Darwin Never Met My Wife

Every so often there is another odd outburst from some hidden pocket of fundamentalism somewhere in some hollow in the hills. Somebody gets all het-up over the fact that Charles Darwin said (sort of) that men are descended from apes. Currently, this controversy is raging on the dusty mesas and dry arroyos of Texas. The State of Texas (the largest textbook buyer in the world) is placing new biology textbooks throughout Texas schools, "the best biology texts ever in Texas" according to State officials. The fundamentalist dissenters complain that these best ever textbooks don't sufficiently prove evolution is true, and don't give enough space to rival "scientific" theories.

The idea that man could be an erstwhile monkey is said to be an insult to man, although I sometimes think it may be an insult to monkeys. Anyway, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection seems to imply this hairy heritage, and this upsets some folks. They prefer a view known as creationism which holds that God created man to look like God, and monkeys to look like monkeys, and that's that.

Clearly, the Creationists take Darwinianism's notion of a purely biological origin for humankind to be dehumanizing. How much finer and nobler it would be to be descended from the golden dust of angel's wings, than from the coarse dirt of earth and the struggle of tooth and claw. Actually, Darwinianism has always struck me as a philosophy of hopefulness--the very opposite of a dehumanizing philosophy. A philosophy of hopefulness for all concerned, from the sea slug slithering along the mud of the ocean floor, who might someday evolve into something resembling a human being, to human beings, who might someday evolve into something resembling a civilized creature. But then who am I to pass judgment on another's prejudices? If the Creationists wish to see evolution by natural selection as dehumanizing, so be it.

I have always felt a certain sympathy for the Creationists. Theirs is, after all, a quixotic quest. Their agenda is to have Creationism labeled a science, or evolution labeled a non-science, so that evolution won't be taught in public schools, or at least, not without Creationism also being taught as a rival scientific theory. I feel sympathy for the Creationists not because I share their agenda, but because no one has really taken them seriously since the Scopes Monkey Trial, when a former presidential candidate pleaded their case. But as long as Creationists want their alternative accredited as a rival scientific theory, I think I should help them out by explaining just what sorts of bells and whistles it takes for an idea to be a scientific one.

There are lots of ideas around: whimsical ones, pompous ones, true ones, false ones, and even a scientific one now and then. Scientific ideas have several distinct birthmarks.

Modern science is generally thought to have begun in the 1500s when Nicolas Copernicus published his heretical view that the sun rather than the earth was the center of our solar system. This was a scientific, and a heretical, idea because it proposed that actual observation, rather than idealized thought, should decide what is true and what is not. You must remember that for most of Western intellectual history this idea of looking to see how things are, simply never occurred to anyone. During the Middle Ages learned churchmen actually engaged in heated debates to decide how many teeth a horse must have based on Aristotelian logic. It simply never occurred to them to hike out to the stable and have a look.

Galileo got into lots of trouble a few years later for believing in this simple idea of looking to see how things are, rather than speculating on how God must of intended them to be. Among other things, Galileo invented the first practical telescope and he used it to look at the moon. What he found were craters and scratches, pimples and pockmarks of all sorts. This was deeply offensive to all God-fearing decent people; after all, if God invented the heavens, and God is perfect, then the heavens must be filled with unblemished perfect orbs. Everybody knows that for crying out loud.

So the first birthmark of scientific ideas is empiricism, which is the idea that observations of how things are take precedence over theories of how they ought to be.

The second key birthmark was placed by Francis Bacon, around 1620. It was Bacon who really firmed-up the idea of the scientific experiment. The earlier empiricism was rather passive, it consisted mainly in observing the universe around us pretty much as Mother Nature preferred to show it. But, Bacon said, if nature doesn't show you just what you need to see, it is perfectly acceptable to move things around a bit to get a better view. Thus the scientist as experimenter was born. (Bacon was apparently a convert to the mystical tradition of Sufism, which holds that spiritual knowledge comes about only through the production of esoteric experience, rather than through belief and faith. Although the thought would horrify most scientists today, it seems that the tools of their trade were crafted by a Sufi mystic who may have had distinctly mystical matters on his mind.)

The final mark of a scientific idea is its willingness to submit itself to refutation by well-defined empirical experiments. The process of science is to offer a conjecture, which is then subjected to empirical test, and if the test results are negative, the theory is refuted and abandoned. That's science. A contemporary philosopher named Karl Popper is the most insistent proponent of this insight. I was trained by a disciple of Popper, and no doubt the powdery residue of Popperianism can still be found deep within the crevices of my neocortex.

So, for a theory to be a scientific one it has to be open to empirical check, amenable to experimental test, and falsifiable. Those are the bells and whistles needed.

Philosophy and theology, by contrast, are unbound by such mundane restraints. You are free to believe anything you like, to take anything you wish on faith, to defer to any authority of your choosing, to speculate to your heart's content. However, you are not free to call any of this "science." To do so is to engage in a kind of false advertising, to try to trade illicitly on the glamor and respectability that science enjoys in contemporary Western culture.

Philosophy and theology have their place. It's a foolish society which has no room for theology, but it's a silly theology which tries to pass itself off as a science. It is true that scientific materialism, as a philosophy, is hopelessly impoverished and inadequate. But scientific materialism is not a science and neither is creationism. Both are rival philosophies. It isn't necessary to overthrow science in order to reject scientific materialism, and it isn't necessary to mislabel one's beliefs in order to certify their value.

Given all this, I don't think we can make creationism out to be a rival scientific theory. It might be true, but it just isn't science. It would also be folly to urge that evolution be seen as non-scientific, because scientific ideas are the easiest kind to kill. Their mortal soft-spots are publicly stated and are indisputable. An arrow of the right type shot into the right place will vanquish any scientific theory. Theology or philosophy, by contrast, wear impenetrable suits of armor.

So I am sure that it would serve the creationists' purposes if someone could come up with a scientific refutation of evolution. If evolution could be shown to be scientifically false, well then that would be enough I suspect. As it happens, I have a perfectly sound falsifying instance for evolutionary theory. In fact, she lives at my house. I have known this for some time, but I have been keeping it pretty much to myself. I am now offering it to the creationists for whatever solace it may provide.

The basic premise of evolutionary theory is that traits evolve because of their survival value. If random genetic mutations produce a strain of critters who are stronger than some others, and if strength promotes survival, then over time there will tend to be more strong critters and fewer weak ones. This is the "evolutionary" part of the theory. A falsifying instance for the theory, then, would be the existence of a widespread trait which is inimical to survival. In other words, a trait which impairs the critter rather than improves it. According to evolutionary theory, such a trait would have a negative survival value, hence it could not be selected for, and hence it could not evolve.

The process of evolution via natural selection is one making no reference to intentions, God's or anyone else's. That is why creationists find it repugnant. The opposite of evolution by natural selection is teleological evolution which holds that species evolve toward some goal, and only in reference to this goal can a satisfactory explanation of the existence of a trait be found. Teleology hints at intention. This is why scientists find it repugnant. Are you with me so far?

Now, consider the mundane topic of female menstruation. I must consider this topic on a regular basis since my blessed wife suffers miserably each month with "the curse." She is one of those unfortunate women for whom the monthly period is a torture. She is wracked by pain, curled into a fetal ball and completely unable to function for days at a time. (My wife insists that this is proof God is male.) Which is how I came, through the serendipity produced by grim necessity, to stumble upon this problem for evolutionary theory.

Billions of women suffer, to a greater or lesser degree, from the debilitating effects of menstruation. We now even recognize a Premenstrual Syndrome which further extends the duration of the effects. Consider: how could this trait survive to be passed on and become such a prominent feature of our biological life? This trait clearly impairs survivability rather than enhancing it. Early womankind must have been dangerously vulnerable during their periods. Those least affected by menstruation should have out-survived those most affected. Those with shorter periods would be more capable of survival than those with longer periods. Those with little or no PMS should vastly outnumber those afflicted with PMS. Over time, menstruation should have all but disappeared. Yet it is very much with us. How could it evolve according to natural selection?

If we take a quick breezy look at it, it almost seems nature is punishing women for failure to get pregnant. If a woman gets pregnant, thereby ensuring the propagation of the species, she can avoid these painful symptoms. If she fails to get pregnant during her monthly fertility, nature punishes this with painful biological consequences. (Sort of the flip-side of sexual pleasure which is nature's way of "rewarding" procreation.) So menstruation seems to be a ploy on nature's part to encourage survival of the species. But ploys imply plans, which implies intentions, which is teleological, which is a no-no.

Now I am fairly confident that this is a troublesome instance for evolutionary theory. I say this on the strength of a conversation I had with my friend John Beatty. John, in addition to being a whale of a nice guy, is also one the the country's leading philosophers of science, specializing in the biological sciences. One pleasant afternoon in Phoenix I put this test case to John over a couple of glasses of dark German beer. John was blanked, so I know we're on to something here.

So it seems to me that there's half a chance that nature contains instances of traits which are inconsistent with the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. I'm sure evolutionary theory is true by and large, it just may not be universally true. But hey, what is?

So I say to the down-hearted creationists, "There is hope ahead, be of good cheer!" My wife can single-handedly refute evolutionary theory, and she is available for a modest fee for personal appearances before school boards everywhere.