The Left and Evolution
Posted by Shannon Love on February 24th, 2005 (All posts by Shannon Love)
I was educated as a biologist and evolutionary theory remains an intellectual interest of mine. I spent many hours in my youth arguing with “scientific” creationists. These hours were largely spent educating the creationists on the actual theory they were criticizing, or debating the finer philosophical points of scientific methodology. I eventually gave up due to pure frustration because in the end creationists believe what they believe as a matter of faith. You can’t argue somebody out of his faith.
So this post over at Powerline pointing to a biology professor who is denouncing the Powerline guys for being idiots because one of them doesn’t believe in evolution grabbed my attention .
Creationists are exasperating because they never study evolutionary theory in any detail. Since they start with the unshakable presumption that the theory is wrong, they can never actually honestly analyze the theory and therefore can never understand it in any depth. They just skim over the theory looking for points that confuse them and then pronounce the misunderstood points as fatal flaws within the theory itself.
Frankly, most creationists’ knowledge of evolutionary theory boils down to, “them scientist fellas what says we alls comes from monkeys!”
Of course, this is a much different view of evolutionary theory than that held by the majority of secular leftists. Their superior educations and their generally more open-minded and inquisitive natures have given them a view of evolutionary theory that might be summed up as, “them scientist fellas what says we alls comes from monkeys!”
I’m not kidding.
Your average leftist is every bit as clueless about evolutionary theory as any stereotypical bible-thumping hick with an 8th-grade education. Worse, leftists hypocritically extol evolutionary theory when it advances their political agenda, but then turn on it viciously when it does not.
Superficially, leftists appear to embrace evolutionary theory to such an extent that most creationists believe that evolutionary theory is itself just a pseudoscientific construction of the Left — used to advance their political power, social authority and intellectual dominance. It is easy to see where they get that impression. For the last 150 years, the Left has used evolution to undercut the authority of religion and tradition. By attacking the fundamental cosmology of religion they have sought to drive religious authority from the public and intellectual spheres. Once religion and tradition are discredited, the only source of answers for life dilemmas is — surprise, surprise — the secular intellectual.
However, the Left’s embrace of evolutionary theory begins and ends with its utility as a materialistic explanation for the origins of humanity. In every other aspect they violently reject evolutionary theory as having any explanatory power. One need to look no further than the savaging of Harvard president Larry Summers to see this hypocrisy in action.
Leftists pilloried Summers because he transgressed against the a central tenet of the leftist faith, the blank-slate model of the origins of human behavior. The blank-slate model holds that human intellect and behavior are strictly the products of learning that occurs after birth. It is a very old idea that shows up in many different eras and cultures . Throughout history, most thinkers have viewed human behavior as resulting from some undetermined ratio of genetics to learning (nature vs. nurture). In the West we have seen a spectrum that has run from someone like Hitler, who viewed human behavior as 90% genetic and 10% learned, to the leftists who hold that human behavior is 100% learned and 0% genetic, with everybody else guessing somewhere between those extremes.
The political implications of the blank-slate model have a long and, in the 20th century, bloody history. The full implications are too large for this post, but it is important to understand that the 100% blank-slate model is not some wacko fringe idea but is instead a central tenet of mainstream leftist ideology. Leftists base their claim to be able to solve most of the problems of humanity, on the presumption that with the construction of the proper environment they can create any behavior needed to make the world a better place.
In reaction to fascism in the wake of WWII, the intellectual dominance of the blank-slate was total. Anyone who posited the most minimum influence of genetics on human behavior was denounced as a literal fascist. Even conditions like schizophrenia and autism were blamed on environmental factors like cold and distant mothers. Only in the last 20 years has the facade begun to crack, but as the Summers incident shows it is still alive and well within the mainstream Left.
The blank-slate model holds that genes (baring obvious genetic illness like Down Syndrome) have no effect on human intellect or behavior. Each healthy human is at birth mentally interchangeable with every other human. Genes may control every other facet of our physiology but not our brains. The differences we see between individuals as they grow arise solely from their psychological environment.
However, in regards to evolutionary theory, the blank-slate does present one rather major problem:
It is completely impossible to reach the state of genetic equality posited by the blank-slate via the process of natural selection.
The driving engine of natural selection is variation between individuals. This was Darwin’s critical insight. Natural selection selects between variations. No variation means no evolution. This central principle of evolutionary theory means that if human brains were as functionally identical on the genetic level as posited by the blank-slate model, then our brains could have never evolved in the first place!
If a person claims to believe that the human mind is the result of the materialistic functioning of the brain, and that the brain arose via a process of natural selection as advanced by contemporary evolutionary theory, but he also holds that individuals’ innate genetic intellectual and behavioral capacities do not vary significantly from individual to individual, then that person is either profoundly ignorant or a hypocrite. (Or perhaps both, a ignocrite?)
Most leftists have no clue about the many implications of evolutionary theory for their ideology. They only know, but in a very vague sense, that leftist authority figures have declared that smart people believe in evolution. The authority figures tell them that anybody trying to apply evolutionary theory to real world human behavior is automatically a fascist. The average leftist, secure in his educated ignorance, just trots along behind authority figures bleating about the superiority of their own particular flock of intellectual sheep.
This is just one of the many areas in which the behavior of the secular Left is indistinguishable from that of religious zealots. The only difference between scientific creationists, and the leftists who had an attack of the vapors while listening to Summers, is which intellectual authority figures they blindly follow. In terms of scientific ignorance, they are engaged in a race to the bottom.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out who I think is winning.
(update: Many commenters have expressed disbelief that the 100% blank-slate view of human cognition actually exist. Some have suggested I have erected a strawman or otherwise engage in hyperbole. I have not. I realize that the intellectual history of views on human cognition is not a subject most people are well versed in (why should they be?) but I assure you the extreme position outlined above is quite real, it is quite old and guite widespread. Here is an excerpt from Steven Pinkers The Blank-Slate that gives one a taste of the extent by which this idea has spread in Western thought)
February 24th, 2005 at 2:28 am
Brilliant reasoning Shannon.
February 24th, 2005 at 2:56 am
There are a couple of ironies here.
The first is that religious faith, while apparently irrational, seems to offer certain survival advantages, in a Darwinian sense, for both individuals and groups.   Belief in God often provides psychological strength and motivation to persevere through life’s difficulties, to change self-destructive behavior, to care for a mate and children, or to sacrifice oneself for the common good.   Likewise, religious traditions can strengthen communities and entire nations.   So when the rationalist tries to argue evolutionary theory with a creationist, he’s actually trying to destroy a philosophical meme that exists precisely because of the evolutionary advantages it offers its host and enjoys over alternative philosophies.   A further irony is that many religious conservatives like Ronald Reagan, who’ve read Hayek, probably understand the “meta-rational” basis for religious belief while many non-religious intellectuals do not.
A second irony, I think, is that at the current pace of human technological evolution, in a few thousand years, perhaps only a few hundred, but certainly within 5000 years, a mere blink of the eye in biological evolution time scales, humans will posses “god-like” powers.   When the full potential of the sciences of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, general & special relativity, quantum mechanics, genetic engineering, etc. are developed, there is a possibility that human beings, or whatever we evolve into, will possess the ability to create a planet in the biblical “six days” and populate it with species of our own design.
February 24th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Interestingly, biological/evolutionary concepts were regarded as quite acceptable among (non marxist?) socialists before WW2, at least in Britain (e.g. Wells, Shaw).
The embrace of “environment only” dogmatism looks like having three causes:
1) Increasing influence of marxists/communists who tended to see this as according with “historical materialism” and the capacity of the Party to reshape society. As with Lysenkoism.
2) Biological theories tainted by association after Nazi’s. Also led to reconsideration of pre-war eugenics movements, which deserved it.
3) As large social programmes were put in place, the interest groups they produced were always likely to favour environmental over genetic factors as providing justification for more and better programmes. Plus greater ease of such schemes modifying people in line with desired ends.
February 24th, 2005 at 10:16 am
An interesting and very sophisticated analysis. Thanks!
I don’t think a complete ‘blank slate’ is possible, either from an evolutionary or a creationist/intelligent-design perspective. By analogy: a computer may be a programmable device that can do virtually anything…run spreadsheets, play games, guide missiles..but it has a fixed nature, as defined by its instruction set. Similarly, the human brain/mind must have a fixed nature to some extent; otherwise there would be no way to write anything on the “blank slate.” The debate can be only about at what *level* that fixed nature exists.
It is interesting that leftists who are presumably blank-slate believers (such as the Marxist rulers of the Soviet Union) attempt to “program” people at a low level, using pain and fear. Clearly, they believe that aversion to pain and death and wired-in, however blank they think the rest of the slate may be.
February 24th, 2005 at 10:47 am
A non-scientific response that goes to the tone you note: Whenever I heard Gould speak, with sarcasm and loathing, of those who didn’t agree with him and, in general, of the religious, I didn’t want to be on his side.
February 24th, 2005 at 11:22 am
That’s rather representative, I think: claiming that Gould spoke of the religious with sarcasm and loathing is quite equivalent to claiming that the left is infested with “blank slaters”, a term invented by a few hacks to describe an opposition view that doesn’t really exist.
I’ve heard Gould speak, and I’ve read all of his published books. If anything, Gould bent over backwards to express respect for the religious, often even when I thought they didn’t deserve it. Saying that Gould acted that way to the religious is convincing evidence that you haven’t actually read or listened to him, just as the silly blank-slate strawman is a dead giveaway that someone doesn’t really understand the argument.
February 24th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
In defense of religion, it should be noted that a significant portion of the people who believe that God created Heaven and Earth also believe that it’s possible that God used evolution as his mechanism for creation and are sitting out most of the evolution wars lately. They’re called Catholics (among others) and this has been addressed since at least Humani generis and most recently by Pope John Paul II in a 1996 speech. Those evolutionists who battle against “the Bible thumpers” without making any provision at all for handling Catholic and other faiths with similar interpretations are doing science and the truth a disservice.
In the Catholic tradition, we’re at a point similar to that of Galileo’s time. The priests are maintaining a nuanced position that whatever side comes out, it does not challenge the faith, whose task is to save souls, not settle scientific controversy.
Evolution is not proven so the Church won’t back it because it’s a side issue just as it wouldn’t endorse heliocentrism until it was proven (Galileo’s demand that the Church do so was at the heart of his conviction at trial). The Church does watch with interest and encourages us to all explore God’s Creation and marvel at His work.
Those minority faiths who fixate on evolution are spoiling for a fight and are generally a noisy but small part of Christianity. Unfortunately, too many scientists seem to not realize that.
February 24th, 2005 at 12:23 pm
Shannon has a point about the intolerance of some of the people who see themselves as defending evolutionary theory from the yahoos. However, I agree with PZ Myers that the use of the term “blank slate” here is so broad and vague as to be a straw man. Indeed there appear to be straw men on both sides of the argument. I prefer Myers’s and TM Lutas’s responses because they deal with the issue at a level of detail where it starts to become meaningful. The arguments from generalities tend to be worthless.
February 24th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
John F,
“Interestingly, biological/evolutionary concepts were regarded as quite acceptable among (non marxist?) socialists before WW2, at least in Britain (e.g. Wells, Shaw).”
Well yes and no. Shaw believed in evolution but hated Darwinism. He had a more mystical view of the process especially in his later days. H.G. Wells likewise portrays a basically non-darwinian view of evolution in his works. This not real surprising because true Darwinism was out of scientific favor at the time.
The blank-slate actually far pre-dates 19th century Leftism and indeed shows up in many different cultures. The pattern is that people who wish to advance a new philosophy or religion as a global solution to a societies problems rapidly converge on the blank-slate because it allows them to rationalize that they can produce any needed behavior at will. For example, most evangelical christians violently reject the idea that genetics has any impact on our ability to make moral choices.
The modern blank-slate arose from the Leftist habit of starting at a conclusion they want and reasoning backwards to produce a chain or reasoning that leads to the pre-determined conclusion.
February 24th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
The fundamental problem with “Creationism” is the argument that the universe, our world, life on our planet and all that jazz is so complex that only God could have done it.
But, then, who created God? God, by definition, must be even more complex then the universe, the world, life and all that jazz.
So why posit something really complex as the creator of something less complex (but still too
complex to have occurred by happenstance)? Especially since God (being uncreated} exists only through happenstance.
If I were a creationist, I would suggest that Earth, being far, far away from the center of the Galaxy, is obviously a place where God tries out his newest creations before introducing them to the center of the Galaxy. Obviously the dinosaurs failed and God wiped them out and replaced them with us guys. This means we should find out what the dinosaurs did wrong or else we’ll be wiped out too.
February 24th, 2005 at 1:09 pm
Here’s a partial transcript of what Summers said:
“There may also be elements, by the way, of differing, there is some, particularly in some attributes, that bear on engineering, there is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization. I just returned from Israel, where we had the opportunity to visit a kibbutz, and to spend some time talking about the history of the kibbutz movement, and it is really very striking to hear how the movement started with an absolute commitment, of a kind one doesn’t encounter in other places, that everybody was going to do the same jobs. Sometimes the women were going to fix the tractors, and the men were going to work in the nurseries, sometimes the men were going to fix the tractors and the women were going to work in the nurseries, and just under the pressure of what everyone wanted, in a hundred different kibbutzes, each one of which evolved, it all moved in the same direction. So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it’s just something that you probably have to recognize.”
When Summers claims that women may be under-represented in engineering, he holds up the idea it may be for biological reasons. Johns Hopkins released a study several years back showing that, as groups, men and women seem to have different levels of ability to engage in 3-D spatial thinking. Men are better able to create 3-D models in their minds, rotate the models, modify the models, etc. They also do better at abstract mathematical thinking, and are better able to correlate mathematical functions to their real-world, physical analogues.
In general, women have superior communication and social skills. They’re far better at multitasking than men and have more stamina (though men produce higher levels of short term energy). And of course they’re also better looking, smell better and are better dancers, but I guess that’s a sexist thing for me to be saying. Too bad. It’s true.
This is not say individuals do not deviate from the norm. Which is fine. That’s what freedom allows us to express. Isn’t that what we want? The freedom to pursue things that interest and satisfy us?
Some people are angry that biology makes men and women different. It clashes with their ideology, which posits that in an ideal universe men and women are exactly the same and interchangeable.
But this begs the question, Is a women more or less free is she’s forced into a career in which she has no interest?
No woman should be denied entry into a profession in which she has ability and interest. But they should not be pressured into positions or professions to fulfill artificial quotas created by ideology and wishful thinking.
February 24th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Jonathan G ewirtz,
“use of the term “blank slate” here is so broad and vague as to be a straw man.”
Man I wish. Unfortunately, the extreme view of the blank-slate where genetics contributes functionally zero input into cognition and behavior is the rule not exception for the intellectual Left. Steven Pinkers study of the matter (linked to in the parent) is an exhaustive examination of the phenomenon.
Consider that the hysterical reaction that Summers drew came after he merely suggested that genetic differences between the sexes might play some very small role in female representation at the upper most levels of the maths and sciences. That seems to be a fairly tame claim for anybody who believed that human intellectual capability was say 95% environment and %5 genetic. But Summers critics its 100% environment or nothing.
The blank-slate model defines many of the Left’s positions. Take abortion. If you believe in the blank-state it is easy not to think of a fetus as possible human. How could it be. A human only comes into being when it interacts with its environment. No environment, no human.
Getting the Left to adopt a less fanciful and ideologically driven model of human nature will be one the great intellectual task of the 21st century.
February 24th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
I agree with PZ Myers and Jonathan G ewirtz here. I don’t think any serious leftist would defend the caricature that Shannon desrcibed. Of course there are total idiots in the left or right or center or whereever. There’s no denying that. But serious folks aren’t like this.
The claim that people on this blog have made over an over — that a scientist who made a sarcastic remark after Lawrence Summer’s speech, “had an attack of the vapors while listening to Summers” is so odd to me. So much anger at this one woman. Shannon’s statement that if you dissagree with Summers is on scientific grounds you are engaged in “scientific ignorance” and “are engaged in a race to the bottom” also frustrates me. I mean, how can you hold Summers up to any kind of high scientific standard? Let’s face it, Lawrence Summers was talking way outside his area of expertise, and the scientific evidence that convinced him was: “I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it’s just something that you probably have to recognize.” Come on now.
February 24th, 2005 at 2:38 pm
The argument about 3-D spatial thinking comes up a lot..but there are vast realms of science and technology in which spatial thinking, 3-D or otherwise, just isn’t that important. For computer scientists and electrical engineers, for example, spatial thinking would seem to be of distinctly secondary importance, as it would for most aspects of pure mathematics.
And if women on average are so bad at 3-D spatial thinking, why are there so many female air traffic controllers? I haven’t seen any numbers but it seems like at least 25% of this profession is female. Possibly it’s because ATC is also very multitasking-intensive and women are said to be generally good at that…but no matter how good you are at multitasking you still need to be at a threshold level of 3-D visualization, and a pretty high one I would imagine.
February 24th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
The “nature vs. nuture” dichotomy is a bit silly. As my genetics professor in college put it, that is sort of like asking “What percentage of a cake is due to the flour and what percentage is due to the over?” There is no sensible answer. Yes, it is possible to ask what fraction of the VARIATION in a trait is due to genetic variation and what fraction is due to environmental variation. But that says nothing about any PARTICULAR individual. While women may in general be worse at 3D spatial reasoning than men, that says NOTHING about whether a particular woman is better or worse than a particular man at spatial reasoning. The lack of distinction between properties of POPULUATIONS and properties of INDIVIDUALS is what bothers me.
February 24th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Yes, the ecological fallacy! I totally agree Tim.
And I’d like to add that even if it were 100% known for certain that a population of men is superior at rotating 3D objects in their minds when compared to a population of women, that observation alone does not speak to the cause of this difference. It could be due to biology or socialization or enviroment or space aliens.
February 24th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Space aliens. That’s it.
February 24th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
The Blank Slate has plenty of examples of broad-brush thinking. Pinker was welcomed because much of what he does is note the emperor’s lack of clothes.
Chel,
Summers was not making a scientific argument, he was positing a question. Your criticism ignores the role he had in the discussion and the nature of positing ideas - ones that seem to make you uncomforable but which should be part of the debate.
Summers is not an unusual case - it is merely a high profile one. And, yes, I think it does show what is wrong with arguments in academic circles.
If you do not consider a reaction of “having the vapors” to such discussion risible - especially when used to blackmail Summers into a series of increasingly ridiculous apologies - then you must be either more optimistic or less realistic about the nature of academic discourse than I am. Might I remark that your use of the phrase “made a sarcastic remark” is not as precise as it should be. The remarks she made were about vomiting and becoming faint. This is not sarcasm. Sarcasm, irritating and inflammatory as it may be, arises from the use of words and a response that is, at least to some degree, of the head. This was a response of the gut. Such responses should not be a part of academic discourse. A country with speech codes might note that to ensure a real marketplace of ideas it is such arguments that should be, well, not banned but marginalized. Such marginalization is the point of many of our remarks about these statements.
If you think that Shannon exaggerated the stance of left-leaning academics, then you haven’t noticed the response of many disciplines to such discussions. For instance, we have a friend who has repeatedly tried to set up a panel at MLA in lit crit heavily dependent upon evolutionary theory. He has published several books on it in respectable university presses; he is mentioned by Pinker in The Blank Slate as the major critic in that area. When my husband invited him to speak at our local university, the audience consisted of less than a dozen people. That friend has yet to have a panel “okayed” by MLA (remember there are between 6 to 7 hundred panels) over the last dozen years.
When my husband and a friend offered to team teach a course viewing literature based on these premises, the course was rejected. Both have published widely in their own specialties and done work from this particular perspective that has found homes in major periodicals. (Of course, one such article was in limbo for a while and it was clear that the editor felt he was going out on a limb a bit–although his judgement was somewhat vindicated when the article was reprinted in an anthology.)
February 24th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Seconding TM Lutas’s comment. Following St. Thomas Aquinas and others, Catholics know that revealed truth and scientific truth are both true, and that truth is seamless, and that new scientific knowledge can be and is to be reconciled with revealed truth. The Pope discussed this and related topics in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor. There are people who insist on the literal truth of the six day creation story in Genesis. Catholics do not and don’t need to.
February 24th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
While I am a ‘believer’ in modern evolutionary theory, I have always found ironic the ‘Darwin Amphibians’ invariably found on Volvos that mock the Christian fish symbol (which itself makes no comment on evolutionary theory). The Volvo drivers can’t figure out that the fish symbol represents a very successful cultural survival mechanism (compare birth-rates of owners of ‘Darwin Amphibian’ stickers to ‘Christian Fish’ stickers).
February 24th, 2005 at 4:33 pm
First of all, what’s sad about the whole Powerline vs. Phryngula argument was that whatever Hindrockets feelings and thoughts about evolution, they had no bearing on his political views. And because Hindrocket felt that evolution was wrong, why would this suddenly mean that any other argument he made, even if it was an entirely different subject, was ipso facto wrong as well? That’s ridiculous.
Shannon has done an excellent job of highlighting the fact that as usual, the extremists from both sides are simply wrong. There is no scientific basis for creationism because it isn’t science. But there is a scientific basis for genetic predisposition, and it is science. Women develop muscles differently than men. This is a genetic difference. And it is falsifiable.
I completely agree with Shannon that there is a bias in most leftist academic establishments pushing “100% environment or else”. How else do you describe the reaction to Summers comments?
February 24th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Hi Ginny,
In my reading of the transcript he did pose the innate abilities issue as his working hypothesis, not as a discussion question. Lawrence Summers said: “So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.” He’s the president of Harvard, our nation’s most respected research university, speaking publicly about something that will have policy implications. I hold his to a higher standard for truth than just a convo among faculy members or an article a prof writes for the local paper.
No, is not science. Yes, this does make me uncomfortable. (Furthermore: Yes, those Darwin fish are annoying and disresepectful. Yes, I have said [and I've seen many others say] jokingly and informally for laughs that something I disagree with made me want to barf. Yes, I think it’s a bummer when conservative are mistreated in academic environments. Yes, I love free speech. No, I do not like eugenics.)
February 24th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
Are we talking about a true “blank slate” theory, or are we talking about the belief that the genetic components of intelligence are not linked to race, gender, etc?
February 24th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
So, Chel, your point is that positing that discrimination is not the major factor (while still acknowledging that it is a factor) but rather innate abilities, choices, and value systems (in part derived from our differing biology) are important is an irresponsible position? I just don’t see that. I may not be a scientist but I’m not sure I need to be. My feeling is that looking at the things we can change (respecting the work of people who come to the workplace after their children have entered school, allowing for movement in and out of the workforce, etc.) and the things that are true (whatever we might find out about innate ability) are both more fruitful ways to approach such a problem. I do not think the most useful approach is to posit as the greatest problem the one that is only solved by “engineering human souls” as Svorecky would put it.
I don’t quite see your point in the section you quoted. That of course is the core of Summers’ position and not one that we have argued.
February 24th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Hi Ginny,
Yes, that basically is my position! I’m like you — I think it’s productive to focus on things that we know matter a lot and that can be changed. Also, since you mentioned discrimination I’d just like to add that the social environemnt is so big, all encompassing, and changeable. Discrimination is only one of the more obvious social factors in the social environment that assign people to different bins.
Eliminating barriers in the social environment doesn’t mean “engineering human souls” to me. Here’s just a little example of something positive that can do that. I used to be part of a volunteer program that would take over a public school sixth grade science class once a week. We did really hands-on, engaging, educational, totally fun experiments, stuff that the kids wouldn’t have gotten in their cash strapped public school. One of the reasons why we targeted sixth grades was that this is time when many girls become disengaged with science. It’s the age when kids decide they hate science or they’re bad at it and not necessarily for good reason.
February 24th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
Evolution is a work in progress. Of course there are weaknesses that can be criticized. That is one of the strengths of scientific theories. They are falsifiable and thus present us with opportunities for more learning.
Innate gender differences in neural development is another potentially falsifiable concept. But you are correct that many politically oriented people are selective in their championing of scientific approaches to truth.
Politics is power, and gender politics is bigtime power at this time. Do not rock the boat, Larry. You will pay a price.
February 24th, 2005 at 7:39 pm
chel,
” I don’t think any serious leftist would defend the caricature that Shannon desrcibed.”
You are absolutely wrong. I did not caricature or exaggerate in the least. If you have never studied the matter in any detail you will be absolutely stunned at the degree to which Leftist denied any influence of genetics on the human mind.
Stephen Pinkers, The Blank-Slate is a phenomenal and exhaustive study of the history of the idea of the Blank-Slate. Pinker is one of the worlds premier cognitive scientist and he documents that the 100% blank slate is not a wacko fringe idea but is instead a core element of Leftism in the 20th century (he spends time on the use of the blank-slate by religions as well.)
” So much anger at this one woman”
Because women have striven so hard to fight stereotypes that they are inherently emotional and incapable of rational and then this academician, in an academic setting has such a powerful EMOTIONAL reaction to having her dogma mildly challenge that IIRC, she felt like “throwing up and passing out.”
Yes, I am angry at her if her widely reported comments actually reflected her true point of view. Its straight back to the 1890’s.
” Shannon’s statement that if you dissagree with Summers is on scientific grounds you are engaged in “scientific ignorance” and “are engaged in a race to the bottom” also frustrates me.”
I said nothing of the kind. My argument has nothing to due with whether Summers is correct or not or the degree to which he might be correct. Rather, I point out that Summers mere broaching of the idea that genetics might play a small, limited role in the social differences we see between men and women trigger a firestorm. This hysterical overreaction to Summers minor comments could only logically spring from a belief in 100% genetic determinism.
To repeat myself, if a person doesn’t’ believe in the 100% blank-slate then Summers said nothing controversial. The fact that Summers’ mild statements caused a controversy, that they were actually newsworthy, is direct evidence that the 100% blank-slate is still alive and well within Leftist academia if no where else.
February 24th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
Whoops,
The line:
This hysterical overreaction to Summers minor comments could only logically spring from a belief in 100% genetic determinism.”
should of course read:
This hysterical overreaction to Summers minor comments could only logically spring from a belief in 100% environmental determinism.”
February 24th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Funny, I was one of th kids in Sunday school who argued for evolution against the teacher. I always loved to read archaeology books and studied the fossils.
I took Advanced Genetics in college near the end of my Animal Science studies. An eye opener that was. I began to get a little sceptical of the claims of evolution. I am a lot more sceptical now. Evolution does a fine job of showing how animals can evolve into different, but similar animals. Cats and dogs having distant ancestors in common, for example.
But it does no job at all of clearing up the mysteries of how the many interconnected parts of living systems can have evolved, either through some sort of punctuated equilibrium, or through slow gradual change. I saw in Scientific American some years ago an effort to explain in evolutionary terms how the eye might have developed. The author, a biologist who studied molluscs, seemed to be arguing in a distinctly lamarkian way. It was sad to see that the best defense of evolution SA could field was so weak. He was obvioulsy preaching to the house, knowing that no one would challenge him on the pages of SA. I have read Gould, and some of the other names, and find them distinctly unconvincing. Avoiding circular logic would ae a good start.
February 24th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
One correction (my husband is now home and noting things I of course miss): It is Skvorecky (Joseph). Sorry about that.
Chel,
To return to earlier points. Of course, I, too, say that such a statement or attitude or style makes me want to barf. I do not, however, give that as my argument when asked (and I think she pursued the interview) by the Boston Globe. My reaction to people I disagree with, as this may indicate, is not to slam my computer shut and walk out. You are not being honest with your own argument - as I think you realize yourself. You expect Summers to present a scientific argument (even though much more than his personal anecedotal experience supports his position) at a meeting designed to discuss ideas but you cut someone slack who walks out of such a meeting and complains to the press.
Next, the point of my anecdotes (especially the one on the MLA) is not that conservatives are not always given an even playing field. They aren’t. The point is that any ideas that in some way challenge the academy’s point of view that man is malleable and society is at fault are not going to be given a fair hearing. This is probably a combination of turf building, political bias, inertia and lack of imagination. I would also suggest that the academy is not fond of perspectives that emphasize autonomy and individual responsibility.
Your responses appear to be muted reflections of someone who discounts the influence of evolution and is less ready to see biology as a motivator than society. This is certainly–as we see in this discussion–a popular and sometimes useful approach. But it means you do not see the point of some of the arguments here that arise from a different perspective. I do suspect, however, that your own experience might tell you that biology is important. For instance, why do you think it is at 6th grade that girls become less interested in science? What else is happening to sixth grade girls? (By the way, you never dealt with the fact that the NYTimes article–I believe it was you who suggested it in an earlier thread–mentioned that consistently across the world women didn’t like to do math - even in the one country where they were better than men.)
Shannon: You might be interested in Joseph Carroll’s Literary Darwinism. His final chapter critiques Gould’s approach - one that is inspired by the contradictory arguments you discuss so well. (This is criticism from an obsessive evolutionist.) He summarizes John Alcock, who:
Carroll also credits P. R. Gross’s “The Apotheosis of Stephen Jay Gould” in The New Criterion, 21 (2, 77-80).
February 24th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Sorry for level of repetition of other’s points - took me so long to get mine together, you all posted.
February 24th, 2005 at 8:52 pm
Hi Tom,
Sounds like a classic case of “I believe micro-evolution, but macro-evolution doesn’t wash” argument. A solid question, you might find the following interesting-
29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Intermediate and Transitional Forms as well as the Punctuated Equilibria FAQ.
February 24th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
Shannon wrote:
A simpler explanation might be that Summers threatens the power of the academic Left, and that leftist profs took advantage of a juicy opportunity to demonize him and maybe bring him down. The quoted woman’s ostensibly emotional reaction just might be an effective tactic in academic warfare conducted via the press.
February 24th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
Jonathan,
You could well be right but even so the criticism, even if insincere, would still require some resonance within the academic community.
February 24th, 2005 at 9:37 pm
As I wrote over on New Covenant a couple days ago about PZ Myers, his arguments are rather unfortunately framed — reading half a dozen of his most recent entries shows he’s far more interested in flamewars and insults than he should be. That doesn’t tend to lead to good discussion with the people he’s arguing with. No matter how ill-informed they might be (and, having read a few comments, some of them *are* ill-informed), the name-ca