Spirituality In Politics

The Natural History Museum (London) — or, a Temple to Darwinism

    At least, that’s what I prefer to call it, even though it is meant to be a science museum, and seemingly once was. I am going to begin a series of posts which will describe its transformation, and therefore explain my reasons for calling it that. This should interest anyone following the debate between Darwinian evolutionary theory and theistic alternatives, including Intelligent Design. This is just a brief introduction.

    In my opinion the Darwinian theory of evolution has become equivalent to a religion. Its believers do not think that, obviously, because they have convinced themselves that it is science. It perhaps takes an outsider to see what is going on, hence the philosopher Mary Midgley’s book Evolution as a Religion (1). Words like dogma, creeds, heresy, Inquisition have become relevant, as I hope to show.

    In 2009 there was a special Darwin exhibition there, timed to coincide with the bicentenary of his birth. My wife and I decided to visit it, and naïvely assumed that we would be able to just turn up and get in; after all, it wasn’t going to be a sell-out, or so we thought. To our surprise, it was fully pre-booked and we couldn’t get in. We therefore spent the time looking at the exhibits in the rest of the Museum. As a sceptic, I found the experience an oppressive attempt at indoctrination, and would probably have felt the same if I had managed to get into the exhibition, since one review described it as having “an unambiguous militant tone” (2).

    The Museum was founded in 1881. Richard Owen was the person primarily responsible and its first director. He was an outstanding naturalist, comparative anatomist, and a lifelong opponent of Darwin’s theory. He was apparently a devout Christian, which may have influenced his views; it is also possible that his religious views were inspired by his observations. Owen agreed with Darwin that evolution occurred, but saw nature as a series of experiments by a Creator. (Divine Imagination! You don’t have to be a conventional Christian to believe that.) For at least part of his career Owen believed that living matter had an “organising energy”, a life-force that directed the growth of tissues, a viewpoint that is called vitalism. In case anyone thinks this is an antiquated idea, smacking of mysticism and the supernatural, let me assure you that the debate continues. As recently as 1989, physicist Paul Davies, not someone likely to indulge in fanciful speculation, while not himself endorsing vitalism or animism, nevertheless outlined in The Cosmic Blueprint (3) the difficulties encountered when trying to explain life, specifically morphogenesis, by ordinary physical laws, and included vitalism and animism as part of the discussion.

    I am not saying that this science museum began under the influence of Christianity, but I do think that it was a genuine science museum, i.e. open-minded and objective, showing exhibits, not promoting one particular line of thought. In the following articles, I’ll relate some of the moments which were significant in its transformation into a Temple of Darwinism. For the time being I’ll just note that at the time of the exhibition in 2009, the statue of the founder Richard Owen was replaced by one of Darwin, at which time the transformation from museum to temple was complete.

Footnotes:

(1) Routledge, 1985, new edition 2002

(2) Darwin review http://www.victorianweb.org/science/darwin/capet.html.                                                         I believe the reviewer thought this approach appropriate

(3) Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1989

 

The Earth as a Superorganism — Further Thoughts

    This post follows on from several articles on this theme, for details of which see footnote (1).

    The idea of the earth as a superorganism re-emerged in modern times with the work of the independent scientist James Lovelock and his Gaia hypothesis (2). This was developed further by the spiritually oriented writer Peter Russell in The Awakening Earth (3).

    When Lovelock published the first edition, where he described the Earth as a kind of self-regulating, living organism, he was attacked by biologists who said that this could not have emerged through a process of natural selection, thus contradicting Darwinian theory, the dominant biological paradigm. Even worse, “one critic referred to it scathingly as a fairy story about a Greek goddess” (4). These are statements typical of modern materialist, Enlightenment science for, as Lovelock says, “the idea of Mother Earth or, as the Greeks called her, Gaia, has been widely held throughout history and has been the basis of a belief that coexists with the great religions” (5).

    Nature at the time was seen as “red in tooth and claw”, and “survival of the fittest” was a key idea in a struggle for survival. This viewpoint may seem true at one level to a casual observer. From a higher perspective, however, taking into account the whole picture from the point of view of Gaia, this brutality can perhaps be seen as cooperation in nature; the death of one creature enabling another to survive would be an essential ingredient in the ongoing process of life. Lynn Margulis, a colleague of Lovelock and fierce critic of Darwinism, believed something along those lines, and developed the concept of symbiosis, or cooperation in nature.

    New material on this theme is now being added. Peter Wohlleben has recently written The Secret Network of Nature (6). Here are some quotes from his introduction:

  • “Nature is like a giant clockwork mechanism. Everything is neatly arranged and interconnected. Everything has its place and its function”.
  • “All animals and plants are part of a delicate equilibrium, and every entity has its purpose and role in its ecosystem”.
  • “Nature is much more complex than a clock. In nature, not only does one cog connect with another: everything is connected in a network so intricate that we will probably never grasp it in its entirety” (his italics).

    As an example, he describes the role of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. They may appear as murdering predators to us (red in tooth and claw), but Wohlleben shows how they play an essential role in maintaining the balance in the ecosystem (symbiosis). They were eradicated from the park in response to pressure from ranchers. This enabled the elk population to increase, the consequence of which was that “large areas of the park were stripped bare by the voracious animals. Riverbanks were particularly hard hit. The juicy grass by the river disappeared, along with all the saplings growing there. Now this desolate landscape didn’t provide enough food even for birds, and the number of species declined drastically”, for example, beavers disappeared. When wolves were reintroduced, they again preyed on the elks, and things began to return to normal (pp5–6).

    This just goes to show what happens when ignorant humans, who understand nothing of the above, and who have lost all sense of their connection to nature, are allowed to act, motivated purely by their own selfish interests.

    If the Earth is indeed this intricate superorganism, it is hard to see how this could have arisen through the blind, random, purposeless processes that neo-Darwinians assure us are the reality of evolution. That is obviously the reason why those biologists reacted so strongly to Lovelock’s hypothesis. If each individual planetary citizen recognises that he or she is the equivalent of one of its brain cells, we can act accordingly, and start to take responsibility for the healing of Gaia.

Footnotes:

(1) Relevant articles:

The first one is preparatory: The Superorganism – a Challenge to Materialist Science

More important are: Is the Earth a Superorganism?

and: Humanity as Part of the Superorganism

    If you’ve read as far as that, you might also be interested in: The Role of the Citizen in a Spiritual Society

(2) Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth, first edition 1979, second edition 1987, reissued 1995, OUP

(3) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982

(4) 1995 edition, Pxii

(5) 1995, Pxiv

(6) translated by Jane Billinghurst, The Bodley Head, 2018

1859 — a Crossroads in the History of Science

    1859 was the year in which the first edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published. He had been putting this off for a long time, but felt pressurised when he discovered that Alfred Russel Wallace had come up with the same theory of evolution by natural selection, and did not want to be upstaged. Luckily for Darwin, it seems that Wallace was not competitive by nature, and did not feel the need to try to take exclusive credit for himself.

    Darwin’s name went on to be associated with the theory, and for a long time Wallace was forgotten. That is my first reason for claiming 1859 to be a crossroads. Science chose to celebrate Darwin, whose theory became a cornerstone of the modern philosophy of atheistic materialism. Suppose it had chosen Wallace instead; he went on to write The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose. He was therefore a believer in God and what we now call Intelligent Design. He was also a firm believer in spiritualism. What would the world look like now, if he had become the dominant theorist instead of Darwin?

    Wallace’s role in the development of the theory of evolution has been recognised more widely in recent years, although the same thing cannot be said of his later beliefs. Extraordinarily and inexplicably, the comedian Bill Bailey, who claims to be a big fan and student of Wallace, in a BBC documentary (1) described the theory of evolution by natural selection as “one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time”, but said that Wallace had taken “a path which would ultimately lead him to deny God”. If this was not a deliberate lie, then it was ignorance on a grand scale. (I’m trying to convince myself that there isn’t some kind of sinister plot going on.)

    Less well known is that 1859 was also the year when Alexander von Humboldt died, a name almost forgotten nowadays, but a giant figure in the world of science at the time, and a prolific writer. He was “a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science”. His most important work was Kosmos, a multi-volume treatise which outlined a “holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity”. He believed that the universe was created, and was subject to a controlling power (2). He was therefore thinking along the same lines as Wallace, and was a forerunner of James Lovelock and his Gaia hypothesis, standing in a tradition which the latter said “has been widely held throughout history and has been the basis of a belief that coexists with the great religions” (3).

    ‘Enlightenment’ thinking has therefore promoted Darwin, and rejected Wallace and von Humboldt. If only we could go back to 1859 and choose the other road. Actually we can. If there can be a Renaissance of ancient spiritual ideas in medieval Italy, then there can be a Renaissance of the ideas of Wallace and von Humboldt in modern times. Bring it on!

 

Footnotes:

(1) Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero, BBC2, April 21 and 28, 2013

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt

(3) Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth, 1995, OUP, Pxiv

Daniel Dennett part 2

 

    In my first post on Daniel Dennett (which I assume here you have read) I restricted myself to mentioning scientists who had written prior to his book, i.e. those whom he could, and perhaps should, have been aware of. I also mentioned only those from scientific disciplines about which there could be no argument about their inclusion – biologists, geneticists, paleontologists, physicists. I also, with a couple of exceptions, chose scientists who, as far as I could tell, had no strong religious beliefs. I was trying to find scientists whose inclusion Dennett could not reasonably challenge.  Here I won’t be quite so strict, but will offer some supplementary material that I think is relevant to the ongoing debate about the truth, or otherwise, of Darwinian theories.

    Beginning with biologists, there are some whom Dennett would reject because they believe in Intelligent Design. To my mind, however, their arguments (which are scientific, and have nothing to do with religion) are at least as impressive as his. Perhaps the best known is Michael Behe, who caused something of a stir with his book Darwin’s Black Box (1). Also interesting are Michael Denton’s Evolution in Crisis (2),  and Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells (3). 

    Mathematicians (I believe they count as scientists) have often been highly critical of Darwinism . The argument usually follows the line that the odds against life as we know it having been organised by blind, purposeless forces, are astronomical beyond astronomical. The most striking comment along these lines was made by the astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who said that the chances that life on Earth just occurred and evolved by chance are about as unlikely as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747 (4).              

                                                                                                              The most significant moment historically was the Wistar Symposium in 1966, its proceedings published as Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (5). This was actually a conference of mathematicians and evolutionary biologists where they aired their differences. In the discussions which have followed, the biologists are usually perceived to have lost the argument, making some ridiculous statements in the process.                                                                                                                         There is more to say about Sir Fred Hoyle, who is described as either an atheist or agnostic, astronomer and mathematician. I have just noted his rejection of Darwinian evolution on the grounds of odds. In a book called Evolution from Space, he and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe had a chapter called The Evolutionary Record Leaks Like a Sieve, in which they said: “The general scientific world has been bamboozled into believing that evolution has been proved. Nothing could be further from the truth” (6). The whole book is an attack on Darwinian theory as an explanation for life on Earth. 

    From other related scientific disciplines:

    Stuart Kaufmann, complexity theorist, believes that systems tend to arrange themselves in patterns, not as a result of natural selection. He thinks that Darwinism is only part of the truth (7).                                   Hubert Yockey, information theorist, argues that “the information needed to begin life could not have developed by chance; he suggests that life be considered a given, like matter or energy” (8). More recently he has said that “the origin of life in unknowable” (9).                                                       

    Sir John Eccles, neurophysiologist and Nobel Laureate (that should be enough to make him reputable in Dennett’s eyes), argued that “mind had an existence independent of the brain, that the uniqueness of individual personalities did not depend on genetics, and that science had gone too far in breaking down Man’s belief in his spiritual greatness. He considered that we were creatures with some supernatural meanings and endowed with purpose” (10). Together with Karl Popper, he wrote a book with a very interesting title, The Self and Its Brain (11).

    Philosophers are of course not scientists, but the philosopher Dennett feels competent to declaim about scientific matters, so I’ll take the liberty of mentioning the following:                                                             Eric Tomlin is admittedly not a household name, but his career included being Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Nice. He contributed an article on the subject of evolution to The Encyclopedia of Ignorance (12), called ‘Fallacies of Evolutionary Thinking’. In it he said: “The truth is that evolution was an hypothesis which hardened into dogma before it had been thoroughly analysed. Hence it mothered a number of fallacies” (his italics). His major complaint was that Darwin’s theory caught on because it met a need; it was “an attitude favoured by the sophisticated as a vindication of their belief that existence lacked purpose. Darwinism appealed to them because it provided a way to justify their belief”. He argues that this is just wishful thinking, that there is purpose in Nature. He said: “To ascribe (the development of the human brain and nervous system) to the play of blind forces is to suspend rational judgement and to betray the cause of science”. He actually says that it is “crazy” to do so (italics mine). In case we are in any doubt about what he means by that, he goes on to use the words “psychotic” and “schizophrenic” as clarification.
    These are strong words. I’m sure you can see why I have chosen to include this possibly obscure philosopher. His suggestion is that certain people, while claiming to be rational scientists objectively seeking the truth, are suffering from a severe psychological problem, in his words suspending rational judgement, in my language a desperate need to be atheists, who will say or believe anything in order to maintain their stance.

    Here is another significant philosophical moment. In 2004, before Dennett wrote his book, the renowned life long atheist philosopher Antony Flew, who had previously written Darwinian Evolution (13), arguing for it, announced that he had become a deist and a convert to Intelligent Design, saying that he “had to go where the evidence leads” (14).

    Historically, another book worthy of mention is The Great Evolution Mystery, by Gordon Rattray Taylor (15). He was not a scientist by profession, but was educated at Cambridge University, and went on to become Chief Science Advisor to the BBC, and edited its Horizon series. The book is an extensive critique of neo-Darwinian theory, easily understood by a general reader, with many scientific references.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            So, in addition to all the scientists mentioned in my previous post, the above gives you some further ideas of the situation leading up to 2006 when Dennett wrote. The story has continued afterwards:

     In 2008, the physicist Amit Goswami published Creative Evolution: A Physicist’s Resolution between Darwinism and Intelligent Design. In a chapter called ‘God and a New Biology’ he said “every modern biologist – in moments of total honesty – hears the foundation (of Darwinism) creaking” (16). (If only more biologists could be totally honest!)

    In 2012, the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel caused something of a stir when he published Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (17).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            In 2014, www.thethirdwayofevolution.com was launched, bringing together and publicising the work of scientists who find neo-Darwinian explanations inadequate, without resorting to theories of Intelligent Design or any other form of supernatural intervention. Dozens of names are listed there. Even if the website was only created in 2014, many of them had obviously begun their research and published earlier than 2006, when Dennett wrote. So here we have many other reputable scientists whom he chose to ignore. I especially like the articles of Stephen Talbott; see, for example, ‘Can Darwinian Evolution Be Taken Seriously? ‘ (18). Interestingly, Stuart Kauffman, mentioned above, had previously used the same term, saying that we need to look for a “third way” between a “meaningless reductionism and a transcendental Creator God” (19).    

    I could go on, as the list of doubters in both my posts is far from exhaustive. By now, however, I hope I have convinced you, in case there was any doubt, that Darwinian theories of evolution are highly controversial. So from now on, don’t let anyone tell you, contrary to what Dennett said, that science has proved beyond doubt the truth of Darwinian evolutionary theory. If you do hear that, I hope I have provided you with enough ammunition with which to fight back.

Footnotes:

1. The Free Press, 1996                                                                                                                                                           2. Adler and Adler, 1986. There is also an update Evolution Still in Crisis.                                                                3. Regnery Publishing, 2002                                                                                                                                               4. See The Intelligent Universe, Michael Joseph, 1983, p19                                                                                                5. Wistar Institute Press, 1967                                                                                                                                               6. Evolution from Space, Simon and Schuster, 1981. Quote from the Touchstone edition, 1984, p87                   7. See, for example, The Origins of Order, Oxford University Press, 1993                                                                     8. Information Theory and Molecular Biology, CUP, 1992, chapter 9, quoted by Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p29                                                                                                                                                                                   9. Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2010,  p182                             10. Malcolm Lazarus, in The Spirit of Science, Floris Books, 1998, p12                                                                         11. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983                                                                                                                                         12. R. Duncan and M. Weston-Smith, eds., Pergamon, 1977, quotes p228, p228, p231                                           13. 1984, Paladin Books. Revised edition 1997, Transaction Publishers.                                                                   14. Interview with Dr. Gary R. Habermas, published in the Winter 2005 issue of “Philosophia Christi” the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society (www.biola.edu/philchristi)                                           15. Secker and Warburg, 1983                                                                                                                                             16. Quest Books, 2008, p3.                                                                                                                                                 17. Oxford University Press, 2012                                                                                                                                     18. At time of writing this article is still available on the link but, as the website states, will at some point be retired, since it has been updated by another, ‘Evolution and the Purposes of Life’. This later article will obviously be as interesting as the original.                                                                                                               19. Reinventing the Sacred, Basic Books, 2010, p31

 

 

 

Daniel Dennett

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           2009 marked the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and his name was everywhere in the media. Newspapers carried features, and the national treasure David Attenborough presented a BBC television programme in his honour. The public’s imagination was captured; at the Natural History Museum a special exhibition Darwin’s Big Idea on any given day could be sold out.
    Yet in the media there are sometimes references to polls which reveal the percentage of people who do not believe in evolution. The number is usually perceived to be surprisingly high, given that science has now “firmly established evolution as fact”.
    Why are the public so unconvinced? The scientists’ answer may perhaps be expressed in more polite language than this, but the gist of it is that these people are too stupid to understand, and prefer to cling to false hopes that there may be a God, that life may have meaning, and on the whole don’t take the trouble to study the science, and listen to scientists and their compelling arguments.
    An outstanding example of these points is provided by the well-known atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett in this passage from his anti-religion book Breaking the Spell (1). He talks about “…those who don’t yet appreciate just how well established the theory of evolution by natural selection is. According to a recent survey, only about a quarter of the population of the United States understands that evolution is almost as well established as the fact that water is H20 ”. He calls this an “embarrassing statistic”, and continues: “Could so many people be wrong? Well, there was a time not so long ago when only a small minority of Earth’s inhabitants believed that it was round and that it traveled round the sun… But how, in the face of so much striking confirmation and massive scientific evidence, could so many Americans disbelieve in evolution?” He calls this “the widespread misinforming of the population”, and blames priests, whom the people trust more than scientists. He continues: “There are no reputable scientists who claim this. Not a one. There are plenty of frauds and charlatans, though. …. What about the Scientific Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents who are so vocal and visible in well-publicized campaigns? They have all been carefully and patiently rebutted by conscientious scientists who have taken the trouble to penetrate their smoke screens of propaganda and expose both their shoddy arguments and their apparently deliberate misrepresentations and evasions”. He then invites his readers to educate themselves in evolutionary theory and its critics, which he says “should only take a few months of hard work”, and suggests various texts and websites to study.

    Let’s examine his points in more detail.

    It’s strange that a trained philosopher should include in his arguments an appeal-to-authority which, according to the rules of Logic, is considered to be a flaw or fallacy. Of course it is said, quite reasonably, that this fallacy should not be applied to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus, which is what Dennett is doing here, or at least thinks he is. Surely, however, it is not inconceivable that a scientific consensus just might be wrong. (Click on link for explanation of these points if required – it’s the second page.) As I’ll show below, there are significant experts who disagree.

    “According to a recent survey, only about a quarter of the population of the US understands that evolution is almost as well established as the fact that water is H20”.
    This is of course nonsense. How many scientific papers or books have been published recently arguing the case that the chemical composition of water is not H20? None. And who can even begin to imagine where they would start their argument?

    “There are no reputable scientists who claim this. Not a one”.
    Dennett is such a fanatic that it is possible that his definition of “reputable” is someone who accepts Darwinian evolution, in which case the statement is mere tautology. I’ll put that idea to one side, however, and mention some of the scientists highly critical of Darwinism, whom Dennett, writing in 2006, had failed to notice. I’ll mention some of their qualifications, so that you can decide whether they are reputable or not.

    I’ll begin with biologists and related disciplines, in approximate chronological order:

    D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form . As this year marks the centenary of its publication, this classic book is a good place to start. Stephen Jay Gould, preeminent palaeontologist, describes the author as “perhaps the greatest polymath of our century”, and the book as “the greatest work of prose in twentieth-century science”. Peter Medawar, eminent biologist, says of it “beyond comparison, the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue” (2). In it Thompson argued that the shapes, forms and growth processes we observe in nature are not an arbitrary result of evolution’s blind searching, but are governed by mathematical rules.                                     Douglas Dewar, ornithologist (and admittedly a Creationist, although one producing books and papers of high scientific quality). See especially Difficulties of the Evolution Theory (3), and The Transformist Illusion (4).
    J. C. Willis, distinguished botanist, Fellow of the Royal Society, honorary doctorate of Science from Harvard. His most significant book is The Course of Evolution (5). He believed that plants are impossible to understand through Darwinian processes.
    Dr. W. R. Thompson, biologist, renowned entomologist, Fellow of the Royal Society. See his introduction to a new edition of The Origin of Species in 1956, where he said: “The modern Darwinian palaeontologists are obliged, just like their predecessors and like Darwin, to water down the facts”. He talks about “fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction mingle in an inextricable confusion” (6).
    E. J. H. Corner, Cambridge Professor, Fellow of the Royal Society. See his paper on Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought (7). In it he states that “to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation”. Please note that this does not make him a Creationist, whose beliefs are inspired by the Bible, rather that the available scientific evidence suggests that. Like many who follow in this list, he believes in evolution, but not neo-Darwinian evolution, which he calls a temple where believers worship. He says of Darwinian literature: “textbooks hoodwink” (p97).
    Professor Andrée Tétry, eminent French biologist. See A General History of the Sciences, volume 4, 1966, section on Evolution (8).
    The interesting case of Gavin de Beer, who was a significant, and usually loyal, Darwinian biologist and embryologist. However, in 1971 he published Homology, the Unsolved Problem, which brought up significant material which challenged neo-Darwinian genetic assumptions about common ancestry (9).
    Pierre-Paul Grassé, one of Europe’s greatest zoologists, who had many academic appointments, and was president of the Académie des Sciences (is that reputable enough?), said that Darwinism is demonstrably false, since it clashes with so many experimental findings. His most important book, and savage attack on Darwinism, is Evolution of Living Organisms (10), where he calls it a “pseudoscience”, “depending on frequent miracles”, and that “Darwinists only look at those facts that fit their theory”.
    Dr. Pierre Gavaudan, botanist and cytologist. He worked on carnivorous plants, and concluded that they could not be explained by Darwinian theory. He called neo-Darwinism an “ingenious romance” (11).
    Richard Lewontin, Harvard Professor of Biology, wrote: “The theory becomes a vacuous exercise in formal logic that has no points of contact with the contingent world. The theory explains nothing because it explains everything” (12). He also said that many organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed”, which is both a challenge to Darwinism and “the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer” (13).
    Rupert Sheldrake, distinguished biologist, former Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Clare College Cambridge, and his theories of formative causation and morphogenetic fields. See A New Science of Life (14), and The Presence of the Past (15) .
    Brian Goodwin, professor of Biology, wrote a significant book critical of Darwinism, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots (16), which was awarded the Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize for 1995. (This was obviously not enough to make him reputable in Dennett’s eyes!) He suggested that organisms are dynamic self-organizing processes that obey certain principles of order, thus questioning the importance of natural selection and adaptation as the fundamental concepts of evolution.
    In the same year that Dennett wrote, the physiologist and systems biologist Denis Noble published The Music of Life, Biology Beyond Genes (17). His theory of downward causation would horrify a neo-Darwinist.

    I could go on, but hopefully I have made the point. However, here are two of the more dramatic denunciations which Dennett, writing in 2006, had failed to notice.
    In 1981 Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, read a paper at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (18). He said: “…last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That was quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long.” Because of this experience, he decided to ask his colleagues the same question ‘can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true?’ “I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time”. He declared at the same meeting that evolution was “positively anti-knowledge”, saying that “all my life I had been duped into taking evolution as revealed truth”.
    Along similar lines Lynn Margulis, Distinguished Professor of Botany and Geosciences, said that history will ultimately judge neo-Darwinism as “a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology” (19). According to Michael Behe,  at one of her public talks Margulis “asks the molecular biologists in the audience to name a single, unambiguous example of the formation of a new species by the accumulation of mutations. Her challenge goes unmet. Proponents of the standard theory, she says, ‘wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin… Neo-Darwinism, which insists on (the slow accrual of mutations), is in a complete funk’ ” (20).

    I’ll move on now to geneticists critical of Darwinism. Perhaps the most famous amongst them historically was Richard Goldschmidt, a first-class geneticist with impeccable credentials, praised even by his intellectual opponents. He concluded, since many species and genera appear suddenly in the fossil record, differing sharply from earlier groups, that evolution did not proceed by small steps, contrary to Darwin’s thinking, and came up with the notorious concept of “hopeful monsters” (21).
    John McDonald, University of Georgia, wrote: “The results of the last 20 years of research on the genetic basis of adaptation has led us to a great Darwinian paradox. Those (genes) that are obviously variable within natural populations do not seem to lie at the basis of many major adaptive changes, while those (genes) that seemingly do constitute the foundation of many, if not most, major adaptive changes apparently are not variable within natural populations” (his italics) (22). (Gene mutation is of course the foundation of neo-Darwinian theory.)
(See footnote 23 for further examples.)

    Physicists are often very critical of Darwinian theories:

    Paul Davies is a well-known figure, writing books for the general public. See The Cosmic Blueprint (24), and a lecture The Cosmic Blueprint: Self-Organizing Principles of Matter and Energy (25). (The use of the word blueprint is suggestive of the term archetype, which was the theory generally believed before Darwin came along.)
    You may not have heard of the late Glen Schaefer, but he was an impressive figure who held degrees in Mathematical Physics and Quantum Field Theory, with a second career in biology and ecology. He said: “All the sources of information that I’m using are from people who have worked at least twenty-five years and are at the head of their fields, and are in print. If you look into those positions, you will find that there is no evidence for evolution (I assume he means neo-Darwinian) and they say so. We believe it because of our education” (26).
    Professor Henry S. Lipson, distinguished member of the Institute of Physics, in communications to Physics Bulletin 1979 and 1980 (27), made the following significant statements:
    “I have.. tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin’s theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.”
    “In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.”
    “the only acceptable explanation (for living matter) is creation”.

    See also Lee Spetner, Not by Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution (28).

    I should note at this point that evolutionary biologists often have a very poor understanding of the quantum physics revolution, if they are even aware at all of its findings. An exception would be Bruce Lipton, who began as a Darwinian biologist, but said that an understanding of quantum physics liberated him from the antiquated worldview on which Darwinism is based. He wrote that “quantum physics is relevant to biology and that biologists are committing a glaring, scientific error by ignoring its laws”. “We biologists almost universally rely on the outmoded, albeit tidier, Newtonian version of how the world works” (29). (Thus in his view biologists on the whole operate from a starting point of ignorance).

    It is clear therefore, contrary to what Dennett says, that there have always been and remain a significant number of reputable scientists who are critical of, even scathing about, Darwinian theory.

    Let me remind you of another statement by Dennett above. He claims that the opposition to the “truth” of Darwinian theory is religiously motivated – priests, Scientific Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents. This is again wrong, since many of the scientists mentioned above are atheists, agnostics or otherwise indifferent to religion, and believe in evolution (but not neo-Darwinian).
    I’ll pick out two striking examples. Professor Lipson, mentioned above, having said that “the only acceptable explanation (for living matter) is creation”, went on to say that the idea was “anathema” to him, “but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it” (my italics). Distancing himself from biblical Creationism, he said elsewhere “in our present state of knowledge creation is the only answer – but not the crude creation envisaged in Genesis” (30).
    Richard Lewontin, who in the quotes above spoke of design, later wrote, in an extraordinarily revealing and refreshingly honest description of the stance of modern science:
    “…we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” (31).

    The important point is not whether all these dissenting scientists are right or wrong (although I believe on the whole that they are right), rather that Dennett is either choosing to live in a state of ignorance – an ostrich with his head buried deeply in the sand – or is deliberately lying to the public. Whichever is the case, if atheistic neo-Darwinians need to do this in their attempts to convert the public to their point of view, why should we listen to anything they say?
    As for “smoke screens of propaganda”, “shoddy arguments” and “deliberate misrepresentations and evasions” (Dennett’s words in the quote above), in relation to neo-Darwinian advocates and theorists, the Dennett quote being a prime example, the words pot, kettle and black spring to mind. I wonder if he would be prepared to spend “a few months of hard work” studying all the scientists mentioned above.

Footnotes:
1. Viking, 2006. My quote is taken from the Penguin edition, 2007, p60-61.                                                             2. Gould’s foreward to the Cambridge University Press Canto edition, 1992
3. Edward Arnold, 1931
4. Dehoff Publications, 1957. Described by Alan Hayward as ‘one of the most scholarly and effective exposures of the weaknesses of Darwinism ever written’ (Creation and Evolution: the Facts and the Fallacies, Triangle, 1985, p208).
5. Cambridge University Press, 1940
6. Everyman Library No. 811, Dent
7. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh & London, 1961
8. Thames & Hudson. English translation of La Science Contemporaine II, ed. René Taton.
9. Oxford University Press, 1971
10. Academic Press Inc., 1977, see pp. 6, 103, 50
11. See his contribution to Mathematical Challenges to the neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution,                    P. S. Moorhead and  M. M. Kaplan, Wistar Institute Press, 1967.
12. The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, p11-12, quoted by Tom Bethell, Darwin’s House of Cards, p124.
13. “Adaptation”, Scientific American, September 1978, pp. 119-130, quoted by Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong, Pan, 1982, p84, (accurately I hope, as this one is somewhat surprising, given other things he has said).
14. Blond and Briggs 1981, Anthony Blond 1985
15. HarperCollins, 1988
16. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1994
17. OUP, 2006
18. Evolution and Creation, November 5th 1981
19. C. Mann, (1991), “Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth Mother”, Science, 252, 378-381.
20. Darwin’s Black Box, The Free Press, 1996, p26. I assume he is referring to further material from the reference in footnote 19.
21. He wrote The Material Basis of Evolution, Yale University Press, 1940.
See also “Evolution, as viewed by one geneticist”, 1952, American Scientist 40: 84-98. Norman Macbeth summarises his argument: ‘evolution has obviously proceeded from the higher categories to the lower… whereas the Darwinians teach just the opposite’ (Darwin Retried, Garnstone Press, 1974, p139n).
22. “The Molecular Basis of Adaptation”, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 14, 1984, p93,              quoted by Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, The Free Press, 1996, p28.
23. Behe also mentions evolutionary geneticist George Miklos, and University of California geneticist John Endler.
24. William Heinemann Ltd., 1987
25. Transcribed in The Spirit of Science, David Lorimer (ed.), Floris Books, 1998
26. Ibid., p122, in a lecture entitled A Holistic Philosophy of Nature. It would be interesting to know exactly who he was talking about. Unfortunately, because this is a quote from a lecture transcript, rather than a book, his sources are not provided.
27. Especially vol. 31, No. 4, May 1980, pp 138, 337
28. Judaica Press, 1998
29. The Biology of Belief, Hay House 2005 revised 2008, p69
30. New Scientist, Vol 90 No 1253, May 14th 1981, p452
31. In a January 9th 1997 review of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, still available at time of writing at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons

Alfred Russel Wallace

    The orthodox story is that he came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection about the same time as Darwin, therefore deserving equal credit. He was not given this recognition at the time, and has therefore been to some extent lost in the historical account. Two BBC programmes supporting this version of events were:

    a) an edition of radio 4’s In Our Time, 21/3/2013.

    b) Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero (two episodes, 21 and 28/4/2013), in which the comedian, a big fan of Wallace, embarks on a mission to rehabilitate his reputation, and give him the recognition he deserves. He achieves his ambition, the climax being a statue of Wallace at the Natural History Museum alongside the statue of Darwin.

    Also, on the occasion of the centenary of Wallace’s death, there was an article by Stephanie Pain in New Scientist magazine (1) under the heading “…it is time to put him in his proper place – as Charles Darwin’s evolutionary equal”.

 

    What is the true story? Whatever Wallace may or may not have thought in the late 1850s, by the end of his life he was a firm believer in God and Intelligent Design, as is clearly shown by the title of his 1914 book The World of Life: a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose. In it he states his view that the purpose (that scientific heresy teleology!) of evolution is “the development of Man, the one crowning product of the whole cosmic process” (1). It is also interesting to note that in his book Darwinism he had previously included a section entitled Independent Proof that the Mathematical, Musical, and Artistic Faculties have not been Developed under the Law of Natural Selection (which are of course what we would describe as more spiritual aspects of humanity) (2). He was also a firm believer in spiritualism, as evidenced by his book Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. (All three books are available as free online downloads.)

    Neither BBC programme found the time to mention any of this, even though the first was specifically meant to be an account of the life of Wallace. If we listen to an edition of In Our Time, we should be able to expect a reasonably complete presentation of the topic under consideration. Melvyn Bragg, however, made no mention of these facts, and concentrated exclusively on the orthodox story. It was left to one of the guests, geneticist Steve Jones, to allude briefly, if somewhat vaguely, to this when he said: “There was lots of speculation (of where species came from) … It got frightfully, terribly close to philosophy, which is always a sign that science is sinking into the morass. Darwin and Wallace rescued it from that, although… Wallace later in his life began to push it back in that direction” (my italics). This statement clearly does not do justice to the subject matter; Jones chose to call “philosophical speculation” what in reality were statements of religious faith and Intelligent Design (derived, it must be emphasised, from his observations of the natural world, not from a reading of the Bible!)

    One can argue that Bill Bailey had the right to choose what to put into his programmes, but I would prefer a more complete, and therefore more honest, picture of the subject at hand. He described the theory of evolution by natural selection as “one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time”, but failed to mention any of the above. He even said that Wallace had taken “a path which would ultimately lead him to deny God”, which is either ignorance on an extraordinary scale, if he has studied Wallace as deeply as he claims, or a blatant lie.

    Stephanie Pain, also a big fan of and knowledgeable about Wallace, is aware that he “was a prolific and successful writer”, yet fails to mention the books mentioned above, although she surely ought to have been aware of them. She therefore leaves her readers with a false impression of Wallace. She does mention his interest in spiritualism, but says that this is something discovered from a reading of his letters, thus downplaying its importance, when in fact he was interested enough to write a whole book about it, in which he bravely declared his belief in it, despite the criticism he received.

Postscript:

    Along similar lines we can also note Richard Dawkins’s opening to his preface of The Blind Watchmaker. There he says that the mystery of our existence has now been solved. “Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet” (3). Again this is very misleading, since Dawkins’s understanding of Wallace’s “solution” is in direct contradiction to what Wallace thought himself.

Footnotes:

1. Issue 2942, November 9th, 2013                                                                                                                                     2. Preface, Pvii                                                                                                                                                                           3. 1889 edition, p 469                                                                                                                                                             4. Penguin, 1988, Pxiii