Cafe Scientifique: Myers Causes Woman to Become Closer to Jesus
Published by Greg February 13th, 2007 in Commentary
Amanda and I just returned from the Bell Museum sponsored by Cafe Scientifique at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, Minneapolis, and it was a very interesting evening.
Panelists Scott Lanyon, director of the Bell Museum and ornithologist, Mark Borrello, Historian of Science, and PZ Myers, Fire Breathing EvoDevo Biologist, each gave 5 minute summaries (none of which lasted more than 10 or 11 minutes) of various aspects of the current social debate over evolution, then fielded questions from an audience that seemed much of the time all too compliant. Many thoughts came to my mind during the discussion (which I stayed tactfully away from) the first of which is that these three guys did a great job at driving home a variety of points. I won’t summarize their perspectives, but rather, I’d like to give a few gut reactions.
I think starting right now we have to substitute the term “Evolutionary Biology” for the often used “Evolutionary Theory” instead of constantly whining about how “people” misunderstand the use of the word “Theory.” It is the Theory of Relativity, but the physicists say just “Relativity.” The Periodic Table of the Elements is a theory, but the word “theory” is never used there either. We are just asking for trouble and should not be so surprised when we get trouble.
It was interesting to see the range of perspectives, running from left to right (on how the panelists were arranged on the couch) but from centrist to left with Lanyon advocating a truce between religion and science on one end and Myers saying of religion “It’s wrong all the way down” (a subtle reference, no doubt, to turtles).
The speakers represented a fairly typical range of biological fields and thinking, even in the way that the behavioral aspects of biology were not especially considered. For instance, Borrello extolled the virtues of The Origin together with The Selfish Gene as representing a kind of range of explanatory power in biology. This is OK, and not wrong, but biologists who study mainly genes or inverts or cells often forget that starting with Hamilton in 1964, and running through a pantheon of other fieldworkers, theorists, and experimental biologists, there is a lot of strong theory that relates almost entirely to organisms with brains (the field of behavioral biology). This missing area was also felt (by me anyway) when Borrello (or Lanyon, can’t remember) noted that there have been three major revolutions in biological science: Darwin (Natural Selection), Mendel (genetics) and EvoDevo. Clearly, Behavioral Biology and Behavioral Theory is one of the revolutions (a.k.a. sociobiology). Nonetheless, the speakers did a fine job fielding the one behavioral question they got, on homosexuality.
The point was made that we live in a science and technology based society, yet Americans disrespect science to a large degree. This is an interesting point. We are actually a Christian Nation, according to some, and this conflict is at the heart of the discord.
I was left with the very strong feeling that science is in need of strong cultural leadership. Instead of our society requiring that office seekers be good christians, we need credible politicians … and movie stars and recording artists and other cultural icons … sticking their noses up at creationism and promoting the premise that of course, we do live in a science and technology based society so we should give more respect to the scientists and the theoretical and empirical knowledge they work with.
This was a real Minnesota Experience for me, coming from “out east.” At one point an anti-religion/pro-atheistic remark was made (by an audience member) and it drew applause. That, I get. And had this event happened in Cambridge Mass, that would have happened. But then, just at the end, what was supposed to be the “last question” turned into a rant against PZ Myers by someone who claimed to be “non religious” and who’s hero was none other than Darwin Himself, but who believed that anti-religious sentiment underlying at least part of the above mentioned spectrum was even more arrogant than Myers had claimed creationists to be. THAT also received applause. THAT would not have happened in Cambridge.
The moderators, feeling that this was a bad “last question” handed the mike to another person. Big mistake. She took the discussion down several notches, explaining (to her credit) that she as a christian still supported science and believed in evolution, but then she did not stop talking, and went on for a while about how she loved Jesus and how this discussion did nothing more than to make her closer to Jesus and so on and so on. More applause.
I don’t think anyone was converted, but thirsts were slaked. The audience wanted more, and more, I think, they shall have at upcoming Cafe Scientifques here and elsewhere. I ended the evening with a discussion with Gordon Murdock that included the idea of doing a Cafe Scientifique sort of format for High School and Grade school kids (same format, minus the beer). And I hope all three of these panelists will be available for that.
22 Responses to “Cafe Scientifique: Myers Causes Woman to Become Closer to Jesus”
- 1 Trackback on Feb 14th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
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What? You couldn’t have said hello afterwards? Joined us at the kit-kat club for a beer?
I feel terrible, but that’s how it worked out. An opportune conversation with a colleague … the need to deliver some boots … and you were being mobbed. Also, I thought the crowd could get ugly. Next time, we’ll get a beer, I promise.
Isn’t “evolutionary biology” redundant? Sorry to here PZ inspires Jebus beliefs in people.
Yes, “evolutionary biology” is redundant. One could say “biology” but you don’t get to say “evolution.” One could say “Evolution” and leave off both “theory’ and “biology” and that would work, but there is enough biology that focuses specifically on evolution vs. other areas that not all biologists would do that (it’s all evolution all the way down, like the turtles, but specialists are specialists). Also “evolution” has been co-opted as a belief system by the naysayers.
So, linking the two together and saying both is probably preferred. And, of course, “Evolutionary theory” is also redundant. I think biologists are accustom to saying two words, so I’m working on getting them to swap one out for another rather than dropping one.
I wish I’d been there. I’d like to have heard more about this “EvoDevo” major revolution in biological science. Can someone tell me in a few sentences what major revolution I’ve missed? I love revolutions.
I had to leave a little early, so I missed the Jesus rant.
That would have been interesting to see. But at any rate,
I am just writing to say that Mark and Scott are much better
proponents of evolution theory than PZ - judging from last night.
PZ talked about arrogance in the “other side,” and I totally
agreee with him. But then, he turns around and does the same
thing. Whereas Mark and Scott
talk about teaching and trying to educate, PZ comes off
as a total jerk. Who wants to ask him anything? So he can talk
about how stupid you are? Yes, people who can’t understand the
concept of monkeys can be annoying. But you know what? There
are a lot of people in the middle (not stupid … but they don’t
know as much as they would like about evolution and want to
learn.)
Obviously, he is a character, and people who are already
knowledgeable get a kick out of his antics and rants.
That’s fine.
But at CS last night, the goal was to teach about evolution,
discuss evolution, etc. Apparenlty PZ thought it was about
talking about stupid people. Not exactly welcoming!
This is the kind of stuff that turns people “in the middle”
to the other side. How does that help?
I wish you’d been there too.
It was a revolution, wasn’t it? (Evolution and Development)? Or are you thinking it was more of an evolutionary thing.
I’ve visited PZ Myers blog, and he is a trip. It must have been fun to see him in real life. Did he really breath fire?
I agree that it is not good to isolate the middle ground on anything. On the other hand, dont we also need to have people in the extreme? Otherwise the middle ground shifts too far over to one side.
Also, I always heard of EVODEVO as a kind of revolutionary thing.
Just my humble opinion.
Somebody missed my actual opinion, and I have to be at fault — I apparently didn’t communicate it well.
I did say rather loudly and repeatedly that creationists are not stupid, that those questions actually represented some good problems, and that communicating the facts of evolution is often hard, especially when you are dealing with people who are baffled by the continued existence of monkeys. Perhaps my mistake was asking the audience to try and come up with explanations for some of the questions I was asked, rather than lecturing on the proper answers. That was my point, though — it’s often not trivial to rebut someone who says one-eyed forms must have evolved before two-eyed forms.
I can attest to that. It was a point PZ made not only loudly and clearly and repeatedly, but it was virtually the first thing he said and it was an underlying theme of his entire talk. He stated is as something one might find hard to believe, then using experiment and observation convinced everyone in the room he was correct. Had he just said it and moved on, I would of thought of it as pandering.
I think asking for answers worked well, though I suppose it could have gone badly. As I recall there was a good range of answers that provided fodder for discussion. The assertion that creationists are not stupid is not intuitive. But then, when you repeat a question coming from a creationist that makes evolutionists stumble, you get a hit.
Obviously this pedagogy requires that you have a few very different kinds of questions at hand, so that no one reasonably-well informed person immediately knows the answer to at least one of the questions.
My answer to the eye question was going to be “Ah, but evolutionists, given what they know about development, would have a hard time explaining the rise of a ONE-EYED creature…” That would hold them off while I tried to figure out a good explanation.
PZ: Your demonstration with the Red Umami sauce was brilliant.
(…but they ARE stoopid…)
Greg:
“For instance, Borrello extolled the virtues of The Origin together with The Selfish Gene as representing a kind of range of explanatory power in biology. This is OK, and not wrong, but biologists who study mainly genes or inverts or cells often forget that starting with Hamilton in 1964, and running through a pantheon of other fieldworkers, theorists, and experimental biologists, there is a lot of strong theory that relates almost entirely to organisms with brains (the field of behavioral biology).”
I certainly agree that Hamilton 1964 sparked a huge revolution but Hamilton 1964 is a *genetical* theory of the evolution of behavior, was originally and has been most successfully applied to inverts, and has since been successfully applied to single cells (see for example the recent green beard in social amoebae paper in Science by Queller et al.). And Dawkins “selfish gene” was a popularization of this.
If Borello was suggesting that the “selfish gene” was the “lowest” range of explanation in evolutionary biology then he was certainly wrong. The whole point of molecular evolution is that we now know that individual sites *within* genes are targets of selection. The whole point of programs like PAML is to identify the sites within a gene that are under positive selection — the vast majority of sites are not.
The problem as I see it is that most popular writers on evolutionary topics are not trained in molecular methods — they promote the false image that evolutionary biologists are all field biologists studying animal behavior. The vast majority of us are not — we study the evolution of sequences and genomes — the work of people like Kimura, Hartl, Hughes, and Li is far more interesting and useful to us than that of Hamilton, Wilson or Trivers.
Middle:
There is a huge literature on behavioral biology that is richest with verts, that stems from Hamilton. But yest, Hamilton’s work applies to anything with DNA. (Or RNA).
Johathan: I think he was referring to the book more than to any kind of gene as a level of selection. Borrello is not a biologist : He’s an historian.
Of course, Hamilton, Wilson, Trivers, Haig, etc. are far more interesting than that lab rat stuff.
Hey, wait a minute, you have a mammal on your home page. Two of them, if fact, if you count yourself…
Actually, Jonathan, imho both the interactions at your favored molecular levels with the environmental selection pressures studied by field biologists are needed to inform one another; broadening of the perspective and understanding. Also, “gene” is defined in numerous ways, both as a specific locus on a molecule that can undergo point mutation and as a region on a molecule that codes for some specific environmentally-interacting trait, so it depends on the context in which you are discussing the selection and the type of transforming alteration in the DNA I believe.
I’ll have you know that there are more prokaryotic cells than evil eukaryotic mammalian cells inhabiting my body.
I know. Isn’t it the case that if you pile all the procaryotes on top of one another you’d get a layer about 6 meters deep covering all the land masses of the earth?
ChemBob: Ah, definitions of genes, yes there are many of them!
I do think the level of selection question is the most important and most interesting one in evolutionary biology right now.
Yeah, the ultimate problem is that the Jesus people are failing the Ultimate Test, in their minds, if they give in to what rational people like PZ are saying.
Like that saying, if something did happen, it can happen. In their minds, it did happen, so it can happen and we non-believers can talk until we are blue in the face but their minds are made up.
If memory recalls it might be fair to note that the “Jesus rant” girl used the word “God” and not “Jesus” – which in light of her lack of articulation may not matter that much – but still, accuracy is good.
Also it became clear after yesterday’s program that the science does need some leadership in the area of how it publicly presents itself.
All of the speakers (in their full range of approaches) came off very authentic and knowledgeable, but none of them would be reliably effective at iniating the uninitiated. Academics owe it to their disciplines to address this – especially with the formidable two-headed ideological force of intelligent design and creationism roving in the public consciousness.
She talked about god but I am pretty sure at the end, her last words, after the mike was gone, were “I feel closer to Jesus” But I could be wrong. I’ll ask Amanda what she remembers and get back to you on this.
And I don’t mean to rag on her, and I really didn’t. But at one point somebody (PZ) said “the best strategy is to let them talk”
I’m not saying anything . I’m just sayin… nothin.l
Greg:
“There is a huge literature on behavioral biology that is richest with verts, that stems from Hamilton.” -Greg
We all have our biases, its just hard to recognize them until someone whacks us over our head with them. A quick search of the last 200 papers from 2006 citing Hamilton 1964a,b (from SSI) shows that
56 papers were on inverts, plants, fungi, or single cells
46 papers were on non-human verts
15 on human verts (hence 61 vert papers total).
If we use each 10 SSI records as sampling units then on average we sample 0.25 more papers on verts than non-verts per 10 papers sampled. The probability of finding this large of a difference from a random, normal distribution is 0.65.
Note, these numbers are based on titles only. If the organism wasn’t mentioned in the title, I didn’t search the abstract to see what it was about (since it was usually theory anyway). Perhaps there is a vert-non vert bias on how titles are determined. Or maybe the latter half of 2006 is biased one way or the other.
The point of my last post was that you describe biologists focusing on genes and inverts as forgetting about this revolution when it was a genetic theory developed to explain a behavior in invertebrates that began the revolution. I simply found the irony amusing.