On Weird Theories

AUTHOR: Allen MacNeill

SOURCE: Original essay

COMMENTARY: That's up to you...

"... say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
- Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski (1998)

I had a next-door neighbor who worked for an aerospace company. One summer afternoon we were sitting beside his barbeque in his back yard, having one of those stream-of-consciousness conversations that often accompanies the guzzling of a six pack or two (his brand was Pabst Blue Ribbon™). I don't remember how the subject came up, but somewhere along the line I must have done what my wife calls "hitting the core-dump button." And he did; for the next couple of hours I listened in semi-horrified fascination as he expounded on his "theory" of reality. Basically, it was a weird variant on the "eagle and snake" mythology of the Aztecs, except that in his own weird theory the snake was the major icon. He went on and on about how the world (and time and everything else) was, at some much deeper level of reality, a snake. Ouroboros and the Midgard Serpent and Satan in the Garden of Eden and Freud's phallic symbols and the Caduceus and on and on and on...it was all tied together in a huge, complicated, and ultimately deranged web of relationships. It clearly was very meaningful to him; at times he seemed on the verge of tears. He showed me a medal of the Aztec eagle-and-snake image, which he wore around his neck at all times (even to bed and in the shower). He told me how it got him through some bad times in Vietnam, and later when he almost broke up with his wife. The emotional connections were so intense that he was shaking at times, and there was a catch in his voice.

This wasn't the first (or the last) time something like this has happened to me. Several times – on the bus or in the bus terminal, on a long car trip with a friend, at the airport, over lunch, at a picnic for work or a fraternal organization – someone hears or thinks of the word or phrase that "hits the core-dump button" and out it all comes. You sit there, in awe and trepidation, while the core-dumper gives you their entire "weird theory" of reality, all in one huge, steaming, highly charged, stream-of-consciousness pile. Sometimes it's clear that they have never articulated this before to anyone. Other times it's clear that they've been working on this particular monolog, maybe for years, and have already "gifted" others with a very similar version. Every time it's always intensely emotional for them, as the whole weird mess unspools and they search your face for some sign of recognition, of empathy, of understanding.

And, with me at least, they don't get that. I listen politely, trying not to look perplexed or horrified, waiting for the whole thing to come tumbling out, and hoping for something to then divert us – the burgers starting to burn or the bus arriving or the teller asking for my driver's license. I nod sometimes, and grunt in what I hope is a non-judgmental way, and quietly wish for someone or something to intervene before the core-dumper realizes that, not only to I not empathize, I think they're nuts.

Because they are, at some very deep level. Almost all of us are; completely whacked. What we almost all have, buried deep in our psyche, is what I call a "weird theory of reality," in which we believe passionately, and into which we shoehorn almost every perception we have about reality. Furthermore, it's clear to me that people have always had such "weird theories" about reality. Today it's alien abductions or UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis. Yesterday it was angels and demons, fairies, gnomes, trolls, heaven and Hell, transubstantiation, faith healing, walking on water, flying, and speaking in tongues. Tomorrow...well, I can't say for sure, but I am sure it will be something weird.

What makes modern "weird theories" different from those of the past is that today everyone has their own "weird theory". When people lived in small agricultural villages or even smaller hunter-gatherer groups, people had weird theories, but these were pretty similar within those groups. Heresy was difficult, if not virtually unthinkable, because everyone in a particular group was in constant verbal and emotional contact with virtually everyone else, and there was a strong incentive to conform to group norms of belief.

This pattern persisted into historic times with the establishment and enforcement of "state religions" - that is, weird theories of reality that had the force of political coercion behind them. People may have had personally idiosyncratic versions of the group's weird theory, but they generally kept these to themselves. These "group weird theories" (GWT) were the mythologies that held such groups together, that gave them a sense of shared experience and shared purpose, and that facilitated group coordination. This was often a good thing, but sometimes a bad thing: it made possible group coordination in agriculture and response to natural disasters, but also facilitated warfare and small-scale genocide.

What characterizes us now is that our weird theories are almost entirely idiosyncratic, especially in the First World. We have largely given up the large-scale group mythologies and religions of the past, and replaced them with what could be called "personal mythologies and religions". That Protestantism is the most influential religion in America today is precisely because it isn't a single religion: it's thousands, even millions of little idiosyncratic religions, with some shared similarities. Schism, right down to the individual level (and even within individuals at different times in our lives) is the norm, and so our weird theories are not only weird, they're mutually incomprehensible.

So, are the various sciences also "weird theories"? Anyone acquainted with the current state of quantum physics would almost certainly agree, as would most evolutionary biologists. But, it's not really the same, because although there are many weird theories in science, there is also an underlying agreement that is deeply "unweird" – the idea that empirical verification and logical inference is the basis for all of our weird theories.

Ultimately, the difference between non-scientific and scientific "weird theories" is that eventually the latter become generally accepted by the scientific community in the same way that the grand overarching religious weird theories of past centuries were. Yes, there are still schisms in science (think of the controversies surrounding punctuated equilibrium versus phyletic gradualism), but in the long run these schisms tend to heal themselves. Thomas Kuhn described this process well, but he also asserted (and most scientists would agree) that eventually the various scientific communities agree on their dominant paradigms. Science, in other words, tends to become more unified over time, as deep connections between the various weird theories stitch them together into "grand unified theories".

By contrast, the non-scientific "weird theories" schism and schism and schism, until they become the incomprehensible idiosyncratic messes that one taps into when one hits the "core-dump button". Indeed, one of my personal weird theories is that this is a good way to distinguish between useful (i.e. "true") and pointless (i.e. "false") weird theories: the former tend to unify your ideas with those of the other members of your community, whereas the latter tend to separate us to the point of mutual incomprehensibility.

Hence, the quote from The Big Lebowski: say what you say what you like about the tenets of (insert scientific discipline here), Dude, at least it's an ethos.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Shermer, M. (2002) Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. Holt, New York, NY, ISBN #0805070893 ($17.00, paperback), 384 pages. Available here.

Sowin, J. (2008) 25 reasons people believe weird things. Pseudoscience, Life, Science, Religion, 28 April 2008. Available online here.

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

--Allen

Scientists Endorse Candidate Over Teaching of Evolution

AUTHOR: Cornelia Dean

SOURCE: New York Times

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

In an unusual foray into electoral politics, 75 science professors at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have signed a letter endorsing a candidate for the Ohio Board of Education.

The professors’ favored candidate is Tom Sawyer, a former congressman and onetime mayor of Akron. They hope Mr. Sawyer, a Democrat, will oust Deborah Owens Fink, a leading advocate of curriculum standards that encourage students to challenge the theory of evolution.

Elsewhere in Ohio, scientists have also been campaigning for candidates who support the teaching of evolution and have recruited at least one biologist from out of state to help.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve who organized the circulation of the letter, said almost 90 percent of the science faculty on campus this semester had signed it. The signers are anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, physicists and psychologists.

The letter says Dr. Owens Fink has “attempted to cast controversy on biological evolution in favor of an ill-defined notion called Intelligent Design that courts have ruled is religion, not science.”

In an interview, Dr. Krauss said, “This is not some group of fringe scientists or however they are being portrayed by the creationist community,” adding, “This is the entire scientific community, and I don’t know of any other precedent for almost the entire faculty at an institution” making such a statement.

But Dr. Owens Fink, a professor of marketing at the University of Akron, said the curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. Rather, she said, they urge students to subject evolution to critical analysis, something she said scientists should endorse. She said the idea that there was a scientific consensus on evolution was “laughable.”

Although researchers may argue about its details, the theory of evolution is the foundation for modern biology, and there is no credible scientific challenge to it as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth. In recent years, with creationist challenges to the teaching of evolution erupting in school districts around the country, groups like the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation’s pre-eminent scientific organization, have repeatedly made this point.

But the academy’s opinion does not matter to Dr. Owens Fink, who said the letter was probably right to say she had dismissed it as “a group of so-called scientists.”

“I may have said that, yeah,” she said.

She would not describe her views of Darwin and his theory, saying, “This isn’t about my beliefs.”

School board elections in Ohio are nonpartisan, but Dr. Owens Fink said she was a registered Republican. Her opponent, Mr. Sawyer, was urged to run for the Seventh District Board of Education seat by a new organization, Help Ohio Public Education, founded by Dr. Krauss and his colleague Patricia Princehouse, a biologist and historian of science, and Steve Rissing, a biologist at Ohio State University.

At the group’s invitation, Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, will be in Ohio today through the weekend campaigning for other school board candidates who support the teaching of evolution. Dr. Miller, an author of a widely used biology textbook, was a crucial witness in the recent lawsuit in Dover, Pa., over intelligent design. The judge in that case ruled that it was a religious doctrine that had no place in a public school curriculum.

After that decision, Dr. Owens Fink said, the Ohio board abandoned curriculum standards that mandated a critical look at evolution, a decision she said she regretted. “Some people would rather just fold,” she said.

But Dr. Miller said it was a good call, adding, “We have to make sure these good choices get ratified at the ballot box.”

COMMENTARY:

Once again Ohio is the battleground in the ongoing culture wars. A similar change in the composition of a state board of education happened in Kansas earlier this year. It will be interesting to see what happens in Ohio, especially in the context of what many are beginning to perceive as a "glacial shift" in Ohio politics, away from religious conservatism and the Republican party and toward a more tolerant and pluralistic libertarianism, as exemplified by Tom Sawyer (even his name resonates in American cultural history). Whether the Democrats can finally become vertebrates and take a principled position on this and related issues remains to be seen...

--Allen

Scientists Force Evolution in the Lab

AUTHOR: Robert Roy Britt

SOURCE: LiveScience.com

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill (following text of article)

Scientists have forced a little evolution in the laboratory, controlling whether a caterpillar becomes green or black.

The color of the critter was made to vary with temperature during their development. The experiment reveals the basic hormonal mechanism underlying the evolution of such dual traits, the researchers report in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Science.

The study was done on Manduca sexta, a caterpillar commonly called the tobacco hornworm. Its larvae are normally green. A related species, Manduca quinquemaculata, becomes black or green depending on temperature. The idea was to use similar temperature shocks to evolve a similar change in M. sexta.

Differing color traits induced by environmental factors are called polyphenisms.

Similar differences show up in genetically identical ants, which can develop into queens, soldiers, or workers based on the hormones they're exposed to early in development. Similar hormonal differences can affect the specific color of a butterfly or bird.

Scientists have not understood evolution's exact role in the differences.

"There had been theoretical models to explain the evolutionary mechanism -- how selective pressures can maintain polyphenisms in a population, and why they don't converge gradually into one form or another," said Duke University graduate student Yuichiro Suzuki. "But nobody had ever started with a species that didn't have a polyphenism and generated a brand-new polyphenism."

Suzuki and biology professor Frederik Nijhout worked with black mutants of the normally green M. sexta. The mutants have a lower level of a key hormone.

The scientists subjected the black mutants to temperatures above 83 degrees Fahrenheit, and over a few generations two types developed. One group turned green and the other didn't.

Importantly, the two groups were found to have distinctly different levels of the hormones.

They then found that they could create green spots on black caterpillars by applying drops of the hormones at the right stage of development. And by thwarting the flow of hormones from head to body—they applied a little caterpillar tourniquet—they could prevent the greening.

None of this looks to be going anywhere in the sense of survival of the fittest. The black and green caterpillars will all grow up basically the same.

"The adult moths are identical, and so there is no obvious basis for the kind of selective mating that might genetically isolate two groups and eventually lead to new species," Nijhout told LiveScience. Because the variations are based on temperatures, and thus in the wild would be dependent on seasons, the two types would tend to occur at different times of the year and may never meet in nature, he said.

The next step, the researchers said, is to see if the variations do indeed occur in the wild.

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AUTHOR'S' BIOGRAPHICAL & CONTACT INFORMATION:

Robert Roy Britt is the Managing Editor for LiveScience.com

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COMMENTARY:

This appears to be an interesting, if somewhat limited experiment. Selection for the green morph of the black mutant using high temperatures could mimic what might happen in the event of global warming, especially given the normal range of Manduca sexta.

But, the author of this Live Science article makes a profoundly dumb statement:

None of this looks to be going anywhere in the sense of survival of the fittest. The black and green caterpillars will all grow up basically the same.

Except that selection can operate on the larval stage just as easily as on the adult stage, especially if the dark mutant is more visible to predators. By analogy with American rat snakes, it seems likely to me that the dark mutants (which are expressed at cooler temperatures) may gain a selective advantage by absorbing more sunlight, thus warming them more quickly in the early morning when their leaf food supply is at its highest nutritional content, whereas the green morph would be more cryptic. In other words, which morph is selected for depends on several interacting environmental factors, including ambient temperature and the presence of avian predators.

Indeed, this experiment is right in line with Mary Jane West-Eberhard's work on evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo"). Selection on early developmental stages, such as these larvae, can cause rather dramatic changes in a relatively short time (i.e. "a few generations," as described in the article). Furthermore, the results indicate that polyphenisms (i.e. polymorphisms) can be generated and maintained without necessarily requiring the kinds of genetic mechanisms specified by R. A. Fisher and other population geneticists of the "modern evolutionary synthesis." That is, these experimental results provide evidence for a new paradigm for phenotypic variation, supporting evo-devo and transcending the "modern synthesis."

Now, an "intelligent design theorist" might argue that this doesn't really show anything, as the underlying genetic predisposition for the green color morph was probably already present in the Manduca sexta, and was simply "turned on" by prolonged exposure to heat. That is, no new "complex specified information" was produced as the result of selection.

Well, that kind of response would be essentially irrelevant to the evolutionary implications of this experiment. What Nijhout and Co. have shown is that dramatic phenotypic changes can be induced as the result of selection for only a few generations, and that this can be correlated with the underlying hormonal physiology.

And besides, at least its an experiment, using real organisms and involving at least quasi-natural conditions. That is, it's light-years beyond the kind of intellectual masturbation typically performed by the average "intelligent design theorist," who declines to stoop to trivialities like empirical verification or publication in peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals.

--Allen

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ORIGINAL PUBLICATION REFERENCE:

LiveScience.com
URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060202/sc_space/scientistsforceevolutioninthelab

Original posting/publication date timestamp:
Thu Feb 2, 3:00 PM ET

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