New age "intelligent design"

It's not just fundamentalist Christianity that promotes a fraudulent "intelligent design" theory of how life developed. The "new age" crowd is also into it, but with a quite different spin. A prominent spokesperson for this point of view is Deepak Chopra. He's a frequent contributor at The Huffington Post.

Chopra explains his version of "intelligent design" here: Intelligent Design without the Bible and here: Rescuing Intelligent Design -- but from Whom?

There are many reader comments on both these messages, but another commentator, Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine provides some of the best rebuttal: Skyhooks and Cranes: Deepak Chopra, George W. Bush, and Intelligent Design

Then Chopra replies in a counter-rebuttal: Getting off the Skyhook: A Reply to Michael Shermer

A little later, Jaron Lanier (a pioneer of "virtual reality") provides his own take on the shortcomings of "new age intelligent desigh: Intelligent Design and the Quest for a Survivable Spirituality.

One way to sum up the whole discussion is that any viable theory of how homo sapiens, as well as life itself, became what it is needs to be based on "natural ingredients" rather than supernatural beliefs -- in Lanier's words:

The path forward, I think, must include a renewed sense of spirituality that doesn't depend (or at least depend very much) on supernatural beliefs. We should demand that our spirituality be made of natural ingredients, and there should be warnings about non-natural additives.

We need a survivable spirituality.

String theory, intelligent design

"Intelligent design" vs. theory of evolution is the (allegedly) scientific controversy everyone has heard about, but there are many other issues that are more controversial in genuine science, for instance string theory in physics.

Not Even Wrong, authored by Peter Woit, is a blog that is well-known to folks who follow the string theory issue. Woit has just announced he's been working for several years on a book that will be published sometime next year to present his views on the subject.

Sean Carroll is an astrophysicist who takes the pro-string theory viewpoint, in opposition to Woit. He's a principal contributor at Cosmic Variance and posted some comments on Woit's forthcoming book. The main point of Carroll's post isn't to talk about Woit's book (which isn't out yet, after all), but rather to say a few things about how the genuine scientific debate over string theory differs from the politico-religious assault on the theory of evolution by "intelligent design theory". Some of the comments on the post are enlightening as well (while others are just venting).

I've discussed the "intelligent design" scam enough before, and have only one more thing to add at this point. And that is, you can see the duplicity of right-wing politicians who've begun to try to make political hay out of this issue -- which is what the objective of the controversy has really been all along -- in their calls to "teach the controversy". Though this might seem like a reasonable request, it is only if the controversy is taught in (say) a social studies or a philosophy class, because this is entirely a political/religious/philosophical controversy, rather than a scientific one. It would be as ridiculous to deal seriously with "intelligent design" in biology classes as it would be to deal with other politically-motivated biological theories like Lysenkoism in Stalin's Russia or the racial superiority theories of Hitler's Germany. (Hey, those are "scientific" theories too. Shouldn't they also be taught in biology classes?)

As for the legitimate debates surrounding string theory, that's a much larger and more important topic I expect to comment a lot more on from time to time...

The lies of "intelligent design"

Since it arose after World War I, Christian fundamentalist creationism has undergone its own evolution, taking on newer forms after absorbing repeated blows from the courts. "Intelligent design," as I will show, is merely the latest incarnation of the biblical creationism espoused by William Jennings Bryan in Dayton. Far from a respectable scientific alternative to evolution, it is a clever attempt to sneak religion, cloaked in the guise of science, into the public schools.

"Intelligent design" is not a scientific theory. It is politics, pure and simple. Christian fundamentalists, having lost repeatedly in the courts in an attempt to promote the lie that a major aspect of their theology is science have turned to political trench warfare. The article quoted above: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name, by Jerry Coyne, exposes the strategy and tactics of this campaign. It's also a very well researched explanation of some of the main debating points and how the arguments used by "intelligent design" proponents are just plain wrong scientifically.

Very much worth reading in case you ever have to discuss the subject with a fundamentalist or a thoughtful but inadequately informed skeptic of evolution.

Einstein's Legacy

As almost everyone knows by now, 2005 is being celebrated as a very special year in the physics community, because it is the 100^th anniversay of Einstein's "annus mirabilis". This "miraculous year", 1905, saw Einstein's publication of not just one spectacular paper, but of five. Most physicists would kill to have published even one of comparable quality in their whole career. At least four of these papers, and perhaps all five, would have merited a Nobel Prize, though only one actually did win the Prize for Einstein. And it had nothing to do with relativity.

All of these papers were written and published while Einstein was working as a patent examiner in Bern and before he had even been granted a doctor's degree. This circumstance has a lot to do with the magnitude of Einstein's subsequent professional reputation and popular celebrity. An interesting recent article, Einstein's Legacy -- Where are the "Einsteinians?" by Lee Smolin, one of the leading experts on quantum gravity, considers Einstein's legagy as a whole, and considers the implications for the status of the science of physics today.

Hundreds of articles have appeared describing Einstein's achievements of 1905. Here's a good one: Five papers that shook the world. Here is a brief summary of the topics of those papers:

• The photoelectric effect -- why the energy of electrons ejected from a target by high-energy light depends on the frequency of the light and not on its intensity. James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics could not explain this, but Einstein's paper, building on ideas due to Max Planck, succeeded. This insight culminated two decades later in quantum mechanics (which, ironically, Einstein never fully accepted).
  
• Calculation of "Avogadro's number" and the size of molecules by studying their motion in a solution. This was a major step towards proving the atomic theory of matter, which (it is surprising to realize) was still far from universally accepted in 1905. The idea that matter comes in discrete chunks is closely akin to the idea of the previous paper that light also comes in discrete chunks. It was this paper that earned Einstein his doctorate.
  
• Prediction of Brownian motion. Using the kinetic theory of liquids and classical hydrodynamics, Einstein derived an equation that described the erratic motion of sufficiently small particles in a liquid. The equation was experimentally verified three years later, providing the definitive confirmation of the existence of atoms and molecules.
  
• The special theory of relativity. Einstein developed this (essentially very simple) theory by taking seriously the consequences of just two postulates: (1) that the laws of electrodynamics must be valid in all reference frames in which the laws of mechanics are valid, and (2) that the speed of light is a constant that does not depend on the motions of either the observer or the emitter of the light. This theory illustrates the primary strength of Einstein's thiking: the ability to build a theory by rigorous deduction from simple principles, however counterintuitive they may have seemed.
  
• The equation E=mc². This expression of the equivalence of mass and energy turns our to be a simple consequence of the theory of special relativity.
  

Given how spectacular these results were, Smolin makes the surprising observation that

Physicists I’ve met who knew Einstein told me they found his thinking slow compared to the stars of the day. While he was competent enough with the basic mathematical tools of physics, many other physicists surrounding him in Berlin and Princeton were better at it.

If that is the case, in spite of his spectacular achievements of 1905, then what accounts for Einstein's modern reputation as a preeminent "genius"? I think Smolin puts his finger on the answer when he remarks:

Einstein’s single goal in science was to discover what he called theories of principle. These are theories that postulate general rules that all phenomena must satisfy. If such a theory is true, it must apply universally. In his study of physics he identified two existing theories of principle: the laws of motion set out by Galileo and Newton, and thermodynamics. The basic principle of the first is the relativity of uniform motion, that the speed of your own motion is impossible to detect. Einstein’s discovery of special relativity came from 10 years of meditation on how to reconcile the relativity of motion with James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which describes the propagation of light.

This characteristic was foreshadowed in the deduction of special relativity from just two major principles as described above. But it is seen most strikingly in Einstein's subsequent general theory of relativity, published in 1915. Einstein deduced this theory by pure thought, with practically nothing in the way of experimental evidence as a guide. He considered rigorously the necessary consequences of a small number of basic principles that a "reasonable" theory of gravity ought to abide by. Some of the principles were plausible, while others were far from "intuitively obvious". Nevertheless, when considered together, they led to a theory of gravity which even now, 90 years later, has yet to fail even a single experimental test.

Taking, for simplicity, a few small liberties, the main principles were:

• The laws of physics must be the same for all observers, regardless of their state of motion, and must take the same mathematical form in all coordinate systems.
  
• Spacetime can be described as a 4-dimensional mathematical object known as a manifold, which is a higher dimensional analog of a (2-dimensional) curved surface.
  
• A particle that is not acted on by external forces moves through spacetime along a curve of minimal length (as measured in the manifold). (Such a curve is called a "geodesic" and this kind of motion is called "inertial").
  
• The presence of mass (or equivalently, energy) causes spacetime to curve in such a way that the effects of "gravitational force" due to the mass acting on a particle are indistinguishable from motion along a geodesic in the curved spacetime.
  
• The laws of special relativity apply to observers moving inertially (without acceleration).
  

From these general principles, Einstein was able to derive an equation that embodies the whole theory of general relativity and makes such astonishing predictions as the curvature of a light ray in the presence of matter, the expansion of the universe, and the existence of black holes. Most such phenomena were not even known experimentally in 1915 (though some were, such as the precession of the perihelion of Mercury). The curvature of light by matter was verified experimentally in 1919, and the success of this prediction was so dramatic that it made headlines in newspapers around the world. Other predictions were so counterintuitive that even Einstein was reluctant to believe them. He doubted the expansion of the universe until Edwin Hubble gave convincing evidence of it in 1929, and never accepted the idea of black holes. Indeed, many physicists have had their doubts about black holes until the evidence for them has become very strong quite recently.

The history of Einstein's general theory of relativity turns certain overly simplistic ideas of "scientific method" completely on their heads. Powerful theories are not necessarily derived by "induction" from observation of accumulating experimental data. They are not necessarily even derived deductively from facts already well-verified. A far-reaching theory can, in fact, be derived logically from very general principles of what ought to be true of a useful fundamental theory.

General relativity came as such a surprise to practially all physicists because of how Einstein derived if from thought alone, with little experimental evidence. It is this, as much as the papers of 1905, which conferred upon Einstein his daunting reputation.

The passage of time has only emphasized what an astonishing accomplishment this was. The bulk of Smolin's article deals, essentially, with how the entire physics community -- including Einstein himself -- has been unable to reproduce this feat in the years since 1915.

Einstein devoted the last 30 years of his career to the search for a "unified field theory" that would encompass both gravity and electromagnetism (including quantum mechanincs). Einstein failed. So have all other physicists, either in the more limited objectives that Einstein pursued or in the most general form of a "theory of everything".

The reason, almost everyone agrees, is that no one has yet been able to guess what additional fundamental principles must be postulated.

It seems likely that there are additional principles that are needed, rather than modifications to the principles from which general relativity was derived. (Quantum mechanics is rather a different story. Though it has underlying principles, it has been constructed in a more inductive manner, adapting the mathematical rules -- the basis of which no one pretends to understand -- to fit experimental facts.)

The reason that additional principles are required is that in fact it has been possible to construct a vast number of possible "theories of everything" -- as many as 10¹⁰⁰ distinct theories in the form of superstring theory alone. It would seem that physicists must be missing some essential fundamental principles that would narrow this rather large embarassment of theories to just one. (It is also possible that many or all of this huge number of theories may in fact be realized in a multiplicity of distinct "universes" that, perhaps, comprise the "multiverse".)

But if there is in fact a single theory of everything, nobody has yet been able to offer plausible guesses about the form that the necessary principles should take in order to make the theory unique, as Einstein did so successfully for general relativity.

This doesn't necessarily mean that humans are too stupid to understand the universe. Roughly 250 years separate Einstein's theory of gravity from Isaac Newton's. We might well need another 250 years to take the next step. In any case, it may be a cause for some satisfaction that there is still so much left to learn -- as opposed to the depressing thought that physics has reached nearly the end of the road, with little left to learn.

The Literary Animal

Fair warning: the following is a review of a review of a book I haven't yet read... though it sounds mighty interesting. I'm just using the review as an excuse to sound off on some ideas which occurred to me in reading the review -- ideas that seem important, though there's no hint that either the reviewer of the book or any of the authors of essays in the book seem to have considered them.

The book in question is The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (Rethinking Theory), edited by Jonathan Gottshall and David Sloan Wilson (also here). (It's not scheduled to be released until November, so I have a reasonable excuse for not having read it. Perhaps the publishers will send me a review copy...) The book appears to be heavily academic in nature and consists of 12 essays by luminaries in such fields as literature, literary criticism, anthropology, biology, and evolutionary psychology.

The review is by David Michelson, a graduate student in English literature and evolutionary studies at Binghamton University. (One would presume that Michelson has been mentored, at least informally, by David S. Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton.) The review itself appears at eSkeptic.

A little context to begin with. In the past few decades university departments of literature, literary studies, "critical theory", and the like have generally fallen under the hegemony (a term often used by denizens of these departments) of scholars of a "postmodernist" persuasion. This is rather a controversial point of view (at least among those who don't hold it). Michelson, for instance, alludes to it as "the rather insular culture of anti-scientism and radical political posturing that is commonplace in most English and cultural studies departments today." Adherents of postmodernism often hold a very jaundiced view, to put it mildly, of science in general and evolutionary theory in particular. They regard most science (to use Michelson's words) as "myopically and detrimentally western, white, and patriarchal in practice."

However, I don't care to go into that debate now. (See books like Higher Superstition for more background.) I only mention it to set the context, which is that there are now many scholars and scientists who want to challenge the postmodernists on their own turf, by applying evolutionary theory to the study of literature itself. Many of the contributors to The Literary Animal are apparently in this camp. This is flagrant lèse-majesté.

But what does it mean to apply evolutionary theory to the study of literature? What might such a thing as "evolutionary literary studies" actually consist of? I can't fairly answer that, since the idea comes as a bit of a surprise to me, and I haven't read the book under review. Perhaps this, from Michelson, gives us some idea:

The Literary Animal tackles a huge topic: the nature and representation of narrative and its role in the evolutionary scheme of human affairs, past and present. Despite other essay collections on evolution, literature and the arts, The Literary Animal is the first volume of evolutionarily focused essays on the multifaceted nature of narrative, which is defined here as oral and written literature. This definition encompasses theater, film, television, novels, poetry, erotica, folktales, the narrative activities of journal writing and the hypothesized narrative processes underlying our conscious thought.

I wonder if it's fair to say that a major part of this undertaking could be described as the application of evolutionary psychology to literary studies. That might be a little too narrow, but let's run with it anyway. At this point, I have a feeling of déjà vu. There have been previous attempts to apply some form of "science" to literary studies. A few decades ago, before the rise of postmodernism, when Freudian psychology and other forms of psychoanalysis were still in vogue (and not yet discredited scientifically), there was a lot of writing about "psychoanalysis and literature". (Indeed, many postmodernists still come from a psychoanalytic background. How is that even "modern", let alone "postmodern"?)

Are we simply dealing here with the application of a rather newer (yet still controversial) brand of psychology to literary studies? Whatever the answer to that may be, it may at least help to illuminate the nature of the task here. That is, there are two important kinds of questions that any flavor of psychological theory ought to try to answer about literature.

First: What does the psychological theory tell us about how and why the people who create "literature" go about their work? What motivates their labor? What psychological processes occur in their minds in the act of composing a story?

Second: Does the psychological theory help us understand the motives, thoughts, and behaviors of the fictional characters that occur in literature? Has the author used this theory explicitly in drawing the characters, or do the characters simply serve as credible examples of the theory's predictions? How compatible, and illuminating, are the theory and the literary story at telling us something about "human nature" through the behavior of characters in the story?

And this brings up the really important question: what is "literature" anyway? Answers to this question are presumably to be found among the essays in The Literary Animal as Michelson describes it:

The editors believe their collection speaks to three major themes, each addressing a specific question:

• What is literature about?
  
• What is literature for?
  
• What does it mean for a seemingly nonscientific subject such as literature to be approached from the perspective of a scientific discipline such as evolution?

At this point, I find myself wanting to know the answers as they would be given by yet another flavor of psychology: neuropsychology. It's not that I have any bone to pick with evolutionary psychology. I like the theory a lot, and find it very illuminating in explaining many things about human behavior. However, ultimately, anything that is the product of biological evolution winds up being incorporated in the material structure of an organism. So what might the facts of our neurobiology be able to tell us about some of the questions mentioned above?

I don't know how to answer that, but I think I do know where to start looking. One thing we know (or think we know) is that the frontal cortex of the brain is the place where most of the planned, deliberate behavior of humans seems to be generated. Unlike most other animals (as far as we can tell), humans think, deliberate, plan, and scheme a great deal before undertaking a course of action that has some conscious goal in view (presuming they have sufficient time, of course). It may be that humans are not so unique within the animal kingdom as they think they are, but that's not important. What matters is that neuroscience seems to know at least a little about how this sort of planning occurs in the frontal cortex.

Frontal lobes have been found to play a part in impulse control, judgement, language, memory, motor function, problem solving, sexual behavior, socialization and spontaneity. Frontal lobes assist in planning, coordinating, controlling and executing behaviour. People who have damaged frontal lobes may experience problems with these aspects of cognitive function, being at times impulsive; impaired in their ability to plan and execute complex sequences of actions; perhaps persisting with one course of action or pattern of behaviour when a change would be appropriate (perseveration).

It seems to me that the creating of literature is an example of this kind of planning in action. Whenever we are faced with an important decision, certain kinds of thoughts go through our minds. For example, consider a decision about taking a new job. We think about the kinds of people we will be working with and dealing with on the job. We think about how we will fit into that situation, about what sort of challenges we will face, and how or whether we might be able to respond. We think about the kinds of things that can go right or go wrong if we take the job. We think about our exit strategy if things do go wrong. But these are precisely the sort of things that an author thinks about in plotting a story! And the frontal cortex is where this kind of thinking takes place. Whatever mechanisms exist in the brain to do this kind of analysis, they are at the service of an author who is creating literature. Presumably it matters little whether one is applying this kind of analysis to one's own life or to the lives of fictional characters.

And all this is just as true for the consumers of literature as well as for the creators of it. Practically everyone with a functioning frontal cortex should be able to enjoy exercising that part of the brain as applied to a set of hypothetical characters in hypothetical situations as they do to theirselves, other people they know, and real-life situations. It's the same process whether it's "real life", a TV soap opera, or a Shakespearean tragedy. There is pleasure in exercising our physical selves, whether it's our leg muscles (in running or biking) or our frontal cortex. In the latter case, there are various older name for the activity: pretending, "make believe", or vicarious experience. In theater, one calls such a thing a "play", for very good reasons.

I can be even more specific. I think that the frontal cortex implements "models" of the real world. That is, we have complex theories about the things and actors that are found in the real world, and about how those constituents of the real world interact causally with each other. When the actors are other humans, we even have theories about how their minds work (Dennett's intentional stance). We are continuously running such models, just as models programmed on a computer are run to predict the evolution of everything from hurricanes to the expansion of the universe. Presumably there is a lot that neurobiology can, or will eventually be able to, say about how such models are implemented in the frontal cortex.

That, in turn, should tell us an enormous amount about how literature is created and enjoyed.

Every story is a kind of thought experiment. What will happen if we take some set of characters, place them in a certain environment, and present them with various challenges? Running such thought experiments (when one has time off from dealing with problems in the real world) is a form of play that almost all humans enjoy. It's a form of play that few, if any, other animals can enjoy. And it's obviously a useful adaptation that evolution has provided us with. But it's much more useful to know exactly how this works in the brain than simply to know we have this ability.

Why is the ability to create and run such models of the real world such a useful adaptation? Probably that's obvious, but one can be more specific. I think that an individual's success, in whatever complex task the individual is trying to accomplish, is directly related to how accurately the individual's model reflects the "real world". Is it a good model, or a false one? And success is further related to how well the brain can run this model against a range of varied inputs.

The model, for a primitive human, might deal with the behavior of a particular type of prey animal that the individual is tasked to hunt. For a modern human, the model might deal with a certain occupation, like running a restaurant. In the latter case, there are a variety of important submodels dealing with behavior of potential customers, behavior of employees, handling financial transactions with suppliers, the preparation of food that the expected customers will enjoy, and so on. How accurate those models are as a whole will determine the prospective restauranteur's success or failure. (The latter is much more common.)

The model itself is not provided by evolution. Evolution gives only the ability to run the model in one's brain. The model itself is a form of software provided by an individual's culure. A primitive hunter learns to hunt by being taught, preferably by the most able hunter of the older generation. (Though a few basic skills, like strong and accurate throwing ability, can be provided by evolution.) A modern prospective restauranteur learns the craft from a good culinary academy and (hopefully) from apprenticeship to a talented mentor.

And what is one of the largest collections of off-the-shelf models that a culture can provide? Literature. The intelligent prospective military officer reads Homer or Sun Tzu. The prospective politician reads Machiavelli or Sandburg's Lincoln. The prospective scientist reads Watson's Double Helix. The prospective master of the art of living reads Shakespeare or Lao Tzu. (There may be as much "fact" as "fiction" in some of these examples, but "fiction" can be just as useful, as long as it's true to the "real world".)

Any decent theory of literature should tell us something about how the best examples of such literary models are constructed and how to most effectively run such models in our frontal cortices. Perhaps even about how we might implement such models ourselves.

The politics of ignorance

Great commentary by Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith) prompted by G. W. Bush's quasi-endorsement of "Intelligent Design".

He captures the basic problem in a nutshell:

Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

And his advice for addressing the problem hits the mark:

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality.

This response by Richard Dawkins contains some good advice as well.