The Slander of “Darwinism”

Kenneth Miller has written yet another extraordinary essay, this one on the nature of the term “Darwinism” and how it is pejoratively used by those insistent on trashing evolutionary theory.  He writes:

He could have just said he didn’t believe in evolution, or that evolution had flaws. Or, he could have said that a book with a whole unit on evolution was just too much. But William Buckingham, of the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania, didn’t use the “E” word when he explained his objections to the biology textbook selected by the science teachers at Dover High School. Instead, he invoked a term that didn’t even appear in that textbook. Prentice Hall’s Biology: The Living Science, he claimed, “was laced with Darwinism from beginning to end.” Surely, he must have thought, “Darwinism” was a disqualifying slander that everyone could understand.

Buckingham, who was singled out for special re-probation by Judge Jones at the end of the trial, was at once ignorant and pejorative.  He was ignorant in that Darwin was not the only one to develop the idea of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace being the other one. He meant to be pejorative (in the same way that all of the Discovery Institute writers intend) because he knew that the term “Darwinism” carries with it the baggage of animus and atheism.As Miller notes, when an entire branch of science is referred to by its founder's name, then it takes on the air of an ideology, rather than a legitimate field of study.  The ideology can then be characterized as agenda-driven, attempting to tear out the heart of morality and decency.  None of this, of course, is true but the perception is rampant.  Miller also points out something of which I hadn't thought:

The overuse of Darwin’s own name facilitates another line of attack, by pretending that the field relies entirely on Darwin’s own work, fashioned in an age before the modern sciences of genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology emerged to confirm and expand his ideas. This allows the pretense that evolution is a stolid, unchanging field, with few new ideas that might refresh its 19th century heritage. Any scientist would scoff at this, of course, knowing the vigor that new discoveries constantly infuse into evolutionary biology. But to laypeople, unfamiliar with the rapid pace of scientific discovery, this can be a persuasive argument.

This would be no different from referring to modern physics as “Newtonism”  despite the vast advances that have been made since Newton's time.  Miller laments that these perceptions are hard to fight against because they appeal to emotions rather than empirical thought. Further, there are those of the atheist perspective who argue that, as humans, we are no better or special than any other species on the planet.   For this, though, he has an answer:

We are the children of evolution in every sense, part of Darwin’s fabled “tangled bank.” We must never forget that. But we must also remember that we are the only creatures to emerge from that thicket and make sense of it all. “Darwinism” does not diminish us. Rather, it puts the human experiment into a truly scientific perspective. We are not just hairless bipedal primates. We are creatures capable of the fugues of Bach, the verses of Yeats, the stories of Twain, the creations of Dalí and, for that matter, the mathematics of Gödel, Ramanujan and Turing.

In contemplating the lessons of evolution for our species and our culture, this is how we should overcome the mindless use of “Darwinism” as a slur. Some may feel demeaned by our evolutionary heritage, but I would argue that the more appropriate emotions are joy and delight. Joy that we are approaching a genuine understanding of the world in which we live, and delight at being the very first stirrings of true consciousness in the vastness of the cosmos. Far from diminishing us, knowing the details of Adam’s journey ennobles each of us as a carrier of something truly precious—the genetic, biological, and cultural heritage of life itself. Evolution describes not the death of Adam, but his triumph. That is the great truth of our story.

Masterful.

David Klinghoffer, Evolution and Conspiracy Theories

Give David Klinghoffer credit for tenacity, or what Linus van Pelt called “mule-headedness.”  Not content to link Hitler and the Discovery Channel gunman to “Darwinism,” he now does so with the 9-11 conspirators in a new post for Evolution News and Views called “Darwinism and 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.”  He starts out innocently enough, describing the 9/11 conspiracy theories and how they were debunked by Popular Science.  He even has a serviceable definition of conspiracy theorism:

The tendency, hardly limited to the faculty fringe, is to want to repudiate the intuitions of common sense in favor of recondite alternative understandings. These purportedly expose the true, secret inner workings behind the façade of society and nature and, in the process, cast the very sources of our intuition in the most sinister light. This is the essence of conspiracy-thinking.

He comments at length about a story in Slate by Jeremy Stahl, in which Stahl argues that it is very hard to dispel a conspiracy theory because those accepting it simply think you are part of the conspiracy. Then he drops the hammer:

What I found striking about the first installment in the Slate series, by Jeremy Stahl, is the parallels with what we know about the thought and writings of Evolution Truth activists: our ever-loving friends in the Darwin Lobby. You may recall the news of a few months back that Glenn Branch, deputy director of the Darwin-lobbying National Center for Science Education, had collaborated with 9/11 Truth conspiracist James H. Fetzer in editing a special number of the journal Synthese on "Evolution and Its Rivals. That issue of the journal became so notorious for the incivility of its contributions that a whole fracas broke out and made the pages of the New York Times."

Interestingly, in typical DI fashion, the supplied link doesn't go to the New York Times.  It goes to an article by Casey Luskin, who then supplies the link in paragraph five of his article.  In that article, Mr. Luskin also notes that James Fetzer is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  That charge sticks like glue: James Fetzer's ideas are whackadoodle with regard to this issue and his ideas have been rebutted very soundly. But then Klinghoffer writes this:

When he burst on the scene a century and a half ago, in the Eric Hufschmid role, Darwin offered precisely a conspiracy theory: a radical overturning of common sense, in this case the understanding that nature reflects design. That was replaced now with an unseen and unseeable material mechanism that simply and comprehensively explained how everything we thought we knew about life's development was totally wrong.

This is nonsense. It would only be true if Darwin was the first one to come up with an evolutionary scenario for the diversity of life. He wasn't. Evolutionary scenarios exist as far back as John Ray and Darwin's contemporary, Jean Baptiste Lamarck and his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had their own.  Darwin didn't introduce a conspiracy theory, he illuminated one of the growing questions of biology: how did populations change over time.  He simply provided a mechanism.  The only reason Klinghoffer thinks that it is a conspiracy theory is that he has bought into one of his own: that evolutionists are covering up the fact that evolution has no empirical support.  As long as he continues to believe that evolution has no empirical support, then anything they write is part and parcel of this conspiracy theory.  It doesn't matter how much evidence there is.  It is like trying to explain something to someone while they are  holding their hands over their ears and saying “La la la, I can't hear you.”

He writes:

Once posited, it tells a story that accommodates any observation. This is the brilliance of paranoia. Though Meigs cites Marxism and fundamentalist creationism as parallels, Darwinism offers one just as apt. Whatever nature brings forth can be squeezed to fit the effectively unfalsifiable Darwinian mold, which always turns out to predict, in retrospect, whatever is found.

Interesting. Why does he not include intelligent design in this list? All he has to say is “God did it that way.” It does not matter what the observation is, that is just the way He did it. It is foolproof. This has been the constant roadblock for supporters of ID since its inception.  It is completely unfalsifiable.  There are no hypothesis tests you can run.

It is amazing that Klinghoffer, who plainly does not understand basic predictive historical science, would state that evolution is unfalsifiable when it clearly is (If we found a human skull in mesozoic strata or dinosaurs in the Cambrian, the party would be over for evolution), and miss the fact that ID is not.There is a conspiracy theory all right.  It is just not the one that Klinghoffer envisions. 

The Perils of "Darwinian" Indoctrination

Christian NewsWire has a story about the efforts of a filmmaker to show the negative effects of "Darwinism" on the school students of today. Joaquin Fernandez writes:

Colin Gunn's school bus tour of America arrives at the Creation Museum today, shooting footage for the upcoming film, 'Indoctrination: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America'. Gunn will interview biblical apologist, Ken Ham, about the effects of Darwinism on Christian youth.

As founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, Ken Ham will share insights from his book 'Already Gone' -- a book which explains why many young people are leaving the church. Research shows that youth are leaving Christian churches in droves, due largely to the failure of Christians to adequately answer the Darwinian propaganda taught in public schools.

Really?? What research is that? I have never seen such research. There certainly is research showing that young people are leaving the church but that has largely been in the context of the church not being relevant. I would counter (also without data, mind you) that it is just as likely that young people are leaving the church because they are finding out that the church they grew up in propounds the belief in something that modern science doesn't support in the least. Fernandez continues:

Gunn believes Darwinian evolution is a key element of government school indoctrination because it conditions students to accept popular ideas promoted by a morally bankrupt culture -- a culture which has embraced Darwinian assumptions.

Gunn considers it ironic that over 80% of Christians send their children to a school system that undermines their values. He says, "There is no neutrality in education. All education is intrinsically religious. It's no victory if we just get creation taught alongside evolution. What we need is Christian education in every subject."

The problem with this argument is that those who promote it have a very poor understanding of the moral bankruptcy that literally pervaded Israel and Judah during the reigns of the kings. If the evil that was present during the reign of the kings is the same kind of evil that is present today, then evolution cannot be the cause of it because evolutionary theory is less than 200 years old. This is a standard creationist tactic using the logical fallacy of false cause. This was first promulgated early in the 20th century and had, as its most ardent supporter, Henry Morris.

The other problem here is, of course, that once again, acceptance of evolution is pitted against belief in God, which makes the mistake of elevating evolution to a first cause, which is biologically nonsensical and conflates theological goals with scientific ones. Whether or not finches in the Galapagos Islands are separate species or not makes no difference to my walk with God. By confusing the issues like this, those that do not understand or support evolution can remove it from the scientific realm and force people to make the choice between God and evolution, a choice that is not logical. More nonsense from well-meaning Christians.
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Cornelius Hunter, Pseudogenes and the Nature of Science

Cornelius Hunter wrote a piece a few days ago that I had not had a chance to respond to. In this piece, Hunter argues (as he usually does) that there are hidden assumptions in all "Darwinian" scenarios. He begins:

Another school year is set to begin at high schools and colleges where the next round of biology students will be filled with evolutionary misinformation. At the center of this propaganda campaign are the many biology textbooks used to indoctrinate young minds with old dogma. These textbooks contain the latest evolutionary newspeak, but the underlying lies are no different.

In overall demeanor, Hunter is considerably more sarcastic and strident than most of the other folks at the DI and one has to wade through that to get at what he is trying to say. The topic of the day is shared pseudogenes, which, when found in two related organisms, are generally considered to be evidence of common ancestry since a progressive creation model would be forced to explain how two related organisms just happen, against all probability, to share the same genetics mistakes at exactly the same place in the genome. Hunter writes of this:

This claim, that such shared errors indicate, or demonstrate, or reveal common ancestry, is the result of an implicit truth claim which does not, and cannot, come from science. It is the claim that evolution and only evolution can explain such evidences. It is the equivalent of what is known as an IF-AND-ONLY-IF claim. Science makes IF-THEN statements (if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them). IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements (if and only if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them) cannot be known from science.

This is a peculiar misunderstanding of the scientific method. Science posits hypothetical questions to explain observed data. It also acts on the principles of parsimony and Occam's Razor. All other things being equal, the simplest explanation for any given phenomenon is likely to be the correct one. The idea that shared pseudogenes reflect common ancestry is not an IF-AND-ONLY-IF statement. It is simply the best explanation that we have. There might be other explanations for these data but, given the evidence from other areas of study (palaeobiology, palaentology, evolutionary development) common ancestry is the best explanation that we currently have. Hunter has failed to make this distinction.

He continues:

In their text The Living World (Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008) evolutionists George Johnson and Jonathan Losos rehearse the usual teachings. Students are told that “Microevolution Leads to Macroevolution” with the giraffe’s neck serving as the example of how small change is supposed to accumulate to the large-scale change evolution needs.

Of course this is a long-standing, well-known problem for evolution. Mechanisms for large-scale change are speculative for it does not appear merely to be the result of repeated rounds of microevolution. Johnson and Losos, of course, inform the student of none of this.

Hunter also fails to inform us that one particularly good reason to think that evolution is responsible for the giraffe's long neck is the placement of the laryngeal nerve. In all animals, the nerve runs from the brain down through the aortic loop to the throat. In simple organisms, this is roughly a straight line but as you go to more complex organisms, the path of this nerve gets longer. In humans, it runs more than a foot longer than it needs to be for it to be efficient. In giraffes, this nerve runs a full fifteen feet longer than would be efficient. Why does this happen? Because the nerve develops the same way embryologically in all organisms. It is during post natal development that the length appears. The nerve cannot restructure itself, so it goes along for the ride.

As far as the evidence for this is concerned, there is no problem for evolution, whatever. From the transitional fossil FAQ in Talk Origins, we have this:

Giraffes: Branched off from the deer just after Eumeryx. The first giraffids were Climacoceras (very earliest Miocene) and then Canthumeryx (also very early Miocene), then Paleomeryx (early Miocene), then Palaeotragus (early Miocene) a short-necked giraffid complete with short skin-covered horns. From here the giraffe lineage goes through Samotherium (late Miocene), another short-necked giraffe, and then split into Okapia (one species is still alive, the okapi, essentially a living Miocene short-necked giraffe), and Giraffa (Pliocene), the modern long-necked giraffe.

Along the way, the neck continues to get longer. What mechanism would Hunter propose to explain this? He presents none. Hunter continually castigates Johnson and Losos for providing what they see to be the best explanation for the evidence. He writes:

The apologists make a failed attempt to enlist the fossil record as powerful evidence for evolution, and end up with only the usual metaphysics. They write:

"If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected."

Very interesting. And how do evolutionists know so much? From where did Johnson and Losos learn such ultimate truths? If evolution is not correct then such orderly change is not expected? Tell us more.

Aside from the snark, Hunter fails to inform the reader what the "failed attempt" is since he provides no evidence to support his position. This is nothing more than name-calling. Since he won't provide the evidence, the quote from the book is completely out of context. He ends his post by writing:

But this is nothing new in evolutionary circles. Only evolutionists teach such a biased version of science.

This is simply incorrect. I can think of numerous postings on Answers in Genesis, for a start, that recycle the same, tired wrong statements about the fossil and geological records: no transitional fossils, evidence of a recent creation of the earth, evidence for a world-wide flood—arguments that do not stand up to even rudimentary scientific scrutiny. Any bias that is practiced by evolutionists pales in comparison to these canards. Furthermore, the Discovery Institute, itself, has not been above stretching the truth to the point of breaking (here, here, here, and here.)

More peculiar thinking from a Discovery Institute fellow.


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"Darwinism" and its Meanings

Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch have written a short article in Evolution: Education and Outreach, on the term "Darwinism." I have long said that anytime some writes about "Darwinism," it is usually a giveaway that they do not understand evolution because they treat it as if Darwin is the only person who had any evolutionary ideas. As they correctly point out, very few practicing biologists use the term:

Modern evolutionary biologists tend not to use “Darwinism” very often, except—again—in a historical sense to refer to Darwin’s ideas. British biologists, perhaps motivated by patriotic pride, are more likely to refer to evolutionary biology as “Darwinism” than their American colleagues, but even in Darwin’s homeland, the term now tends to be used as a pejorative (Liberman 2007). When they are speaking of the theoretical core of modern evolutionary biology, scientists tend to use the phrase “the synthetic theory of evolution” to refer to the augmentation of Darwin’s natural selection theory with Mendelian genetics in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by the development in the 1940s and 1950s of mathematical systems allowing the modeling of evolution in populations.

I, in fact, never encountered the term "Darwinism" until I began to read creationist writings. During graduate school, while I was reading Simpson, Verne Grant, Wright, Ernst Mayr, Dobzhansky, Haldane (responsible for one of the funniest quote about God and creation¹), Gould, Van Valen and others, it was always referred to as the "synthetic theory."

Scott and Branch suggest that there is another reason that the term "Darwinist" is used. They write:

By insisting on talking about “Darwinism,” creationists are rhetorically transforming evolution into an ism—a position held as a matter of ideology, rather than on the strength of the evidence. By the same token, “Darwinists” is used to transform those who accept evolution into ists—devotees of isms. So, for example, CSC Senior Fellow Jonathan Witt, lamenting the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover that the teaching of intelligent design creationism in the public schools was unconstitutional, referred to Judge John E. Jones III as a “Darwinist judge” (2005)—even though Jones acknowledged that, before the trial, he had little knowledge of or interest in evolution.

If the folks at the Discovery Institute can get people to associate evolution with a religious perspective, they can appeal to people's emotions. This is also done by equating evolution with political perspectives:

At a conference, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder reportedly referred to “Darwinist storm troopers” (Cohen 2007), while intelligent design blogger Denyse O’Leary rails against “Darwinian brownshirts” (O’Leary 2007)—the brownshirts, of course, were the stormtroopers of the Nazi Sturmabteilung.

Lost is all of this posturing is the fact that the Discovery Institute was, at one time, supposed to be turning out scientific papers that would show that "Darwinism" could not explain biodiversity. That goal is so far back now, it can't even be seen in the rear-view mirror. Now, the tactics of the DI are those of a PAC: push your agenda in the courts, have a media blitz and appeal to the emotions of the people. Whatever this is, it is not science. Remember this the next time you hear someone talking about "Darwinism." They have no interest in the actual science behind the term.

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The Nonsense of Pat Buchanan

Former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has written a column that, sadly is all too common from conservatives these days. He has rolled into one column nearly every myth and misrepresentation about evolution out there. Let's start at the top:

"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

And the support for this allegation is where? Not in this column, that's for sure. No matter. He moves on. Talking about Eugene Windchy's book The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold, Buchanan says:

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

"Although born to a Catholic family, Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs' advance into France. Had the Christians lost, (Hitler) reasoned, Germanic people would have acquired a more warlike creed and, because of their natural superiority, would have become the leaders of an Islamic empire."

Charles Darwin also suited the purpose of the eugenicists and Herbert Spencer, who preached a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism to robber baron industrialists exploiting 19th-century immigrants.

Some of these are so old, they are getting whiskers. Hitler, once again, did not use natural selection as the underpinnings of his hatred of the Jews. He simply didn't. And to continue to peddle this nonsense only makes Buchanan look foolish. Herbert Spencer's adaptations of Darwin's theory was misapplied, since Darwin never meant his theory to be extrapolated outside of the biological realm. As Derek Freeman wrote for Current Anthropology in 1974:

The disparity between Spencer's "general doctrine of evolution" and Darwin's theory of the origin of species was thus immense. Spencer's doctrine, not having resulted from any kind of sustained empirical enquiry, was explicitly deductive in its structure, and rested on the metaphysical supposition that all evolutionary change was due to the persistence of an immanent "Power" that was (Spencer 1904 [1882], vol 1: 554) both "unknown and unknowable." In marked contrast, Darwin's theory, as he published it in 1859, was authentically scientific, for, without recourse, for all practical purposes, to metaphysics or "final causes," it postulated, on the basis of massive factual evidence, a non-teleological mode of evolutionary change and incorporated a precise definition of the mechanism of natural selection which (as has been conclusively demonstrated) does indeed result in the genetic evolution of populations of living organisms.¹

The problem is that Buchanan has no idea what evolution actually is and has confused what Spencer believed with what Darwin empirically showed. Buchanan continues:

Darwin also lied in "The Origin of Species" about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

Darwin did not lie about believing in a creator. When his beloved daughter Anne died, it shattered Darwin's belief in a personal, loving God. It is also nonsense that Darwin's family suppressed it. Darwin wrote:

Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.

This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt—can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.

I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.

He didn't "lie" about his belief in a creator. That is a simplistic read of Darwin's thoughts on God. Darwin freely admitted he was an agnostic but that is a far cry from lying about it. The real clue that Buchanan has no idea what he was talking about comes toward the end, though, with this:

Darwin's examples of natural selection – such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive – have been debunked. Giraffes eat grass and bushes. And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive?

What Buchanan is actually recounting here is Lamarckian evolution. Darwin used Lamarck's example of the giraffe to show that Lamarck was wrong. The problem is that Buchanan doesn't know the difference. Darwin showed that the giraffe didn't stretch its neck and pass on the characteristic to its offspring. He showed that the giraffes with longer necks outcompeted those with shorter necks and this trait was passed on to their offspring. Not the same thing. As far as the females not getting any food, he makes it seem as if there was no food at the lower branches. This is nonsense. The giraffes evolved long necks over time because the ones with longer necks could exploit a feeding niche that no other animal could, which ensured their survival. As Buchanan, himself, says, giraffes also eat grass. Plenty of that around. He also trots out this lie:

For 150 years, the fossil record has failed to validate Darwin.

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists," admitted Stephen J. Gould in 1977. But that fossil record now contains even more species that appear fully developed, with no traceable ancestors.

If Buchanan actually knew anything about the fossil record, he would know that this isn't true. It is also absolutely telling that he uses a quote that is 32 years out-of-date. And it was even a controversial statement when Gould said it then. Furthermore, if Buchanan had done his homework, he would have discovered this quote of Gould's:

"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists--whether through design or stupidity, I do not know--as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups."²

But that doesn't fit the narrative, so it has to be ignored. Buchanan simply swiped that quote from a stock of misquotes that creationists have been collecting for years. That Buchanan has been marginalized in the GOP is little consolation because this kind of thought keeps showing up in conservative sources. That so little thought, preparation or accuracy is put into such work is a very disturbing.

¹Freeman, D. (1974) The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Current Anthropology 15(3): 211

²Gould, Stephen J. (1983) Evolution as Fact and Theory. Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes.Norton, New York.


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The Forgotten Alfred Russel Wallace

There is an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution by Michael Casey detailing the life and times of the other author of the theory of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Casey writes:

"Excellent. This is the actual spot," he yells.

It is on this site, in a long-gone thatched hut, that Alfred Russel Wallace is believed to have spent weeks in 1855 writing a seminal paper on the theory of evolution. Yet he is largely unknown outside scientific circles today, overshadowed by Charles Darwin, whom most people credit as the father of a theory that explains the origins of life through how plants and animals evolve.

Now, in the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, a growing number of academics and amateur historians are rediscovering Wallace. Their efforts are raising debate over exactly what Wallace contributed to the theory of evolution, and what role, if any, the spiritual world plays in certain aspects of natural selection.

Beccaloni, a 41-year-old British evolutionary biologist with London's Natural History Museum, is on a quest to return Wallace to what he sees as his rightful place in history. He and Fred Langford Edwards, a British artist making an audiovisual project about Wallace, are retracing the scientist's eight-year trip around Southeast Asia.

Unlike Wallace, Darwin spent two decades developing his theory of natural selection and had far more evidence to back it up, as presented in his defining work, "The Origin of Species," published 150 years ago. But Wallace reached the same conclusion before Darwin published his findings, and Beccaloni contends that Wallace deserves equal billing.

Wallace was a fascinating man and is the subject of a chapter called The Man Who Knew Islands, from the excellent book, The Song of the Dodo, by David Quammen. Darwin was pressured by Charles Lyell to publish his findings once he found out that Wallace also had come to the same conclusion. Lyell feared that Darwin would be scooped.

Sort of deflates the bubble of those who use the term "Darwinist" doesn't it?

David Klinghoffer and the Evil of Evolution

David Klinghoffer has a post in which he recounts a radio program that he did in which one of the callers asked, apparently in his best preacher-style voice:

"David, would you not saaaay that Darwinism is a lie, from its top to its bottom, sprung straight from the pit of Hell!?"

Rather than answer the question directly, which he should have done, Klinghoffer, who has written some truly amazing drivel about evolution, equivocates. He writes:

There was sort of an awkward pause. I'm a pretty mild and soft-spoken kind of person. I didn't want to disagree with him, but I couldn't quite echo his sentiment, neither the style nor the substance. "Well," I offered, "that's not exactly the way I would put, though I like your formulation! What I would say is that it's a delusion with, um, some very negative social consequences." I felt bad about having to disappoint him.

A delusion? Thousands of scientists working around the world, putting together the pieces of the past and Klinghoffer, without a shred of scientific training, calls it a delusion? As far as the negative social consequences, society had no trouble creating mischief long before Charles Darwin came along. Klinghoffer is both a bad biologist and a bad historian. And what is it about the caller's formulation that Klinghoffer liked? Does he really think Darwinism comes from Hell? Amazing.

Hat tip to LGF.


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