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.
Reader Jo sends us a picture of the itinerant moggy Stewart, who has the biggest head on a cat I’ve ever seen. Stewart was never a “pet” cat; he came around to Jo’s for a while, and then disappeared one day.
This is Stewart. He came to us as a frightened, malnourished adolescent with a scrawny body and a comically huge head, but he became a regular guest for breakfast and supper and filled out nicely. Over the years he learned to indulge in a good head scratch before being fed, but he never would entertain any further manhandling. He was an amiable fellow around our other cats, but the top platform of the feeding station was always and indisputably his. This picture is a favorite of mine because despite the intimidating stare he is putting on, I have to laugh at the drool coming down the right side of his mouth. He always did appreciate a good meal. We miss him.
I meant to put this up this morning, but forgot in the press of departure. It’s one of my favorite guitar players doing one of his best pieces: John Fahey (1939-2001) playing the old Episcopal hymn “In Christ There is No East or West.” (For a while, Fahey had the habit of putting one such hymn on each of his albums.) I love it when, at 1:10, he turns the piece into a bouncy bit of blues.
I couldn’t get enough of Fahey when I was young, and bought all of his albums, issued on his own label, Takoma Records. He was a fabulous writer, stylist, and picker, and couldn’t really be classified as a “folk guitarist.” He was sui generis. Fahey had a tumultuous life, was a diabetic and a drunk, and died from heart disease at 62.
Fahey fell on hard times and died in poverty. In graduate school, I once paid only $2.50 to see him play at some benefit for a Hindu guru. During the concert he drank from a thermos of what was obviously booze, and as the performance wore on he got drunker and drunker, finally managing to heap insults on the guru. But his playing stayed fantastic.
I corresponded with Fahey for a while, and still have some of his letters. I asked him about his guitar, and he wrote me that it was a “Bacon and Day Senorita guitar, bought out of a pawn shop with a bowed neck.” I believe it’s that guitar he’s playing on this song, filmed in 1969.
If you want to hear the “normal” version of the hymn, listen to Mavis Staples singing it here.
If you liked this, here are two more live versions (one with live video): Beverly and, my favorite, Brenda’s Blues (a very short version).
Endeavour has just left on its last mission and this fantastic photo was taken by Stefanie Gordon (follow her on Twitter – @Stefmara) and posted on Twitpic. She was in a plane as the shuttle passed by and took this picture of the shuttle bursting through the cloud cover and charging upwards towards space. Gives you a real impression of the amount of energy involved to throw that metal box and its frail cargo (which includes a bobtail squid) into orbit. We covered the Discovery shuttle’s last launch here. Endeavour was built to replace Challenger, which was destroyed 25 years ago. You can watch a video of the bit before this – Endeavour taking off and going through the cloud – here.
I read John Haught’s God and the New Atheism (2007) before I started this website, and found it not only poorly argued and tendentious, but dreadfully written. (Opaque writing is the occupational disease of theologians, since they have to argue for something that doesn’t exist.)
Over at Metamagician, Brother Blackford is reading Haught’s book and, in a series of short posts, giving some highlights (hint: he doesn’t like it). I refer you to Blackford but also to Haught’s book.
After all, Haught (there should be a “y” at the end of his name) is a Catholic scholar at Georgetown University, widely regarded as one of those sophisticated theologians whose erudite arguments are either neglected or not understood by Gnu Atheists. That’s hogwash: scratch a “sophisticated” theologian and find fuzzy thinking cloaked in high-sounding prose. Here, from Blackford, is Haught’s definition of “faith” from the book:
Faith, as theology uses the term, is neither an irrational leap nor ‘belief without evidence.’ It is an adventurous movement of trust that opens reason up to its appropriate living space, namely, the inexhaustibly deep dimension of Being, Meaning, Truth, and Goodness. Faith is not the enemy of reason but its cutting edge. Faith is what keeps reason from turning in on itself and suffocating in its own self-enclosure. Faith is what opens our minds to the infinite horizon in which alone reason can breathe freely and in which action can gain direction. Reason requires a world much larger than the one that mere rationalism or scientific naturalism is able to provide. Without the clearing made by faith, reason withers, and conduct has no calling. Faith is what gives reason a future, and morality a meaning. (God and the New Atheists, page 75).
Got that stuff about self-suffocating reason rescued only by the deep breaths of faith? And the need for faith to give meaning to morals? This isn’t sophistication, it’s just anti-scientism and the old “divine dictum” argument couched in fancy academic prose. That, and a redefinition of faith into something completely incomprehensible. All of which, of course, neglects the question: How do you know that the tenets of faith are true?
Being carried away by overwhelming feelings of something transcendent (Haught’s schtick argument for faith) is no guarantee that those feelings give you any insight into truth. I’m truly amazed that people can make a living writing stuff like this.
If the accommodationists have made you worried that you’re missing some subtle and convincing arguments for God, this book is the cure.
Here, watch Dennett pwn Haught’s view that science and faith are compatible. Dan also argues for a scientific study of religion. (David Sloan Wilson also claims that the explanation for belief without evidence is based on evolution. I think he’s right, but only partly right.)
Lest there be some soul in, say, the Rub’ al Khali who doesn’t know that Stephen Hawking is an atheist, let this be the definitive word. According to the Guardian, Hawking is “speaking” at a Google Zeitgeist meeting in London today, and his topic is “Why are we here?” A taste of his answer, which will infurate theists:
In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life, emerged. “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,” he said.
But this, from an interview he had with the newspaper, will tick off the faithful even more:
You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything, do you fear about death?
I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
So let’s not have any more palaver about Hawking’s “mind of God” remark indicating a deep religiosity.
At least since Socrates explored the meaning of the Greek maxim “Know thyself”, and Alexander Pope added that “the proper study of Mankind is Man”, we have been interested in knowledge about ourselves. But who are we? A paper in press in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Ron Pinhasi and colleagues raises this issue with regard to Neanderthals, an issue which Jerry considered a while back: are they us?
In several senses, they obviously are us: fellow mammals, fellow primates, fellow hominids, and fellow members of the genus Homo, and thus men in the generic sense (in both the vernacular and technical senses of generic). But are they members of the same species as us, Homo sapiens? Or members of a distinct species, Homo neanderthalensis?
Life reconstruction of a Neanderthal by John Gurche at the USNM.
The question of whether they are a different species from us is the question of whether or not we could interbreed with each other. And not just mate– but successfully produce fertile offspring. For most of the time since the first reported Neanderthal in 1856, reproductive compatibility could only be inferred based on morphological data, and opinions varied as to whether Neanderthals were a subspecies of H. sapiens or a separate species. The great Finnish paleontologist Bjorn Kurten proposed in his novel, Dance of the Tiger, that Neanderthals and modern H. sapiens could mate and produce offspring, but that the offspring, while showing somatic luxuriance (they were really smart and strong), were completely sterile (a form of post-mating reproductive isolation). Published in 1980 before there was any genetic evidence, a novel, rather than a scientific paper, was probably the right venue for Kurten’s reasoned but entirely speculative proposal.
Early genetic data from mitochondrial DNA indicated that Neanderthal mitochondria were well outside the variability of modern populations, supporting the ideas of those (such as Kurten) who supposed that Neanderthals were a separate species. More recently obtained nuclear DNA sequences, however, showed that 1-4% of the genome of modern Eurasians was derived from Neanderthals (modern Africans lack this admixture of Neanderthal DNA). Thus there was enough successful interbreeding to leave a noticeable signature in modern genomes. Even more recently, a previously unknown fossil Asian population called Denisovans, related to but distinct from Neanderthals, has been shown to have contributed about 5% of the genome of modern Melanesians. Thus, measurable interbreeding occurred between anatomically modern humans and more archaic Eurasian populations as the former spread out of Africa across the remainder of the Old World.
The paper by Pinhasi et al. revises the dating of Neanderthal fossils from the Caucasus, finding them to be older than previously thought (about 40,000 years BP). The authors also suggest that other younger dates are unreliable, and that it is unlikely that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted for any substantial length of time. If they are correct, then the Neanderthal (and Denisovan) contribution to modern genomes speaks even more strongly of conspecficity, as the gene flow had to occur over shorter periods of time. There are, regrettably, quite a few historical instances where two peoples (both of course undoubted anatomically modern H. sapiens) met, and one quickly disappeared, with relatively little measurable gene flow having occurred, so the rapid demise of Neanderthals in the face of anatomically modern humans is no bar to their having been the same species. I would interpret the genetic evidence so far as indicating that the Neanderthals, indeed, are us.
In addition to the references below, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has a fine blog in which he often comments on Neanderthals and other paleoanthropological topics. His take on the Pinhasi et al. paper, which deals more with the dating issues, is here; his view on the species question is here. [JAC: I also discussed the species problem in Neanderthals, reaching the same conclusion as Hawks.]
Green, R.E. et al. 2010. A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome. Science 328:710-722.
Green, R.E., et al. 2008. A complete Neandertal mitochondrial genome sequence determined by high-throughput sequencing. Cell 134:416-426.
Kurten, B. 1980. Dance of the Tiger. Reissued by University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993.
Pinhasi, R., T.F.G. Highamb, L.V. Golovanovac, and V.B. Doronichev. 2011 Revised age of late Neanderthal occupation and the end of the Middle Paleolithic in the northern Caucasus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in press.
Reich, D., et al. 2010. Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature 468:1053-1060.
I’ll be sad to leave for Chicago tomorrow morning, as there is so much to see, and so much natural beauty, in this region of the Canadian Rockies. The weather was perfect this morning, and I abandoned science to take a long walk. I decided to visit the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel, one of the world’s most famous hotels—I’m sure you’ve seen a photo—in one of the world’s most famous settings. I couldn’t get a good overall view of the place, so here’s one from a website:
It’s a giant stone chateau-like structure, very appealing to the eye. And it’s as gorgeous inside as out. It was built in 1887-1888 by the Canadian Pacific Railway to lure tourists to this lovely but remote part of the country. A newer hotel, the present one, was built in 1911, designed by American architect Walter Painter. The whole place is evocative of old-time luxury, as if you’re back in the 1920s. Here’s the lobby: And a corridor: The hotel concierge was very gracious in drawing me a map of the public areas that are worth seeing. Here are some of them. This one appears to have held church services this a.m.; the windows to the left have an amazing view of the mountains (see below):
This is the lounge bar:
Elevators:
There’s a small room with old photos and memorabilia from this historic hotel. Here’s a lunch menu from July 28, 1939. Look at all that food you could get for $1.50! (Click to enlarge.)
And Marilyn Monroe playing on the hotel links. She appears to have injured her ankle:
The hotel pool (outdoor hot springs are within walking distance):
The symbol of the old owner (it’s now owned by Fairmont rather than Canadian Pacific):
The view from the terrace. What a place to have a drink!
On the walk back you can descend to the Bow River, which the hotel overlooks, and see the Bow Falls. This is the hotel from the river side (east):
And the falls:
And I saw what looks to be a skinny marmot (I’m sure one of my readers will inform me that I’ve got the wrong mammal):
Of course I needed a treat after this arduous walk, and so repaired to Welch’s Candy Shop on Banff Avenue to pick up a few nostalgic goodies. Here’s their window, full of hard candies:
And my haul: Blackpool (not Brighton) rock, horehound twist, dark and vegetal, and molasses sponge, which we used to call “fairy food” when I was a kid.
If you’re a Brit, you’ll know “rock,” a hard cylinder of peppermint candy traditionally sold at seaside resorts. Its distinguishing feature is that it has words on it, and they go through the entire stick of candy:
Making this stuff is not easy, especially getting the letters to extend throughout the entire candy. The whole process is described here.
I’ve heard of cats and birds being pals, but never when the bird is a barn owl (Tyto alba). Here’s an amazing video of a basement cat, named Fum, playing with an owl named Gebra. You really wonder what is going through the mind of each beast when it regards the other.
