Kansas evolution
The Kansas State Board of Education recently revised the state's standards for teaching science.
One change they made was the definition of science itself. Their old definition was
Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.
This they changed to
Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.
Some critics object that the only reason for removing the phrase "natural explanations" is to allow the introduction of "supernatural explanations." Nonsense. The new definition improves on the old one by listing the elementary processes of the scientific method. These processes, consistently used, do not admit the supernatural.
In fact, most if not all of the changes in the Kansas science teaching standards have to do with evolution. Two of the stated aims of the changes are to:
Exclude intelligent design from the standards, without prohibiting it.
Make it clear that evolution is a theory and not a fact.
Certainly, evolution is theory and not fact. The experimental or observational evidence is fact. Everything else is either hypothesis (conjecture not yet or not adequately supported by fact) or theory (a body of conjecture well supported by fact). Most of science in general is theory and not fact.
As for the supposed neutrality of neither including nor prohibiting the teaching of "intelligent design," there's no neutrality there. The standards still call for the teaching of evolution beginning in grades 5-7, and further detail is called for in grades 8-12, including detailed coverage of variation, adaptation, and inheritance.
But also included in grades 8-12 are some controversial additions. One change is the addition of the statement that
Biological evolution postulates an unguided natural process that has no discernable [sic] direction or goal.
Critics ask why evolution is singled out when all scientific theories postulate an unguided process. I can answer that: many popular scientific explanations refer to adaptations as being guided by an individual's desire to pass on its genes to future generations. According to the scientific theory, there's no such desire. Individuals either survive and reproduce, or they don't, and if they don't, future generations won't have their genes. Any genes we see in currently existing individuals are there because they were passed on, usually because they were either adaptive or at worst neutral. So the unguided nature of the process has to be emphasized.
What I would question, though, is the word "discernable." The theory postulates no direction or goal whatever, discernible or not.
More troubling are the following statements:
The view that living things in all the major kingdoms are modified descendants of a common ancestor (described in the pattern of a branching tree) has been challenged in recent years by:
i. Discrepancies in the molecular evidence (e.g. differences in relatedness inferred from sequence studies of different proteins) previously thought to support that view.
There's no "challenge" here. Molecular evidence is known to be imperfect.
ii. A fossil record that shows sudden bursts of increased complexity (the Cambrian Explosion), long periods of stasis and the absence of abundant transitional forms rather than steady gradual increases in complexity, and
Fossil evidence is also imperfect. And the idea of "steady gradual increases in complexity" belongs to the hypothesis of gradualism, as distinct from the newer hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium (which postulates that species tend to remain stable for far longer than it takes for new species to emerge). The facts challenge gradualism, not evolution.
iii. Studies that show animals follow different rather than identical early stages of embryological development.
Only the discredited hypothesis that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" demands that all species have identical early embryonic forms. In the theory of evolution, the form of the embryo is (like any other trait) subject to adaptation.
None of these facts "challenge" the theory of evolution.
Here's another troubling statement:
Whether microevolution (change within a species) can be extrapolated to explain macroevolutionary changes (such as new complex organs or body plans and new biochemical systems which appear irreducibly complex) is controversial. These kinds of macroevolutionary explanations generally are not based on direct observations and often reflect historical narratives based on inferences from indirect or circumstantial evidence.
There's something left out here. If "microevolution" is change within a species, then "macroevolution" should be the formation of new species, and perhaps "megaevolution" would be the emergence of new body plans or complex organs.
As to the emergence of new species, Darwin found his observations of the finches he found on the Galapagos Islands quite compelling. The only reasonable explanation was that a single stock of finches came to the islands and diverged to form several new species.
As to the emergence of new body plans and complex organs, there's no evidence that it could not happen. There's even a hypothetical description in a recent Scientific American of how fish evolved into quadrupeds. Really, the notion of "irreducible complexity" does not exist in the theory of evolution. There's no criterion for when complexity would become "irreducible," because there's no reason to suppose that it ever would be "irreducible." Within the theory there are systematic efforts to reduce the evolution of amazingly complex organs to sequences of less amazing adaptations. Not every such sequence has been described, but progress is being made.
I wish the Kansas State Board of Education had subjected the hypothesis of "intelligent design" to the same criticism that they applied to evolution, since then they would have prohibited it. There is in fact no empirical evidence of a designer, beyond an unwillingness to believe that species could have evolved without one, nor is there any explanation of how the designer could have executed the designs. "Intelligent design" is simply not science. But I'm afraid it would have been politically impossible for them to say so.
One change they made was the definition of science itself. Their old definition was
Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.
This they changed to
Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.
Some critics object that the only reason for removing the phrase "natural explanations" is to allow the introduction of "supernatural explanations." Nonsense. The new definition improves on the old one by listing the elementary processes of the scientific method. These processes, consistently used, do not admit the supernatural.
In fact, most if not all of the changes in the Kansas science teaching standards have to do with evolution. Two of the stated aims of the changes are to:
Exclude intelligent design from the standards, without prohibiting it.
Make it clear that evolution is a theory and not a fact.
Certainly, evolution is theory and not fact. The experimental or observational evidence is fact. Everything else is either hypothesis (conjecture not yet or not adequately supported by fact) or theory (a body of conjecture well supported by fact). Most of science in general is theory and not fact.
As for the supposed neutrality of neither including nor prohibiting the teaching of "intelligent design," there's no neutrality there. The standards still call for the teaching of evolution beginning in grades 5-7, and further detail is called for in grades 8-12, including detailed coverage of variation, adaptation, and inheritance.
But also included in grades 8-12 are some controversial additions. One change is the addition of the statement that
Biological evolution postulates an unguided natural process that has no discernable [sic] direction or goal.
Critics ask why evolution is singled out when all scientific theories postulate an unguided process. I can answer that: many popular scientific explanations refer to adaptations as being guided by an individual's desire to pass on its genes to future generations. According to the scientific theory, there's no such desire. Individuals either survive and reproduce, or they don't, and if they don't, future generations won't have their genes. Any genes we see in currently existing individuals are there because they were passed on, usually because they were either adaptive or at worst neutral. So the unguided nature of the process has to be emphasized.
What I would question, though, is the word "discernable." The theory postulates no direction or goal whatever, discernible or not.
More troubling are the following statements:
The view that living things in all the major kingdoms are modified descendants of a common ancestor (described in the pattern of a branching tree) has been challenged in recent years by:
i. Discrepancies in the molecular evidence (e.g. differences in relatedness inferred from sequence studies of different proteins) previously thought to support that view.
There's no "challenge" here. Molecular evidence is known to be imperfect.
ii. A fossil record that shows sudden bursts of increased complexity (the Cambrian Explosion), long periods of stasis and the absence of abundant transitional forms rather than steady gradual increases in complexity, and
Fossil evidence is also imperfect. And the idea of "steady gradual increases in complexity" belongs to the hypothesis of gradualism, as distinct from the newer hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium (which postulates that species tend to remain stable for far longer than it takes for new species to emerge). The facts challenge gradualism, not evolution.
iii. Studies that show animals follow different rather than identical early stages of embryological development.
Only the discredited hypothesis that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" demands that all species have identical early embryonic forms. In the theory of evolution, the form of the embryo is (like any other trait) subject to adaptation.
None of these facts "challenge" the theory of evolution.
Here's another troubling statement:
Whether microevolution (change within a species) can be extrapolated to explain macroevolutionary changes (such as new complex organs or body plans and new biochemical systems which appear irreducibly complex) is controversial. These kinds of macroevolutionary explanations generally are not based on direct observations and often reflect historical narratives based on inferences from indirect or circumstantial evidence.
There's something left out here. If "microevolution" is change within a species, then "macroevolution" should be the formation of new species, and perhaps "megaevolution" would be the emergence of new body plans or complex organs.
As to the emergence of new species, Darwin found his observations of the finches he found on the Galapagos Islands quite compelling. The only reasonable explanation was that a single stock of finches came to the islands and diverged to form several new species.
As to the emergence of new body plans and complex organs, there's no evidence that it could not happen. There's even a hypothetical description in a recent Scientific American of how fish evolved into quadrupeds. Really, the notion of "irreducible complexity" does not exist in the theory of evolution. There's no criterion for when complexity would become "irreducible," because there's no reason to suppose that it ever would be "irreducible." Within the theory there are systematic efforts to reduce the evolution of amazingly complex organs to sequences of less amazing adaptations. Not every such sequence has been described, but progress is being made.
I wish the Kansas State Board of Education had subjected the hypothesis of "intelligent design" to the same criticism that they applied to evolution, since then they would have prohibited it. There is in fact no empirical evidence of a designer, beyond an unwillingness to believe that species could have evolved without one, nor is there any explanation of how the designer could have executed the designs. "Intelligent design" is simply not science. But I'm afraid it would have been politically impossible for them to say so.
posted by GrumbleGrouch at 1:52 PM
2 comments
