Evolutionary Coda

I catalog, dispense, and reorder medications for a living at one of the nicer assisted living facilities in my area.  Across the street from my work is a bike path which, in fact, I use every day coming to and from work.  It is also where I take my lunches in all but the most inclement of weather.  There are park benches where I like to sit and read.  The trail itself is scenic, next to a creek.  It's a lovely area.

I was sitting there on my lunch break the other day when a man, a complete stranger to me, approached on a bicycle.  He was around retirement age and the repair and accessories of his bicycle as well as his dress suggested a man of modest means and likely a more solitary existence, but not an unpleasant sort of person.

As for me, my moment before the encounter was spent realizing that I had 10 more minutes of my lunch break and only 3 more pages left before I completed the chapter I was reading.  I was inclined towards finishing the chapter before I had to return from my break.

The man said, "How's the reading?"

I said, "Great as always."

He said, "What are you reading?"

I said, "Mr. Charles Darwin."

He screeched to a halt.  I think he actually said, "Uh oh."  I knew exactly what was going through his head and what was about to happen.  The man, in his head, thought that this was the moment where he meets the secular humanist on the road and evangelizes him, or at least does intellectual battle with him.  What went on in my head was, "Great.  Now I'm going to have to listen to this guy and not get to finish my chapter."

It was a source of great amazement to me how reading Darwin in public inspires more strangers to feel compelled to talk to you about religion than does reading the Bible in public.

I felt a little cheap after I thought, "This guy is looking for a great story to tell his church group.  He wants to tell the story of the atheist he met on the path and either he stood his ground for the truth of the Gospel or, even better, he preached at the atheist until the atheist got down on his knees a-weeping and repenting."  Immediately followed by the humbling thought, "Wait a minute, Paul.  Aren't you already planning to use this story on your blog?"

I did not say much.  I mainly didn't say much because he didn't ask much.  He lectured and I silently prayed, "God help him if he ever meets the person he currently thinks he is meeting.  He'll be eaten alive."  He began to speak in such a way that I could not break out of the conversation without compromising my standing as a gentleman.  I felt a little like I did when Mormons came to my door the other day.  I felt a little cheated because I would love to have an intelligent conversation about ideas, but that was not on the table here.  What was on the table was for some guy I don't know to tell me what he thinks and then leave, feeling good about himself and feeling no requirement to give me another thought so long as he lives.

How did this come to be?

I also felt a little bad that he was not about to obtain the narrative from his encounter with me that he was expecting.  He started out with the unsolicited advice that I should balance reading Darwin with also reading the New Testament.  I said, "I fully anticipate that I shall" although, in all honesty, I am currently studying through the book of Ruth and, frankly, am not doing so to "balance" anything. 

He asked me if I knew why there was so much evil in the world.  I said, "Yes.  Because of sin."  And at that moment I had the distinct impression that he realized that he was not talking to "the enemy."  He talked for a while about his view of science and religion and about how he lives in a low income apartment complex for the elderly and about the CMA church that he attends.  I then got the sense that he didn't really have all that much interest in speaking to me as a fellow human being now that he felt to his satisfaction that I wasn't someone that he needed to correct and, just as he arrived, he left.

I had this moment as he started to ride away where I had a vision, a moment where my internal camera pulled away into the third person, and I saw this lonely old poor man on a bicycle, riding away from a neurotic middle-aged poor man in a path in a neighborhood where wealthier people dwell.  Two infinitesimal growths on the thin layer of scum covering a small rock hurtling through a dark void.  It's only by the grace of God that an asteroid doesn't slam into the Earth, or Mount Lassen erupts, or the poles shift, or the coming antibiotic resistant plague doesn't arrive to wipe us all out of our strutting and fretting existence.  While both of us owe our lives to the myriad shoulders of ancestors on which we stand, neither of us are exactly the sort of mover and shaker whose bold personality is going to insure top-feeding for us and our kin.

And I called out after him, probably out of his range of hearing, "You know, both can be true."

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species- Part 3

“The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.” -Stanislaus Lec

I had intended to break this book into four blog entry responses, but enthusiasm got the better of me and I finished the whole thing over the past few days.  So, this is the conclusion.

Darwin was wrong about one thing, although it was something that everyone was wrong about in his day and for a long time afterward.  He spent a great deal of this section writing about geology and he has no concept of tectonic plates or of Pangea, a relatively new scientific understanding.  (Fun fact: Did you know that one of the last things Albert Einstein ever wrote was the foreword to a book about the coming polar shifts?  The major hypothesis of how it was to happen in that book relied on a pre-tectonic plate understanding of the Earth's crust.)   Darwin then sets up and jumps through a lot of hoops in the latter half of the book to explain how different species came to be located in different places on the planet.  This leads to what I found to be some of the more entertaining portions of the entire text. 

Some of the sections that I found most interesting involved experiments that Darwin carried out to see how long diverse and sundry seeds could float in salt water and still germinate.  He observes how many and often seeds are found stuck to the feet of birds.  This suggests an extremely old Earth from the law of averages of how often seeds would stick to the feet of birds or float across the sea for us to find similar flora in different lands.  He talks about a time on the Beagle when a bird blew onto their deck, confused and very far from home as he knew it to be a landlocked bird from far far away.

It is also important to mention his repeated referral to the imperfection of our geological record (and that the geological record is intermittent).  He was correct.  The geological record was imperfect and, as it fleshed out over the following 150 years, turned out to support his theory far more than he likely would even have imagined.  At the end of the book (and I mean within the last 5 pages) he slips dangerously close to a polemic.  He has a great deal to say to the special creation crowd, but he also reserves some fire for geologists, essentially haranguing them to get their act together.

There is also a section on hybridism.  In one portion he talks about diversity strengthening species (as in diverse groups within the species procreating leading to stronger individuals).  I hear that this was a special point of concern for Darwin as he worried that having married his first cousin might have been related to the poor health and early deaths of some of their own children.

The section on extinction was a bit archaic as well.  At one point he writes "...the utter extinction of a group is generally, as we have seen, a slower process than its production."  In the margin I wrote "Yeah, not so much anymore!"  Which leads to a modern given that seems to have been entirely beyond the imagination of Mr. Darwin, that is to say the destructive capacity of humankind.  To read this biologist writing in a time before one could even think that humankind has it within their grasp to kill every living thing on the planet reminds me of looking into the face of my grandchild and wondering what it was like to be unaware that one day you will die.

Darwin never gets to the "Monkeys is peoples" part.  I am given to understand that one must needs read The Descent of Man for that little gem.  He does suggest that the embryonic state of a species recalls the parent form, but that's as close as we get to all of the fuss.  The Descent of Man is not included in the curriculum of  this current reading project, but given how much I've enjoyed reading Darwin I fully expect to read it one day.

We do get this, "Whenever it is fully admitted, as I believe it will some day be, that each species has proceeded from a single birthplace, and when in the course of time we know something definite about the means of distribution, we shall be enabled to speculate with security on the former extension of the land."  Rather, we grew to understand both more fully, but the "single birthplace" line has been a pebble in my shoe for the past few days.

I recommend reading Darwin.  As I've said before, it is a piece that one must deal with one way or another at some point or another in life.  You really ought to read what the man has to say for himself rather than taking it through the filter of others.  Then and only then do you get to come over the grown ups table when you talk about these ideas.  If you are a person of faith, let me, as a person of faith, assure you that there is no idea in this work that will shatter your faith.  In fact, I would say that if there is an idea out there that will shatter your faith, you have a much bigger problem than that idea existing.  It means that your faith is weak and shatter-able.

Although, even better, it is a fascinating book with so much to teach.  Darwin is tremendously generous with his knowledge of the natural world and his ideas are well worth engaging with.  As with so much of this series, I feel richer for the experience.  You read to engage with ideas for yourself.  If you don't want to engage with ideas, you are living incorrectly.

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species- Part 2

The second part of my reading began with the Laws of Variation.  Mr. Darwin writes at some length about the reproductive system being subject to changes from the conditions of life, how deviation must have causes, and how elements of an organism can be lost through disuse.  He cites many examples.  He talks about plants in different climates.  I am not entirely sure how to convey how interesting I find these sections, simply as a student of the world, but I kept feeling as if this book might do well to have illustrations.  Lo and behold, such an edition exists and now my heart is full of discontent over my measly Bantam Classics mass market paperback.  It would benefit from illustrations for those times when one is reading away from Google and Wikipedia and cannot look up the 550 species of beetles in Madeira or the opercular valves of sissile cirripedes.

While he readily admits our profound ignorance of the laws of variation, he, nonetheless, does illustrate to satisfaction that it is observable in nature that habit, use, and disuse have and do play an important role in the modification of organisms.  He also, as seems to be his custom, then examines the issue through the lens of what humans are capable of with breeding and domestication.  He points out that the tendency towards variation and the tendency to return to the original states both serve to make sustained traits difficult in breeding.

Returning once again to matters ecclesiastical, I was surprised to find this line at the end of a chapter, specifically referring to those who might argue for the independent creation of each individual species.  He says that this argument "makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now living on the sea-shore."  I was astonished at how similar this was to my own reasoning.  I have had discussions before over stars and our knowledge of the Speed of Light alone suggesting that either 1) the Universe is ancient beyond our imagination or 2) God made the stars look old to trick us.

It might also be prudent to note at this point another common misunderstanding.  Mr. Darwin is not writing about the Origin of Life.  He is writing about the Origin of Species.  As of writing this I am about 2/3rds of the way through the text and so far that is his entire focus in this book.  It is a book suggesting that species evolve(d) from other species.  It does not mention the point of singularity.  

Another section which surprised me was his addressing of Difficulties on Theory.  Have you ever heard any of these arguments against Darwinian Evolution?:

-If species evolved from other species, where are the transitional forms?
-Why are there seemingly trifling organs?
-How could an organ as complex as an eye evolve?
-What about the seeming intelligence of, for example, the bee and the cells which they create?
-What about sterility in crossed species?

I have heard all of these arguments from those who oppose the concept of Darwinian Evolution.  I have heard those questions from pulpits and in Christian books.  What I had not heard from those sources is that all of those questions are addressed and answered by Darwin in this book.  This alone would, in my opinion, be sufficient reason to recommend reading this book to anyone.  I do wonder if the reason these arguments are used by the opposition is from a lazy cursory reading of Darwin or simply feeling safe in the assumption that none of their readers will actually go and read Darwin for themselves.  However, again, I feel I should state that belief or disbelief are moot.  You can disbelieve gravitation all you want, but you're still not going to float off into space.

Also, I am not going to go over his responses here because you should read the book (and write your own paper.)

Darwin likens how certain variations emerge at certain times to how at certain points in time you will find two men coming up with the same invention completely independently of one another.  Which is funny because that is precisely the case in the book that I am reading.  Darwin hastened publication of this book because Alfred Russel Wallace had come up with the same idea on his own.  Darwin wanted to beat him to the punch and so rushed to press.

Darwin begins employing a Latin phrase in this section as well which seems like it is to recur throughout the rest of my reading: Natura non facit saltum.  It is the natural selection mantra.  It means "Nature does not make jumps."  We will return to this concept many times I'm sure.

I also read the section on Instinct.  We spend a lot of time watching insects in this chapter.  I was surprised by the existence of philanthropy in nature (as illustrated by the behavior of aphides towards ants.)  Also about the existence of slaves in certain insect communities.  He rounds out the chapter with a fascinating look at the structure of honeycombs. 

Another surprise to me has been how readable I've found this book.  I have not found it difficult in the least.  So far St. Augustine has been the biggest slog in this series.  I am finding Darwin if not overly charming at the very least quite interesting.

Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species- Part 1

 

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

- Galileo Galilei

I have decided to cut my reactions to The Origin of Species into four sections as I am reading it.  In hindsight, I ought to have done this with Wealth of Nations as well.  I feel like 1/4th of this book will provide ample material to fill a blog post.

When I came to read this book, I half expected the central theme and thesis to be something along the lines of this:

"Peoples is monkeys and there ain't no God."

That is because, since early in the history of this book, that is how a good portion of Western organized religion has characterized Mr. Darwin's work.  I am given to understand that this included the former captain of HMS Beagle.  Darwin, along with Copernicus and Freud, deals one of the Three Major Blows to the Human Ego.  Its reception by certain types within religious circles has become a self-parody of the ostrich-like effects of insecure faith.  And, there I go, tipping my hand as to what I think.

I have been more than a little astonished to find, in recent years, certain members of the scientainment community arguing Darwin as if the Christian mischaracterization were accurate.  So, let me preface by saying that I am about to say some things that I know will make some group of people out there angry and/or feel the need to correct me.

I don't "believe" in Darwinian Evolution any more than I "believe" in plate tectonics.  It simply is.  I object to being called a "guided" evolutionist on the grounds that we don't feel the need to apply "guided" before "physics" or "gravitation."  I am a Protestant Christian with deep and heavy roots in Quakerism.  Therefore, I hold that there is a God, and that we humans, in our natural state, have a sin nature which separates us from Him.  He, in His infinite goodness, became human, was willingly sacrificed to atone for our sins, rose from the dead, and will return, and that all who believe in Him will have eternal life with Him.  This, to me, has nothing to do with what Mr. Darwin is writing about, save that we are able to better understand the workings and processes of the universe around us through the scientific method.  What Mr. Darwin had to say seems to be an entirely reasonable presentation of the observable facts available at the time, and the information available after him seems to only further back up the concepts.  I feel that people within my religion who fight so hard against this reveal some pretty hefty latent doubts.  I feel that a hoard of charlatans and carpetbaggers have exploited this false dichotomy.  There is an industry and people profit from it.  I can't say whether or not profit is their primary motivation.  Be that as it may, you can go into stores and spend money on things exploiting this false dichotomy.  This occurs on both sides of the argument.

I have no desire to discuss why people think I am wrong about what I've just written.  I am a little sad that I had to write all of that just to be able to talk about the ideas in the book that I'm reading.  I should have liked to have interacted with the ideas presented here without the loads of baggage.  But, don't let's set up camp there.

So far, this is largely a book about animal husbandry and gardening techniques.  It mainly reads more like this:

The emminent naturalist, to whom I am indebted for having shown me countless sketches of various beak types, Dr. Geisel states that a certain variety of Sneetches in generally clement and fair littoral climate have manifested a pattern surrounding their navel in a distinct pentagram while others in the same locale have no such marking.

(not an actual quote)

He will then explain why diet, climate, or some advantage has caused this change.  He will also talk about similarities or differences in producing these effects in domestic varieties.  This will go on for a page or two and then he will move on to some other bit of flora or fauna.

I wrote in the margins around the third chapter that, were this just slightly more pastoral, it would be exactly what I wished Thoreau was like when I was reading Walden.  It's like talking to someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of varieties of plants and animals.  He lists why certain birds have certain kinds of beaks, certain plants have certain flowers, certain shells in certain places are brighter than others in other places.  Let me put a fine point on this: This sort of thing is the bulk of what I've read in this book so far.

Of course, there are parts of this which argue against special creation, which is to say the idea that God created every variety of every plant and animal.  At this point in history, it would take a very special kind of person to actually make that argument.  We know that we made mules.  We are so far beyond this concept now that we are actually creating new forms of life.

Some of the language is a bit archaic, although I feel that anyone with a successful high school level education would find the book within the grasp of their comprehension.  There are portions where he talks about what he refers to as "monstrosities."  Yes, he is talking about cleft palets and microcephaly and those sort of things.  To my modern eyes, I found his liberal designation of disabilities as "monstrous" as, well, a bit monstrous.  Like a good scientist, he defines his terms:

 "By a monstrosity I presume is meant some considerable deviation of structure in one part, either injurious to or not useful to the species, and generally not propagated."

I know that this is where some make the link to some of the more unfortunate ideologies of the early 20th century.  I would hasten to point out that Mr. Darwin is not putting a philosophy forward.  He is simply attempting to make objective observations about the available data.

Another area which pushes the envelope of my comfort zone is when he unabashedly admits to vivisection.  In fact, so far, for me that's been the most morally problematic section of Darwin.

The main point so far seems to be inherited traits, peculiarities appearing in similar times and circumstances, our known, observable, and re-creatable capacity as humans to employ selection in agriculture (think dogs and splicing produce plants.  Now think of dozens of pages of examples), observable instances of selection in nature without the guiding hand of man, examples from history (our hero Pliny once again makes an appearance to show that pears of antiquity were an inferior fruit, but have since been cultivated to one of the finer fruits), how diversity equals success (a concept which I am tempted to conflate into philosophy, but shall restrain myself in deference to our esteemed host), how the record of animals seems to focus almost exclusively on those animals which humans find useful in some way, how the struggle for life births variations which will tend towards survival (careful to note that this is not to be confused with willful selection, but rather an emergent outcome from conditions), and entropy as an essential.  At the end of one chapter, he gets as close to optimism as we're going to get in this work when he writes:

"When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."

From what I know of Mr. Darwin's life, he was not a man I would describe as vigorous, healthy, or particularly noted for his happiness.

I wonder if Dr. Eliot might have placed this work at this point in our series, just after Adam Smith, to further explore the concept of an "Invisible Hand" which guides certain observable processes.  Our time is brief and nature's work is staggeringly long.  However, the minutiae counts in ways we couldn't have imagined.

We are that minutiae.

More soon.