Eric MacDonald on natural selection, purpose, and the problem of evil

February 22, 2011 • 10:13 am

I’m flattered that our discussion of natural selection and its mindless and purposeless nature has inspired a very nice post by Eric MacDonald at Choice in Dying: “Darwin Meets Job.”  For years MacDonald, an Anglican priest, struggled with the problem of evil, trying hard to rationalize it to his congregation as part of God’s plan.  Then he read On the Origin of Species:

It is simply impossible to read Darwin and come away with the idea that the process of evolution is directed or supervised. The completely contingent character of the world is fully revealed, and it’s hard to understand how one did not see this before. It should have been obvious? But not only is contingency obvious. It becomes obvious that, if the way the world is is contingent, then knowledge itself, if not contingent, must be a fully human project, the product of millennia of trial and error. And then, it becomes pellucidly clear that morality itself is human, that goodness is a purely human product, and very fragile, not something simply built into the process by which we came to be, but an extrapolation from that process, and, to the extent possible, a determination to bend the process to ensure better outcomes. . .

. . . Darwin was a modern Job. All he could do in the end was to submit to the forces that were at work in Anne’s body [his daughter, who died at ten of scarlet fever]. Anne was struggling for survival, just as every living organism does, and she lost. She died without leaving any descendents. In the struggle to survive and propagate, she lost. By all accounts, Anne was a bright, happy child. Certainly Darwin’s memorial to Anne tells us that she was. But however happy she may have been, her death spelled the end of faith for Darwin. After that he could not really even pretend, and ceased going to church with the family. I can understand that.

Faith can’t survive the realisation that the whole of the life world is built on struggle and failure, with a glacially slow accumulation of small successes. It is a constant struggle, a struggle that has been going on for billions and billions of years, in which organisms come into being, struggle for survival, and then die, many of them, perhaps most, not leaving any issue, only a favoured few — those selected by a completely indifferent process — surviving to pass on their genes to the next generation. And in that process, billions and billions of living creatures struggle to pass on their genes, and fail. What is the sum of all that suffering, struggling multitude? Can faith in a god survive the knowledge that we are the product of all that misery and affliction? In the Epic of Gilgamesh even the gods do not know why so many had to suffer. That there is no reason should make us much more sensitive to and caring, but it should spell the end of gods.

Read the rest, and if you haven’t yet bookmarked his site, I recommend doing so.

An afterthought: I’m surprised that accommodationists and the National Center for Science Education don’t criticize evolutionists for describing the evolution and natural selection as “purely natural and materialistic processes,” for that steps on the toes of the faithful just as hard as saying that evolution is “unguided and purposeless”.  In both cases divine intervention is explicitly ruled out.

A vestigial trait in humans: the arrector pili

February 22, 2011 • 6:02 am

Yesterday I came across a photograph of this kitten:

It’s cute, of course (check out the valentine patch), but today we’re paying attention to its fur.  If you have a cat, or simply observe animals, you know what’s going on off screen.  The kitten is freaked out: either it’s been scared or, more likely, has seen another threatening beast: another cat, a dog, or a vacuum cleaner.  The rush of adrenaline associated with fear or threat causes it to erect its hair.  This makes the cat look bigger than it really is, and in this case probably serves to ward off predators or competitors. (Note too how the kitten hunches its back and stands up on its toes—another way to exaggerate your size.)

What makes the hairs stand up on end?  Attached to the base of each hair follicle is a tiny muscle, collectively called the arrector pili. When the muscle contracts, it pulls the hair upright. Here’s a diagram:

And a photograph, showing the muscle fibers:

The muscles contract under several circumstances. When a mammal is cold, it raises its fur for insulation, trapping a layer of warm air next to its skin.  If you have a cat, you’ve probably seen it bush out its fur in winter.

And, as noted, the muscles are used in a situation of defense, to exaggerate apparent size.  But you also want to exaggerate your size during offense, when you’re trying to achieve dominance, get food, or intimidate another beast of the same species.  Here’s a brown hyena (Hyaena brunnea) trying to dominate a confrère:

Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, also use their arrector pili during encounters that show dominance.  Dominant individuals sometimes approach others walking upright, with fur on end:

And like our closest relatives, we have arrector pili too—and they act in a similar way.  When they contract, our hair stands up and we see the phenomenon of goose bumps—so called because our skin resembles that of a plucked goose.

When does our hair stand on end? In two situations: when we’re cold and when we’re freaked out (“that horror movie made my hair stand on end”; we “bristle” with anger or fear).  These are precisely the occasions when the hairs stand up in other mammals.  But in our species, erect body hair has no function in keeping us warm—certainly not in Africa where the bulk of our early evolution took place.  As naked apes, we’re simply furred too sparsely.  And our thin body hair can hardly act to threaten or intimidate other humans.

In humans, the arrector pili—and their function when we’re cold or watching a scary movie—is a vestigial trait.  It serves no purpose in our own species, but is there as an evolutionary remnant, for it has an adaptive function in our relatives, and did so in our ancestors.  It’s evidence of our evolution from fur-raising ancestors, and I discuss it on p. 62 of Why Evolution is True.

Why did it evolve in ancestral mammals? I’m not sure about the evolutionary origin of these muscles, or whether the selection pressures that produced them involved cold, threat, or both.  As far as I know, they’re present in all terrestrial mammals* (somebody check echidnas and platypuses, please!), and mammals evolved from reptiles.  The fur was undoubtedly an adaptation for thermoregulation, and if you could get warmer by erecting that fur, so much the better.  And early mammals were largely nocturnal, so a hair-erecting threat display may have been of little use.

My best guess is that the muscles originally evolved to keep the mammals warmer, and were secondarily co-opted for threat displays.  In other words, the hair-erect threat display would be what Steve Gould called an exaptation: a trait evolved for one purpose that subsequently comes to serve another.  Now, of course, there’s been additional evolution, so that hair erection is automatically triggered by an adrenaline surge.  That situational behavior can be seen as an adaptation—just like the “wings” of penguins, which were exaptations whose precise “finlike” form evolved, as an adaptation, through natural selection.

_________

*Pinnipeds (sea mammals like seals and walruses) and sea otters lack arrector pili, almost certainly reflecting a secondary loss after invasion of the water.  Why they’ve lost them, and we haven’t, is a mystery.  Perhaps they’re more deleterious if you’re living in water.

The greatest pop voices of our time. Day 3: Johnny Mathis

February 22, 2011 • 4:37 am

If maple syrup could sing, it would sound like Johnny Mathis.  His voice has a soothing, liquid quality that I find in no other singer.  And think of all of his songs that have become standards—a few of the best are below.

Mathis started out as an athlete, and had to choose between singing and track.  Fortunately for us, he chose music.  And the guy is a trouper: he’s still giving concerts at age 75.

I’ve chosen three songs, two of them from live performances.  The first is my favorite: “A Certain Smile,” which first appeared in the eponymous 1958 movie, itself based on a novel by Françoise Sagan.  I’m putting up the recorded version, but you can also see the movie version here.

“Misty,” written by jazz pianist Erroll Garner, might be Mathis’s most famous song, and the most famous part is when his voice blends imperceptibly with the oboe at the end.  It’s most striking in the recorded version, but you can also hear the big high note in this live version, taped in 1973:

You might remember the Clint Eastwood movie, “Play Misty for Me,” in which a deranged fan repeatedly calls Eastwood, a disc jockey, requesting that he play the song.

The last selection features a young and shockingly skinny Mathis singing “It’s Not for Me to Say.” The YouTube notes claim it’s his first performance on the Ed Sullivan show.  He looks plenty nervous! (This version is truncated; the full recorded version is here.)

And don’t miss the recorded versions of “Chances Are” and “Wonderful, Wonderful.”

Natural selection and evolution: material, blind, mindless, and purposeless

February 21, 2011 • 6:26 am

I’m teaching undergraduate evolution this quarter, and right now am lecturing on natural selection.  As always, I read the textbook along with the students, and this year’s textbook, as usual, is Evolution, by Douglas J. Futuyma.  It’s a superb text, authoritative and well written.  What struck me in this week’s reading were two statements. First this one:

[Darwin’s] alternative to intelligent design was design by the completely mindless process of natural selection, according to which organisms possessing variations that enhance survival or reproduction replace those less suitably endowed, which therefore survive or reproduce in lesser degree. This process cannot have a goal, any more than erosion has the goal of forming canyons, for the future cannot cause material events in the present. Thus the concepts of goals or purposes have no place in biology (or any other of the natural sciences), except in studies of human behavior. (p. 282)

(I do take issue with the characterization of goals and purposes as limited to humans: there’s plenty of evidence that some other primates—and perhaps some non-primate animals—have goal-directed and purposeful behavior.)

Here’s Futuyma’s second statement, referring to an experiment in bacteria:

This experiment conveys the essence of natural selection: it is a completely mindless process without forethought or goal. (p. 285)

And, indeed, this is what I teach—that natural selection, and evolution in general, are material processes, blind, mindless, and purposeless. (I also emphasize that—despite our shorthand characterization of selection as “acting” on individuals—it is not a “force” imposed on organisms from the outside, but simply a differential sorting of genes based on their contribution to reproduction.)

But when reading Futuyma’s statements, I remembered that some people object to such a description as a needlessly “theological” assertion: a flat and insupportable claim that natural selection was not designed by, and is not being guided by, gods.  How can you be so sure, some theologians say, that there really isn’t a goal, purpose, or mind behind evolution?

You might remember that a while back the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) persuaded the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) to change its characterization of evolution, which originally read:

The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

As NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott recounts, the words “unsupervised” and “impersonal” led to pushback from the faithful:

As one Christian said to me, defining evolution as “unsupervised” and “impersonal” implied to many Americans that “God had nothing to do with it and life has no meaning.” Reflecting these public concerns, two distinguished theologians, Cornell’s Huston Smith and Notre Dame’s Alvin Plantinga, wrote a polite letter to NABT’s board of directors, asking it to delete the two words “unsupervised” and “impersonal”. They specifically noted that the use of the two words has two unfortunate and unintended consequences. It gives aid and comfort to extremists in the religious right for whom it provides a legitimate target. And because of its logical vulnerability, it lowers Americans’ respect for scientists and their place in our culture.

Scott also considered such language to be a pollution of science with philosophical naturalism.  And so she persuaded the NABT to drop the two offending words. (I’m baffled why they weren’t asked to strike out “natural” as well!)

In my classes, however, I still characterize evolution and selection as processes lacking mind, purpose, or supervision.  Why? Because, as far as we can see, that’s the truth.  Evolution and selection operate precisely as you’d expect them to if they were not designed by, or steered by, a deity—especially one who is omnipotent and benevolent.  And, more important, the completely material nature of selection is of great historical and intellectual importance.  After all, Darwin’s greatest achievement was the explanation of organismal “design” by a completely naturalistic process, replacing the mindful, purposeful, and god-directed theory that preceded it.  That was a revolution in human thought, and students should know about it.  (This achievement is also why Dawkins claimed, in The Blind Watchmaker, that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”  Perhaps Darwin did not mandate that evolution ineluctably proves the absence of God, but he kicked out the last prop supporting the action of a deity in nature.)

Evolution and selection lack any sign of divine guidance.  Earlier teleological theories based on divine or spiritual guidance, such as orthogenesis, have fallen by the wayside.  Natural selection is a cruel and wasteful process.  99% of the species that ever lived went extinct without leaving descendants.  There is no sign that evolution always goes in a fixed direction.  Do primates always get bigger brains? There is some suggestion that orangutan populations evolved smaller ones.  Fleas lost their wings; tapeworms lost nearly everything when evolving a parasitic lifestyle.  There is no sign that the goal of evolution was Homo sapiens (if that were true, why the virtual extinction of Neandertals or the robust australopithecines)?

Now you can always say, along with many liberal theologians, that god just created the world, knowing that life would eventually arise and evolve largely by natural selection.  If you add the caveat (viz. Kenneth Miller and Simon Conway Morris), that god made sure that evolution coughed up a complex and intelligent primate that would apprehend and worship him, then you have modern theistic evolution.  But even liberal theologians have no explanation why God would use such a wasteful and tortuous process to produce humans. (Curiously, while they claim absolute knowledge that god used evolution to produce humans, these theologians bail when asked why he did it that way).

In the end, the absence of evidence for a godly hand in evolution is evidence of godly absence, for evolution and selection show precisely the characteristics they would have if they were purely material, mindless, and purposeless processes. There is no sign of orthogenesis, directed evolution, or a one-way march to Homo sapiens.  There is no more evidence that god directed evolution than there is that god keeps the engine working in your car—and yet nobody keeps an open mind about the possibility that god is pushing their pistons.

To withhold from students the evidence that natural selection is purposeless—lacking direction, guidance, or goals—is to cheat them of the very essence of that process. It is part of the wonder and beauty of selection that this purely material process can produce species so exquisitely attuned to their environments.  That is why Futuyma—and I—emphasize the undirected, material, and blind nature of selection and evolution.

I close with a quote from WEIT:

In the early 1800s, the French mathematician Laplace presented Napoleon with a copy of his great five-volume work on the solar system, the Mechanique Celeste. Aware that the books contained no mention of God, Napoleon taunted him, “Monsieur Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.” Laplace answered, famously and brusquely: “Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la,” “I have had no need of that hypothesis.” And scientists have not needed it since.

The greatest pop voices of our time. Day 2: Streisand

February 21, 2011 • 4:32 am

Today’s popular music is heading towards belting: the production of very loud sounds in the middle range.  Loudness now seems prized on its own, a viable substitute for technique.  One example is the execrable star of Glee, Lea Michele, wildly popular and widely praised.  (I predict that Glee will result in the debasement of all Broadway-style singing.) But all Michele has is volume, and to me her voice is intensely unpleasant (for an example, see this video, where she fails miserably to reprise the Streisand classic from Funny Girl, “Don’t rain on my parade”; the horror show starts at 3:30).

Which brings us to Barbra Streisand.  Yes, she can sing loud, but, more important, her voice is beautiful, and she has style and technique.   And her voice is absolutely unique.

Any singer wishing to make his/her mark has to have a voice that’s instantly recognizable on the radio: Bing Crosby had that, and Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin, and so too the other singers I’ll highlight this week.  Can anybody hear a Streisand song and not know immediately who’s singing?

Many of us were first introduced to Babs through the movie Funny Girl, made in 1968 when she was 26.  Her performance nabbed her a best-actress Oscar.  To me, the best song in that movie is not “People,” but “My Man,” in which Streisand, playing comedienne Fanny Brice, sings through tears right after she’s dumped by her gangster boyfriend (Omar Sharif).  You can see the original here—don’t miss it! But here’s a great concert version from 1975.

“He touched me,” from a 1965 concert in Central Park:

And the Sig Roberg/Oscar Hammerstein classic, “Lover come back to me”, from the 1965 television special, “My name is Barbra.”  I watched it live!

Streisand is a fabulous singer and stylist, a good actress, and a talented producer and director (Yentl, The Prince of Tides)—and a drop-dead gorgeous Jewish girl, too!  I would have married her in a minute, but I was too young, and Eliott Gould (née Goldstein) got to her first . . .

Insanity in Texas: guns on campus

February 20, 2011 • 1:04 pm

According to Yahoo News, the Texas state legislature is poised to pass a bill allowing handguns on college campuses (this is already permitted in Utah and Colorado).

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he’s in favor of the idea.

Currently parts of campuses, including dorms and classrooms, are gun-free zones.  Now why is the Texas legislature (and the governor) so eager to pass this legislation?  So that students can defend themselves against armed marauders:

“It’s strictly a matter of self-defense,” said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. “I don’t ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks.”

Yeah, I’d really like to teach in front of a classroom full of students packing heat. What would happen if one of them failed an exam?  So I weep for my fellow professors in Texas.  And, of course, there are the students. How much mayhem, how many homicides and suicides will occur when a campus full of stressed-out and emotionally volatile students can simply reach into their handbags or backpacks for a revolver?

This is mostly the doing of Republicans, of course, and of Republican governor Rick Perry, who will eagerly sign the bill.  And it’s not only dangerous, but an embarrassment to Texas—and America. Imagine what people in France, England, or Germany would think of this insanity!  Even conservative students have misgivings:

Frankie Shulkin, a first-year law student at the University of Texas, said he doesn’t think he’d feel safer if other students in his classes had guns.

“If I was taking an exam and knew the person next to me had one, I don’t know how comfortable I would feel,” Shulkin said. “I am in favor of guns rights and your typical conservative guy, but the classroom thing bugs me.”

Exactly. And that goes for dorm rooms too.

The greatest pop voices of our time. Day 1: Sinatra

February 20, 2011 • 6:35 am

This week I’ll feature what I think are the four greatest pop singers—in terms of vocal quality—of our era.  There will be two males, two females, and then, on Thursday and Friday, the also-rans.  I’m not necessarily highlighting singers who are great stylists, or vocally inventive, but those whose voices simply give me the most pleasure.

I’m sure that at least one of my choices will be controversial, but the first one is not. It’s Old Blue Eyes, here singing the George Gershwin classic, “Our love is here to stay” (recorded in 1955, lyrics by his brother Ira Gershwin).  As in this instance, Sinatra did his best work with conductor/arranger Nelson Riddle.  I’ll try to feature live performances, but there’s not one of Sinatra doing this song.

Gershwin, who died of brain cancer at age 38, wrote so many great songs, including “I Got Rhythm,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” and “Summertime” from his opera Porgy and Bess.  Imagine how much more music we’d have if he’d lived a normal span!

And Sinatra, of course, always gives an impression of effortless musicality in his songs.  Is there anyone who doesn’t like him?

Click on “Watch on YouTube”.

For a great jazzy version of this song by Ella Fitzgerald, click here. Want live Sinatra? Try here, here, and, for a LOLzy duet with Dino, here.

And, of course, you’re welcome to tout your own favorite artists or songs.

Paris peregrinations

February 20, 2011 • 4:10 am

by Matthew Cobb

The other week I was in Paris, visiting a student from my University who is studying Zoology and French, and is spending a year in Paris, working in my old laboratory at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, more commonly known as “Jussieu”. On my way to see him I took a brief journey that in the space of about 10 minutes raised issues of history, evolution, and what it means to be human.

From my hotel in Oberkampf (Hotel de Méricourt, very cheap and basic, but highly recommended) I decided to take the scenic route. I took the métro to Gare d’Austerlitz, a trip that includes one of those sudden surprises when the métro bursts into the sunlight, and – in this case – takes a lurching right hand turn and goes over the Seine (A on the Google Maps image below). This provides a great view upriver towards Notre Dame and downriver towards the new buildings at Bercy. On the other side of the river is the Gare d’Austerlitz (B, C), the beautiful gardens at the Jardin des Plantes (C, D), and the rather bleak seven storey buildings of the university (E).

Upstream of the Gare d’Austerlitz is the site of one of the forgotten horrors of the Occupation of France by the Germans. Unknown to most Parisians, then and now, there were three internment camps for Jews in the centre of Paris. Interned Jews were forced to work for a macabre process called Möbel Aktion (Operation Furniture). This involved stealing household effects from French Jews and shipping them to Germany. The richest pickings were taken by the Nazi hierarchy, while the remainder was supposedly distributed to those who had been made homeless because of bombing raids. The role of the hundreds of internees was to separate out the material that had been seized, parcel it up and load it ready for deportation. Sometimes, they found themselves handling personal effects that belonged to their own family.

One of those annexes was in two warehouses on the Quai de la Gare (B). The warehouses are long gone, replaced by some modern buildings. But there is a plaque marking the horror.

Leaving the station and crossing towards the Jardin des Plantes – created in the 17th century – there is one of my favourite sculptures: a life-size, and very green stegosaur (C).

As I’ve previously pointed out here, it’s not clear how the mysterious back-plates were arranged – were they off-set or were left and right plates in pairs? This sculpture has opted for a rarely-seen third option: slightly off-set. I’m not sure there’s any paleontological justification for this. This statue is even more impressive because it is, I reckon, the only stegosaur that can been from space. You can just make it out on Google Maps, in the centre of this image:

I don’t know how long the stegosaur has been there. I hope it was made before the war, as it would then have looked out on one of the happier events of the Occupation – its end. After the German garrison in Paris surrendered on 25 August 1944, as a result of the uprising of the Paris population and the arrival of the Allied forces (French and US), the Free French contingent, the 2nd Armoured Division (the Leclerc Division), drove its tanks, armoured cars and jeeps in the Jardin des Plantes for the night (D). One of the women ambulance drivers who accompanied them, Suzanne Massu, recalled in her memoires:

“That first night, everything was quiet in the Jardin des Plantes (…) or at least, almost quiet (…) from all around there were stifled sighs and ticklish giggles. Many Parisian women were too charitable to let our lads spend their first night in the capital alone.”

There are no plaques to commemorate this event.

As you walk along the quai Saint Bernard past the Jardin des Plantes, you can see various ostriches and dik-diks, the inhabitants of the Ménagerie – a rather sad zoo (D on the map). The oldest inhabitant of the zoo is a female orang-utan called Nénette. A couple of weeks before my trip I had seen a new feature film about her, called Nénette. Made by Nicolas Philibert, the director of the excellent Etre et Avoir (To Be and To Have) – a gentle documentary about life in a rural primary school – Nénette is very slow moving, as befits a film about an orang-utan.

For much of the film, the camera is centred on Nénette (there are no humans to be seen), and you hear the voices of visitors (and the noise of passing demonstrations). Sometimes crass, sometimes sympathetic, always thought-provoking, these comments are really what makes the film worth watching. Ultimately, it’s as much a film about us and our attitudes to animals as it is about Nénette. It’s really like sitting in front of an orang-utan enclosure for an hour or so, and just watching and listening. Which isn’t something we do enough of. You can see the English-language trailer here. Not as faithful to the film as the French trailer, IMHO, but there you go:

And then, less then 10 minutes after getting of the métro I was at Jussieu, going into the buildings on the quai Saint-Bernard (E on the map). Jussieu is built on the site of the old Halles au Vin – the wine market – which was destroyed in a final German bombing raid the night after the Leclerc Division rested up in the Jardin des Plantes. That same bombing raid destroyed the warehouses at Austerlitz too (the internees had been removed by the Germans two weeks earlier). The buildings on the quai Saint-Bernard were built soon after the war; most of Jussieu, however, was built after May 1968, incorporating a state-of-the art fire retardant: asbestos. After a great deal of struggle (and a number of deaths) the dangers of the asbestos was finally acknowledged and, over more than a decade, the site has been slowly decontaminated and rebuilt. I’m glad I worked in the older buildings.

Before going up to the top floor to see my student, I decided to visit an old friend on the first floor corridor of Bâtiment A, 7 quai Saint-Bernard. It’s a coelacanth, dredged up from the depths off Madagascar some time in the 1950s, I think. Anyone can get in to see this – security is non-existent. For a while we had a tramp sleeping outside the lab entrance… This is a pretty crappy picture, but then the poor old coelacanth is a bit sad, too. Gone is his (or her?) beautiful speckled deep blue coloration. Instead it looks pale and drained. Something is even leaking out of its body into the preserving liquid:

Here’s a fuller image, taken from Wikipedia (the colour on this isn’t right – it really is as pale as my picture shows):

Annoyingly, in the last week the Wikipedia elves have cropped this picture so you can’t see the full display any more. As you can just make out on my picture, the display shows our and the coelacanth’s common ancestor. What it doesn’t show, of course, is the fact that we now know there at least two exant coelacanth species – Latimeria chalumnae, shown here , and L. menandoensis, discovered on the other side of the Indian Ocean in 1998.

And with that, I got in the lift and went upstairs to see my student and some other denizens of Madagscar – ponerine ants that my pal Christian Peeters is studying, which occupy the niche filled by army ants on continental Africa. But that’s another story…