Moar on lizards eating fruit

December 2, 2011 • 12:19 am

by Greg Mayer

I’ve previously noted a recent paper about fruit eating lizards that wind up as bird fodder. Fortunately, the cases I’m about to relate here don’t end tragically in an avian maw. The lizards that I study, anoles, are primarily insectivorous, but eat a modest amount of meat and fruit as well. I’ve seen the Jamaican Anolis opalinus eat runny banana (the banana had been sliced and left out to attract birds), Puerto Rican Anolis cristatellus pursue round, red fruits (pursue because the fruit kept rolling away as the lizard tried to grab it), and Virgin Island A. cristatellus defecate purplish feces with small black seeds (perhaps from Turk’s cap cactus, Melocactus).

My colleague Manuel Leal of Duke has posted at Anole Annals a video of Bahamian Anolis sagrei eating fruit. This is a tough-skinned fruit. It was opened by another type of lizard (a curly tail or lion lizard), and the sagrei is nomming the pulp left behind.

The video was taken by Dave Steinberg. For more on anole feeding, see Jon Losos’s book, Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree, noted here previously at WEIT.

Steve Pinker and his new book profiled in the NYT

December 1, 2011 • 9:39 am

Several readers sent me “Human nature’s pathologist,” Carl Zimmer’s New York Times profile of Steven Pinker and his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.  Many of you might have already seen Zimmer’s piece, but I’ll highlight it here, for Pinker’s book is superb and you should read it.

At least that’s my opinion after having gotten through 250 pages. As you know, the book is a long analysis of and explanation for why various forms of violence have declined in the millennia since our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived. The thesis, in other words, is that the world—and human behavior—is getting better.

I find that thesis so far pretty convincing. Pinker backs it up with a ton of statistical analysis (the book is loaded with graphs) and a lot of thoughtful commentary.  Yes, the book is very long—696 pages of text, with tons of footnotes and references—and many of my friends won’t take my recommendation, saying that they have no time to read such a big tome.  I mourn the trend of avoiding big books, since many of the greatest ones (including, of course, Darwin’s Origin) fall into this category, and I really do think that everyone who wants to consider themselves educated should put Better Angels under their belt.

But though the book is long, it’s not a slog. Steve always writes with a light and graceful touch, and peppers the text with anecdotes that are edifying (and horrifying, as in his graphic descriptions of medieval torture) as well as with his patented references to modern culture.

I’ll include just one excerpt that I liked, for it bears on recent discussions we’ve had on this website. I particularly like his characterization of “science” in the second sentence, which is how I construe oue discipline broadly:

(p. 181) Though we cannot logically prove anything about the physical world, we are entitled to have confidence in certain beliefs about it.  The application of reason and observation to discover tentative generalizations about the world is what we call science.  The progress of science with its dazzling success at explaining and manipulating the world, shows that knowledge of the universe is possible, albeit always probabilistic and subject to revision. Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time.

Zimmer’s profile in the Times is good, though many readers may already know about Pinker’s intellectual history and his previous books.  But if you want to see what Better Angels is about before you buy it (and you should buy it), Zimmer gives a good precis.  As Carl notes, critical reception has been pretty favorable, with a few exceptions (I read the New Yorker’s hatchet job and thought it was way off the mark).

Steve’s books have been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes twice before, but the award has so far eluded him. I predict that Better Angels will finally nab him that honor.

Jim Houston apologizes; I accept

December 1, 2011 • 6:10 am

How rare it is for any of us—atheist and theist alike—to apologize for unfairly tarring our opponents.  Yet Jim P. Houston has done just that. I’ve been travelling, and have just become aware that Houston posted an apology to me on November 29.  Since he apologized publicly, I think I should accept publicly.

To briefly resurrect a horse after it’s been dead three days:

  1. I criticized an article by philosopher/theologian Keith Ward in the Guardian, an article claiming that religion could answer factual questions (Ward’s piece is here).  I claimed that religion could do no such thing, and had never in fact produced any real knowledge about the universe. And I challenged Ward “to give me just one reasonably well established fact about the world that comes from ‘general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment’ [according to Ward, these are other sources of truth] without any verifiable empirical input.”
  2. Houston took me to task at Talking Philosophy for leveling a challenge at Ward on my website without having contacted Ward directly. He called this act “shabby” and implied that I was intellectually dishonest. Houston contacted Ward on my behalf to find out what truths religion could supply, and Ward answered. But Ward’s response, involving his father being a double agent for M16 and the KGB, was completely unconvincing.
  3. I rejected Ward’s example as not providing credible facts, and reiterated that the only facts about the world we can establish require some empirical input and verification by others.  I admitted that perhaps I should have issued the challenge to Ward directly by contacting him, but noted that such challenges on websites are meant more for readers than for the person challenged.
  4. Now Houston has issued an apology on Talking Philosophy. Here’s an excerpt:

“All that granted, the charges of intellectual dishonesty, and shabby behaviour that I levelled against Professor Coyne were, I think, both counter-productive and a good few steps beyond what is appropriate. If I want to insist on civility and charitable interpretation on the part of my more strident fellow atheists, I’m rather obliged to offer the same to them.  So, I have rather been drawn to the conclusion that I should offer some apology to Jerry Coyne for the accusations I made against him. I have now done so. I’ve also happily conceded that I am, as Coyne suggests, a ‘pompous jerk’.”

And those, I think, seem quite appropriate as my final words on the matter.

Houston also notes that I’ve been criticized by other philosophers like Jean Kazez and Brother Russell Blackford for my philosophical naivité about what a “fact” is. (Massimo Pigliucci has also gone after me, but since he thinks that everyone except Dr.3 Pigliuicci is philosophically naive, he doesn’t count.)

I am reassessing my notion of “facthood,” though I haven’t changed it yet, but in the meantime am happy to accept Houston’s apology. It’s not everyone who will admit that he’s been a pompous jerk. Thank you, Dr. Houston.

And my challenge to Ward still stands. I haven’t yet received a credible answer, and I doubt that I will, for I don’t think that religion—or any “way of knowing” that explicitly avoids empirical input and affirmation by independent observers—can give us “facts,” whatever they may be.

Big news (not): Republican candidate favors teaching the controversy

December 1, 2011 • 4:24 am

We all know that Republicans aren’t really down with evolution in the U.S., and the Republican candidates for President are particularly dire. As if you need more proof of their ignorance and pandering, here’s Michele Bachmann (an elected Congresswoman) arguing that teaching only evolution and not intelligent design or other creationist theories is “censorship” on the part of the government. Let parents, school boards, and students themselves—nay, everyone—vote on what should be taught to our children.

The video below, taken from a post on Think Progress, shows Bachmann responding to a question today at an “education forum” at the University of Northern Iowa. The post notes that question camer from a Catholic student curious to know “why it’s not a violation of the separation of church and state for a public school to teach the religiously-tinged theories.”  Take a minute and a half and listen to Bachmann’s muddled response:

Note that Bachmann equates evolution with “the origin of life” (a common tactic of creationists) and adds:

Why would we forestall any particular theory, because I don’t think that even evolutionists, by and large, say that evolution is a proven fact: they say that this is a theory—as well as intelligent design. So I think intellectually the best thing to do is to allow all scientific facts on the table and let students decide, but that’s my opinion.

But it’s a bad opinion, for although nothing in science is really a “proven fact” (though some things, like a water molecule having one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, come close), and all knowledge is provisional, evolution comes as close to “facthood” as does the “atomic theory” and the “germ theory” of disease.  As my book showed, there’s a mountain of solid evidence for evoution. In contrast, there is no evidence for intelligent design. We might as well teach homeopathy in medical school and astrology in psychology classes. Put all facts on the table and let the students decide!

Don’t vote for these morons!  But I suppose that’s superfluous advice to most readers of this website. And foreign readers, weep for America: there aren’t many “advanced” nations where someone so scientifically illiterate can be considered a serious candidate to run the government.

h/t: Michael Dowd

Scientific Americat

December 1, 2011 • 12:48 am

by Matthew Cobb

At last, Ollie and Pepper (and all their feline friends) have their very own scientific magazine!

funny science news experiments memes - I Wouldn't be Surprised if This Was Real

First announced over at Meme Base/Dropping the Science, Scientific Americat is in need of new features, and I think WEIT readers are well placed to help the editors with potential stories. Among those suggested by readers of Meme Base are “Schroedinger’s Cat – you don’t know if the article is in the magazine until you open it” and “When We Were Gods — The halcyon days of ancient Egypt.” Post your ideas here and we will send them on to the team of Scientific Americat.

Via @BoraZ and @Laelaps on Twitter

Jason Rosenhouse pronounces intelligent design dead

November 30, 2011 • 1:47 pm

. . . and he’s absolutely right.  All the bluster of intelligent design (ID), once so visible in books like Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box and Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial, has been reduced to pathetic sniping at evolutionary biologists on a few ID websites.  The arguments of IDers have been countered, the ID “science” that, we were told, was “right around the corner” hasn’t made an appearance, and their same refuted arguments keep cropping up.

(Here’s one: “Not enough time for complex organs to have evolved! Ergo Jesus.”  I’d love it if people who make arguments like that would actually produce calculations supporting their claim. I’m unaware of any. In the meantime, evolutionists have the counter in the Nilsson and Pelger model showing that complex camera eyes can evolve from simple pigmented spots in an evolutionary instant.)

And, the death rattle: the überpompous David Berlinski is trotted out to recycle the old creationist claim that the fossil record doesn’t support Darwinian evolution. What has he been smoking in those cafés?

There is no longer any pretense that ID is science. It’s been reduced, as have all forms of creationism, to simpleminded criticism of evolutionary theory, without any predictions or insights of its own.  Twenty years on, ID has offered us not a single insight into nature.

But enough ranting, for in a short but incisive post at EvolutionBlog, “Twenty years after Darwin on Trial, ID is dead,” Jason Rosenhouse shows how ID has become the Ozymandias of science:

. . .here comes ID to provide what seems like a scientifically plausible form of anti-evolutionism. You could apparently oppose evolution without descending into outright religious obscurantism. I worried that people would find that sufficiently appealing to avoid looking too carefully at the details, rather like it’s easier to just enjoy a chocolate covered Oreo than it is to think about what it’s doing to your innards.

But that’s not what happened. Even leaving aside the blow of Dover v. Kitzmiller, ID has simply collapsed under the weight of its own vacuity. In the nineties and early 2000s, ID seemed to be producing one novel argument after another. They were variations on familiar themes, of course, but books like Darwin on Trial, Darwin’s Black Box, No Free Lunch and even Icons of Evolution, written by people with serious credentials and written with far more skill than the YEC’s could muster, seemed to advance the discussion in original ways. These books attracted enormous interest among scientists, if only in the sense that they were promoting bad ideas that needed be countered. Many books were written to counter the ID’s pretensions, and major science periodicals took notice of them.

Not so today. Consider the two biggest ID books of recent years. Michael Behe’s follow-up book, The Edge of Evolution, dropped like a stone. It got a few perfunctory reviews written by scientists who perked up just long enough to note its many errors, and then everyone ignored it. Frankly, even the ID folks don’t seem to talk about it very much. Stephen Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell was likewise met with crickets. It briefly seemed like a big deal, a big book released by a mainstream publisher, but scientists gave it a scan, saw nothing remotely new, and yawned.

The ID blogs are hardly in any better shape. It’s mostly just post after post whining and kvetching about how mean old scientists don’t take them seriously.

Indeed. I wonder whether people like Berlinski, Jon Wells or William Dembski sit around at the Discovery Institute and still pretend that they’re relevant. Can they really think that ID has caught on?

Apropos, Jason’s new book about his experiences attending creationist conferences and talking to the participants, Among the Creationists, will be out in April.  I’ve read it in manuscript form and provided a cover blurb. Read it; it’s well written, packed with science, and loaded with unique insights into the people whom we often demonize but seldom meet.

My Christmas wish list

November 30, 2011 • 5:45 am

Perhaps Santa will bring me one of these, which I badly want, or perhaps an alert readers can find where this can be bought.  It was from the Feministe website, which also couldn’t locate the item.

Can you spot Judas Cat at the Last Nomz?

And there’s one error: HappyCat was not a tabby, but a gray shorthair; they seem to have gotten him mixed up with Joseph.

h/t: John S.

Would the world be better without religion?: the debate

November 30, 2011 • 5:44 am

National Public Radio (NPR) has finally posted the audio of a debate between Matthew Chapman, Darwin’s great-grandson, philosopher Anthony Grayling, Dinesh D’Souza, president of the King’s College of New York, and Rabbi David Wolpe on the question, “Would the world be better off without religion?”  You can hear the 50-minute debate here, or get to the debate by clicking the link on the page given in the first sentence.

I didn’t find the debate particularly edifying, nor did I see a clear winner; indeed, the atheist side failed to bring up obvious points like the total lack of evidence for God (or the tenets of Wolpe’s Judaism or d”Souza’s Christianity)—though evidence was alluded to. Nor were the specious roots of supposed “atheist atrocities,” like those of Pol Pot and Stalin, really probed.  Perhaps the debate was more useful to people who are largely unfamiliar with the arguments.  What was painfully lacking here was Christopher Hitchens.

As for the results, the atheist side appeared to have gained a tiny victory, though both sides gained votes at the expense of those undecided at the beginning. NPR reports:

Before the Oxford-style debate, moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the audience at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts voted 52 percent in favor of the motion and 26 percent against, with 22 percent undecided. Afterward, 59 percent of the audience agreed the world would be better off without religion, while 31 percent disagreed — making the side arguing for the motion the winners of the debate. Ten percent of the audience remained undecided.

And I’m sure the vote reflects performance and not the actual changes in mindset of the audience. That’s the big problem with these debates.