Reims

 
When we were in Europe, we took a trip to Reims in Northeastern France. It's a 2.5 hour drive from Brussels where we were visiting my granddaughter Zoë (and her parents).

Reims is in the heart of champagne country and the main purpose of our visit was to see the winery of Veuve Clicquot, our favorite champagne. The cellars are a maze of limestone quarries under the city. After the tour there was free champagne! Zoë loved the champagne.


The other, less important, site in Reims is the cathedral where dozens of French kings were crowned. One of them was Charles VII, crowned on July 17, 1429 after the city had surrendered to Jeanne d'Arc and her army the day before. The cathedral is beautiful but I was struck by the statue of Joan in front of the cathedral. Zoë liked her too.


Someday I'd like to visit Rouen where Joan of Arc was burned as a heretic by her English captors.

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Lyon, France

 
I'm in Lyon for the evolution meeting and this was our day to see the city. We haven't been here for over 30 years.

I love European cities. They are simultaneously more modern and more ancient than cities in Canada and the USA. I love the cafes and bistros and I love the old buildings and the history.

Lyon was an ancient hill top Celtic fort when it was captured by the Romans in 43 BC. Under the Romans it grew rapidly on the hill overlooking the Rhône and Saône rivers. Lugdunum, the Roman city, was the capital of Gaul and its most important city.

Here's an example of a bistro from Pixdaus.


And here's a photo taken today by Ms. Sandwalk. This is the Roman amphitheater built in about 15AD under the reign of Augustus. Today it's known as Théâtres Romains de Fourvièreand it's still in use as an outdoor theater, although part of it is in ruins and the capacity is much less than it was 1800 years ago after it was expanded.


Tomorrow we're going to the flea market.

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"American" History

 
PZ Myers posted this video of Cynthia Dunbar reciting a prayer to open a meeting of the Texas IDiots state board of education [Another reason to ban official prayer at public meetings]. He makes an important point: why the hell is anyone saying prayers to open a meeting of publicly elected government officials? We do this in Canada as well. It makes no sense in the 21st century.



But that's not the only thing weird about this prayer. PZ draws your attention to the following statements in the "prayer."

I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses.

Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England...the same objective is present — a Christian land governed by Christian principles.

I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.

Keep in mind that this is the same board of education that is rewriting American history. They don't have a lot of credibility. Having said that, there's one thing I'd like to point out. Cynthia Dunbar makes reference to the First Charter of Virginia as evidence that the United States of America is a Christian nation.

Here's a bit from the beginning of that charter from: The First Charter of Virginia.

JAMES, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc. WHEREAS our loving and well-disposed Subjects, Sir Thomas Gates, and Sir George Somers, Knights, Richard Hackluit, Clerk, Prebendary of Westminster, and Edward-Maria Wingfield, Thomas Hanham, and Raleigh Gilbert, Esquires William Parker, and George Popham, Gentlemen, and divers others of our loving Subjects, have been humble Suitors unto us, that We would vouchsafe unto them our License, to make Habitation, Plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called VIRGINIA, and other parts and Territories in America, either appertaining unto us, or which are not now actually possessed by any Christian Prince or People, situate, lies, and being all along the Sea Coasts, between four and thirty Degrees of Northerly Latitude from the Equinoctial Line, and five and forty Degrees of the same Latitude, and in the main Land between the same four and thirty and five and forty Degrees, and the Islands thereunto adjacent, or within one hundred Miles of the Coast thereof;

....

We, greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government: DO, by these our Letters Patents, graciously accept of, and agree to, their humble and well-intended Desires;

This doesn't sound much like the United States of America, does it? The United States didn't come into existence until almost 180 years after this charter was written. Furthermore, when the revolution began the goal was to separate from Great Britain and its monarch and start a new country that did not have a state religion.

At least I thought that was the goal. Does Ms. Dunbar want to turn back the clock and revert to being a colony of Great Britain? Does she want Queen Elizabeth II to become the American head of state and the Church of England to become the state religion as in 1606? I'm not sure that Britain would agree to such a change. But I bet if you ask them nicely they'd consider giving you Prince Charles as an American king.

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Waterloo

 
Yesterday we took Zoë on her first major outing. We visited the site of the battle of Waterloo. Here's a photo of Jane, Michael, and Zoë in front of the entrance to the visitor center located on the ridge overlooking the farms of La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont. This was the location of some of the bloodiest fighting of the entire battle (Ney's cavalry charge and the attack of the Imperial Guard).

Today there's a huge artificial hill on the site. You can climb the stairs to the top and see the entire battlefield.


The last time I visited Waterloo was 35 years ago with our niece and nephew. Ever since I've wanted to take my own kids to see this famous site and yesterday was the day for Jane and my new granddaughter. My son Gordon will be so sad that he missed this battlefield () but since he'll be here in a few months I'm sure his sister will take him to Waterloo.

For more pictures, see Family Outing.

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Was Charles Darwin an Agnostic Atheist?

 
Let me say, right at the start, that I really don't care whether Charles Darwin was a deist, an agnostic, an atheist, or something else entirely. He died on April 19, 1882. That was a very long time ago. And the truth of evolution does not depend on what Darwin may or may not have believed about God.

Still, it's of some historical interest to learn what Darwin thought of religion. My own opinion is that these speculations are never going to be satisfactorily answered because Darwin was not always candid about his beliefs, for Emma's sake.

It may come as a bit of a surprise to find me favorably recommending an article on Uncommon Descent but this article by Flannery deserves your attention: Theist, Agnostic, Atheist: Will the Real Charles Darwin Please Stand Up?.

It's not going to make my agnostic friends happy but I think it's a pretty good analysis of Darwin's beliefs. I especially like the emphasis on the fact that his grandfather wasn't religious and his father (Robert) was an atheist. I'm pretty sure that his brother, Erasmus, was a nonbeliever as well. It strains credibility to imagine that Darwin was ever a religious man.

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The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

 
Twenty-nine men died on November 10, 1975 when the S.S. Edmund Fitgerald sank in a storm on Lake Superior.

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The Devil Among Us: America's First Witch Hunt

 
Here's a clip from the movie The Devil Among Us: America's First Witch Hunt. It's about the first witches who were executed in the colonies of New Haven and Connecticut in New England. (See: The Hanging of Goodwife Knapp in 1653.)

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The Hanging of Goodwife Knapp in 1653

Roger Knapp was born about 1618 in England and came to New England in the early 1640s. He eventually settled in Fairfield in the colony of New Haven in 1644 (now Connecticut). Not much is known about Roger Knapp except that he is listed as a farmer and an Indian trader.

His wife is known only as "Goodwife" Knapp—a title that’s equivalent to "Mrs." Knapp in modern times. (Sometimes shortened to “Goody”. Women with a higher status in society were referred to as “Mistress.”) In 1653 Goodwife Knapp was accused and convicted of witchcraft and executed by hanging in Try’s field outside the village of Fairfield. (None of the witches executed in New England were burned at the stake.)

Nothing is known of the trial of Goodwife Knapp or what she was accused of. This was right in the middle of the epidemic of witch trials and executions in England and Scotland and the phenomenon naturally made its way to the new colonies. Typically, the witch was accused of associating with the Devil, sometimes intimately. The “evidence” was usually a series of unusual happenings that occurred in the presence of the accused, or strange behavior that was deemed to be inappropriate. In many cases, the accused women seem to be rather more outspoken than others—in other words, they didn’t know their proper place.

Men who were accused of witchcraft were also people who were not satisfied with the status quo.

One of the books put on line by Googel is The Salem Witch Trials: a Reference Guide (by K. David Goss). It recounts the trial of Anne Hibbins who was hanged in 1656.

Anne Hibbins (1656) was censured by Boston church leaders for her contentious behavior in repeatedly accusing a local craftsman of overcharging for his labor. She was furthermore charged with supplanting her husband’s position in dealing with this problem, violating the puritan belief that wives should submit themselves to the leadership of their husbands. For this offense, she was unrepentant. She was removed from membership in the Boston church and found guilty of witchcraft in 1654 after the death of her husband. Although the magistrates denied the initial vedict, a second trial was held before the Massachusetts Great and General Court. Anne Hibbins was convicted a second time of witchcraft and executed in 1656. In his assessment of this tragedy, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, in his "History of Massachusetts," places the blame for this conviction upon the people of Boston who disliked Anne Hibbin’s contentious nature. He wrote that the trial and the condemnation of Anne Hibbins for withcraft was "a most remarkable occurrence in the colony," for he found tha is was her temper and argumentative nature that caused he neighbors to accuse he of being a wtich.

It’s very likely that Goodwife Knapp was hung for the same reasons three years earlier in Fairfield in the New Haven Colony.

The remarkable thing about the Goodwife Knapp execution is not the trial itself but the aftermath. Roger Ludlow, the Deputy Governor of Connecticut, had been fighting on and off for several years with his neighbor Mary Staples (wife of Thomas Staples, also known as Staplies). In 1651 Ludlow won a suit against Mary Staples for slander but this did not put and end to their dispute.

During the trial and imprisonment of Goodwife Knapp, Roger Ludlow and his supporters tried to get her to affirm that Mary Staples was a witch but Knapp refused. Just before the execution, Ludlow claimed that Goodwife Knapp came down the ladder and whispered in his ear that Mary Staples was, indeed, a witch.

Ludlow told this story to his friends, Rev. John Davenport and his wife, and it soon spread to the entire village of Fairfield. Accusing someone of witchcraft was a very serious charge—especially just after Goodwife Knapp had been hanged. When Thomas Staples heard that Ludlow was making these accusations against his wife he filed a defamation suit against Roger Ludlow.

The trail took place in May, 1654. There are several accounts on the internet taken from books that have recently been scanned. The best and most readable is from The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut by John M. Taylor. This is from the trial records and some of the descriptions are quite graphic, particularly the account of the examination of Goodwife Knapp’s body for witch’s teates.

There’s another good account in Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638 ... by David D. Hall.

The role of the Sherwood family in the trial is described in A Changing America: Seen Through One Sherwood Family Line 1634-2006.

The reason for my interest in this trial is that many of my ancestors lived in Fairfield at the time and their names are mentioned in the account. Some of my ancestors were friends of the Staples and defended Mary Staples while others sided with Roger Ludlow. Ludlow lost the case and he left Fairfield the following year (1654), making his way eventually back to England and then to Ireland where he remained for the rest of his life.

By an extraordinary coincidence, my good friend and former best man at my wedding, Charles Beach, is a descendant of Mary Staples and Thomas Staples. Their daughter, Mary Nicol Staples (1630-1677) married John Beach (1623-1677).

My living relatives might be interested in our connections to the trial: here they are.

These are ancestors of Isabelle Hooper Burns (1862-1923) the mother of my maternal grandfather. More specifically, they are direct ancestors of her mother’s mother, Esther Treen (1807-~1891).

Here are the names of people mentioned in the defamation lawsuit. Our direct ancestors are underlined. (Some of these have subsequently been proven to be incorrect = strikeout.)

John Banks (1619-1684), attorney for Thomas Staples. (He is my great⁹-grandfather. Most of the others are from this generation or one generation earlier: great¹⁰)

Witnesses Andrew Ward (1597-1659) and his wife Hester Ward = Hester Sherman (1606-1666).

Witnesses: Goodwife Barlow = Ann Ward (?-1684) and her husband John Barlow (1599-1674)

Witness: Goodwife Sherwood = Mary Onge? second wife of Thomas Sherwood (1586-1655). Thomas' first wife, my ancestor, was Alice Tiler¹ (1585-1635).

Witness: Goodwife Odell (Odill) daughter-in-law of John Odell (1574) and Joan Bingley (1581-1640).

Witness: Mr. Jones is John Jones (1591-1665).

Witness: Goodwife Lockwood is Susan (Susanna) Norman (1616-1661) wife of Robert Lockwood (1600-1658).

Witness: Deborah Lockwood (1636-?), 17 years old at the time of the trial and my great⁹-grandmother. She is the daughter of Robert Lockwood and Susanna Lockwood.

Witness: Thomas Lyon (1621-1690).

Witness: Rebecca (Rebecka) Hull is Rebecca Jones, wife of Cornelius Hull and daughter of John Jones (1591-1665) and Sarah UNKNOWN (1599-1650).

Witness: Thomas Barlow was the second husband of Rose Sherwood, daughter of Thomas Sherwood (1586-1655) and Alice Tiler¹ (1585-1655).

Goodwife Pell is not an ancestor of mine but she has an interesting connection. She is Lucy Pell, wife of Thomas Pell who later founded Pelham, in what is now the Bronx, New York City [The Involvement of Thomas Pell's Family in the Witchcraft Persecution of Goody Knapp].

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1. Usually given as Alice Seabrook but this is almost certainly wrong according to A Changing America: Seen Through One Sherwood Family Line 1634-2006, Volume 1 By Frank P. Sherwood.

The drawing of the hanging of Ann Hibbins and the map of the colonies in 1650 are from the HTY277 website of the University of Maine at Farmington.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 

Niall Nóigiallach is a very famous man (Nóigiallach is Gaelic for "having Nine Hostages"). He was an Irish King who lived from about 350 to 405 AD. The "nine hostages" refers to hostages that he kept from each of the places that owed him allegiance.

Niall was fond of raiding the coast of Roman Britain and on one of those raids he captured a man named Maewyn Succat, who became a slave in Ireland. Succat eventually escaped, returned to Britain, and became a Christian missionary. He then went back to Ireland to convert the Irish heathens to Christianity. We know Maewyn Succat by his Christian name, Patrick, or Saint Patrick.

Aside from converting the Irish heathens to Christianity, St. Patrick is famous for his skill as a magician. One of his most famous tricks was removing all the snakes from Ireland. At least that's what the legend says.

Connie Barlow describes A St. Patrick's Day Parable.(This is the same Connie Barlow I met last summer—the one who edited Evolution Extended.)

Ireland is a land of no snakes. It has no slithering serpents. There are no rat snakes in Ireland; there are no rattlesnakes; there are no garter snakes. There are no snakes at all.

The absence of snakes in Ireland seems to cry out for an explanation — but only if one regards or ventures to the island from outside: from England, say, or from continental Europe. To the indigenous Celts, there would, of course, have been nothing to explain. The Gaelic peoples no more needed to explain an absence of snakes on their island home than they needed to explain an absence of kangaroos. To those who came to Ireland from abroad, however, a dearth of serpents was a striking anomaly in need of an answer.

We humans must have answers. And so arose the legend of St. Patrick and the snakes. The reason Ireland has no snakes, the story goes, is that Patrick charmed all snakes on the island to come down to the seashore, slither into the water, and drown. So Ireland did once have snakes, but it has them no more. Patrick charmed them all into the sea.

She goes on to explain why there are no snakes in Ireland but I prefer to swtich to the website of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park for their explanation of Why Ireland Has No Snakes.

Now snakes are found in deserts, grasslands, forests, mountains, and even oceans virtually everywhere around the world. Everywhere except Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland, and Antarctica, that is.

One thing these few snake-less parts of the world have in common is that they are surrounded by water. New Zealand, for instance, split off from Australia and Asia before snakes ever evolved. So far, no serpent has successfully migrated across the open ocean to a new terrestrial home. As the world's oceans have risen and fallen over the millennia, land bridges have come and gone between Ireland, other parts of Great Britain, and the European mainland, allowing animals and early humans to cross. However, any snake that may have slithered it's way to Ireland would have turned into a popsicle when the ice ages hit.

The most recent ice age began about three million years ago and continues into the present. Between warm periods like the current climate, glaciers have advanced and retreated more than 20 times, often completely blanketing Ireland with ice. Snakes, being cold-blooded animals, simply aren't able to survive in areas where the ground is frozen year round. Ireland thawed out for the last time only 15,000 years ago. Since then, 12 miles of icy-cold water in the Northern Channel have separated Ireland from neighboring Scotland, which does harbor a few species of snakes. There are no snakes in Ireland for the simple reason that they can't get there.

[The book cover is from a book by Sheila MacGill Callahan (Author) and Will Hillenbrand (Illustrator). You can buy it on Amazon.com.]

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Reposted from St. Patrick Banished Snakes from Ireland with a snippet from Niall Nóigiallach - Niall of the Nine Hostages. You find out how Irish I am by clicking here.

The Demise of the Squiggle

Fritz Lipmann is often credited with discovering ATP but that's not correct. He won his Nobel Prize for discovering Coenzyme A [The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1953].

However, it's fair to say that Lipmann made some of the most important contributions to our understanding of ATP as an energy currency. His classic 1941 paper in Advances in Enzymology was entitled "Metabolic Generation and Utilization of Phosphate Bond Energy." In that paper he introduced the concept of an energy-rich phosphate bond designated by a squiggle (~). Thus ATP could be represented as

AMP~P~P
to show that it had two such high energy bonds. The cleavage of either bond is accompanied by a large release of energy that's available to do work. The idea that ATP contained some special bonds with high energy was very attractive and the concept ruled in biochemistry textbooks for several decades. Indeed, there are still many courses and websites that still use the squiggle.

The concept is extremely misleading and came under attack by many biochemists in the 1950s and 60s. According to these biochemists, the correct way of looking at ATP as an energy currency is to recognize that the overall reaction of hydrolysis is associated with a large negative Gibbs free energy change.

ATP + H₂O → ADP + P_i          ΔG°′ = -32 kJ mol^-1

It's the system, including reactants and products, that is associated with the large negative free energy change. The only reason ATP is useful as an energy currency is because the concentration of ATP is maintained at high levels relative to ADP + P_i inside the cell. As a matter of fact, the actual Gibbs free energy change in vivo is closer to -48 kJ mol^-1.

If the system were allowed to reach equilibrium then ΔG°′ = 0. Think about what this means. At equilibrium those ~P "high energy" bonds are still being broken but there's no useful energy being produced.

Does this mean that the strength of a chemical bond depends on the relative concentration of reactants and products? Of course not. What it means, in the words of someone who knew Friz Lipmann, is that his understanding of basic thermodynamics was rudimentary.

The arguments over the proper way to think about ATP raged back and forth in the scientific literature for over thirty years. For the most part Lipmann did not participate in the squiggle debates, he left his defense to others. It's fair to say that there was no knock-out blow that ended the fight. Gradually people began to realize that the squiggle—and the concept of a high energy bond—were unfortunate at best and possibly misleading to the point of being counter-productive. The squiggle has been dropped from most (all?) textbooks.

So, how do we explain the fact that ATP hydrolysis is associated with a large release of energy under conditions found inside the cell? If it's not because of some special "high energy" bond, then what is it? See Why Is ATP an Important Energy Currency in Biochemistry?.

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Here's a couple of articles on the history of the squiggle:

Fritz Lipmann

Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life: The elusive squiggle (p.80>)

Here are some websites that still refer to "high-energy" bonds and still use the squiggle. It's interesting that most of these sites include a modest disclaimer, stating that there's no such thing as a "high-energy bond" but they then go on to talk about high energy bonds using the squiggle notation.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Columbia University

University of Connecticut

Online Textbook: Department of School Education, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, India

[I am indebted to my colleague Byron Lane for explaining the history to me. He was a post-doc in the Lipmann lab during the 1950s where he was in a position to observe the debate first-hand. Byron kindly gave me copies of the relevant papers. Our discussion began when we realized that the kinds of scientific debates that were common in the past are no longer occurring even though there are many controversies bubbling beneath the surface. We don't know why. Does anyone?]

Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin?

 
This week's issue of Newsweek has an article by Malcolm Jones comparing the influence of Charles Darwin, the greatest scientist who ever lived, and an American politician named Abraham Lincoln. Why, you might ask, would anyone make such a comparison? It's because they were both born on February 12th, 1809.

Now, you might think this was a slam-dunk in favor of Darwin but that would be foolish. Remember that this is an American magazine. In America, Lincoln is responsible for abolishing slavery—conveniently ignoring the fact that slavery had already been illegal in the British Empire for almost thirty years. The Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833 and gave all slaves their freedom.

The answer is ... Lincoln!!! [Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin?].

Lincoln and Darwin were both revolutionaries, in the sense that both men upended realities that prevailed when they were born. They seem—and sound—modern to us, because the world they left behind them is more or less the one we still live in. So, considering the joint magnitude of their contributions—and the coincidence of their conjoined birthdays—it is hard not to wonder: who was the greater man? It's an apples-and-oranges—or Superman-vs.-Santa—comparison. But if you limit the question to influence, it bears pondering, all the more if you turn the question around and ask, what might have happened if one of these men had not been born? Very quickly the balance tips in Lincoln's favor. As much of a bombshell as Darwin detonated, and as great as his book on evolution is (E. O. Wilson calls it "the greatest scientific book of all time"), it does no harm to remember that he hurried to publish "The Origin of Species" because he thought he was about to be scooped by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently come up with much the same idea of evolution through natural selection. In other words, there was a certain inevitability to Darwin's theory. Ideas about evolution surfaced throughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as cogent as Darwin's—until Wallace came along—it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea.

Lincoln, in contrast, is sui generis. Take him out of the picture, and there is no telling what might have happened to the country. True, his election to the presidency did provoke secession and, in turn, the war itself, but that war seems inevitable—not a question of if but when. Once in office, he becomes the indispensable man. As James McPherson demonstrates so well in the forthcoming "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief," Lincoln's prosecution of the war was crucial to the North's success—before Grant came to the rescue, Lincoln was his own best general. Certainly we know what happened once he was assassinated: Reconstruction was administered punitively and then abandoned, leaving the issue of racial equality to dangle for another century. But here again, what Lincoln said and wrote matters as much as what he did. He framed the conflict in language that united the North—and inspires us still. If anything, with the passage of time, he only looms larger—more impressive, and also more mysterious. Other presidents, even the great ones, submit to analysis. Lincoln forever remains just beyond our grasp—though not for want of trying: it has been estimated that more books have been written about him than any other human being except Jesus.

If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not gainsay his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications. Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave. He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it. Lincoln prosecuted a war—and became its ultimate casualty—to ensure that no man should have dominion over another. Their identical birthdays afford us a superb opportunity to observe these men in the shared context of their time—how each was shaped by his circumstances, how each reacted to the beliefs that steered the world into which he was born and ultimately how each reshaped his corner of that world and left it irrevocably changed.

Answer: Lincoln

In fairness, if you only consider the United States of America, then the answer might be correct. Darwin's ideas do not have much influence there.

The comments on RichardDawkins.net are fun to read.

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[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]

Gunther Stent (1924 - 2008)

 
Gunther Stent was one of the leading figures in the 'phage group, a group of molecular biologists who transformed the science of biology back in the 1940's, '50's, and 60's. He died on June 12th [Gunther Stent, an Early Researcher in Molecular Biology, Is Dead at 84].

Today's Citation Classic from John Dennehy is the book The Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses by Gunther Stent. In keeping with his main theme, John often uses the citation classic to highlight the influence of past scientists and not necessarily the significance of a single paper. Stent's name is not associated with any one experiment, or even a series of experiments. His influence extended well beyond his ability to do important experiments.

I first encountered Gunther Stent at the annual 'phage meeting held at Cold Spring Harbor every summer. I learned pretty quickly that he thought on a different plane than the rest of us. I also observed first hand the respect he earned from other famous biologists. At the time I was just a graduate student, I'm certain that Gunther Stent was unaware of my existence.

Later on I began to read Stent's articles on the history and philosophy of biology and I was greatly influenced by his writing.¹ Stent had an amazing ability to sift through the garbage and get to the heart of an argument; especially if that meant going against the perceived wisdom of his intellectual peers. Here are two examples from THE DILEMMA OF SCIENCE AND MORALS published in Zygon in March 1975. Stent is discussing contradictions between modern science and Western moral traditions.

The first example we might consider concerns the teaching of evolution in the public schools, which evidently has come a long way from the days of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee half a century ago. In 1972 the Curriculum Commission of the California State Board of Education held hearings in response to the demand of some Christian fundamentalist groups that in the officially approved biology textbooks the biblical account of Creation ought to be presented on an equal footing with the Darwinian view as an explanation of the origin of’ life and of the species. Although much of the argument before the Commission pertained to the question of whether the theory of evolution is merely an unproven speculation, as alleged by the fundamentalists, or a solidly documented scientific proposition, as claimed by the biologists, the deeper point at issue was religious freedom.

For the fundamentalists held that a Christian child in a tax supported school has as much right to be protected from the dogmas of atheism as an atheist child has to be protected from prayer. Hence, it would follow that the classroom teaching of Darwinism as the only explanation of biocosmogony is an infringement of the religious freedom of Christian parents to raise their children in the faith of their choice. This argument seems completely justified, whether or not it is true as claimed in pro-Darwinian testimony at the hearings by liberal, apologist clergymen that one can be a good Christian without taking the biblical account of Genesis all that literally. After all, the fundamentalist faith is to take the Bible literally. But the inference that follows from admitting the justice of the fundamentalist claim is not that biology texts should give Genesis equal time with evolution. Rather, it is to be concluded that no public school system can operate effectively in a heterogeneous social setting without having its curriculum prejudice the minds of the pupils against the cherished beliefs of some of the citizens. In other words, in this case the ultimate Christian ethical aim of freedom and individual rights has to give way to the pagan aim of mounting a pedagogically effective society.

The second example is much more controversial, yet the logic is impeccable. This is not the sort of thing that modern liberals (I am one) want to hear, but the very fact that they cover their ears and chant nonsense verses at the top of their lungs is the problem that Stent addresses. Most of us don't realize that the conflict between science and culture is much deeper than the fight between scientist and Biblical literalists would suggest. If you are going to adopt the positions of science and rationalism then there are some implications that may be hard to confront. Sweeping them under the rug, as many try to do, is hypocritical.

We may now consider the ethical conflicts surrounding two applications of human genetics. One of these is the very troublesome matter, at least for present-day American society, of the heritability of intelligence and in particular of the problem whether there exist significant racial differences in intelligence genotype. On the one hand, it seems reasonable to think that if there is a significant variation in the genetic contribution to intelligence between individuals, or between racial groups, then this factor ought to be taken into account in the organization of society. But, on the other hand, the mere acknowledgment of the existence of this factor, let alone taking it into account in social action, seems morally inadmissible, a scientistic underpinning of racist ideology. An excellent exposition of this problem was recently provided by W. Bodmer and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, who show that the heritability of intelligence, unlike extrasensory perception and telepathy, is a genuine scientific proposition.

First, it is possible to obtain a meaningful measure of intelligence through IQ tests, at least insofar as the concept of intelligence applies to the capacity to succeed in the society in whose contextual setting the tests are given. Second, there do exist significant differences in IQ between individuals and between social and racial subgroups. Third, it is possible, at least in principle, to perform studies that can ascertain the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to the observed differences in IQ. Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza find that there is sufficient evidence at present to make it very likely that within a socioeconomically homogeneous group heredity does make a significant contribution to extant differences in IQ. When it comes to the considerably lower mean IQ of American blacks, however, they conclude not only that the currently available data are inadequate to ascertain whether this fact is attributable mainly to hereditary or mainly to environmental differences, but “that the question of a possible genetic basis for the race IQ differences will be almost impossible to answer satisfactorily before the environmental differences between U.S. blacks and whites have been substantially reduced. . . .” Finally, “[since] for the present at least, no good case can be made for [studies on racial IQ differences], either on scientific or practical grounds, we do not see any point in particularly encouraging the use of public funds for their support. There are many more useful biological problems for the scientist to attack.”

In my opinion, this recommendation, which trivializes the problem scientifically, amounts to taking the easy way out from a serious dilemma. What if, as Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza admit could be true, there does exist a significant genetic contribution to the mean IQ differences found between blacks and whites? They think that this “should not, in a genuinely democratic society free of race prejudice, make any differene.”’~ But if the races really differed hereditarily in intelligence, then racism would not be a “prejudice” but a true perception ofthe world and one of which a rational society ought to take account. For instance, in this case, the black-white disparities in socioeconomic levels would not reflect discrimination at all but merely an underlying biological reality. And hence the aim of an egalitarian, multiracial society would be just another unattainable, utopian dream. We thus encounter another Machiavellian contradiction between the two incompatible ethical systems of our heritage. The pagan ethics of communal purpose, which science serves, would demand that every effort be made to ascertain whether the member races of a multiracial society do in fact differ hereditarily in their intelligence. But the Christian ethics of ultimate values, which inspire science, holds racism to be an absolute evil in that it is subversive of the fundamental concept of the freedom and responsibility of the human soul. Hence, these ethics demand an uncompromisingly hard line against research on race intelligence. Since there must not be any hereditarily determined racial differences in intelligence, research that entertains the possibility of such differences is a priori evil.

In today's world we need more Gunther Stent's, not fewer.

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1. Incidentally, I'm currently reading Richard Dawkin's anthology of Modern Science Writing. Stent is not in that book but, then again, neither are many other scientists who should be there. It's probably no coincidence that most of those scientists express opinions that differ from those of Richard Dawkins.

[Photo Credit: Left-to-right: Esther Lederberg, Gunther Stent, Sydney Brenner and Joshua Lederberg. From Wikipedia : "The original photo is owned by the Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Estate. With the permission of that Estate's Trustee, Matthew Simon, I have adapted the photo for free use."

D-Day

 
Today marks the 64th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. British, Canadian and American forces opened the second front against Germany. On the eve of the invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the following Order of the Day.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

For baby boomers it means a day of special significance for our parents. In my case, it was my father who took part in the invasions. He was an RAF pilot flying rocket firing typhoons in close support of the ground troops. During the initial days his missions were limited to quick strikes and reconnaissance since Normandy was at the limit of their range from southern England. During the second week of the invasion his squadron landed in Normandy and things became very hectic from then on with several close support missions every day.

The photograph above shows a crew loading rockets onto a typhoon based just a few kilometers from the landing beaches in Normandy. Here's an example of the effectiveness of rocket-firing typhoons [Air Power Over the Normandy Beaches and Beyond].

Intelligence information from ULTRA set up a particularly effective air strike on June 10. German message traffic had given away the location of the headquarters of Panzergruppe West on June 9, and the next evening a mixed force of forty rocket-armed Typhoons and sixty-one Mitchells from 2 TAF struck at the headquarters, located in the Chateau of La Caine, killing the unit's chief of staff and many of its personnel and destroying fully 75 percent of its communications equipment as well as numerous vehicles. At a most critical point in the Normandy battle, then, the Panzer group, which served as a vital nexus between operating armored forces, was knocked out of the command, control, and communications loop; indeed, it had to return to Paris to be reconstituted before resuming its duties a month later.

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Lester B. Pearson

 
Lester Bowles ("Mike") Pearson (1897-1972) was Prime Minister of Canada from 1963 until 1968. He lead the Liberal Party to two minority victories in the elections of 1963 and 1965.

Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his work on forming the United Nations peacekeeping forces following the Suez crisis.

Pearson is responsible for some of the most important legislation passed by Parliament in the 20th century. His government brought in universal health care, and the Canada pension plan. It also adopted the new Canadian flag. Most of these reforms were supported in the House by the New Democratic Party under Tommy Douglas.¹

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1. Tommy Douglas was recently voted the The Greatest Canadian. Lester Pearson is #6 and his Minister of Justice, Pierre Trudeau, is #3.

Baldwin and Lafontaine

 
The statues of Robert Baldwin and Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine on Parliament Hill in Ottawa commemorate two of the most important reformers in Canada. They played a major role in establishing parliamentary government following the union of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) in 1841.



The Historical Foundation of Canada has produced a number of short videos about Canada's history. There's one on Baldwin and LaFontaine. Watch it and read more about their historical alliance at Building Democracy: Baldwin and LaFontaine.

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Joshua Lederberg

 

Joshua Lederberg died last Saturday (Feb. 2, 2008). In his honor, John Dennehy has selected one of Lederberg's famous papers as This Week's Citation Classic: Joshua Lederberg.

I think it's too bad that our current generation of students is growing up without being sufficiently aware of the fundamental principles of biochemistry and molecular biology that were worked out in bacteria and bacteriophage.

UPDATE: [Loss of a giant: Joshua Lederberg]

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Bobby Fischer

 
Bobby Fischer died yesterday in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he had been living for the past several years [Bobby Fischer, 64: Former chess champion].

Back in 1972, Fischer beat Boris Spassky of the USSR to become world chess champion. The event has been glorified as part of the cold war competition between the USA and the USSR but this was only part of the story. Some of us were just interested in it as a major sporting event featuring a radical new hero who didn't always play by the rules.

I remember following the games live on television—yes, that's right, the moves in each game were broadcast live on a large chessborad, with plenty of color commentary. As an amateur chess player, it was a real insight into the world of high level play.

Go to World Chess Championship 1972 for a brief summary of this extraordinary event. We'll never see anything like it again.

Here's the position at adjournment in the final (21st) game [Spassky vs Fischer Game #21]. Fischer (black) has just played h5. After thinking about the position all night Spassky phoned in the next morning to resign and concede the championship. Can you see why he gave up?

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Bon Voyage Charles

 
On this day in 1831 Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth Sound (England) on the newly refitted brig HMS Beagle. Its mission was to explore South America and survey its coast.

The ship returned to England on October 2, 1836 after circumnavigating the globe.

When the ship left England, Darwin was officially the companion of the captain, Robert FitzRoy, but by the time it returned Darwin was the official naturalist.

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[Image Credit: The HMS Beagle Project]

Mitt Romney and Truthiness

 
I noticed the following in Mitt Romney's religion speech [Mitt Romney's Faith In America address (as prepared for delivery)].

Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government. No people in the history of the world have sacrificed as much for liberty. The lives of hundreds of thousands of America's sons and daughters were laid down during the last century to preserve freedom, for us and for freedom loving people throughout the world. America took nothing from that century's terrible wars - no land from Germany or Japan or Korea; no treasure; no oath of fealty. America's resolve in the defense of liberty has been tested time and again. It has not been found wanting, nor must it ever be. America must never falter in holding high the banner of freedom.

I don't mean to diminish the role played by the United States of America during the second half of World War II but it seems a touch arrogant to say that "No people in the history of the world have sacrificed as much for liberty."



As for not taking any land from Japan, the people of the Ryukyu Islands (including Okinawa) might disagree. America occupied those islands until they were returned to Japan in 1972. The USA still has a military base on Okinawa as far as I know.

America also gained control over the Amami, Miyako and Yaeyama Islands groups at the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco. These islands were subsequently returned. I suppose Mitt Ronmney could argue that technically these territorial acquisitions were on behalf of the United Nations but that's not going to fool anyone.

America took back its colony of the Marianna Islands (Guam) after world War II but this isn't really taking land from Japan since America had previously owned the colony after grabbing it from Spain in 1898.

I was also stuck by the following statement.

I'm not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty. I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe's churches. And though you will find many people of strong faith there, the churches themselves seem to be withering away.

Unlike many others, Romney seems to be aware of the implications of American tradition of religious liberty. Whereas in Europe religion is disappearing in spite of the fact that European countries have state religions, in America where "religious liberty" is the norm, religion is still so important in politics that Romney is forced to give a speech defending his version of religion. There's irony hidden in there somewhere.

In such a world, we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day. And you can be certain of this: any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion - rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith.

Does this sound like someone who would respect atheists and agnostics? How abut Buddhists?

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[Photo Credits: Mitt Romney from his campaign webstite (True Strength for America's Future); WWI statistics are from Wikipedia.]
[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]

Jena, Louisiana

 
Jena is a small town in Louisiana. It was named for Jena in Germany, the site of a famous victory by Napoleon in 1806. I'm a (very amateur) student of military history so I'm familiar with this battle [Battle of Jena-Auerstedt].

The American town is in the news because of allegations of racism at the local high school. The local prosecutor seems to have been motivated by less than honorable motives in charging six young black men with attempted murder in a schoolyard fight.

While watching coverage on television, I was struck by the modern name of the town. It's pronounced "Geena" in Louisiana. There's nothing wrong with this. They can call pronounce the name of the town however they want. But just for the record, the name of the German city, and the battle, is pronounced "yaene." You can hear it here: Jena.