but nobody in science is saying it is twoddle. There are people spouting faith-based ideas who disregard the evidence who claim to be offering scientific alternatives, but the rest of the science community does not recognise this handful of individuals because they are not scientists.

The evolution of species theory is a good one. It stands up to analysis and experiment. Creationism does not.

[expat]

Please supply ANY evidence that Scientists (or indeed ANYONE) ever thought that the World was flat........ the center of the (known) Universe - Yep but Flat??

Sorry FSM beat me to it!

Actually it wouldn't matter if some "scientists" had thought the world was flat. Science has never held that as a theory.

Today some scientists believe that God exists, I am told. Science does not have a theory on that matter.


BTW a "theory" is not the same as "a personal guess". Just before we get that chestnut.

[Drewster]

History is littered with "Science proves this...". Once upon a time it was believed by scientists the Earth was flat, the Earth was the centre of the universe.

Other scientists then come along and prove that is not the case.

It is all about timelines. At this moment scientific evidence proves there is no God as the creationists want us to believe, but who is to say in 500 years time science proves that there is some aliens directing us etc.

BTW - I am not a believer in God, but just putting an argument back to yours.

Please supply ANY evidence that Scientists (or indeed ANYONE) ever thought that the World was flat........ the center of the (known) Universe - Yep but Flat??

Sorry FSM beat me to it!

[FSM with Cheddar]

History is littered with "Science proves this...". Once upon a time it was believed by scientists the Earth was flat, the Earth was the centre of the universe.

Other scientists then come along and prove that is not the case.

No science NEVER told us that the earth was flat. That is what individual people believed, based on a lack of knowledge.

On the science of evolution by natural section. Over the last 100 years, ALL findings have supported and enhanced the theory.

Yes science does get things wrong, and theories change. However the underlying fact that species evolve is a fact, its just our understanding that may change.

[bogeyman]

Of course there's no God, FFS. There's no Tooth Fairy, no Jack Frost, no bogeyman-under-the-bed and there is no God / godhead / group of gods living on a mountain / aliens directing us / mystical powers in star constellations. Grow up.

Oh yeah? Have you checked under your bed lately?

Other than that, completely agree.

[techno]

Prove it.

History is littered with "Science proves this...". Once upon a time it was believed by scientists the Earth was flat, the Earth was the centre of the universe.

Other scientists then come along and prove that is not the case.

It is all about timelines. At this moment scientific evidence proves there is no God as the creationists want us to believe, but who is to say in 500 years time science proves that there is some aliens directing us etc.

BTW - I am not a believer in God, but just putting an argument back to yours.

[FSM with Cheddar]

Last week I prayed to my invisible friend (Flying Spaghetti Monster) for an inch of snow.

I think he must have been drunk at the time, because we got about 12inches.

So that is definite proof that he exists. Also he talks to me in my head, and told me that I must keep my faith.

Faith and personal revelations: 1
Evidence based reasoning: 0

[cailin maith]

Prove it.

Can't... thats what faith is all about.

Anyway... you should be more careful with your blood pressure.

[expat]

Well done, BI. But the wearing part is how you have to keep doing that, as the same old fallacies, lies, obscurantism, straw men, irrelevancies, and wilful ignorance keep popping up. The opposite of scientific progress, where you may re-examine the theory and the evidence at any time, but don't actually have to keep doing it from the start.