21 February 2010

Signature in the Cell: Chapter 6

The chapter is called "The Origin of Science and the Possibility of Design." It's short, unimportant and uninteresting. Its purposes, along with Chapter 7, are twofold: 1) to counter the claim that ID theory is "not science" and 2) to establish that "historical science" (that which deals with the past) is not all that different from "operations science" (as defined by Charles Thaxton and others), specifically because the theorizing of "historical science" can be considered testable.

Comments in non-random order.

1. Chapter 6 simply notes that scientists from the deep past (Kepler, Newton, etc.) were believers who made various design arguments. In this context, Meyer puts a design spin on the birth of modern science in the West, and I'm very curious what others (John Lynch, Todd Wood, Del Ratzsch) would think about his angle. Specifically, it seems to me that Meyer substitutes "design" for "theism" or "belief in a creator." For example, I think many historians and philosophers of science would agree with Meyer that Christian thought was a critical impetus for the development of modern science, by undergirding such central assumptions as the intelligibility of nature. But the scholars I've read emphasize the role of Christian understanding of creation, not particularly design. In other words, the belief that the cosmos was created, by a God with certain attributes, led to the assumptions of intelligibility, uniformity, and so on. Meyer repeatedly suggests that it was belief in a "designing mind" that birthed scientific thought, and while I'm sure that Boyle and Kepler and Newton believed in a God who could be described that way, I'm suspicious of the way he's peppering the narrative with references to design. One need not enthuse about design, the way ID advocates do, to assert belief in a Creator and thereby enable the assumptions that form the foundation of scientific thought.

2. But of course, if the goal is to establish ID as "science" or as a worthy pursuit with explanatory potential, then the beliefs of people at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution are simply irrelevant. (Not to mention potentially embarrassing: wasn't Newton the guy who thought that God had to constantly intervene miraculously to keep the planets in their orbits?) Isaac Newton's faith, whatever it was, doesn't help us understand gravitation. Richard Dawkins' lack of faith doesn't help us understand adaptation. Even if I believed in the overwhelming power of "worldviews," I would find this focus on the personal beliefs of 17th-century astronomers to be immaterial to the question of whether ID can help us understand the cosmos.

3. Meyer's credulous repetition of the creationist canard about "junk DNA" led me to suspect that we're going to see a lot of folk science in this book. And then I read this, on page 138, in reference to the "interdisciplinary" and non-experimental approach of Watson and Crick:
I was not an experimentalist, but a former applied scientist and philosopher of science. In my investigations of the DNA enigma, I began to marshal every relevant intellectual resource and insight – scientific, historical, mathematical and philosophical – that I could.
I'm skeptical of this claim. I find the book so far to be fluffy and vacuous, simplistic at best and not infrequently wrong or misleading. Meyer's claims about Darwin and the 19th-century design argument, for example, are inaccurate, and his understanding of molecular genetics is undergraduate textbook-level. Signature in the Cell is not the product of a serious two-decades-long inquiry into theories of the origins of genetic information systems. Such a book would look fantastically different from this one. No, this is a work of folk science, at least so far, and readers should not be impressed by Meyer's claim to have comprehensively examined the intellectual landscape of his topic. His aim, as I see it, is much more straightforward, and much less difficult.

4. Recall that Meyer refers to the book as "one long argument for the theory of intelligent design." This got me thinking about the other book that was referred to in this way by its author. And I decided to start a new feature in this series. As we look at each new chapter in Signature in the Cell, which runs to about 500 pages (with the Epilogue and first Appendix), we will choose a page and compare it to the same page in The Origin of Species, 6th Edition, which runs to page 429.

Chapter 6 of Signature in the Cell ends with a discussion of Charles Thaxton's ideas. Here's an excerpt from page 148:

I remembered that my Dallas mentor, Charles Thaxton, thought that many scientists today rejected design out of hand because they failed to recognize that there were different types of scientific inquiry, specifically, that there was a distinctive kind of scientific inquiry concerned with investigating and explaining the past. His distinction between origins and operations science suggested a reason to consider an "intelligent cause" as a possible scientific explanation for the origin of life.
And here's what Charles Darwin was doing on page 148:
According to this view it may be inferred that all vertebrate animals with true lungs are descended by ordinary generation from an ancient and unknown prototype, which was furnished with a floating apparatus or swimbladder. We can thus, as I infer from Owen's interesting description of these parts, understand the strange fact that every particle of food and drink which we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea, with some risk of falling into the lungs, notwithstanding the beautiful contrivance by which the glottis is closed. In the higher Vertebrate the branchiæ have wholly disappeared—but in the embryo the slits on the sides of the neck and the loop-like course of the arteries still mark their former position. But it is conceivable that the now utterly lost branchiæ might have been gradually worked in by natural selection for some distinct purpose: for instance, Landois has shown that the wings of insects are developed from the tracheæ; it is therefore highly probable that in this great class organs which once served for respiration have been actually converted into organs for flight.
How's that for contrast?

21 comments:

toddcwood said...

Bio majors at Bryan at least know the difference between bacteria and viruses, and my biochem students learn that the ribosomal peptidyl transferase is a function of the RNA. Surely that's true at most schools. So how can you say Meyer has an undergrad level understanding of molecular genetics?

I'll have to get back to you on Meyer's understanding of design and history of science.

Stephen Matheson said...

Uh Todd, I guess you didn't get the memo. The response I was looking for goes like this: "Hey Steve, you're doing a little better lately. Your characterization of Meyer's knowledge showed generosity and patience. Nice job! I knew you could do it. See you at the next 12-steps meeting."

toddcwood said...

Oh, sorry, sure, I can see that! Very, very generous and patient and compassionate of you. I was also thinking that only some undergrads would remember the bit about the ribosome, so you really weren't far off.

Good job! Way to go!

Berend de Boer said...

Steve: How's that for contrast?

Equally fluffy I would say :-)

Dennis Venema said...

Steve, I'm a ways ahead of you in the book, and it doesn't get any better, sorry (but you knew that already).

My thoughts as I went through these chapters were similar: Meyer doesn't even understand this at an undergrad level. He's basically reading a college text, misunderstanding a bunch of it, and then deciding he has the chops to declare a whole field of active research bogus.

Todd, nice to see you. Hope all is well.

Steve, hope the 12-step program is going well. I flunked out last week... :)

Reg said...

Just out of interest has anybody come across a positive review of this book that is apparently supposed to re-energize the whole ID movement?
Why are more people not concerned by the obvious lack of scientific credentials displayed by those making the arguments? That's not to say outsiders can't have important new insights, but when people simply have no training at all in a field and have made next to no contribution to any area of science, does this not send up red flags when they attempt to overturn entire areas of science?
Why do people not see this? It's quite similar to when people promote the 'work' of obvious frauds such as Kent Hovind and Carl Baugh.
Furthermore, if these people really think they have genuinely new and impressive arguments why not take them to scientific conferences and meetings to present them before actual scientists? Why present them in books for the general public?

toddcwood said...

There are 165 five-star reviews on Amazon.com. There are also 37 one-star reviews, and very few in between. I often find this pattern of good/bad reviews characteristic of ID and anti-ID literature (and creationist/anticreationist literature). People either love the books or hate them. I wonder if that isn't symptomatic of the propaganda nature of the debate?

Why present them in books for the general public?
I hate to be cynical, but royalties are a factor.

Hi, Dennis! I am well. You?

Reg said...

I didn't doubt that this book has positive ratings on Amazon, but my question was intended to refer to scientific reviews. There have been quite a few reviews at Biologos and origin-of-life researchers Gerald Joyce and Jack Szostak were invited by Darrel Falk to analyze his responses to Meyer's claims. Neither of them seemed to think that the book had any scientific merits.

I don't dispute the point about royalties either but from a scientific point of view Meyer's entire career has been involved in ID. If it turns out to be a complete scientific failure he has just wasted several decades of his life. In light of this you'd think he'd spend more time trying to get scientists on board. He had vast swathes of the general public on board before he wrote the book anyway, they are not the people he needs to convince. Is ID scientific or not?

Reg said...

I didn't doubt that this book has positive ratings on Amazon, but my question was intended to refer to scientific reviews. There have been quite a few reviews at Biologos and origin-of-life researchers Gerald Joyce and Jack Szostak were invited by Darrel Falk to analyze his responses to Meyer's claims. Neither of them seemed to think that the book had any scientific merits.

I don't dispute the point about royalties either but from a scientific point of view Meyer's entire career has been involved in ID. If it turns out to be a complete scientific failure he has just wasted several decades of his life. In light of this you'd think he'd spend more time trying to get scientists on board. He had vast swathes of the general public on board before he wrote the book anyway, they are not the people he needs to convince. Is ID scientific or not?

Arthur Hunt said...

Hi Stephen,

I got the impression, when Meyer mentioned that Watson and Crick were not experimental scientists, that he was trying to emphasize some sort of similarity between his "approach" and that of W&C. Basically, he seemed to me to be casting himself in the same light as W&C, arguing that the fact that he is not an experimental scientist, but rather a collector of facts, is akin to what W&C were.

I found this sentiment to be the height (depth?) of hubris. W&C sought out and embraced contrary data (not just ideas, but data), while Meyer is religious in his avoidance of data, ideas, whole bodies of work that contradict his largely unsupported assertions. The contrast between the two cannot be greater.

Dennis Venema said...

Hi Arthur,

Yes, I noticed that too - and it crops up several times. I found it very distasteful, as did you. In my notes, it has something to the effect of "dressing IDers in the borrowed robes of W&C."

Hi Todd,

Things are fine here, thanks. I'm teaching first-year non-majors Bio again this semester and we just covered YECism (so that's why your ears are burning). :)

Hey, is there any info on that BSG conference Joe contacted me about? Perhaps you or Joe could drop me a line over email.

Bill said...

Meyer has to construct an environment for his thesis such that "design" is the only answer. Thus, he attempts in Signature to appear to have "run the traps" for exdy-x years of "careful study" and, what ho, design is all that remains as an explanation.

It's not that Meyer doesn't understand the history of science, the subject of his PhD, or that he doesn't understand the general arguments about random mutation, natural selection, genetics and so forth. Those topics have been the subject of articles in Scientific American for decades and are readily understandable.

No, Meyer slices and dices both history and science, and picks out the bits that are to his liking however small or thin.

Meyer isn't interested in science at all. He's only interested in pushing the political agenda of the Discovery Institute which puts food on his table. Intellectual dishonesty is a living, I guess.

toddcwood said...

(I preface this by saying that I just ordered a copy of this book, and I've only read a few pages of chap. 6 via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature)

Regarding the W&C comparison, I didn't see that as hubris necessarily. I just thought he was trying too hard to show that he's a scientist, too. IDers are constantly harangued for being philosophers, engineers, mathematicians but not scientists, and I read that section as Meyer's response. Science isn't just about benchwork, and he's right, to an extent.

But as one who earned the title "scientist" the hard way, I must admit it ruffles my feathers when amateurs just lay claim to "scientist" and act like they deserve it. I like to dabble in philosophy and history of science, but I am very quick to point out that I am not a philosopher or historian.

I'm surprised no one's complained about his portrayal of Darwin. "Darwin also did little experimental science." (p. 139) Oh really? Darwin was constantly doing one experiment or another, and they had a significant role in Origin. I'll try to discuss that after I read Meyer's chapter.

Dennis, we're still finalizing BSG plans for this year. Hope to have registration up by April or so.

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks for comparing this book with Origin of Species.

And, yes, Darwin did a lot of experimenting. Of course, he didn't experiment with speciation. How could he have?

Michael Fugate said...

He could very easily have experimented on speciation by selecting on different isolated lines over many generations. This is his hypothesis proposed in "Origin" Ch 6. He just didn't think it was possible to see the needed change in his lifetime, but this is now demonstrated in many organisms. I think Darwin would be surprised how quickly selection can act - the work by the Grant's on finches is a good example.

Doppelganger said...

Todd:
"There are 165 five-star reviews on Amazon.com."

It is my understanding that the DI sent out an email asking all those on its list to write positive reviews.

toddcwood said...

Holy cow! My copy of the book just arrived in the mail, and it's 500 pages! I didn't realize it was so huge. Steve, you deserve some kind of reward for plodding through this.

Doppelganger: I'm not the least surprised by the DI's request for positive reviews.

Michael Fugate said...

It is pretty clear that many people routinely "review" books on Amazon without reading them - especially books on evolution.

Arthur Hunt said...

500 pages? Todd, somewhat tore out about 100 pages from your copy.

toddcwood said...

Arthur: Yeah, I meant 500 pages of text. Thanks for reminding me about the other hundred pages of references and notes.

gingoro said...

Had I been asked for a review shortly after I received my copy probably I would have given the book a positive review. I had no courses in biology during my years of formal education in three towns and two continents. What I do know I pick up from the odd Scientific Americian. But in terms of the cell I had read parts of the story but nothing that put the whole picture together. For me just doing that was very useful. My reaction as someone trained in engineering and applied math is that the combinatorial explosion is a difficult or possibly impossible problem for any natural solution to overcome.

It would be good if a Christian EC/TE would write a good popular synopsis of the state of OOL thinking.

Also I tend to discount much of the specifically ID material in SIC as it is based on Dembski's work which I have a lot of issues with already.

"Steve, I'm a ways ahead of you in the book, and it doesn't get any better, sorry (but you knew that already)." I also am well ahead of Steve and am finding it hard to justify the time to continue.