Fox News Polling Data Shows Support for Evolution Increasing Exponentially


There's a new poll out on the percentage of Americans who agree with the scientific evidence in favor of the theory of evolution. The new poll was conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research for Fox News (polling data are here). The questions asked in the poll are very similar to those in the periodic polls on this question conducted by the Gallup organization (their polling data are here).

As a professional evolutionary biologist and someone who has followed this debate for decades, I find the Fox News poll results surprisingly encouraging. Although the fraction of the American public that agrees with the Young Earth Creationist position hasn't changed significantly for almost half a century, the fraction that agrees with the position taken by evolutionary biologists has increased very significantly since the Gallup organization first polled Americans on this question in 1982.

Here are the data, in chronological order:

Percent of Americans agreeing with evolutionary theory:

GALLUP:
1982 9%
1994 11%
2002 12%
2006 14%

FOX NEWS:
2011 21%

From 9% to 21% in only twenty-nine years (i.e. less than two generations)! If you plot the data, the increase is clearly exponential, with the inflection point at around 2006 (i.e. following the Kitzmiller-Dover decision). At the current exponential rate of increase, the "evolutionary biology" position should be the majority position within another generation. This is why we need to keep presenting the science, and why creationists (including the "intelligent design" variety) are their own worst enemies.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

Teleological Explanations in Biology


Biologists tend to use teleological language in explaining the origin and evolution of living organisms and their characteristics. As John Reiss has pointed out (Reis, J. Not by Design: Retiring Darwin's Watchmaker, University of California Press, 2009), this entails the idea that evolution is necessarily a teleological process. This entails the idea that evolution is not a "natural" process, like gravity or oxidation, and that therefore there is some "non-natural" component (i.e. "magic") in biology that fundamentally distinguishes it from the other natural sciences.

Evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins try to make this distinction when referring to the problem of human free will (see "Let's all stop beating Basil's car"), but unless they are careful about how they talk about evolution (especially natural selection) they revert to the same teleological descriptions and explanations that Reiss so decries. What is the problem, here?

I believe that the underlying problem is the tendency by most evolutionary biologists to think of natural selection as a "force" or "mechanism". As John Endler has pointed out (Endler, J. Natural Selection in the Wild, Princeton University Press, 1986), natural selection is not a "force" or "mechanism", it is an outcome. To be precise, it is the outcome of four separate, but related processes:

Variety: structural and functional differences between individuals in populations,

Heredity : the inheritance of structures and functions from parents to offspring (either genetically or epigenetically),

Fecundity : the ability to reproduce, especially (but not necessarily) at a rate that exceeds replacement, and

Demography : some individuals survive and reproduce more often than others.

As a result of these four processes, the heritable characteristics of some individuals become more common in populations over time.

Notice that the same list of processes can be used to explain non-adaptive evolutionary change (e.g. genetic drift). Also notice that the only source of new phenotypic variations is what I have called the "engines of variation": all of those processes that produce heritable phenotypic changes in phylogenetic lines of organisms in populations. There are at least fifty such processes (you can see a summary list here). While it is the case that "random mutation" is included in this list, there are many other processes in this list that do not involve "mutation" (in the genetic sense) and which also are not "random" (at least insofar as that term is often used).

Is there a real distinction between non-teleological and teleological processes, or are all processes either teleological or not? If all processes (i.e. changes over time) are teleological, as asserted by Aristotle (and some of the commentators), then there is no point in talking about it. However, if some processes are teleological and some are not (as most people, including presumably most of the commentators here, now believe), then the question becomes "how can one distinguish between teleological and non-teleological processes, and what explains the differences between them?"

In his comprehensive analysis of teleology, Andrew Woodfield (Woodfield, A. Teleology, Cambridge University Press, 1976) pointed out that all teleological descriptions can be reformulated to conform to the linguistic formula " x happens in order to/for y outcome." He also asserted that such linguistic formulations describe metaphysically real processes. That is, some processes are genuinely teleological – they involve pre-existing designs or plans that cause processes to tend toward particular outcomes, regardless of perturbations or outside interference – while other processes only seem teleological – they involve laws of nature, such as gravity, that result in particular outcomes, without responding actively to perturbations or outside interference.

This distinction is essential when considering whether "genuine" teleology exists. To be precise, teleological descriptions sound "reasonable" when they are applied to genuinely teleological processes, but sound ridiculous if they are applied to non-teleological processes. For example, does it sound reasonable to say that when you drop a rock, it falls "in order to" reach the ground? By contrast, does it sound reasonable to say that birds have wings "in order to" fly? Is there a difference between the "reasonableness" of the first teleological explanation and the second?

When I pose this question to my students, almost all of them say yes: the first is ridiculous and the second isn't. I then point out that this implies that the origin of the wings of birds therefore seems to be the result of a teleological process. I then point out (reprising Aristotle) that there are at least four ways of explaining the presence of wings:
• "this bird has wings because it is composed of materials that are assembled and operated as wings" (Aristotle's "material" cause);
• "this bird has wings because its parents had wings" (Aristotle's "efficient" cause);
• "this bird has wings because birds have wings" (Aristotle's "formal" cause); and
• "this bird has wings in order to fly" (Aristotle's "final" cause).

Since at least the 17th century (and mostly because of Newton), natural scientists have stopped using formal or final causes to explain natural phenomena...except in biology. This was first pointed out by Colin Pittendrigh (Pittendrigh, C. S. Behavior and Evolution) (ed. by A. Rose and G. G. Simpson), Yale University Press, 1958), who coined the term "teleonomy" to refer to the kind of teleological phenomena observed in biological processes. Francisco Ayala modified and extended Pittendrigh's analysis (Ayala, F. J. 'Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology', Philosophy of Science, vol. 37 pp. 1-15, 1970). Ernst Mayr finally sorted the whole thing out in 1974 in "Teleological and teleonomic: A new analysis" (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. XIV, pp. 91 -117). According to Mayr, the difference between the "behavior" of dropped rocks and genuinely purposeful processes is the presence or operation of a pre-existing information-containing program in the latter. Rocks do not fall because there is an encoded program in nature that makes them fall. They fall because there is a force (i.e. a law of nature) that causes them to fall. However, a bird has wings because there is a program encoded within its genome which, as the result of interactions between the "phenome" of the bird and its environment, causes the construction and operation of wings.

To say that natural selection is teleological would therefore require that there be a pre-existing encoded program somewhere that would cause natural selection to bring about its effects. This is ridiculous for at least two reasons:
• there is no such program as far as we can tell (where would it be encoded?), and
• this would require that natural selection be a process in and of itself, rather than the outcome of the four processes listed above.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science

I started attending the weekly meetings of the Ithaca Friends Meeting in September, 1969. One of the people who made an immediate and lasting impression on me was an older gentlemen, always impeccably dressed, who sometimes spoke in meeting in a quavery, but very determined voice. His "messages" were always very literate, but not necessarily complicated. I was eventually introduced to him, and learned that his name was "Ned" Burtt, and that he was one of the founders of the Ithaca meeting.

After several years we became good friends, but only in the context of the Friends Meeting. I got to know his wife, Marjory, with whom I had many very engaging conversations. She was a retired psychotherapist with an interest in Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism. I didn't have as many conversations with Ned, not because he wasn't willing, but because he was almost completely deaf. Indeed, after a few years I noticed that Marjory and some of his older friends took turns sitting next to him in meeting, and when someone rose to speak, would write down what they said on a slip of paper and pass it to Ned.

Year later I was co-teaching a course on the history and philosophy of science, for which the teaching staff had chosen as one of the required readings a "classic" in the history of science, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, by Professor Edwin Arthur Burtt, the Susan Lynn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Translated into dozens of languages and continuously in print since 1924, Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations was often mentioned as the precursor to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and one of the seminal texts in the history of science.

Imagine my surprise (and chagrin) when I discovered that "Ned" Burtt of the Ithaca Friends Meeting was Prof. Edwin Arthur Burtt himself, author of the Metaphysical Foundations and perhaps the most famous historian of science in the first half of the 20th century. Characteristically, he never mentioned it in any of our conversations (brief and halting as they were), and no one else in meeting seemed to think it important enough to mention either.

Ned died in 1989 at the age of 97, and was memorialized at the Ithaca Meeting in our usual way – a silent meeting, punctuated by a few heart-felt "messages" from his friends. I think of him now as I am re-reading once again his Metaphysical Foundations, and am once again struck by his keen insight and masterful use of language. Here's just one sample:
"The glorious romantic universe of Dante and Milton, that set no bounds to the imagination of man as it played over space and time, had now been swept away. Space was identified with the realm of geometry, time with the continuity of number. The world that people had thought themselves living in – a world rich with colour and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals – was crowded now into minute corners in the brains of scattered organic beings. The really important world outside was a world hard, cold, colourless, silent, and dead, a world of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity. The word of qualities as immediately perceived by man became just a curious and quaint minor effect of that infinite machine beyond. In Newton the Cartesian metaphysics, ambiguously interpreted and stripped of its distinctive claim for serious philosophical consideration, finally overthrew Aristotelianism and became the predominant world-view of modern times.
*Whew* - talk about a splash of cold water in the face. It is this world-view – the one that forms the basis of all of modern science, including biology – that depresses and terrifies those who cannot live without the "old magic" and motivates those who want to tear down "modern" science and go back to the pre-scientific world-view, what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world." But, just like the magic realm of childhood, there is no going back now, not to the innocent and often terrifying universe of the childhood of our cultures. In the words of Bertrand Russell (one of Ned Burtt's contemporaries):
"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are the outcome of accidental collections of atoms...that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins...only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." – A Free Man's Worship [1923]
And so tomorrow (it's Memorial Day once again), I will go walking through the little grave yard out behind the Hector Meeting House where Ned and Marjory are buried, and think once again about the old, deaf gentleman whose messages were so eloquent and whose view of reality so unflinching.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

Evolutionary Psychology: The Science of Human Nature


Having been tickled by Google Alert that my name had been mentioned in the comments at Pharyngula (P. Z. Myer's blog), I took a quick look. Just a few comments for now:

1) I became an evolutionary psychologist when studying the behavioral ecology of Microtus pennsylvanicus got boring. Those cute little field voles got boring because their ethology is relatively simple. Human ethology is a lot more interesting, mostly because it is a lot more complex. Should we not try to study it because it is more complex? Or because it might not jibe with some people's political preconceptions?

2) I assign Gould & Lewontin's "spandrels" paper to my students in evolutionary biology, along with various criticisms of it. I also assign Eldredge & Gould's "punk eek" paper and Gould and Vrba's "exaptation" paper (along with close to three dozen others, not to mention the entire Origin of Species, 1st. ed.). I also give them chunks of George William's 1966 classic, Adaptation and Natural Selection, so that they will know exactly how "onerous" the concept of "adaptation" actually is.

3) Here's the definition of "adaptation" I use:
An evolutionary adaptation is any heritable phenotypic character whose frequency of appearance in a population is the result of increased reproductive success relative to alternative versions of that heritable phenotypic character.
4) Here are the criteria I believe are most useful when one is attempting to determine if one is dealing with an "adaptation":
Qualification 1: An evolutionary adaptation will be expressed by most of the members of a given population, in a pattern that approximates a normal distribution;

Qualification 2: An evolutionary adaptation can be correlated with underlying anatomical and physiological structures, which constitute the efficient (or proximate) cause of the evolution of the adaptation;

Qualification 3: An evolutionary adaptation can be correlated with a pre-existing evolutionary environment of adaptation (EEA), the circumstances of which can then be correlated with differential survival and reproduction; and

Qualification 4: An evolutionary adaptation can be correlated with the presence and expression of an underlying gene or gene complex, which directly or indirectly causes and influences the expression of the phenotypic trait that constitutes the adaptation.
To me, it seems reasonable that if one can apply those to a specific human behavior, one can make arguments about its evolutionary derivation. Would anyone disagree?

As for the ridiculous idea that evolutionary psychology only deals with sex, has anyone making such a claim actually read a textbook on the subject? Here are several:

Human Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (4th Edition)

Evolution and Human Behavior, 2nd Edition: Darwinian Perspectives on Human Nature

Evolutionary Psychology: The Science of Human Nature

[Full Disclosure Notice: The fourth title is indeed by Yours Truly.]

If you haven't, then please do so, and then we can discuss these questions.

While we're on the subject, Part II of Evolutionary Psychology: The Science of Human Nature (on the ethology of between-group behavior in humans) is coming out in May. My next project is an introductory textbook in evolutionary biology, entitled Evolutionary Biology: The Darwinian Revolutions, again in two parts. Part I (due out in September) is The Modern Synthesis and Part II (due out next May) is The Evolving Synthesis.

After that (if I live that long) will be On Purpose: The Evolution of Design by Means of Natural Selection (won't there be some fireworks when that comes out?), in which I present one of the core arguments for The Metaphysical Foundations of the Biological Sciences, in the spirit of E. A. Burtt's The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. Should be fun!

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen