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.
Hili: What is the sense of life?
A: I don’t really know, maybe everything that gives us a willingness to live.
Hili. That makes sense. I wonder, what would I like to eat.
Hili: Czym jest sens życia?
Ja: Sam nie wiem, zapewne tym, co daje nam ochotę do życia.
Hili: To ma sens, zastanawiam się, co ja bym zjadła?
Professor Ceiling Cat is otherwise occupied today, and so posting will be light and limited to persiflage.
I don’t know if this is a regular feature of Prospect magazine, but it should be. Thursday’s issue published a short piece called “Daniel Dennett: If I ruled the world.” It’s a laundry list of what Dan would do if he could run everything. (He says nothing about enforcing compatibilism.) I’ll include just one of his Roolz:
I am not known for my modesty, and some may be surprised to learn that I really don’t think I have all the answers. Here, for instance, is one of my favourite ideas, but I am truly baffled about how to put it into action even with all the powers in the world at my disposal. As we all know—but sometimes forget, in our panic— when the plumbing has burst, the first step to take is to turn off the water main. In that spirit, I would like my first step on ascending to the dictatorship to be decreeing high quality, non-ideological education for boys and girls in every community on the globe. If we could just liberate the world’s children from illiteracy, ignorance, and superstition, their curiosity would lead them to solutions that were both locally informed and sensitive while also tuned to a fairly realistic view of the global context into which these solutions must fit. Once accomplished, the result of this universal education would be the opposite of paternalism, giving people everywhere maximum freedom to make informed choices about how to live their lives.
A great idea, but, as Dan admits, not workable:
The disastrous attempts to separate children from their families in the recent past in order to give them “proper” educations should convince us that there is simply no way of imposing an educational system on children in different cultures against their will and the will of their elders that isn’t both inhumane and ineffective. . . My reluctance to use my political power to educate the young is based on the begrudging opinion that resistance to such impositions is itself so intense that the effort is almost certain to be counterproductive.
He has another diktat as well, and one that even Sam Harris would agree with, but go over and see for yourself.
What would I do if I ran the world? Well, let’s leave aside Big Projects like the above, or forcing the North Korean government to disband and merge with the South (something much to be desired). My aims are smaller:
1. Anybody with more then ten items in the “ten items or less” (and it should be “fewer,” not “less”) grocery checkout lane would be roundly excoriated, turned away, and sent to the end of another lane. One item too many and you’re GONE! (Note: two bottles of soda count as two items.)
2. Speaking of which, anyone approaching the register in the checkout line who has not fully written out their check except for the amount (or who has not removed their wallet from their pocket or purse) would also be expelled from the line. In my world there will be no fumbling in change purses for pennies or dimes.
3. The price of lattes—the most overpriced non-alcoholic beverage on the market—would be capped at $2.00, even for a large one.
4. No hotel could charge for wireless.
5. No airline could charge you to check a single bag so long as it’s not overweight.
6. If you had an appointment for a haircut, and had to wait more than 15 minutes past that time for your trim, the haircut would be free.
7. Cilantro would be banned from all restaurants as an inedible substance.
8. All bicyclists would obey the traffic laws, including stopping at stop signs.
9. No commenter on this website could ever use the words “I don’t mean to nitpick, but . . . “
Feel free to add what you’d change about the world, along the lines of the above. But please, no stuff like “I’d bring world peace.” That’s for Miss America contestants!
I have found, over the years, that catnip (a mint whose scientific name is Nepeta cataria) affects some cats but not others. Hili, for instance, is completely indifferent to it, as I discovered when schlepping a catnip toy to Poland for her. A short (free) article by Jeff Grognet in the Canadian Veterinary Journal gives some information about the plant and how it works. For example:
Compounds in catnip alter the behavior of wild and domestic cats, other mammals, and insects. The main constituent that attracts cats is the trans, cisisomer of the unsaturated lactone, nepetalactone. Nepetalactone constitutes 70-99% of the essential oil of the catnip plant. It is metabolized and excreted in the urine. After oral administration of 20 to 80 milligrams of nepetalactone to cats, histological examination of tissue at postmortem* indicated the absence of permanent alteration or damage. Although the main constituent of catnip is nepetalactone, the most active constituent is a metabolic product of this, nepetalic acid. Cats can respond behaviorally to air concentrations of 1:109 to 1:1011.
*A nefarious experiment: they killed the cats after giving them ‘nip!
Although marijuana has recently been legalized in several states, not enough attention has been paid to the dangers of catnip. It is, after all, a gateway drug to harder stuff, like oregano and cilantro. The next time you want to give ‘nip to your cat, think about the kittens!
This is your cat on catnip:
There is a genetic polymorphism for catnip response, which is why not all cats show it:
Not all cats will respond to catnip. The heredity of the response has been shown to be an autosomal dominant trait. There is no correlation with breed or color. Most nondomesticated felids also react, but there is a suggestion that tigers may not respond. If a kitten is less than six to eight weeks old, it will not react and the full behavioral pattern may not be evident until they are three months old.
That paragraph, from the Grognet paper, suggests but doesn’t say explicitly that the response is due to a single dominant gene. If that were the case, then breeding two cats insensitive to catnip would produce a litter of insensitive kittens. I haven’t read the referenced paper, but it’s sufficiently old that while they could have implicated a single dominant gene, they could not have identified it.
Here’s a frightening video of a catnip overdose:
From Chemical and Engineering News:
One cannot observe catnip’s remarkable and sudden, if transient, effect on cat behavior without suspecting that something chemical is afoot. In fact, the key to catnip-induced friskiness is a compound called nepetalactone, says Carolyn M. McDaniel, a veterinarian at the Feline Health Center at Cornell University.
Nepetalactone is one of several related compounds known to initiate the classic catnip response sequence: sniffing, licking, and chewing, followed by head shaking, body and head rubbing, and then repeated head-over-heels rolling. Similarly active compounds are actinidine, iridomyrmecin, and matatabilactone.
McDaniel says a thorough neurological explanation for catnip-induced calisthenics is lacking, but experts infer that cats receive the necessary stimuli from olfactory and possibly oral receptors for nepetalactone and similar compounds.
Another unfortunate victim (from reader Ronaldo; more photos at Cat Macros: Hide the nip!)
Nip: Not even once!
And it could lead to dancing:
And it works on hoomans, too:
In the 1960’s, catnip was used in place of marijuana or as a filler in marijuana. Even toys for pets were bought to get the catnip for use. Because catnip burned too fast by itself, it was usually mixed with tobacco. A more intense effect could be obtained by spraying the alcohol extract on tobacco and then smoking it . Catnip produces visual and auditory hallucinations. It makes people feel happy, contented, and intoxicated, like marijuana.
I wish I had known that in the Sixties (after all, I was there), when I was reduced at times to scraping the fibrous lining from banana peels, drying it in the oven, and smoking it. (That was supposedly a hint from the Donovan song “Mellow Yellow”.) It never worked.
Do relate your own (i.e. your cat’s) catnip experience below.
Hili: Tell me, please, what is a lefthanded mouse?
A: It is a computer mouse for lefthanded people.
Hili: It’s very confusing.
Hili: Proszę, powiedz mi, co to jest leworęczna mysz, bo ja takiej jeszcze nie jadłam?
Ja: Jest to mysz komputerowa dla osób leworęcznych.
Hili: To bardzo mylące.
Too much evolution and philosophizing makes Jack a dull boy, and so we’ll finish the work week with a few fun animals. This video, sent by reader Ronaldo, show the remarkable psychological similarity between humans and raccoons (Procyon lotor).
‘Fess up: you like to pop the bubbles in bubble wrap, don’t you? I know I do—often to the detriment of my packing. This little guy clearly enjoys it, too. Much as I tried to interpret his actions as looking for food, in the end I concluded he’s just having fun.
h/t: Ronaldo
This video really makes me queasy, for it’s made and partially funded by America’s largest association of scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS. And that organization has an official program to reconcile science and religion, the “Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion,” also called the DoSER program (information here). DoSER is an example of the Templeton Foundation putting its sticky fingers into science; for Templeton started DoSER in 1996 with a 5.3 million dollar grant (!) that ends this month (and I’d bet money it’ll be renewed).
Here’s DoSER’s mission, as quoted on the Templeton site:
These grants established the AAAS program, Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER), and provide support for its ongoing infrastructure costs. DoSER engages the public on a range of questions in science and religion, including evolution, cosmology, astrobiology, and human evolution. The program seeks to establish stronger relationships between the scientific and religious communities and promotes multidisciplinary education and scholarship on the ethical and religious implications of advancements in science and technology.
I wonder how many AAAS members even know—or would approve if they knew—about the DoSER program. It is, in effect, a theological enterprise of a scientific organization, one devoted to telling the faithful that there’s no conflict between their beliefs and science—including evolution.
The head of DoSer is Jennifer Wiseman, who appears in this video along with a younger interlocutor whose name I can’t find (correct me if you find it). Wiseman is a Christian astronomer and head of the American Scientific Affiliation, a group of Christian scientists. The Test of FAITH website says this about her, though I don’t think she’s still president of the ASA:
[Wiseman] is also the current Council President of the American Scientific Affiliation, and she enjoys speaking to student and church groups on the excitement of seeing God’s beauty and creativity in nature.
So here, filmed during last week’s AAAS meeting in Chicago, is Wiseman and her colleague promoting accommodation by interviewing Galen Carey from the National Association of Evangelicals, as well our old friend sociologist Elaine Eckland of Rice University, who has been funded by five Templeton grants and who has used her Templeton money to show that science and religion are perfectly compatible. She likes to take her survey data and twist it to show that scientists are far more friendly to religion than people think, and vice versa.
Most of the discussion in the video below is about Ecklund’s recent survey of the beliefs of scientists and religionists.
So what happens when you get a Templeton-funded Christian scientist interviewing a Templeton-funded sociologist on the question of whether science and religion can coexist? Guess! It’s a regular love-fest, with the answer not even remotely in dispute from the outset.
The AAAS site is Live Chat: Can science and religion coexist?, and the nearly hour-long video “chat” is embedded below. Watch it if you dare. I did watch the whole thing and nearly required insulin for the excessive sweetness and light. If you make it through the whole thing I will congratulate you. I do hope, however, that at least some of my fellow scientists find this AAAS endorsement of accommodationism (with an evangelical Christian chiming in, for crying out loud!) repugnant:
Here are a few highlights, if you can call them that:
12:00: The mission of this conversation is explicitly accommodationist, as Ecklund notes that her work is aimed at trying not to alienate religious people who want to go into science. She also mentions darkly the “implications for the funding of science” (i.e., don’t alienate religious legislators). Carey notes that religion can enhance the science-religion dialogue by adding “voices that bring a moral sensibility to the conversation.” (As if the faithful were more moral than scientists!)
Wiseman adds that accommodationism helps us retain science talent that would be otherwise alienated by science’s “overreaching into areas that science isn’t equipped to address”. The alienation of the faithful is, apparently, muddled by misperceptions that scientists have about the faithful, and vice versa. In other words, Ecklund, Wiseman et al. “want to make sure that we can move as much as we can away from misperceptions so we can have more honest dialogue.” There’s a lot of this fluffy talk throughout the conversation.
Carey, when asked, then defines evangelicals as those who take the Bible seriously, trust in Jesus as saviour and lord, focus on Bible as an authority for living, and try to discover how they have a personal relationship with Jesus. What is this doing in an AAAS-sponsored conservation?
17:20: The discussion turns to what science and religion have in common. What can bring them together? Ecklund notes that both show a “concern for diversity in American society” (e.g., fair gender representation), as well as a desire to increasing the diversity of science by bringing in more religious people. Ecklund’s agenda, and that of DoSER, becomes manifestly clear here.
25:00: Carey says we shouldn’t ask scientists to provide data on “spiritual realities”, even though “Spiritual reality is there, but has to be approached with different methods and tools.” This is an explicit admission of a disparity, and a serious one, between science and religion. Carey admits that religion is looking for reality, but using tools different from those employed by science. Those tools, of course, are revelation and dogma—completely useless for finding any kind of relity.
29:30: Ecklund notes that, among Evangelicals, 42% favor teaching creationism instead of evolution, but the figure is only 13% for mainline Christians. That’s certainly a conflict! But of course she qualifies the figure by saying that evangelicals support science as much as does the general population. She is, in other words, getting around data that she doesn’t like. Notice how Ecklund nods along in agreement with what the evangelical Carey says. Good feelings and brotherhood all around!
33:30: Carey makes the outrageous claim that religion, like science, tests its claims every day, differing from science only in which tools are used for the testing. Right: empirical observation and reason versus revelation and authority.
Ecklund then promotes initiatives from the AAAS asking for more “collaboration” and “creative dialogue” for the sake of “everyone’s good”. The AAAS should try to get religious people together with scientists and “talk through the issues.” (It’s not clear to me what such a dialogue will really accomplish.) Once real agreement on some issues is established, then, says Ecklund “we can go forward with some of the much harder issues”. Like trying to get creationists to accept evolution?
37:15: Wiseman notes that religion can address questions that science can’t. Indeed, say I, but “addressing” questions is not the same as answering them. She also implies that scientists aren’t really that good about interacting well with the public, and that scientists need to “be more communicative about their lives as a whole.”
45:30: The participants discuss how a religion-science dialogue can “help the planet.” Science is supposed to “provide the information,” but people “are the portal for that information, and “many people are religious”. That’s a pretty tenuous form of collaboration, cooked up to show false comity. I suppose the dialogue here is aimed at finding common ground between religious people and scientists so they can collaborate in matters of common interest. But I think they already are doing that (e.g., promoting environmental conservation), and further dialogue isn’t going to help matters much. Moreover, that dialogue, to me, merely gives credibility to magical thinking—the elephant in the room that is totally ignored in this conversation.
Near the end, someone mentions that a collaboration between science and religion will help bring out the “broader context of scientific discoveries” because “religious communities are better at that”. That’s a base canard, for secular humanists and philosophers are also good at that. Why not foster a dialogue between philosophers and science instead? After all, most philosophers don’t believe in magical thinking.
The whole aspect missing in this “dialogue” is the recognition that science is more than just what professional scientists do for a living. It’s also a way of thinking about the world. And that way of thinking is in complete opposition to the way that people like Carey think about the world, at least about the world’s “realities.”
In the end, I’m still baffled by these repeated calls for “dialogue” between scientists and religious folks. These calls never come from secular scientists, but from religious people or religious scientists.
I don’t see the point of such a dialogue, or an attempt (costing millions of dollars) to find “common ground.” Like Steven Weinberg, I believe in a dialogue, but not a constructive one. I believe in a dialogue in which scientists undermine the habits of magical thinking and the reliance on faith. As for the faithful, I don’t think they have one iota to contribute to science.
I’m sure we’ll all be rooting for Official Website Physicist™ Sean Carroll as he begins his two-day series of debates and discussions with William “Kill the Canaanites” Craig this evening. And you can watch tonight’s debate live (see below). The topic is whether modern cosmology gives any evidence for God, and you can read all the preliminaries here.
As Sean said on his website yesterday (my emphasis):
Tomorrow (Friday) is the big day: the debate with William Lane Craig at the Greer-Heard Forum, as I previously mentioned. And of course the event continues Saturday, with contributions from Tim Maudlin, Alex Rosenberg, Robin Collins, and James Sinclair.
I know what you’re asking: will it be live-streamed? Yes indeed!
Fun starts at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific. (Corrected from earlier goof.) The format is an opening 20-minute speech by WLC and me (in that order), followed by 12-minute rebuttals, and then 8-minute closing statements, and concluding with 40 minutes of audience questions. Official Twitter hashtag is #GreerHeard14, which I believe you can use to submit questions for the Q&A. I wouldn’t lie to you: I think this will be worth watching.
Sean seems to be actually raising expectations for his performance, for his post continues:
I want to make the case for naturalism, and to do that it’s obviously necessary to counter any objections that get raised. Moreover, I think that expectations (for me) should be set ridiculously high. The case I hope to make for naturalism will be so impressively, mind-bogglingly, breathtakingly strong that it should be nearly impossible for any reasonable person to hear it and not be immediately convinced. Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if there are any theists left in the audience once the whole thing is over.
That sounds like a bit of a joke given that there will be many WLC supporters in the audience, but maybe he’s serious.
h/t: Peter