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.
It’s only September, but snow has already fallen in Idaho. Reader Stephen Barnard sends documentation. (There’s no way I can make this fit on the page without overlapping the website text, but the next post should fix that.) Click to enlarge.
Hili is decisive but indecisive:
H: I think I will do something.A: What are you going to do?H: I will see.
Hili: Myślę, że coś zrobię.
Ja: Co zamierzasz zrobić?
Hili: Zobaczę.
Over at the Guardian, Andrew Brown damns Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene with faint praise, noting as well that former Pope Benedict has criticized the book as science fiction.
The Selfish Gene, which has by now sold well over a million copies in a gazillion languages, is a seminal work, and has opened the eyes of millions to a gene-centered view of evolution and all that it explains: cooperation, conflict, and, in its brilliant central metaphor, the process of natural selection. I can’t count the number of people who have told me, either in person or on this site, that it changed their lives, opening them up to the wonders of science.
And this is what Brown says about it in his essay, “Ex-Pope Benedict says The Selfish Gene is science fiction. He’s half right.”
The first thing to be said about The Selfish Gene is that it is a very fine piece of pop science writing indeed. It is not as dense and thought-provoking as Richard Dawkins’s second book, The Extended Phenotype – but without it, who would had bought or read the latter? – and it is not as accomplished as The Blind Watchmaker or Climbing Mount Improbable but those early books are much better than anything he has produced in his subsequent career. Their freshness and direct force is extraordinary.
Well, that’s not too bad, though the phrase “pop science writing” makes me quail. And I do think it was far more influential than the other two books Brown mentions. But he’s entitled to his opinion, though I think it’s a matter of record that The Selfish Gene has outstripped the others in both sales and influence. But then Brown says these things:
The Selfish Gene must have inspired thousands of people to take up biology. Beyond that, it had a huge influence on the culture of nerds. There is nothing original in the biology and some can now be seen to be wrong, but that’s the fate of any 30-year-old undergraduate text (it grew out of his lectures to students).
“Nerds”? “Undergraduate text”? It’s not an undergraduate text, and the use of “nerds” is simply an ad hominem. And even if Dawkins was just explicating the results of other scientists, he did it in an original and literary way, bringing to the public important science that would otherwise have remained obscure. In other words, Dawkins’s book spread wonder through the world. It was a good thing for science education.
But Brown’s piece gets worse:
But alongside the intellectual force and drive, wrapped round it and giving it shape, as histones give shape to DNA, came Dawkins’s shadow side – the fact that he is his own greatest fan and believer. You may think the competition for this position is too great for there to be any single winner but I think it’s safe to say that not even the most devoted of his groupies have their partner read out loud from his books at bedtime, as he does. But even if he does have readers more delighted in his cleverness than he is himself, they don’t have quite the same corrupting effect on his understanding.
What is that about? It seems that what Brown dislikes is not the book, but Dawkins. And, as almost everyone knows, Dawkins’s wife, Lalla Ward, is a trained actress, and has helped coach him about how to read in public by reading his books out loud (she also, Richard says, has helped him realize that good writing should sound mellifluous when you read it aloud). It’s simply wrong, and nasty, to imply that this “reading out loud” reflects some kind of groupie-ism. It’s tutelage, and nothing more. How low of Brown to say something like this.
Finally, Brown makes the Mary Midgley-ian argument that The Selfish Gene goes astray because of the weakness of its central metaphor:
In particular, the ascription of agency to genes led him and his followers into endless confusion. The point is not merely whether genes can be selfish or generous, but whether they can be said to have any activity at all in the world. This is a point which he freely concedes and then forgets – his manner of dealing with most criticism. If a gene is defined, as he defines it, as a piece of chromosomal material subject to the pressures of selection, it is the pressures of selection which are the active and changing parts of the picture, and the DNA sequence is entirely passive.
It is still less true to imagine that genes “build” us into “great lumbering robots”. The process by which a stretch of DNA sequence becomes a protein is complicated, and determined by cellular mechanisms which are in turn reacting to pressures from their environment. The process by which proteins become bodies is even more complicated.
The Selfish Gene is a brilliant phrase. It’s also accurate, so long as you realise that “selfish” doesn’t mean selfish, “gene” doesn’t mean gene, and the definite article is a bit of an abstraction. But taken as the literal truth, it’s about as much use as “In the beginning was the word”. Given Dawkins’s hostility to everyone else’s metaphysics, this is an unfortunate weakness. “Science fiction” may not be the right term for the book but it does capture the sense in which its hold on the imagination depends on the parts that aren’t science but dazzling metaphor.
I don’t see the “endless confusion” that the metaphor caused, except by those like Mary Midgley who seemed too obtuse to realize the brilliance of analogizing the behavior of genes to some kind of “selfishness.” How many people really were led astray by this metaphor? Not many, I’d guess. And “pressures of selection” are themselves metaphorical; those are simply another word for the differential effects of different bits of DNA on reproduction—the effects that lead to natural selection. Natural selection is not an external pressure imposed on the organism, but a description of how genes replicate themselves differentially in specific environments. It’s a process of sorting among “selfish genes”.
The bit about genes not building bodies directly is, of course, something that Dawkins is aware of and has written about constantly. And it’s largely irrelevant to the whole “selfish gene” idea. Brown’s final paragraph, which implies that the part of The Selfish Gene that’s half right is the “fiction” part of “science fiction”, is simply wrong. The book educated millions of people about how natural selection works, and what kind of behaviors it can mold. That depended on the science, not on the metaphor, as the metaphor was just a way to bring the science home. When people talk about Dawkins’s book, they talk about how it opened their eyes to the wonder of natural selection, not about how clever the “selfish gene” idea was.
Poor Richard! I can imagine how frustrating it must feel to be subject to such unwarranted attacks—attacks that not only have been rebutted years ago, but are repeated endlessly by those who dislike his atheism (or his fame).
Even the Pope got into the act. As The Independent reports, ex-Pope Benedict apparently agrees with Brown. Have a look at what Ratzinger said:
The 86-year-old discusses atheism, apparently poking fun at Odifreddi’s previous statements and condemning Richard Dawkins’ writing as a “classic example of science fiction”.
In response to Odifreddi’s 2009 declaration that the church preaches conjecture, not facts, and is therefore “science fiction”, Benedict said: “There is, moreover, science fiction in a big way just even within the theory of evolution. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a classic example of science fiction.”
He added: “The great Jacques Monod wrote the sentences that he has inserted in his work certainly just as science fiction. I quote: ‘The emergence of tetrapod vertebrates … draws its origin from the fact that a primitive fish’ chose ‘to go and explore the land, on which, however, was unable to move except jumping clumsily and thus creating, as a result of a modification of behaviour, the selective pressure due to which would have developed the sturdy limbs of tetrapods’”.
So much for the Catholic Church being down with evolution! As for Monod’s statement about the evolution of terrestriality in vertebrates, it’s a bit extreme but not inaccurate. Terrestriality might have arisen through a behavior in which a “fishapod” that had already evolved sturdy fins to “stand” in shallow water went looking for food (or another pond) by walking ashore, and, if that behavior was successful, could have promoted the evolution of further adaptations to live on land. That’s “fiction” only in the sense that we don’t know it for sure, but it’s certainly not “fiction” in the sense that it’s deliberately untrue!
The idea that many major evolutionary changes begin with a change in behavior has been suggested by many, including the famous evolutionist Ernst Mayr. Flight may also have begun in a similar way in theropods that had already evolved feathers for other reasons.
Matthew Cobb sent me this image from Richard Wiseman’s Quirky Mind Stuff. It’s an example of “the Ponzo illusion.”
The images of all of these cars are the same size. If you don’t believe it, measure them!
More proof that neither evolution (nor, according to Alvin Plantinga, God) gave us absolutely reliable belief-forming mechanisms.
Here’s another example of a Ponzo picture:
Well, summer’s just over now, but I learned today that WEIT was chosen as one of five recommended 2013 “Summer Reads” by Sophie Roell, editor of the very useful Five Books site. (She interviewed me a few years back about my picks of the five best evolution books for the tyro.)
The other summer books are Amanda’s Wedding by Jenny Colgan, Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and Influence, by Robert Cialdini. I’ve read the Collins book (one of the few “mystery books” I’ve ever liked) as well as the one by Cialdini, and can recommend them both. The others are unknown to me.
I can’t resist reproducing the recommendation for WEIT:
Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne
I started reading this book because I never did study evolution or much biology at school and I really started feeling that deficit when even my aged four-and-under children could fox me with questions like, “Do snakes lay eggs?” I never expected reading this book to be a profound experience, but it was. The fact that the book is setting out to prove, to potentially sceptical US citizens, that evolution is indeed true, makes it highly readable and engaging: it’s not just a textbook saying “This happened and then that happened.” And the writing at the end, when Coyne tries to explain why evolution is a wonderful thing, something to embrace rather than run away from, is really quite beautiful. It made me look at the world around me — the leaves on the trees, the groundhog on my backdoor step — with a new kind of wonder. Plus my children are very well-informed now, and know they are closely related to apes (at least on their father’s side).
Think of the children!
The other day I discussed an NPR “cosmos & culture” website post by Tania Lombrozo. The title was “Can faith ever be rational?“, and her answer was “yes.”
This conclusion, of course, gives immense solace to the liberal listeners of National Public radio. In drawing her conclusion, Lombrozo, a psychologist at the University of California Berkeley, leaned heavily on the work of Lara Buchak, a philosophy professor at the same University, “Can it be rational to have faith?” (reference below, free download).
Yesterday Dr. Buchak wrote me a cordial email about my post, clarifying some things and disagreeing with others, but also noting that our disagreement may rest partly on a lack of clarity in what she wrote. Her email is a model of cordial discourse (contrast it with the responses of, say, Henry Gee or Peter Hichens!), and she gave me permission to post it. I promised that I would do so without editing it.
Her defense below indicates why she thinks it can be rational to have faith, and, controversially, why it can be rational to have religious faith. I’ll add a few responses after the email:
Dear Professor Coyne,
I was pointed to your blog post yesterday. First of all, thanks for reading and engaging with my work! I appreciate the time you took to read the paper and engage with it. Second, I wouldn’t mind clarifying my paper a bit, so I’ve written a few points below. You could feel free to post it to your readers if you would like:
– Philosophers sometimes concern themselves with analyzing a concept – roughly, coming up with a definition that covers some set of cases. For example, philosophers ask “what is knowledge?” and then consider scenarios in which we would want to ascribe knowledge to an individual and scenarios in which we wouldn’t, and try to come up with a definition that includes the cases in which a knowledge ascription would be apt and leaves out the cases in which a knowledge ascription would be inapt. (Of course, it’s slightly more complicated than this, but that’s the general idea.) So, I am interested in analyzing faith: in coming up with a definition that includes cases we’d describe as cases of faith but not cases we wouldn’t describe as cases of faith. This is orthogonal to the question of whether all cases of faith are rational, some are, or none are: we first just want to figure out what the concept is. And part of my worry is that the current cultural conversation hasn’t taken on this project.
– So, the examples in the beginning of my paper are just examples of data we are trying to capture with our analysis of what faith is. I take on the assumption that “faith” is the same attitude in mundane and religious cases – that it should be given the same analysis. Thus, faith will be subject to the same rationality standards in both religious and mundane cases. Whether faith meets these standards is a separate question. (I think you might actually be on board with these claims so far.)
– Then, the analysis comes in, and I think that you do a very good expository job (thanks!), with one exception I’ll mention next. As an aside, if someone wants to argue for the alternative analyses you mention in the post, I’d encourage them to take up the project. The data is: apt and inapt uses of “he has faith,” and practices and phenomenology surrounding cases of faith (in, e.g., religious or interpersonal contexts). Show that some alternative hypothesis fits the data! It seems to me that the Kaufman analysis is too narrow (it is apt to say that I have faith in my spouse even if every reasonable person would also assent) and the other analysis you mention too wide (I have confidence, based on evidence, that Obama is president, but it seems inapt to say that I have faith that Obama is president). But these are genuine philosophical disagreements, so hey, let’s do some philosophy!
– On the part where you say: “This is where Buchak’s argument goes wonky.” Here is where you misunderstand my argument. I do see where the misunderstanding comes from, given the italicized contrast and my use of the technical term “credence” as opposed to “belief,” and I wish I had been clearer. So just to be clear: I didn’t mean to imply that it’s rational to have faith without sufficiently high credence. One shouldn’t manufacture high credences when the evidence doesn’t yield them (contra a modern-day version of a William James point), but you should have faith when the evidence does yield sufficiently high credence, when the available evidence is not highly correlated with the truth of the proposition in question, and when there are postponement costs and/or risk-attitudes of a certain sort. So, to be clear: the rationality standards for religious faith are just the same as the rationality standards for other cases of faith.
– Where you and I disagree – and where Professor Lombrozo and I disagree, too – is in whether the conditions are ever satisfied in the case of religious faith. I think they are (though I don’t think they are for everyone – so I wouldn’t want someone who thinks they don’t have evidence for God’s existence to have faith that God exists). I think some people do have evidence of the required sort. You (and Professor Lombrozo) think the conditions are never satisfied, that no one (or no one nowadays, or who has thought about it) has evidence of the required sort.
– Also, as for the “postponement costs” question. We are talking about having faith in God as expressed by particular religious actions – actions that would have an effect right now in how you live – not the question of whether you should believe in God per se. That’s a minor point, but the relevant upshot is that we shouldn’t be evaluating the postponement costs of believing, but rather the postponement costs of these actions. And, in general, I don’t think “the goods” to be had in, say, the Christian life (I will speak from my own tradition) primarily have to do with the afterlife, but rather with our time on earth. So in that sense, refraining from committing to the “Christian life” does have costs.
– So, to summarize, you have mostly correctly interpreted my view, except that I don’t think that the standards are different for religious faith and more mundane cases of faith. I think they are the same. (You and I then disagree about whether these standards are met.)
– Finally, my main motivation for writing the paper was because of the prevalence of statements like this in the “science vs. religion” debates:
Naïve atheist: “Religious beliefs are based on faith, so they are irrational!”
Naïve theist: “I don’t have evidence, but I don’t need any, because I have faith!”
I think that both of these attitudes are wrong, and harmful. And I think a helpful way to move forward is to figure out how to correctly characterize what it is to have faith. (If you already think these attitudes are wrong, that’s great, but it seems to me that these attitudes are prevalent in the public sphere, so I’d like to fight against them.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for hosting a spirited debate.
All best,
Lara Buchak
******
I have three brief responses, which I’ll convey to Dr. Buchak.
1. Re the claim:
So just to be clear: I didn’t mean to imply that it’s rational to have faith without sufficiently high credence. One shouldn’t manufacture high credences when the evidence doesn’t yield them (contra a modern-day version of a William James point), but you should have faith when the evidence does yield sufficiently high credence, when the available evidence is not highly correlated with the truth of the proposition in question, and when there are postponement costs and/or risk-attitudes of a certain sort. So, to be clear: the rationality standards for religious faith are just the same as the rationality standards for other cases of faith.
This clearly implies that it’s rational to have religious faith—and for Buchak, “faith” means “acting on a prior evidenced belief without seeking further evidence”—when there is “sufficiently high credence.” That is, there must be fairly strong evidence buttressing your faith before you begin to act on it. (The “fairly strong evidence” part is from her argument.)
I don’t see that kind of evidence for religious belief, especially since Buchak claims that such evidence must be as strong for religious “faith” as for nonreligious “faith.” Would you to go to Catholic church for the rest of your life if the evidence you had was as thin as the evidence that Jodie Foster really loved you, or that UFOs have abducted people from Earth?
2. Re the claim:
Where you and I disagree – and where Professor Lombrozo and I disagree, too – is in whether the conditions are ever satisfied in the case of religious faith. I think they are (though I don’t think they are for everyone – so I wouldn’t want someone who thinks they don’t have evidence for God’s existence to have faith that God exists). I think some people do have evidence of the required sort. You (and Professor Lombrozo) think the conditions are never satisfied, that no one (or no one nowadays, or who has thought about it) has evidence of the required sort.
I’d like to ask Buchak exactly what the evidence is that can support a rational faith in God, and why it would differ among people. This is a crucial question that bears on my claim that faith really is irrational, for I see no evidence of even a moderately convincing sort. Remember, the evidence has to be sufficiently strong to motivate pretty strong actions: religious “belief” and actions predicated on that.
Now scientists do differ on what it takes to convince them of the provisional truth of a proposition, but the evidence is empirical, available to everyone, and doesn’t differ among scientists. There may be some people who didn’t believe in continental drift, for example, until we were actually able to measure that drift using satellites, but the evidence was there for everyone to see.
In contrast, religious “evidence” is based solely on revelation and the propositions of ancient, man-made books. And it differs among people—far more than it differs among scientists. Why is it rational for a Muslim to have faith in the claims of the Qur’an and, at the same time, rational for a Christian to have faith in the claims of the Bible?
Note that Buchak says that Lombrozo doesn’t think that it can ever be rational to rationally have faith in religion. If that’s the case, Lombrozo didn’t mention that in her NPR piece. In fact, at the end Lombrozo argues that the rationality of religious belief provides some common ground for a fruitful dialogue between believers and nonbelievers.
3. Finally, re the claim:
Also, as for the “postponement costs” question. We are talking about having faith in God as expressed by particular religious actions – actions that would have an effect right now in how you live – not the question of whether you should believe in God per se. That’s a minor point, but the relevant upshot is that we shouldn’t be evaluating the postponement costs of believing, but rather the postponement costs of these actions. And, in general, I don’t think “the goods” to be had in, say, the Christian life (I will speak from my own tradition) primarily have to do with the afterlife, but rather with our time on earth. So in that sense, refraining from committing to the “Christian life” does have costs.
This mystifies me for two reasons. First I don’t see the point of acting on a belief if you don’t really hold that belief. Buchak implies that the question of taking action based on a belief in God is somehow independent of actually believing in God. That is, you can take the action (predicated on a belief) without having good reasons for that belief. Maybe I’m misunderstanding her here, but that’s what it sounds like.
Second, I don’t know what the real-life “goods” are for the Christian faith, and Buchak doesn’t specify them. (I gather from this email that she is a Christian.) If it’s a motivation to do good, well, there are plenty of more rational reasons to do good than simply accepting the reported words of Jesus.
I’m not a philosopher, so I may be missing the subtleties of Buchak’s arguments. But her piece was written to be accessible to the average person, and I’m one of those people.
I’ve called Buchak’s attention to this post and my responses, so maybe she’ll reply either separately or in the comments below.
______________
Buchak, L 2013. Can it be rational to have faith? In Louis P. Pojman & Michael Rea (eds.), Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th edition (forthcoming)
The long sobs of the violins of autumn soothe Hili’s heart with a monotonous languor:
H: It’s a mystery.A: What is a mystery?H: Those leaves; they are changing colours every day.
In Polish:
Hili: To jest tajemnica.
Ja: Co jest tajemnicą?
Hili: Te liście zmieniają kolor każdego dnia.
I really need to see the six-part BBC series Earthflight, which I gather has been picked up by PBS in the U.S. The show uses a variety of methods to photograph birds in flight, and some video clips I’ve seen (a sample is here) are stunning. Here’s one.
We’ve seen roosting flocks of starlings before, moving in great artistic waves in the twilight, but here’s one being pursued (in vain) by a peregrine falcon. The narrator says that the synchronous movement of big groups results from each bird cueing on seven of its neighbors, something I hadn’t known, and have no idea how it was discovered. Regardless, this is one of nature’s most amazing spectacles.
One of the producers, John Downer, has a selection of 49 great animal videos on his YouTube channel.