My Chicago colleague Bob Richards, an eminent historian of science, reviews Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini’s What Darwin Got Wrong in the latest issue of American Scientist. He and I appear to be of one mind about the book: it stinks (I hasten to add that Bob, as a gentleman, would never say something like that).  Some excerpts.

In reading through all this, I was reminded of John Dewey, who began his philosophic career as a Hegelian but said he finally came to realize that a system of thought can be internally coherent and still be crazy. What Darwin Got Wrong, at least across the three parts, doesn’t even have the virtue of being consistent. If “selection for” attributes to nature an intentionality that it cannot have, then “constraint on,” the favored conception of the first part of the book, must also operate under the tainted assumption. . .

Had Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini read the first chapter of the Origin, they would have seen that Darwin argues there not so much that artificial selection is a model for natural selection as that it is exactly the same thing. Darwin regarded the breeder’s intention, correctly I believe, as simply another environmental condition—one that rarely has a predictable outcome, as he discovered when he tried to breed fancy pigeons back to their original ancestral colors. Darwin thus directly demonstrated natural selection at work. And we do the same in the case of drug resistance. . .

The authors, in a denigrating mode, claim that a historical account cannot be supported by counterfactuals, as if evidence and generalizations were unknown to the historian. History and thus evolution are both, they say, “just one damned thing after another.” Yet they concede that many historical narratives, that is, causally sufficient accounts, are “reasonable” and “plausible.” Unless this is an utterly empty concession, they must allow what the historian takes for granted: namely, that he or she, on the basis of evidence and supported generalizations, can uphold the relevant counterfactuals—counterfactuals to the effect that if the significant antecedent conditions mentioned in the narrative had not occurred, neither would the event of interest, at least not in the form that it did. If the historian could not defend such counterfactuals, then it would be impossible to assess his or her narrative as “reasonable” or “plausible.”

Historical accounts depend on evidence and generalizations derived from observation, and evolutionary explanations have the added advantage of experiment. These well-honed techniques of inquiry form the basis for the kinds of discriminations that Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini both deny and grant the laborers in these fields. The authors thus orchestrate a medley of contradictions that can delight only the ears of creationists and proponents of intelligent design.

And, finally, the scathing conclusion, which is just about right:

In the legendary meeting of the British Association in 1860, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce attacked the Darwinian defender Thomas Henry Huxley with this barb: Did Mr. Huxley claim his descent from a monkey through his grandmother’s or his grandfather’s side? Huxley reputedly whispered to a friend: “The Lord has delivered him into my hands.” Huxley retorted that he would rather have a monkey as his ancestor than be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth.

A little birdie tells me that there will be a couple more important reviews appearing shortly. Stay tuned.

I haven’t yet picked a winner of the name-a-good-book-for-spring-reading contest: there are over 200 entries, and, as you might expect, this competition is very hard to judge. I’ll announce the winner when I return from Vancouver on Wednesday. The contest was closed, by the way, at 5 p.m. Friday, though if you want to tout one of your favorite books, by all means post on it.

However, there is a winner in the How-did-Charles-the-Cat-get-to-Chicago? contest.  Many of the entries were quite clever, but I judge Bimston‘s entry (post #12) the victor.  It clearly required a lot of thought, and was very clever, what with the names (Don Gato cartel, whiskertap, Fluffers Jimenez and all), and the intricate scenario in which Charles is tracked to Chicago by federal agents for possession of catnip.  Just an excerpt:

1.20.10
F. Jiminez apprehended after stakeout of Holiday Inn alley near Springfield, Ill. Jiminez and unknown felid resist apprehension, resulting in death of felid (traffic) as well as agents Sqeakers and Whiskerman (predation). Upon bath interrogation, perpetrator indicates that C. Alex left the day before and is likely headed north.

2.01.10
Informant Yippers *name redacted* reports seeing perpetrator in Chicago area while on her daily walk. Subsequent raid of nearby dumpster reveals evidence of predation (avian class 1, rodent) but olfactory and gustatory analysis (feces) indicates that C. Alex had abandoned the dumpster 36-48 hours previously. Whisker-tap indicates the perpetrator may be attempting escape into Canada.

“Bath interrogation” is mucho lolz: waterboarding for cats!

Bimston, whoever you are, please email me (my address is widely available on the internet) with your address.  An autographed paperback of WEIT will be sent your way.

From Jesus and Mo:

Thumbs down: To Comedy Central for censoring South Park’s episode on Islam and Muhamed out of sheer cowardice.  South Park has satirized many faiths, and even went after Dawkins, but only the Muslim episode was censored.   We all know why: the “religion of peace” threatens to kill people who make fun of Islam, or even name a teddy bear “Muhamed.” Many thumbs down to the Revolution Muslim organization, who showed a dead body on their webpage that criticized South Park, and whose spokesman, Abu Talha Al-Amrikee, said this:

“We have to warn Matt and Trey [the producers of South Park] that what they are doing is stupid, and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

Not a threat? What a contemptible lie!  And thumbs down to the “moderate and peace-loving Muslims” who refuse to speak up against this call for murder.  A bit of Googling has failed to reveal one Islamic organization that decries the murderous irrationality of Revolution Muslim.

Thumbs down at a 30-degree angle to Michael Ruse, who continues to mystify with his bizarre mixture of faitheism and atheism.  Over at BioLogos, he’s mercifully concluded his six-part intellectual autobiography, “Accommodationist and Proud of It.”  He admits that religion is a “delusion”, and is not a way of knowing, but then plays favorites among the faiths.  He doesn’t for instance, have much truck with Mormonism:

I really find it very difficult to respect the Mormons. The whole thing seems to me to absolutely ludicrous, from wearing silly underwear to not drinking tea and coffee, to all of that stuff about golden plates, not to mention the already-mentioned lost tribes of Israel, now supposedly alive and well and living on reservations out West. Why do I not feel the same way about Christianity? Is turning water into wine any more stupid than thinking Joseph Smith got special insights in upstate New York? Is it simply that one is older and I grew up with it? Is wearing a fancy pair of knickers anything different from wearing your collar backwards?

The answer to all three questions, Dr. Ruse, is “yes.”  So why does he favor Christianity?  Because it has a theology!:

I think the reason I can legitimately separate your basic Anglican or Roman Catholic from a Mormon rests on the fact that traditional Christianity (this may also be true of Judaism and other religions) has worked hard at what I will call philosophical theology. I came to appreciate this while working on Science and Spirituality, a book that goes much more deeply into theological questions than my earlier writings. Such Christianity has labored to give philosophical meaning to the claims, say, about the nature of a necessary God and so forth. I think this also holds in areas like ethics, where (to name one branch of Christianity) Catholics have tried to give some meaning to natural law and so forth. (Protestants have done similar things, as I know full well from my own background.) So as a philosopher I can appreciate the efforts to try to answer the basic metaphysical questions.

Never mind Ruse’s admission that religion is not “a valid way of knowing” (and kudos for that admission).  All that matters to Ruse, apparently, is that they have tried to answer the metaphysical questions, even though, as Ruse believes, their answers are likely wrong.

Both thumbs completely down for Skye Jethani at HuffPo, who wrote a whole column showing the similarities between atheists and fundamentalist Christians without once addressing atheists’ arguments about the lack of evidence for God and the palpable dangers of faith.  Jethani’s piece, as you might expect, is all about tone.  As we all recognize, the emphasis on atheists’ shrill and militant “tone” is merely a way to avoid engaging our substantive arguments:

But the new breed of atheists and evangelicals may have more in common than they’d like to admit.

For example, some within New Atheism are proselytizing their beliefs with the fervor, and in come cases anger, more often associated with evangelicals. From an international ad campaign on buses dismissing belief in God, to rallies at universities inviting students to exchange their Bibles for pornography, atheists are no longer content with a live-and-let-live approach to those adhering to religion. Instead, they are actively trying to convert (or is the word un-convert?) the masses. . .

But I believe both the New Atheists (advocating life over God) and the Constitutional Evangelicals (advocating life under God) are far closer in their values and worldview than either would like to acknowledge. They are two sides of the same coin. But there is a third dimension; a third way between “live over God” or “live under God.” There is also “life with God” — the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Thumbs mildly down for The New Yorker,  which continues to show an emphasis on style over substance.  Its articles on books, culture, and literature are increasingly dominated by writers who don’t have much to say but try to say it in lovely prose.  This often falls flat.  For example, a recent article by Peter Schjeldahl on one of my favorite photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson, contains this sentence:

Cartier-Bresson has the weakness of his strength: an Apollonian elevation that subjugates life to an order of things already known, if never so well seen.

Sounds nice, but what the bloody hell does it mean?  What’s worse, Schjeldahl manages to write a whole piece on Cartier-Bresson, including giving a potted biography, without even once mentioning the man’s nationality (Cartier-Bresson was French).  Oh, and in the latest issue Jill Lepore strains to produce New-Yorker quality prose in a review of a book about the publisher Henry Luce:

“Magazines are ephemeral, timely at the expense of timelessness. They evanesce.  Each new issue displaces the last; a magazine molts.”

Why not say it five times, just to make sure that the reader gets the point?  Lepore reminds me of this:

‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Finally, two enthusiastic thumbs up for Pedro Almodóvar, director of the new movie Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces).  This is a wonderful, complex and layered film about uncontrollable passion, duplicity, moviemaking, and blindness.  Almodóvar pulls another great performance from Penelope Cruz (they’ve made some great films together) and from Lluis Homar as the blind director.

Fig. 1. One of my favorite photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson.  The kid is just so proud of toting home wine for the family dinner!

If you read this website regularly, you’ll know that I’m a BBQ aficionado.  I’ve traveled to many of the highly touted pits of North and South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Kansas, and Texas.  The best BBQ I’ve found is that at the City Market in Luling, Texas, where they do a mean brisket with an ethereal sauce.  But the pitmasters of Chicago are no slouches, and specialize in rib tips—the ends of the spareribs that are wood-smoked in “aquarium smokers” that resemble oversized fish tanks.  You get your choice of mild or hot sauce (I usually get “mixed”), the obligatory two slices of white bread, which act as a neutral starch to tame the sauce, and about 10 grams of “vegetable” (a tiny plastic tub of cole slaw) on the side.  Another delicacy is the “hot link,” a large sausage packed with pork, spices, and red pepper, tasting a bit like a breakfast sausage but with a lot more punch. Those, too, are smoked and barbecued.

Nobody could claim that this food is good for you, but every few weeks I have a hankering for the stuff and head down to Uncle John’s BBQ on 69th street, a short drive from the University of Chicago. In this humble storefront, amiable pitmaster Mack Sevier works his magic.  And I always get the same thing: tips and links.  It’s ten dollars, and enough food for three meals.  The hot links literally burst in their porky juiciness when pierced by a tooth, and the rib tips are a wonderful mixture of crunchy outer bits and tender inside meat, which you gnaw to get every last shred off the bone. Here is food for the gods:

Figure 1.  Tips and links from Uncle John’s.  If you want to make a comment about the unhealthiness of this food, do me a favor and refrain.

Which brings us to today’s felid.  I am a denizen of Chicago’s premier food discussion group, the “LTH forum” (named after a Chinese restaurant, the Little Three Happiness), and a while back there was a thread on the splendor of Uncle John’s BBQ.  One poster, “geno55”, was photographing a tips and links combo for the thread, but without warning a ninja barbecue cat darted into the picture to snatch a rib tip.  Here’s the photo:

Fig. 2.  A lucky cat. I can has ribz?

Fig. 3.  Uncle John’s: a mecca for all lovers of BBQ

Fig. 4.  Mack Sevier at the smoker.  This man has brought far more happiness to the world than I ever will.

h/t: LTH forum and geno55

As of 5 p.m., I will stop accepting entries to both the “Recommended spring reading” contest and the “How did Charles the Cat get to Chicago?” contest. Please post answers on the appropriate threads.

Yesterday I headed out to the ritzy suburbs of Chicago to visit Adlai Stevenson High School, where the two AP biology classes have been reading my book and blogging about it.   I gave them a 25-minute spiel that covered a lot of topics: my scientific history, the importance of charismatic and enthusiastic teachers, what it’s like to be a scientist, career strategies, the importance of learning to write clearly, and why I wrote my book.

I emphasized that there are four qualities that make a good scientist: the willingness to work hard (diligence is far more important than brains); the ability to live with doubt, since we’ll never have all the answers and some of them are impossible to get; the willingness and openness to be wrong, and to admit it when you are; and the humility to realize that no matter what contribution you make, somebody else would have made it had you not existed.

I also covered the Big Topic—the relationship between science and faith.  These are smart, mature kids who can think and don’t need to be intellectually coddled, so I saw no call to pull my punches. As I expected given that a large chunk of the students describe themselves as “theistic evolutionists” (see the poll on their blog), the question-and-answer session dealt largely with the relationship between science and faith.  Nearly all the questions were along those lines, including these (with the answers I gave):

“Many religious people are theistic evolutionists, with the “evolution” part going against many people’s religious beliefs.  Aren’t you proud of them for their stand?”

A:  I am proud of them for accepting the fact of evolution, but not so proud of them for being either straight “deistic” evolutionists (who think that a god got the process started and then withdrew), or more active theistic evolutionists (who think that God may occasionally have intervened in the process—this is the official position, for instance, of the Catholic Church).  If you accept evolution based on the evidence, why is it praiseworthy to posit that the process was started or tweaked by a supernatural being, a proposition for which there is no evidence? Moreover, there are hundreds of different and conflicting creation stories—which of these do you accept, and why?

“Why do all apes except humans have the same chromosome number but humans have a different one, with 46 chromosomes?”

A: I believe, but am not sure, that the student who asked this thought that there was some supernatural reason connected with the specialness of humans.  My answer was that yes, chimps, orangs, and gorillas have 48 chromosomes and humans two fewer. On a mechanistic level, this was the result of a fusion of two chromosomes in one of our ancestors to form the metacentric chromosome 2 in humans.  We know precisely which chromosomes fused, too (I believe this is all described in Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God).   But why did the fusion occur? We don’t know, although there may not be much of a selective penalty for two chromosomes fusing, and it may be adaptive in bringing together genes in the same pathway into the same “linkage block.”  We’ll probably never know the answer to this question.  But such fusions are certainly not unique to primates: they occur all the time in Drosophila flies, for instance. So if chromosome fusion is some providential and supernatural act, a divine being did the same thing in flies as in apes.

“What is NOMA and what do you think about it?”

A:  This was an involved question and I won’t recount my answer in full here. I explained what NOMA was, its origin in Steve Gould’s writings, and described my view that it is an unsatisfactory solution to the problem of faith versus science. I also took issue with NOMA’s (and Gould’s) contention that morality is solely the purview of religion.

It was a great visit and I wished I could have stayed longer to talk to the students.  But I told one of their teachers, Brett Erdman, that I would make a post (this one) in hope that the Stevenson students would comment (anonymously if they wished) about my talk or any other issues related to my book or evolution.  So, kids, fire away!

Oh, and the students gave me a huge card (with many index-card insertions to contain the well-wishes) and a iTunes and a Barnes and Noble gift card. A picture is below, and don’t think that this didn’t bring a lump to the throat of an old evolutionist.

Fig. 1.  My thank-you card from the AP bio students!

Many thanks, Stevenson students, and best of luck with your careers!