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.
A short bit on National Public Radio’s “Around the nation” news report was brought to my attention by reader Tom. Bill Zeeble from NPR was reporting on the deadly tornadoes afflicting Texas, and interviewed Garland, Texas resident Sabrina Lowe. You can hear the piece at the site, and here’s a bit of the transcript. Remember, Zeeble is the reporter (my emphasis).
ZEEBLE: Murray, who’s 69, would love to be back in her apartment. But it’s not safe. In a nearby Rowlett suburb, Sabrina Lowe says she was luckier because of her faith. Ten relatives were at her home when the tornado threatened.
SABRINA LOWE: We actually went outside and started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over the winds – the airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We – we spoke to the storm and said, go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.
ZEEBLE: Others weren’t so lucky or blessed. Officials say many as a thousand North Texas homes were damaged or destroyed. Garland was the hardest hit. Meteorologists say a powerful tornado hit the town with winds exceeding 200 miles an hour. For NPR News, I’m Bill Zeeble in Dallas.
Somehow Zeeble’s last statement doesn’t sit right with me. I doubt that “lucky or blessed” is sarcastic. What would he had said if Lowe had averred that Zeus, or Satan, had given her power to divert the winds. And why would she have that power rather than others? Should Zeeble have asked her to answer that question, or why God decided to destoy the homes of others? As Reader Rik wrote, who also called my attention to this piece:
While I’m glad she and her home were unharmed, it’s hard to imagine the arrogance it takes to believe a loving god spared you when others were killed or had their lives devastated by the same storm, supposedly caused by the same god.
Maybe I’m being overly captious here, but I’m not quite sure why NPR would present these delusional rantings without question. Are they just trying to show how crazy Texas is? Or are they deferring to faith, as NPR is wont to do.
Here’s part II of Lou Jost’s photographs taken on a single walk. As he noted yesterday:
A few weeks ago I took a walk in our Rio Anzu Reserve, in the Amazon basin, to test some macro photography techniques. The insect diversity and abundance was overwhelming; it was like the African savannah in miniature.
So, continuing on, Lou concentrated on a single orchid, sussing out the source of its color:
There were some ladyslipper orchids, Phragmipedium pearcei, along the river. Their flowers’ shapes are complex, but until that day I had never looked at them under high magnification, so I had never realized that their textures and microstructures are also very complex.
My photos showed that what looked like simple green spots on the edge of the flower’s pouch were actually made of highly specialized convoluted surfaces that gave them an almost iridescent quality.
When I got home and looked at the spots under a microscope, they were different in texture than any other part of the flower. I figured they must play an important role in pollination, and I imagined they might be imitating fly eyes to draw the pollinating fly to the flower. It wasn’t until weeks later that I learned via internet that the green spots were really imitating aphids, and the pollinator was a female syrphid fly that normally lays its eggs in aphid colonies.
Even though I was trying to concentrate on tiny things, I couldn’t resist taking my first photos ever of a Fulvous Shrike-Tanager (Lanio fulvus). This is a leader of the mixed-species bird flocks in the forest mid-story. The other birds hang out with it because it spends a lot of time watching for danger, and gives a sharp alarm call when it spots something bad. The other birds can thus concentrate more on foraging and less on watching for danger. But the Shrike-tanager is famous among ornithologists for sometimes “lying” to the flock. When another bird scares up a bug that the Shrike-tanager wants, the Shrike-tanager gives out its loud alarm call, and the other bird freezes, just long enough for the Shrike-tanager to grab the bug.
For more photos from this day’s trip, see this site.
There’s only one shopping day left before the end of Coynezaa, and I’ll be excited to find out tomorrow what famous events happened on my birthday. On December 29, 1937, thoughm the Irish Free State formally became Ireland after adopting a new Constitution, and Wikipedia tells us that on this day in 2003, “the last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct. On this day in 1936, Mary Tyler Moore was born and Marianne Faithfull exactly ten years later. In 1894, Christina Rossetti died at age 64; in 1952, jazz great Fletcher Henderson died, and Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is congenitally dissatisified, reminding me of the waiter who approached three Jewish women after they’d finished their meal, asking them, “Was anything all right?”
Hili: I have a feeling that it’s time to announce a strike.
Cyrus: But what about?
Hili: What? Are you satisfied with everything?
In Polish:
Hili: Mam wrażenie, że trzeba ogłosić strajk.
Cyrus: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: A co, jesteś ze wszystkiego zadowolony?
And in Wroclawek, Leon is kvetching again (I suspect he has some Jewish genes):
Leon: Holidays, holidays… and now it’s after holidays.
Malgorzata, though, tenders an explanation:
This is a kind of saying used quite often after Christmas and is supposed to express the disappointment that the holidays are over, that it was so much work and it went too quickly… Well, I don’t know. But the picture is cute.
The most important finding of vertebrate comparative morphology and paleontology is that most of evolution is the gradual, adaptive, modification of pre-existing structures (or, better, pre-existing developmental programs, which result in the structures). The point about pre-existing structures is very important– the history of evolution is to a great extent the history of making due with what you have– “tinkering”, as François Jacob called it. The current phenotype is where you start, and there is a range of mutationally accessible phenotypes that is determined by the developmental system, the environment, and the genotype. This mutationally accessible region will only rarely include completely new structures.
As mammals, WEIT readers may have wondered why it is so difficult for them to get food to come out of their noses while eating (it usually requires vigorous coughing, laughing, or sneezing), while their pet aquatic turtles can do so effortlessly, small food particles floating gracefully out of their nostrils while they eat. The reason is that mammals have a secondary palate– reach in and tap the roof of your mouth– that’s it, right there. It is a shelf of bone that separates the air passage, which goes from the nostrils to the glottis, from the food passage, which goes from the mouth to the esophagus. In (most) turtles, there is no secondary palate, so the air and food passages are one passage, thus allowing food to exit the nostrils. Where did the secondary palate come from? It is not a new bone(s), but a series of medial processes, off the very same bones found in turtles, that meet in the midline to form a complete shelf. Turtles, having a low basal metabolism, do not need to breathe incessantly, while mammals, with their high metabolism, must generally be breathing and eating all the time– the separated passageways allow mammals to breathe while chewing. The gradual modification of these bones to form a secondary palate (and, somewhat less clearly, the crucially associated soft palate) can be traced in the fossil record. The drawback to the way mammals eat is that when finally you have to swallow the food, the lungs are ventral to (i.e. below) the digestive tract, even though your nostrils are dorsal to (i.e. above) your mouth, and the air and food streams must cross. So, if you sneeze/cough/laugh real hard just as your food is crossing over the air passage, it can be blown into the air passage, and come out your nose.
Mammalian swallowing and breathing is thus based on the same bones, digestive tract, and lungs, arranged in the same basic way, as are found in turtles, and in our common reptilian ancestor. In mammals, the pre-existing structures have been “tinkered” with, in a series of documented steps, to arrive at the current state, which allows for a lot of eating and breathing, which in turn allows for a high metabolic rate (and hence being warm-blooded), although since the lungs remain below the gut, you can choke on your food. (Had engineers designed vertebrates, they never would have crossed the air and food passages.)
What brings all this to mind is Jerry’s mention yesterday of Steve Gould’s concept of “exaptations”, noting that the 7th day of evolution video stated that penguin wings are an”exaptation”, because “not every trait is an adaptation, and they don’t all have a point.” This is surely one of the most unproductive, and, indeed, wrong, ways to look at penguin wings. Penguin wings are in fact adaptively modified pre-existing structures; the earliest known penguins in the fossil record, were flightless swimmers, but not as modified for this as later penguins. The notion that a change in function (flying to swimming, in this case) necessitates a new terminology was argued, quite unsuccessfully, by Gould and Elizabeth Vrba in 1982.
Composite skeleton of Waimanu tuatahi of the Paleocene, one of the earliest penguins, from Slack et al. (2006), via March of the Fossil Penguins.
“Exaptation” is an unnecessary term in the science of form. It confuses more than it clarifies. It ignores the historical component of adaptive evolution (which is curious for Gould, since he frequently, and often correctly, argued for the importance of historical considerations; his animus against natural selection must have overcome his historical instincts in this case). The great paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson attempted to rehabilitate the term “preadaptation” to cover the not uncommon situation where a pre-existing structure undergoes a change of function; once there is a new function, then “postadaptation” will refine the structure to fit the new function. The morphologist Carl Gans suggested that what he called “excessive construction”– the ability of a feature to perform at least tolerably in circumstances other than the usual ones– could often form the basis for preadaptation. (Gans substituted “protoadaptation” for “preadaptation”, finding the latter term too freighted with unfortunate associations with mutationism, of which Simpson sought to cleanse it, to be used.)
I find preadaptation, shorn of its mutationist connotations, a perfectly serviceable concept. Thus, wings on aquatic birds are a preadaptation for swimming in the water. Behavioral flexibility allows the wings to be used in a new way, which then induces a new selective environment, and postadaptations will then further suit the structure to these new conditions of existence. But even more productive, I think, is the notion of “sequential adaptation”, based on Richard Swann Lull’s notions of primary and secondary adaptations (and related to W.K. Gregory’s related concepts of caenotelic vs. paleotelic and habitus vs. heritage), which provides a much better way of looking at changes of function. (I’ve long attributed the phrase “sequential adaptation” itself to Lull, but after a rereading I can’t find that he used it; it was my term for summarizing his views. Lull, by the way, was Simpson’s doctoral adviser.)
So how do we look at the wings of penguins under this view? Certain dinosaurs’ front legs (they already had front legs, of course– they were preexisting structures) became adapted for flight– that is, there were modifications in the structures that conferred higher fitness on their possessors by virtue of the presence of the modifications. Are the wings of birds an “exaptation”? No. Wings, qua wings, are an adaptation for flying. The wings of certain birds became adapted for swimming– the “flippers” of penguins. The bones have become solid, more robust, dorsoventrally compressed and knife edged, all of which improve their function for diving (not all of these were fully present in the earliest known fossil penguins). Each of these modifications is an adaptation. In Lull’s terms, the wing is a primary adaptation (for flight), the flipper a secondary adaptation (for swimming). But the wing itself was a secondary adaptation of the primary adaptation of the locomotory forelimb of dinosaurs– and so on back in time. They are a series of sequential adaptations. The error of “exaptation” is to think of traits or features of organisms as unanalysed wholes without a history: penguin flippers are are not merely “flippers”, but a whole suite of features, including many bones, muscles, and behaviors for their use. And the flippers have a preceding history as wings, front legs, and so on ad not-quite-infinitum. If “exaptation” means that later adaptations are based on the pre-existing structures, then the term is vacuous– all adaptations are then exaptations.
A case noted by Simpson as preadaptation involves the predatory behavior of keas (Nestor notabilis), the large alpine parrot of New Zealand. Keas eat sheep (or at least parts of them, since the sheep may survive), by cutting through the skin with their sharp hooked beaks.
Keas are naturally omnivorous, so what we have is an expansion of the dietary range, enabled by the pre-existence of a wicked beak. The beak is an adaptation to wide ranging foraging on and in the ground, and on and in the vegetation (excavating logs and such). If there arises an innate (as opposed to learned) aspect of sheep feeding, or the bill itself experiences selection for features that enhance the ability to feed on the sheep, there would would then be secondary, or sequential, adaptations. At this point, though, feeding on sheep may well be behavioral flexibility with the available tools (Gans’ “excessive construction”, providing the basis for “protoadaptation”).
We not only don’t need the term “exaptation”, it actually hinders understanding, by suggesting that non-adaptive processes are at work (which was Gould and Vrba’s explicit intention), when in fact we have a series of sequential adaptations.
Gans, C. 1979. Momentarily excessive construction as the basis for protoadaptation. Evolution 33:227-233.
Gould, S.J. and E.S. Vrba. 1982. Exaptation- a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology 8:4-15. pdf
Jacob, F. 1982. The Possible and the Actual. Pantheon Books, New York.
Kirsch J.A.W. and G.C. Mayer. 1998. The platypus is not a rodent: DNA hybridization, amniote phylogeny and the palimpsest theory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 353:1221-1237. pdf
Lull, R.S. 1917. Organic Evolution. Macmillan, New York. Internet Archive
Simpson, G.G. 1953. The Major Features of Evolution. Columbia University Press, New York.
Slack, K.E., C.M. Jones, T. Ando, G.L. Harrison, R.E. Fordyce, U. Arnason, and D. Penny. 2006. Early penguin fossils, plus mitochondrial genomes, calibrate avian evolution. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23:1144-1155.
Although most Americans correctly regard Europe as a fairly secular place with far lower levels of religiosity than the US; countries within Europe often find that there are still people in positions of power who find this immensely annoying and pine for the imaginary halcyon days of yore when European nations all bent the knee under the One True God.
The UK Secretary of State For Education Nicky Morgan has published new guidelines that states that contrary to a recent High Court ruling that atheism and humanism had been excluded unlawfully from the school curriculum; schools do not have to teach non-religious world views and should let students know Britain is “in the main Christian”. Interestingly, the inclusion of material on non-faith perspectives is an issue that had a very high public support level (over 90%) even amongst people of religion.
The Telegraph reports a spokesperson for the Secretary saying:
“Nicky has had enough of campaign groups using the Courts to try and force the teaching of atheism and humanism to kids against parent’s wishes.
“That’s why she’s taking a stand to protect the right of schools to prioritise the teaching of Christianity and other major religions.”
The whiff of imaginary persecution is strong in this one. Damn those humanists and their dastardly underhanded tactics of resorting to law courts to gain equality.
Religious schools have welcomed the guidelines (quelle surprise).
It is possible that eventually the Secretary will change her mind once she realises that everyone in the UK does not feel threatened by the inclusion of material on non-religious viewpoints. She used to be of the anti same-sex marriage persuasion, voting against it in 2013 but changed her mind a year later when it transpired that her constituents did not agree with her. If she comes to understand that the public consensus is in favor of including material on Humanism and Atheism, she may come to see the light.
Here’s the Eighth Day of Creation, or rather, the eighth episode in the PBS/It’s Okay to be Smart series on “The Twelve Days of Evolution.” In effect, the episodes each aim to debunk one creationist misconception (or lie). In this case it’s the old claim that evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Let’s review that law, as limned by Wikipedia:
The second law of thermodynamics states that in every real process the sum of the entropies of all participating bodies is increased. In the idealized limiting case of a reversible process, this sum remains unchanged. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.
This supposedly makes evolution impossible, as evolution is the production of order from disorder: a reduction in the entropy of life, and an increase in order, if you begin the process molecules floating in water. The solution, as the video shows (and all of us know) is that the reduced entropy produced by evolution is paid for by a greater increase in entropy in the cosmos as a whole. That’s because the Earth is not a closed system, and Sun’s increasing entropy is necessary to fuel Earth’s evolution 93 million miles away. Here’s the short video:
My sole beef with this episode is that I think the cookie example, in which baked cookies are supposed to be analogs of the products of evolution, is weak. In fact, I’d need a physicist to convince me that the transformation of cookie dough to edible cookies requires a loss of entropy, even though I understand that the stove’s heat is an increase in entropy. So it goes; perhaps readers can clarify.
I’ve just seen the new movie “Spotlight,” about the Boston Globe‘s coverage of the Catholic child-rape scandal in their city, and how their stories shed light on not only pervasive priestly pedophilia, but its coverup by the Church hierarchy. Their reporting eventually not only led to the criminal conviction of several priests, but brought down Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston (after resigning he was, as “punishment”, given a cushy sinecure in the Vatican). It also won the paper a well deserved Pulitzer Prize.
Although I haven’t watched a ton of movies this year, I have no qualms about recommending “Spotlight’ as one of the best movies of 2015. (To my mind it’s the best one I’ve seen.) It’s not for fans of Batman, Star Trek, or Mad Max, what with their eternal and infernal chase scenes; rather, it’s simply a low-key but gripping drama about how an intrepid band of investigative reporters (“Spotlight’ is the name of the Globe‘s investigative section) fought the powerful and entrenched Catholic Church in a city where Catholicism is the going faith, one that garnered immense (but unearned) respect. The film has fantastic acting, and gets an astounding 97% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 96% from the audience. Click on the screenshot below to go to their compilation of reviews:
Rather than summarize the plot, I refer you to Anthony Lane’s positive review in The New Yorker (free online); he’s my favorite film critic and gives it many thumbs up. An excerpt of his review:
The film is a saga of expansion, paced with immense care, demonstrating how the reports of child abuse by Catholic clergy slowly broadened and unfurled; by the time the paper’s exposés were first published, in 2002, Spotlight had uncovered about seventy cases in Boston alone. (In a devastating coda, McCarthy fills the screen with a list of other American cities, and of towns around the world, where similar misdeeds have been revealed.) The telling of the tale is doubly old-fashioned. First, there are shots of presses rolling and spiffy green trucks carrying bales of the Globe onto the streets; we could be in a cinema in 1945. Second, the events take place in an era when the Internet still seems an accessory rather than a primary tool. As the journalists comb through Massachusetts Church directories, looking for disgraced men of God who were put on sick leave or discreetly transferred to another parish, we get closeups of rulers moving down lines of text. Don’t expect “Spotlight” to play at an IMAX theatre anytime soon.
On balance, this arrant unhipness is a good thing. So crammed are the details of the inquiry, and so delicately must the topic of abuse be handled, that a more intrepid visual manner might have thrown the movie off track, and one of its major virtues is what’s not there: no creepy flashbacks of prowling priests, or—as in the prelude to Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River”—of children in the vortex of peril. Everything happens in the here and now, not least the recitation of the there and then. You sense the tide of the past rushing in most fiercely during some of the plainest scenes, as Globe staffers listen to victims like Joe (Michael Cyril Creighton) and Patrick (Jimmy LeBlanc) explain what they underwent decades before. They are grown men, but they are drowning souls. Boldest of all is the brief appearance of Richard O’Rourke as Ronald Paquin, a retired priest, who answers the door to Pfeiffer and answers her questions with the kindliest of smiles. “Sure, I fooled around, but I never felt gratified myself,” he says, as if arguing the finer points of doctrine.
“Spotlight” comes across as the year’s least relaxing film, thanks to the attention that McCarthy and his fellow-screenwriter, Josh Singer, oblige you to pay.
Two bits I’ll add here: the Church and its officials are rarely seen directly in this movie; rather, they are usually offscreen, as a faceless and odious monolith determined to protect its priests at the cost of their victims. Cardinal Law is a Sauron-like figure in person, but an enabler of pedophilia behind the scenes. And the portrayal of the Church’s victim, recounted when they were adults, recounting exactly how the priests sexually manipulated them, is heartbreaking.
I cannot say enough good things about this film, though it will leave you with an abiding anger at the Catholic Church, and at the coverup of its many pedophilic priests (nearly 90 of them) that came from the very top. Apparently Cardinal Law, with the complicity of lawyers and other Catholics, simply settled the cases brought to their attention, sealing the court records so they escaped public attention. (How they became unsealed is a fascinating subplot of this movie). You’ll see how child-raping priests were shuttled from from parish to parish as their behaviors came to the Church’s attention. PLEASE go see this movie; it is Professor Ceiling Cat’s Movie of the Year. You won’t regret it.
UPDATE: After some explanation on my part, the higher-ups at Facebook have restored my access, so thank to them.
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I am one of the moderators of the Global Secular Humanist Movement Facebook page, which gives me the right to put up posts (I don’t really moderate). It’s a popular page, with over 300,000 “likes,” but it’s not popular with some Muslims, who have reported us several times for “violating community standards”. In one instance that results in both the GSHM site being blocked but the personal FB page of every moderator. The posts that supposedly do that are criticisms of Islam—never the other faiths that we regularly criticize. I should add that we have many positive posts as well, including pro-science ones and ones that criticize, for example, Republicans.
When I logged onto Facebook this morning, I found the messages below, telling me that we had been reported for violating FB’s community standards, and that the situation wouldn’t be rectified until I checked the entire page, de-published the site, and then re-published it. I have no right to do that, nor would I, for I don’t run the site Here’s what was seen as offensive and what I was supposed to do about it:
I didn’t post that image, and, as far as I can interpret it, it actually defends Muslims against prejudice on the grounds of their religion. In other words, it is pro-Islam, anti-bigotry, and doesn’t make fun of Catholics, either. How could this possibly be construed to violate community standards? Who would have reported it?
And here’s what I’m supposed to do about it.
I’m not sure about this, but I’ve heard rumors that when a post is reported in this way, a group of people outside the US decides what is a violation of community standards, and often reflexively blocks anything reported. Let me add that this is just a rumor I’ve heard, and I can’t vouch for its truth. Nevertheless, to get back on Facebook—I’ve been blocked before—you have to go through a long appeal process. This time I’m asking some higher-ups to review the issue.
But Facebook really should have a look at the double standards that have prevailed: anti-Islam posts (I can only imagine that the above post was mistaken for one of those) are regularly cause for blocking, while entire sites are devoted to not only anti-Israel sites, but sites that are allowed to publish anti-Semitic cartoons worthy of der Stürmer.
Whatever the issue, the item removed from our site seem to be a protest against anti-Muslim bigotry, not cause for violating anyone’s sensibilities.
