Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This will be the last batch of readers’ wildlife photos for a while. But please keep accumulating them to send me when I return.
First, Christopher Moss, whose “first chipmunk of spring” photo was posted two days ago, adds a video of what he says is a mating call. (Do female chipmunks call?) His comment: “Beginning at first light, and continued now for five solid hours! She must have a sore throat!”
And some diverse photos by reader Damon Williford from Texas, whose notes are indented:
Attached are some photos of wildlife from May of last year. The photos were taken at the Lost Maples State Recreation Area, which is located on the Edwards Plateau. This region is home to endemic species as well as other species more characteristic of western North America.
I purchased a macro lens 2 years ago and I am trying to do more arthropod photography. The sixth photo is a damselfly, the Great Spreadwing (Archilestes grandis).
Good morning on my last day in Chicago for a while; it’s Wednesday, March. 15. (Starting tomorrow, the Hili Dialogues will be brought to you by Grania for a while, as I’ll be Down Under.) Today is National Peanut Lovers’ Day, and all my squirrels say they’re on board with that. (I’ve provided for their care and feeding in my absence.) It’s also World Consumer Rights Day, which surely includes the right not to have homeopathic remedies sold at CVS and Whole Foods (they are).
This is of course the Ides of March, and on this day in 44 BC , Julius Caesar was assassinated. (That was using the Roman calendar, not the one we use now, so we’re just within an order of magnitude here.) Caesar was stabbed 23 times, with only one wound deemed fatal in the autopsy—the first post-mortem report in recorded history. On March 15, 1493, Columbus returned to Spain from his first voyage to the Americas. Wikipedia reports that on this day in 1819, “French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel wins a contest at the Academie des Sciences in Paris by proving that light behaves like a wave. The Fresnel integrals, still used to calculate wave patterns, silence skeptics who had backed the particle theory of Isaac Newton.” Finally this day (and part of the next) in 1952, a world rainfall record was set: in 24 hours an astounding 1.87 meters (73 inches) of rain fell in the town of Cilaos on the Indian Ocean Island of Réunion. That’s the most rain ever recorded within a 24-hour period. Can you imagine what that downpour was like?
Notables born on this day include Saint Nicholas, the model for Santa (273 AD), Andrew Jackson (1767), Jackson Scholz (1897, see “Chariots of Fire”), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933), Jimmy Swaggart (1935), Phil Lesh (1940), Mike Love (1941), Sly Stone (1943), and Ry Cooder, (1947; clearly a good day for rock stars). Those who died on this day include, besides Julius Caesar, H. P. Lovecraft (1937), Lester Young (1959), Aristotle Onassis (1975), and Benjamin Spock (1998). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the beasts, some distance apart, are contemplating sport:
Hili: Can you play ping pong?
Cyrus: I don’t know, I never tried.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy umiesz grać w ping ponga?
Cyrus: Nie wiem, nie próbowałem.
Lagniappe: Can you tell the kitten from the ice cream? More important, which would you rather have? (Image from imgur, h/t: Taskin)
It’s a sign of the bald eagle’s return that there is a pair nesting at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. The two, named, appropriately, “Mr. President” and “First Lady” (I prefer to call them “Obama” and “Michelle”), were caught in the latest storms, but sat intrepidly in a snow-filled nest to keep their eggs warm. As WTOP reports:
A pair of nesting bald eagles at the U.S. National Arboretum teamed up to protect their two eggs from the storm. The arboretum’s eagle cam captured both First Lady and her mate, Mr. President, atop the eggs.
Mr. President joined his mate for several hours in the nest, adding an extra layer of warmth. The First Lady was seen sheltering her eggs from the storm Monday night and into Tuesday morning, the arboretum said.
Look at these cold and bedraggled birds protecting their genes! Yes, I know it’s just a form of kin selection (which is what parental care is), but it still tugs at the heartstrings, just as we feel sadness when a cheetah takes down an antelope, which is simply natural selection.
This is from today’s eaglecam feed; be sure to check it out it tomorrow at the link above.
According to the New York Times, in 2018 Nike will begin marketing a “Pro Hijab”: a hijab made for Muslim women to compete in sports while still remaining “modest”. Featuring the prominent Nike “swoosh,” it’s made of a light and breathable fabric that can be tucked into clothing. It’s expected to cost about $35.
Aaron Hewitt/Nike
Recognizing the increasing number of women from Muslim countries who are participating in sports, Nike will undoubtedly introduce other “modest sportswear” in the future. After all, there are about 800 million Muslim women, and that’s a big market!
To accompany the hijab, Nike has released a video called “What will they say about you?” (There are English subtitles.) The company’s description:
Nike’s “What will they say about you?” campaign launches with a new film highlighting five remarkable women who have achieved personal success through competitive and amateur sport. Despite concerns or criticism, these women hope that the world will say they’re pioneers, role models and strong voices for their region.
The film features both professional and everyday athletes from the Arab region, including Parkour Trainer, Amal Mourad; Figure Skater, Zahra Lari; Pop Singer; Balquees Fathi; Fencer, Inès Boubakri; and Boxer, Arifa Bseiso. Narration is done by Fatima Al-Banawi, a Saudi Arabian social researcher, artist, and actress.
Of course I have mixed feelings about this. While other companies already market sports hijabs, putting a company logo on one won’t necessarily endear it to more traditional Muslims. On the other hand, maybe it—and especially the video, which sends the message “Screw your antiquated morals”—will inspire Muslim women to participate more in sport, and that gives them more freedom.
The part that saddens me is that all of this caters to a religious dictate that women must cover themselves to avoid inciting the lust of men. In short, it’s to keep women from being raped by revealing either a wisp of hair or a bare forearm or ankle. Non-Muslims in sports have evolved a style of dress that gives them the most comfort for competing, and that doesn’t include either head coverings (except for fencing) or full-body covering. Women, whether in sport or not, should be able to dress as they want, not to be bound to religious dictates catering to misogyny and oppression of women.
And we know that many women who now wear the hijab and full-body covering wouldn’t do so if it weren’t mandated by either their government, their parents, or their peers. (Look at women in Iran and Afghanistan in the 1970’s, or see the My Stealthy Freedom campaign.) There’s no avoiding the conclusion that if Muslim women suffered no social opprobrium for dressing however they wanted—for sports and otherwise—the hijab would largely be deep-sixed, along with all those arm, leg, and body coverings.
And if revealing a bit of hair incites lust, what about those women in the video who reveal a lot more? What good is it to cover your hair yet reveal lots of other parts? Won’t that incite lust, too?
I’d say “kudos to Nike” for giving Muslim women a chance for some kind of freedom, even if it’s limited, but somehow I can’t escape the conclusion that the Almighty Dollar is behind it all.
Well, I confess that I’ve taken something from Brainpickings, but only because it was tweeted approvingly by Jennifer Ouellette. “The Lost Mariner” is a 6-minute film centered on a patient described in Oliver Sacks’s popular book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. You can find more information about the personnel involved, and all the prizes the film garnered, at the Vimeo site. In 2015, Brainpickings described the subject studied by Sacks:
One of those patients was Jimmie G. — a “charming, intelligent, memoryless” man admitted into New York City’s Home for the Aged with only an unfeeling transfer note stating, “Helpless, demented, confused and disoriented.” Jimmie G. is the subject of the second chapter, titled “The Lost Mariner,” which Dr. Sacks opens with an epigraph from the great Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel:
“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all… Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”
In the beautiful short film The Lost Mariner, independent animator Tess Martin brings Jimmie G.’s rare memory condition to life using photograph cutouts and live action. The effect is a stunning visual analog to the disorienting see-saw of reality and unreality constantly rocking those bedeviled by memory impairments, exposing the discomfiting yet strangely assuring truth in Buñuel’s words.
Wikipedia describes Jimmie G.’s ailment like this:
“The Lost Mariner”, about Jimmie G., who has lost the ability to form new memories due to Korsakoff’s syndrome [JAC: the syndrome is associated with long-term abuse of alcohol, and you forget everything that happens to you within minutes.]. He can remember nothing of his life since the end of World War II, including events that happened only a few minutes ago. He believes it is still 1945 (the segment covers his life in the 70s and early 80s), and seems to behave as a normal, intelligent young man aside from his inability to remember most of his past and the events of his day-to-day life. He struggles to find meaning, satisfaction, and happiness in the midst of constantly forgetting what he is doing from one moment to the next.
The entire chapter by Sacks is in the New York Review of books (free); Jimmie was 49 when admitted to the Home, and is named by Sacks as “Jimmie R.” Read it to remind you of Sacks’ humanity, empathy, and remarkable ability to write.
Click on “vimeo”, and then on the enlarging box ate the vimeo site, to see it on full screen.
The man who visits Jimmie is his brother: the only person he consistently recognizes. He forgets everyone and everything else, including the doctor, within a few minutes. All of us, but especially Sacks, would be curious about what that would be like, and how it would affect your life and well being.
Here’s a bit from Sack’s chapter:
“What year is this, Mr. R.?” I asked, concealing my perplexity under a casual manner.
“Forty-five, man. What do you mean?” He went on, “We’ve won the war, FDR’s dead, Truman’s at the helm. There are great times ahead.”
“And you, Jimmie, how old would you be?”
Oddly, uncertainly, he hesitated a moment, as if engaged in calculation.
“Why, I guess I’m nineteen, Doc. I’ll be twenty next birthday.”
Looking at the gray-haired man before me, I had an impulse for which I have never forgiven myself—it was, or would have been, the height of cruelty had there been any possibility of Jimmie’s remembering it.
“Here,” I said, and thrust a mirror toward him. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see. Is that a nineteen-year-old looking out from the mirror?”
He suddenly turned ashen and gripped the sides of the chair. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Christ, what’s going on? What’s happened to me? Is this a nightmare? Am I crazy? Is this a joke?”—and he became frantic, panicky.
“It’s okay, Jim,” I said soothingly. “It’s just a mistake. Nothing to worry about. Hey!” I took him to the window. “Isn’t this a lovely spring day. See the kids there playing baseball?” He regained his color and started to smile, and I stole away, taking the hateful mirror with me.
And here’s a three-minute film on the making of “The Lost Mariner”:
Quantum mechanics is deeply weird, and I can’t grasp it in the sense of trying to understand how it works using my own experience as a reference. But of course that’s true for physicists as well, and I think it’s what Feynman meant when he said “Nobody understands quantum mechanics” (see the short video below):
That is, quantum mechanics gives us a mathematical representation of how the Universe works (one that is remarkably good at making verified predictions), but understanding concepts like entanglement, the collapse of the wave function and so on—all this is beyond our ability to grasp using our everyday experience. (This has led to truly bizarre theories like the “many worlds” hypothesis, which defies comprehension but might in fact be true.) Trying to “understand” quantum mechanics in that way eludes the ability of physicists, too, as recounted in a new article in Aeon by Adam Frank, a professor of astronomy at the University of Rochester, a computational astrophysicist, an author, and co-founder of the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture. While physicists agree on the mathematics and its usefulness in understanding the universe, trying to envision the reality described by the equations has divided the field:
At a 2011 quantum theory meeting, three researchers conducted just such a poll, asking participants: ‘What is your favourite interpretation of quantum mechanics?’ (Six different models got votes, along with some preferences for ‘other’ and ‘no preference’.) As useful as this exercise might be for gauging researchers’ inclinations, holding a referendum for which interpretation should become ‘official’ at the next meeting of the American Physical Society (or the American Philosophical Society) won’t get us any closer to the answers we seek. Nor will stomping our feet, making loud proclamations, or name-dropping our favourite Nobel-prizewinning physicists.
The weirdness of quantum mechanics, and its ability to defy intuitive understanding, has of course led to its appropriation by both woo-meisters and postmodernists, who use it to justify all sorts of numinous and spiritual (as well as literary) principles, and to espouse the “observer effect” that falsely implies that the presence of an observer somehow affects the behavior of nature. As far as I know, it doesn’t: it just limits what we can learn about nature. Deepak Chopra, for instance—the apogee of quantum quackery—has said that when we’re not looking at the Moon, it doesn’t exist. Well, we know that’s not true because there’s evidence of the Moon’s existence before any conscious beings existed on Earth.
It’s a longish piece and I won’t reprise it in detail (some of it’s above my pay grade), but Frank’s premise is stated in the titles: materialism cannot explain consciousness or mind. Something “more” may be involved. What that “more” is Frank never explains, but of course the Aeon site has a Templeton-like penchant for uniting science and faith, and the riddle of consciousness has been a lever to release the teleology of all manner of creationists, as well as anti-scientific philosophers like Tom Nagel. Because we don’t yet understand how consciousness works or how it evolved, say these folks, there has to be something in nature beyond the laws of physics and blind evolution. I won’t go into the fallacies of this claim except to say that similar claims have been made throughout the last few centuries for epilepsy, contagious disease, lightning, magnetism, and all manner of phenomena that eventually yielded to science. What Frank is making here is simply a sophisticated God of the Gaps argument, except that he uses the word “something more than materialism” rather than “God.”
Now Frank talks about the insufficiency of “materialism”, but I think he means “naturalism”, because materialism is simply the claim that there’s nothing more to the Universe than matter, and we may find some natural phenomena that don’t involve matter as we know it. I’ll use both terms interchangeably, though I prefer “naturalism.”
Beyond the view that consciousness defies materialist understanding, Frank appears to have bought into the view that the “observer effect” is real—real in the sense that, as he surmises, the laws of physics depend on the presence of mind, which must perforce become part of physics itself (my emphasis in all the statements below):
A particularly cogent new version of the psi-epistemological position, called Quantum Bayesianism or QBism, raises this perspective to a higher level of specificity by taking the probabilities in quantum mechanics at face value. According to Fuchs, the leading proponent of QBism, the irreducible probabilities in quantum mechanics tell us that it’s really a theory about making bets on the world’s behaviour (via our measurements) and then updating our knowledge after those measurements are done. In this way, QBism points explicitly to our failure to include the observing subject that lies at the root of quantum weirdness. As Mermin wrote in the journal Nature: ‘QBism attributes the muddle at the foundations of quantum mechanics to our unacknowledged removal of the scientist from the science.’
Putting the perceiving subject back into physics would seem to undermine the whole materialist perspective. A theory of mind that depends on matter that depends on mind could not yield the solid ground so many materialists yearn for.
Now put alongside that notion the idea, espoused by Frank, that consciousness eludes a “materialistic” explanation—with the implication that this will always be so. Here are a few quotes (my emphasis):
Albert Einstein and Max Planck introduced the idea of the quantum at the beginning of the 20th century, sweeping away the old classical view of reality. We have never managed to come up with a definitive new reality to take its place. The interpretation of quantum physics remains as up for grabs as ever. As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for. The closer you look, the more it appears that the materialist (or ‘physicalist’) position is not the safe harbor of metaphysical sobriety that many desire.
And
But those ascribing to psi-ontology – sometimes called wave function realism – must now navigate a labyrinth of challenges in holding their views. The Wave Function (2013), edited by the philosophers Alyssa Ney and David Z Albert, describes many of these options, which can get pretty weird. Reading through the dense analyses quickly dispels any hope that materialism offers a simple, concrete reference point for the problem of consciousness.
And this:
It’s been more than 20 years since the Australian philosopher David Chalmers introduced the idea of a ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Following work by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, Chalmers pointed to the vividness – the intrinsic presence – of the perceiving subject’s experience as a problem no explanatory account of consciousness seems capable of embracing. Chalmers’s position struck a nerve with many philosophers, articulating the sense that there was fundamentally something more occurring in consciousness than just computing with meat. But what is that ‘more’?
Some consciousness researchers see the hard problem as real but inherently unsolvable; others posit a range of options for its account. Those solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. Regardless of the direction ‘more’ might take, the unresolved democracy of quantum interpretations means that our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case.
You see the conundrum. If mind is a fundamental aspect of physics but cannot be reducible to, or even an emergent property of, physics, then we are stuck in an endless feedback loop. The world cannot then be explained fully in materialistic (or naturalistic terms). We have to somehow add consciousness to the Standard Theory of physics before we can even begin to explain it! This is what Frank means when he says this:
Putting the perceiving subject back into physics would seem to undermine the whole materialist perspective. A theory of mind that depends on matter that depends on mind could not yield the solid ground so many materialists yearn for.
I suspect that most physicists would take issue with Franks’s claim that the laws of physics depend on mind, and that mind and consciousness cannot be reducible to the laws of physics (which of course underlie chemistry, biology, and evolution). No, I believe Frank is calling for something numinous or even supernatural—the “something more” mentioned in the paragraph above.
I’m sure Frank would deny he means God, but if he means “something more than naturalism and materialism,” then he’s surely treading in the realms of the supernatural. In fact, “something more than naturalism” is by definition “supernaturalism.” And of course Aeon would love this view: remember that the site published the dubious theory of “panpsychism” I discussed the other day.
Why did Frank write this piece? I don’t know, but it seems to emanate from two issues: the difficulty of understanding quantum mechanics in terms of everyday experience, and the fact that science hasn’t yet understood the evolution or operation of consciousness. Yet there is every indication that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges when evolution has shepherded organisms to a certain level of complexity, and that it’s also a physical phenomenon whose existence and operation depend on physical factors. (For one thing, you can remove and bring back consciousness with chemicals like ketamine.) And no, Dr. Goff, rocks and electrons aren’t conscious, and don’t have minds.
As I said, I’m not a physicist, so some of Frank’s musings are beyond my ability to judge. But I’ve heard plenty of respected physicists—most recently Lawrence Krauss in his new book—argue that the so-called “observer effect” isn’t what we think it is, and isn’t itself part of the laws of physics. I am not at all convinced at all that explaining consciousness requires “something more” than naturalism.
But read the article yourself and see if I’m distorting what Frank says. I aver again that Frank doesn’t mention God, and may well be an atheist, but what is “something more than naturalism” if it be not supernaturalism?
Reader Mike sent me this podcast by Eiynah (“Nice Mangos“) on “The complexity of criticizing Islam under Trump.” He added that it is a discussion that needs to be had, was worth every moment of his attention to the 12-minute podcast, and wanted to know the readers’ feedback. So by all means, proffer some feedback in the comments.
While I think Eiynah is overly hard on Gad Saad and Dave Rubin (I don’t think they undermine liberal critics of Islam, nor do they “promote far-right lunatics who believe in white genocide”), she’s right that Leftists are in the dilemma of having to oppose bigotry against believers while still criticizing the oppressive tenets of religion, Islam in particular. That is, by espousing some of the same criticisms of Islam as do members of the Right, we discredit ourselves by being seen as allies of the Right, which is incorrect but something widely espoused. As Eiynah says, “There are so many awful people piggybacking on things that ex-Muslims say.”
Her dilemma, and ours, is real. In an age when Trump is, properly, seen as a bigot against Muslims, it’s easy to mistake any criticism of Islam for calls for discrimination against Muslims. That is the “Islamophobia” canard. And I agree with Eiynah’s solution: “measured, careful, well-thought out critiques of Islam” combined with criticism of bigotry against Muslims. This is what I’ve tried to do on this site, and while I think it’s the true liberal position, Eiynah is frustrated that it’s not working. Indeed, on some sites I’m characterized as being “right wing.” But I see no other solution, and while I share Eiynah’s frustration, I think we have no choice but to persist.
You can hear the podcast by clicking on the arrow in the upper left corner of the screenshot.
