What Is the New Atheism?

Andrew Brown blogs at Helmintholog and also at AndrewBrown's Blog, part of the Guardian website. Andrew and I met in London a few years ago. We had an interesting discussion.

Yesterday Andrew posted a provocative article where he attempts to define the New Atheism [The New Atheism, a definition and a quiz]. He is not a fan, to put it mildly.

So, who does he rely on to construct a definition of the New Atheists?

The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration. All of them make claims about religion and about believers which go far beyond the mere disbelief in God which I take to be the distinguishing mark of an atheist.

That's very distinguished company. I'm flattered. I guess it means I'll have to take the quiz!

Quiz? Yes, that's right, Andrew proposes that we atheists 'fess up to six propositions that represent the New Atheist position, or at least the Andrew Brown version of New Atheism.

All of these propositions will be found in the authors I have cited as well as in the comments to religious articles here. I sometimes think that only the last two are unique to the new atheists: you can certainly find the others in earlier authors. But those are the six doctrines which I would reject when saying rude things about the new atheists.

What would be interesting in comments is if people would score themselves out of six. I expect that one of the most common forms of disagreement would be to claim that you are a three or a four, but none the less the believers are so repulsive and dangerous that the other two points just don't matter. That's how politics works, after all, and the new atheism is interesting as a political or social movement, not an intellectual one.

Challenge accepted.

Here are the six propositions and my position on each of them.

1. There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief.

I agree.

2. The cure for faith is science: The existence of God is a scientific question: either he exists or he doesn't. "Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is just superstition" [Robert L. Park]

I agree, as long as we understand that science is a way of knowing that relies on evidence and rationality. The other, undefined, ways of "knowing" will reject either evidence or rationality.

The question before us is whether supernatural beings exist or not. I fail to see why a scientist isn't as competent to answer that question as those who study "psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration." The object of my attention (not execration) is supernatural beings. Why would a psychologist or a sociologist know more about their possible existence than I do?

3. Science is the opposite of religion, and will lead people into the clear sunlit uplands of reason. "The real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition" [Jerry Coyne] "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." [Dawkins]

I agree, except for the minor quibble that science is not the opposite of religion. Religion is a set of beliefs based almost exclusively on the worship of supernatural beings. I think that religion is silly because these supernatural beings do not exist. Belief in such beings is not the opposite of the scientific way of knowing: it is outside of the scientific way of knowing. Such beliefs are based on some other, undefined, way of knowing that we may refer to as superstition for want of a better term.¹ The battle is between rationalism and superstition.

4. In this great struggle, religion is doomed. Enlightened common sense is gradually triumphing and at the end of the process, humanity will assume a new and better character, free from the shackles of religion. Without faith, we would be better as well as wiser. Conflict is primarily a result of misunderstanding, of which Faith is the paradigm. (Looking for links, I just came across a lovely example of this in the endnotes to the Selfish Gene, where lawyers are dismissed as "solving man-made problems that should never have existed in the first place".)

I agree.

5. Religion exists. It is essentially something like American fundamentalist protestantism, or Islam. More moderate forms are false and treacherous: if anything even more dangerous, because they conceal the raging, homicidal lunacy that is religion's true nature. [Sam Harris]

I don't agree with all of this. While it's true that even moderate forms of religion are based on the irrational belief in non-existent beings, that only makes them false—not treacherous, and certainly not homicidal. Most modern religions are trying to promote good things that I support. The mistake theists make is in assuming that you have to believe in non-existent beings in order to be good.

6. Faith, as defined above, is the most dangerous and wicked force on earth today and the struggle against it and especially against Islam will define the future of humanity. [Everyone]

Nonsense. We will be better off when people abandon their belief in supernatural beings but that's a far cry from saying that such superstitious beliefs are the most dangerous and wicked force on Earth.²

I have never singled out Islam for special attention. As a matter of fact, I am very much opposed to characterizing the current struggles as a war between Islam and Christianity. I may not be an historian but I know enough history to understand that Islam has a solid track record of tolerance and understanding. Probably a better record than Christianity.

What's my score? I agree with the first four propositions and disagree with the last two. I guess that means I'm not a true New Atheist. I should have known that those other guys were too good for me.

Oops, PZ only gives himself 2 out of 6 [Oh, no! The New Atheists are getting attacked again!]. I guess I'm more of a New Atheist than he is. Go figure.

---

1. I anxiously await Andrew Brown's next essay when he defines the New Theism and reveals to us these other ways of thinking.

2. Earth, the planet, begins with an upper-case letter, just as the names of all the other planets do.

[Hat Tip: Richard Dawkins.net]

On Darwin and Atheism, by Richard Dawkins

 
Richard Dawkins posts a comment about an article written by Madeleine Bunting [Darwin shouldn't be hijacked by New Atheists - he is an ethical inspiration]. She repeats the rather boring complaint that the "New Atheists" are about to hijack the 2009 celebrations.

She says,

In particular, what would have baffled Darwin is his recruitment as standard bearer for atheism in the 21st century. Darwin kept his pronouncements on religion to a minimum, partly out of respect for his Christian wife. Despite continuing claims that he was an atheist, most scholars acknowledge that he never went further than agnosticism.

Richard Dawkins replied ...

It is true that Darwin declined to call himself an atheist. But his motive, clearly expressed to the atheist intellectual Edward Aveling (incidentally the common-law husband of Karl Marx's daughter) was that Darwin didn't want to upset people. Atheism, in Darwin's view, was all well and good for the intelligentsia, but ordinary people were not yet "ripe" for atheism. So he called himself an agnostic, largely for diplomatic reasons..

In any case, what Darwin chose to call himself, as a pillar of his local parish in the nineteenth century, is of less interest than the cogency of the arguments themselves. Before Darwin came along, it was pretty difficult to be an atheist, at least to be an atheist free of nagging doubts. Darwin triumphantly made it EASY to be an intellectually fulfilled and satisfied atheist. That doesn't mean that understanding Darwin drives you inevitably to atheism. But it certainly constitutes a giant step in that direction.

I stand with Dawkins¹ except that I would include all of the modern scientific advances as additional facts that make it easy to be an atheist and difficult to believe in supernatural beings.

Science doesn't turn you into an atheist but it sure as heck poses a severe challenge to most established religions. That's why religions fear science.

---

1. On the issue of superstition vs. rationality, I'm in (almost) complete agreement with Richard Dawkins and I admire him greatly for writing The God Delusion. On the issue of evolutionary theory, I'm not in complete agreement.

An Adaptationist View of Stephen Jay Gould

In last week's issue of Nature, Steve Jones reviews Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life. Jones is part of the British school of Darwinism, along with Richard Dawkins, the late John Maynard Smith, and others.¹ This group shares many perspectives on evolutionary theory including an emphasis on natural selection. They are also united in their dislike of, and misunderstanding of, Stephen Jay Gould.

The misunderstanding shows up in several places in the Jones review [A wonderful life by leaps and bounds].

Being part of the anti-Gould school means that Jones is obliged to trot out the famous quotation by Maynard Smith (it's part of their oath of allegiance).

Gould held fast to Darwin's maxim that "All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service", and was among that band who felt that those not for him must be against him — which was not much help in keeping friends. The great biologist John Maynard Smith wrote that most evolutionists saw Gould as "a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because at least he is on our side against the creationists".

Gould was hurt by that acidulous statement, which was without doubt unfair.

Of course it was unfair—so why repeat it? The statement says more about the British Darwinists than about Gould. The fact that they find Gould's ideas "confusing" isn't something to be proud of.

One of Gould's major contributions to evolutionary theory was punctuated equilbiria, with Niles Eldredge. The basic idea is that the fossil record shows millions of years of stasis (no change) and when change occurs it takes place relatively quickly during speciation by cladogenesis (splitting). After that, the two species (parent and daughter) continue to exist together in the same environment.

The morphological changes that occur when a new species is formed are not dramatic. They are similar to the differences between closely related modern species. In many cases it takes an expert to even recognize the new species in the fossil record.

Punctuated equilibrium is a theory of speciation and stasis. The changes during speciation may be due to natural selection or some form of random genetic drift. That's not what's important about punctuated equilbria—what's important is that change is coupled to speciation and nothing happens for most of the life of a species.

Here's what Steve Jones has to say about it.

Whatever the importance of sudden leaps in the fossil record, his notorious idea of punctuated equilibria, nicknamed 'punk eek' and referred to as 'evolution by jerks' by some of its critics — their own views characterized by Gould as "evolution by creeps" — gave the fossilized field of palaeontology a much-needed kick in the pants. Gould saw punk eek as a "coordinating centrepiece" that "congealed into a coherent critique" of evolutionary theory. Many biologists, by contrast, insist that what look like palaeontological leaps can be explained by simple Darwinism. To them, an instant in geology may represent almost an infinity in biology, leaving plenty of time for evolution by natural selection to do its normal job.

He just doesn't get it, does he? The speciation event takes place over a period of about one hundred thousand years as Gould and Eldredge explained. That's plenty of time for selection, or drift, or founder effect, or whatever. Punctuated equilibria is not a challenge to natural selection, it's a challenge to gradualism.

Furthermore, anyone who refers to punctuated equilibria as "sudden leaps" is revealing an understanding of the theory that's no better than that of the creationists. As is anyone who thinks that "Darwinism" explains speciation.

His other great passion, contingency — the notion that evolution goes on with sudden bangs rather than protracted whimpers — has also not held up particularly well. Wonderful Life, Gould's 1989 book on the Burgess Shale, suggests that the obscure fauna of the late pre-Cambrian represents a lost universe wiped out by some unknown disaster, but now we know that they have descendants among modern animals. Even so, scientific ideas often change, and that volume, like most of his others, remains a rattling good read. The fact that nature must build on what it has, and not on what it wants, is still at the centre of evolutionary thinking.

Talk about confused thinking! When did Gould ever say that contingency is "the notion that evolution goes on with sudden bangs"?

Gould and Lewontin made great play with the parallels between the Spandrel School and the many evolutionists who say that every character in every animal is there for an adaptive reason and if you look hard enough you'll find it.

There's some truth in their argument, but to accept it as the only truth is basically to give up and walk away, to stop being an ornithologist and turn into a bird-watcher. You become somebody who observes rather than analyzes. What they're saying to lots of biologists is, "Abandon hope, go home, and become a liberal-arts graduate!" I may be overcriticizing the Lewontin and Gould view; both of them like to poke people with their sharp pitchforks. The spandrels were a particularly successful poke. But what happened as a result of the famous spandrel paper? The answer is, not much.

Steve Jones in
The Third CultureAs for Wonderful Life, it is, indeed, a book about contingency—just like the movie from which it takes its title. One wonders whether Steve Jones has actually read the book, or seen the movie.

While it's true that some of the unusual Cambrian species that Gould once thought were separate phyla have now been lumped into modern phyla, it's also true that there are many that haven't. Gould's point is that some of those enigmatic Burgess Shale species have left no descendants and, if you could have observed them back then, you would not have been able to pick out the eventual winners and losers. In other words, if you re-wind and replay the tape of life it will come out differently.

Jones is not referring to these species however. He's talking about the "pre-Cambrian" fauna—presumably the Ediacara biota. It's not an important part of Gould's book. As far as I know the relationship between Ediacaran species and modern species is still very controversial. Perhaps Jones has studied this in more detail that I have.

One of the ideas to come out of punctuated equilibria is the idea of species sorting. This makes sense when you think about it. If most speciation occurs by cladogenesis and not by gradual transformation, then over time the number of species in a clade doubles every five to ten million years. Eventually there will be hundreds of similar species. The reason this doesn't happen is that species go extinct. They die.

If species within a clade are "born" and "die" then this looks an awful lot like evolution at a different scale than the birth and death of individuals within a population. The idea of species sorting, where the species in a clade are treated like the individuals within a population, is part of Gould's hierarchical theory of evolution. He claims that it is an extension of the Modern Synthesis.

Whether he's right or wrong doesn't matter. What matters is whether his critics have the intelligence to understand hierarchical theory in general, or species sorting in particular. I don't have much respect for evolutionists who refuse make a modest attempt to understand; it's not rocket science.

Here's what Steve Jones says.

Backwards ran his sentences, and some of his ideas were equally opaque. In support of punk eek, for example, he wrote that "species are individuals ... by all vernacular criteria", which is at best obscure, and at worst obscurantist.

No, Professor Jones, it is not obscure and it is not obscurantist. Gould explains it very well to those who can read his works with an open and intelligent mind. He's talking about species sorting and treating species as "individuals" that are selected within a clade.

As Reflections portrays, its hero showed an increasing regard for style over content, and was resistant to the notion that anyone should dare to edit his writings. The pinnacle — the very summit, crown and peak — of his great Olympus of orotundity was his last voluminous volume, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, published in the year of his death. All the authors agree that this is not a book to be lightly tossed aside, but their motives for saying so vary. Its reviews are quoted with a certain relish: "an elephantine opus"; "pathological logorrhea"; "billowing clouds of verbal flatulence" — but Gould had no doubt of its value. In it he came out with the idea of life as a series of interlocking hierarchies and of a grand unification of its sciences into some post-Darwinian consilience, comprehensible only to the chosen.

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is long and tedious but those who criticize its ideas are the ones who confuse style over content. I don't agree with many of Gould's ideas about species sorting and hierarchical theory and therefore I stand as the exception to Steve Jone's claim. It was comprehensible to this unchosen one so it must also be comprehensible to others who disagree with Gould. You just have to make the effort.

If you don't make the effort to understand Gould then you should refrain from criticizing him. It doesn't make you look good.

---

1. For examples of the Steve Jones perspective on evolution see Have Humans Stopped Evolving? and Steve Jones Says Human Evolution Is Over.

[Image Credit: The Cheltenham Ladies' College]

"Monkey Girl" and False Icons

 
Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul is a book about the Dover trial. It's written by Edward Humes, an ex-newspaper journalist turned author.

The cover of the book shows one of the common, but false, icons of human evolution. This series of skeletons depicts a steady upward march of human evolution from a chimpanzee to modern humans. The image is false in two ways: (1) humans did not evolve from something that looks like modern chimpanzees, and (2) the "progress" was not a linear transformation as depicted, instead, there where many side branches and lineages that went extinct.

This is the icon that Stephen Jay Gould attacked in Wonderful Life and elsewhere in his essays. Even the Intelligent Design Creationists recognize that this is a bad way to depict evolution. Casey Luskin writes in A Partisan Affair (Part 2): False Attacks Upon Discovery Institute in Edward Humes’ Pseudo-History of Kitzmiller, "Monkey Girl".

Any book with an icon of evolution on its cover — in this case, the fanciful diagram of ape-like skeletons transitioning into a human skeleton — is bound to be unfriendly towards intelligent design (ID).

For once I agree with Casey Luskin!!!! The diagram is a fanciful "icon" and the book is unfriendly towards creationists.

I realize that trade book authors don't get much say in cover design but that has to change. I urge all authors to insert a clause in their contracts that requires approval of the cover design and title. Let's try and prevent future embarrassments of this sort.

---

If Spiders Are Arthropods then Where Are the Segments?

 
Christopher Taylor of Catalogue of Organisms has the answer [Attercop].

---

[Image Credit: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)]

Trouble with Blogger

 
I'm pretty happy with Blogger, most of the time.¹ However, every now and then the powers that be meddle with the code and screw up a feature that we've come to rely on. I don't understand why this happens—you'd think they would test all their changes before implementing them.

A few weeks ago Blogger decided to mess with the RSS feeds and other things. The changes had two obvious effects: I can no longer detect links to my blog via Technorati, and recent comments are stuck on old comments (June 20, 2007).

Blogger has a "Help Group" forum where you can post about problems with Blogger. There are hundreds of postings—most of them concern mistakes made by the users, many of whom don't read instructions very well. The thread concerning the RSS feed [Problem with the comments feed] was begun on December 19th, shortly after the problem first appeared. On December 21 the Blogger team indicated that they were aware of the problem.

Thanks for the heads up folks! We're looking into this right now and hope to have this sorted out shortly.

We'll make sure to update this thread when we have some news to pass along. Thanks for your patience,

Gatsby
The Blogger Team

As of today (Dec. 30) it still hasn't been fixed.

Why is it taking so long to fix a problem that they created in the first place?

---

1. After all, it's free. I shouldn't complain about such an excellent service at such a low price. (But I will anyway.)

Recreational Mathematics

 
Ms. Sandwalk has discovered a new game called Blokus. I recommend it highly.

She has a description of the game on her blog and an explanation of "polyominoes"—a term used in recreational mathematics. What she didn't put on her blog is her reaction on discovering that some people think that mathematics can be recreational!!

Incidentally, she hasn't yet won a game of Blokus. This makes up for all the times when she beats me at word games.

---

Philosophers and the Existence of God

 
The existence of God is one of the exciting questions in philosophy. I firmly believe that all undergraduates should take a course in philosophy where they address issues like this and learn how to argue logically and rationally. Philosophy is the most important subject in university.

However, sometimes philosophers seem to get so badly off track that they fail to see the forest for the trees. The debate over the ontological argument for the existence of God falls into this category. I can't believe that modern philosophers would waste more than a microsecond on such a stupid argument.^1.

Here's one version of the argument from Wikipedia.

1. God is, by definition, a being greater than anything that can be imagined and is the cause of all things, but is not bound causally by anything (otherwise God would be ontologically dependent on something else which would in turn undermine "its" greatness).
2. Existence both in reality and in imagination is greater than existence solely in one's imagination.
3. Therefore, God must exist in reality: if God did not, God would not be a being greater than anything which can be imagined.

Alex Byrne wastes far more than a microsecond in the latest issue of Boston Review [God: Philosophers weigh in]. Check it out if you want to wade through some mind-numbing examples of tree-gazing. (There are other interesting bits in the article that might make it worth your while.)

Part way through that article, Byrne decides that philosophical arguments in general, and arguments for the existence of God in particular, are often not very significant. He says the following ...

A better complaint is that sound philosophical arguments with significant conclusions are as rare as atheists in foxholes: the track record of philosophical “proofs” is not exactly impressive, unlike the mathematical variety.

What the heck?

There have been millions of atheists in (metaphorical) foxholes throughout history. Does this mean there are millions of sound philosophical arguments with significant conclusions? Or does it mean that Alex Byrne is one of these people who think that atheists becomes believers whenever they're under stress, in spite of the fact that there are no sound arguments for the existence of God?

What a strange thing for a philosopher to say.

---

1. It's fun to debate the logic of the ontological argument and to try and construct proofs that it is false. That's not what I mean when I say that it's a stupid argument. What I mean is that it is stupid to actually think that such a clever twisting of words would actually cause someone to believe that a perfect supernatural exists.

[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]

On the Origin of Eukaryotes

 
Theme

The Three Domain Hypothesis
If all you do is read the textbooks, you would think that the origin of eukaryotic cells has been discovered. Most textbooks describe the Three Domain Hypothesis as a done deal. Eukaryotes and archaebacteria share a more recent common ancestor than either group does with the remaining groups of bacteria. Thus, eukaryotes arose from archaebacteria.

The scientific literature does not reflect this confidence. In fact, there is general agreement that the classic Three Domain Hypothesis is no longer viable as a complete explanation for the origin of eukaryotic cells. The current consensus favors a more confused picture of early life with lots of gene swapping—the so-called web of life. It is not clear that eukaryotes as a group arose from any particular prokaryotic clade. It is likely that in addition to horizontal gene transfer, there were probably one or more fusion events where the cells from two separate lineages united to form a hybrid.¹

This week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Acedemy of Sciences (USA) has a paper that addresses the problem, one more time. Cox et al. (2008) ask whether there is phylogenetic support for the Three Domain Hypothesis by analyzing 53 well conserved genes. The answer is no. But is there support for one of the alternatives, the Eocyte Hypothesis? The answer is, maybe.²

The commentary by John Archibald is worth reading. Here's an excerpt.

Evolving Views on the Tree of Life

Next to life itself, the origin of complex cells is one of the most fundamental, and intractable, problems in evolutionary biology. Progress in this area relies heavily on an understanding of the relationships between present-day organisms, yet despite tremendous advances over the last half-century scientists remain firmly divided on how to best classify cellular life. Many adhere to the textbook concept of 2 basic types of cells, prokaryotes and eukaryotes, as championed by Stanier and van Niel (7). Others posit that at its deepest level life is not a dichotomy but a trichotomy comprised of cells belonging to the domains Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya, each monophyletic and sufficiently distinct from one another to warrant equal status (5, 8). The conceptual and practical challenges associated with establishing a genealogy-based classification scheme for microbes have been fiercely debated for decades (see ref. 9 for recent review), and the literature is rich in philosophy and rhetoric.

The genomics revolution of the 1990s brought tremendous optimism to the field of microbial systematics: if enough genomes from diverse organisms could be sequenced and compared, definitive answers to questions about evolutionary relationships within and between eubacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryotes would surely emerge. More specifically, it should be possible to discern how eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes (if indeed that is what happened), and perhaps even who among modern-day prokaryotic lineages is our closest ancestor. Unfortunately, with the sequences of hundreds of eubacterial, archaebacterial, and eukaryotic genomes has come the realization that the number of universally distributed genes suitable for global phylogenetic analysis is frustratingly small (10). Lateral (or horizontal) gene transfer has shown itself to be a pervasive force in the evolution of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes, and even if a “core” set of genes can be identified (and there is much debate on this issue), how confident are we that the phylogenetic signal in these genes reflects the vertical history of cells? How meaningful are sequence alignment-independent, gene content-based approaches to resolving the “tree of life” (11)? To what extent is a “net of life” a more accurate and useful metaphor for describing the full spectrum of life on Earth (10, 12–14)?

The bottom line is that the earliest stages of evolution are still very much open questions. It is wrong to assume that the Three Domain Hypothesis is correct and scientists, as well as textbooks writers, should stop making this assumption.

---

1. Most workers make the unstated assumption that eukaryotic cells are more recent than prokaryotic cells. The idea that archaebacteria could have arisen by a fusion of an early eukaryote with an early prokaryote is just as consistent with most of the data yet this possibility is almost never discussed.

2. Cox et al. use very "sophisticated" techniques for analyzing their sequence data. Much of the controversy in this field involves disputes over which computer programs give the most accurate results. What's really going on, in my opinion, is that the data isn't good enough to justify the kinds of manipulations that are being done. The trees give you a good approximation of the true phylogeny but subjecting the data to over-analysis isn't helpful.

Archibald, J.M. (2008) The eocyte hypothesis and the origin of eukaryotic cells. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 105:20049-20050. [doi:10.1073/pnas.0811118106]

Cox, C.J., Foster, P.G., Hirt, R.P., Harris, S.R., and Embley, T.M. (2008) The archaebacterial origin of eukaryotes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 105:20356-20361. [doi:10.1073/pnas.0810647105].

My Christmas Jigsaw Puzzle

 
According to Wikipedia, the first commercial jigsaw puzzles were marketed in England by John Spilsbury in 1760.

I haven't been putting them together for nearly that long. Every Christmas we buy a jigsaw puzzle and try to assemble it before the end of the holidays. Ms. Sandwalk usually gives up after the first day.

Do you know what "tessellation" means?

---

Pop Evolutionary Psychology

 
David J. Buller is a Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University (USA). He is an expert in his field, He is not a professional science journalist although he has written a book and many articles.

This is relevant because many science journalists have written favorable articles about popular evolutionary psychology. This is the field that promotes evolutionary explanations for many human behaviors. They are the classic examples of adaptationist just-so stories.

Buller has just published an article in Scientific American where he argues against these popular stories [Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology].

Here's part of what he says ...

Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence

...

The most notable representatives of Pop EP are psychologists David M. Buss (a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Evolution of Desire and The Dangerous Passion) and Steven Pinker (a professor at Harvard University whose books include How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate). Their popular accounts are built on the pioneering theoretical work of what is sometimes referred to as the Santa Barbara school of evolutionary psychology, led by anthropologists Donald Symons and John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides, all at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

According to Pop EP, “the human brain consists of a large collection of functionally specialized computational devices that evolved to solve the adaptive problems regularly encountered by our hunter-gatherer ancestors” (from the Web site of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at U.C.S.B.). Just as evolution by natural and sexual selection has endowed all humans with morphological adaptations such as hearts and kidneys, Pop EP says, so it has endowed all humans with a set of psychological adaptations, or “mental organs.” These include psychological mechanisms, or “functionally specialized computational devices,” for language, face recognition, spatial perception, tool use, mate attraction and retention, parental care and a wide variety of social relations, among other things. Collectively, these psychological adaptations constitute a “universal human nature.” Individual and cultural differences are, by this account, the result of our common nature responding to variable local circumstances, much as a computer program’s outputs vary as a function of its inputs. The notable exceptions to this rule involve sex differences, which evolved because males and females sometimes faced distinct adaptive problems.

Moreover, because complex adaptation is a very slow process, human nature is designed for the hunter-gatherer lifestyle led by our ancestors in the Pleistocene (the period from 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago). As Cosmides and Tooby colorfully say, “our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind.” Pop EP proposes to discover our universal human nature by analyzing the adaptive problems our ancestors faced, hypothesizing the psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve them and then testing those hypotheses using standard-fare psychological evidence, such as paper-and-pencil questionnaires. Pop EP claims that a number of psychological adaptations have been discovered in this way, including evolved sex differences in mate preferences (males prefer nubility; females prefer nobility) and jealousy (men are more distressed by a mate’s sexual infidelity, women by emotional infidelity).

I believe that Pop EP is misguided. The ideas suffer not so much from one fundamental flaw as from many small mistakes. Nevertheless, recent critiques of evolutionary psychology point to some general problems of Pop EP.

There's nothing remarkable about this article. The majority of evolutionary biologists know full well that pop evolutionary psychology is a farce. For most biologists, it's an embarrassment.

The real puzzle is why most science journalists seem to be completely unaware of the controversy. They haven't been doing their job. Next time you see an article promoting the "latest discoveries" of pop evolutionary psychology look for the balance. Do you see the disclaimers questioning the relevance of the entire field? If those points aren't mentioned then you know that science journalists have not done their homework.

---

Top Ten Intelligent Design Creationist Stories

 
Denyse O'Leary is one of the best of an excellent group of science journalists.¹ When she selects her top ten science stories of 2008 it's time to pay attention, especially since these are stories about Intelligent Design Creationism [The top ten Darwin and Design stories of the year.

Here's the list ...

The Altenberg 16
Atheists and Agnostics Defend ID
Expelled #1 Political Documentary of 2008
Louisiana Academic Freedom Act
Biologic Institute Releases Stylus: A System for Evolutionary Experimentation
A Molecular Clutch Discovered in the Flagella
Royal Society Expels Director of Education
Leading Biologists Marvel at the "Irreducible Complexity" of the Ribosome
Have Cosmologists Lost Their Brains?
Design-based Biomimetics Yields Tangible Results

What a sad list.

---

1. Not. I wonder what George Johnson thinks of science journalists like Denyse O'Leary?

The "Best" of Genetics Science Writing from New Scientist

 
The blogosphere is discussing the conflict between scientists and science journalists. The issue is not whether science journalists can write for the general public—I take that as a given—it's whether what they write is scientifically accurate. Do articles by science journalists fairly represent the state of science?

New Scientist has risen to the challenge by listing it's top ten article on genetics [Genetics: Top 10 articles from 2008.

Here's the list of titles. Judge for yourselves.

Me and my genome
DNA dating: Can genes help you pick a mate?
Genes make mice squeal during sex
Are political leanings in the genes?
Cloning 'resurrects' long-dead mice
Genetically modified humans: Here and more coming soon
MicroRNAs: The cell's little emperors
Solar-powered sea slug harnesses stolen plant genes
Cancer special: Living with the enemy
Goldmine bug DNA may be key to alien life

---

Webpages as Graphics for Sandwalk

 
Here's the Webpages as Graphics for this blog. I have no idea what this means.

---

Who the Heck Is George Johnson?

 
A few weeks ago I wrote about Epigenetics at SEED. The article in SEED was written by a scientist who wants to change evolutionary theory in order to accommodate epigenetics. I pointed out that this was a poorly written article. One of the worst problems was the definition of epigenetics, which was broad enough to include the kitchen sink.

Abbie Smith picked up on this on her blog ERV. She agreed that the SEED article was not helpful [ew... epigenetics in SEED...].

Along comes someone named George Johnson. He interprets Abbie's criticism of the science, and mine, as a rant against science journalism. Well, he's right, even though in this case it's science journalism being written by a scientist. Apparently science journalists (I assume George Johnson is one) are very sensitive about criticism from scientists. Apparently science journalists are very good at what they do ... how dare scientists criticize what they write about science!!!

Watch George Johnson make a fool of himself on this bloggingheads video with John Horgan. Johnson reads my name from the ERV posting but it seems he didn't bother to read my posting. If George Johnson has the courage to show up here I'll be happy to explain to him why this particular SEED article is bad. He's welcome to read all my other criticisms of science journalism and and attempt to defend the science journalists.

Pay close attention to Johnson's comments when he reads the passage from Abbie's blog. It's clear that he doesn't know what chromatin is and he doesn't know what epigenetics is. On the other hand, he is certain that Nicholas Wade, who writes about molecular biology, is a great science writer. How would George Johnson know this? Johnson may be able to tell whether Nicholas Wade is a good writer but he sure isn't in a position to judge whether he's a good science writer since the most important thing about science writing is accuracy and Johnson knows nothing about molecular biology.

This may be one of the biggest problems with science writers. They can't tell the difference between science and writing. And they don't like it when scientists point this out to them.

---