Mr Natural Selection

Why are scientists so fond of contradicting themselves? Scientists like to believe they are the most logical people on earth but time and time again I find them trying to rationalise their own preconceived notions. I love reading science magazines but I find this dishonesty or blindness very frustrating. Sometimes I think I’m more scientific than the scientists!

Here’s something from Isaac Asimov.

Indeed, humans, as creatures who behave in a purposeful, motivated way, naturally tend to attribute purpose even to inanimate nature. Scientists call this attitude teleological, and try to avoid such a way of thinking and speaking as much as they can. But in describing the results of evolution, it is so convenient to speak in terms of development toward more efficient ends that even among scientists all but the most fanatical purists occasionally lapse into teleology. Let us however try to avoid teleology in considering the development of the nervous system and the brain. Nature did not design the brain, it came about as the result of a long series of evolutionary accidents, so to speak, which happened to produce helpful features that at each stage gave an advantage to organisms possessing them. In the fight for survival, an animal that was more sensitive to changes in the environment than its competitors, and could respond to them faster, would be favored by natural selection. If, for instance, an animal happened to possess some spot on its body that was exceptionally sensitive to light, the advantage would be so great that evolution of eye spots, and eventually of eyes, would follow almost inevitably. [Asimov’s New Guide to Science (Revised Edition) 1987.]

First, Asimov said everything happened by accident. No design, no guide, no aim, no purpose whatsoever. He called the human brain the most complex object in the known universe, but we got that purely by a happy series of meaningless events. (By the way, the brain is so complex scientists today are still struggling to figure out how it works.)

Right after that, he brought up “natural selection”. So there is a purpose after all - survival! For some strange reason, all life is fighting to survive. That is the standard or benchmark all living organisms aim for. And the guy who set the criteria is a chap called Natural Selection. Whatever he is, all scientists agree that he is NOT God! Call him Mother Nature or Mr Evolution, but never never Creator! That’s a sin that will get you excommunicated from the Church of Scientism!

So there are two things all good scientists accept without a hint of irony:
1) There is no God because we can’t prove there is no God.
2) Everything happened by accident but guided by natural selection.
Amazing mental gymnastics, if you ask me.

Here’s another passage I came across recently.

Piet immediately suggested a design for multiply nested binary star graphstellation that would have the delightful technical designation “hyper-super-duper double-star system”: a pair of a pair of a pair of double stars. 16 total. This configuration would be stable and unlikely to interact with nearby stars. It also would do no harm to the solar system or life on Earth, should we end up as part of the formation. The set-up phase would coax pairs of stars into headings destined to bring them into mutual embrace in such a way that the pairings would eventually pair as well, and so on. Such a structure would be vanishingly unlikely to come about naturally, and it would be recognizable at a great distance. An alien observer wouldn’t have to be able to discern all the individual stars in order to notice that something funny was going on; the alien would only have to note subtle changes in the qualities of the light, wobbles in the position, and other clues. [Jaron Lanier; Discover; February 2008.]

What this guy is proposing is to adjust the positions of nearby stars using the gravitational pull of space crafts so that aliens from outer space can detect our presence. Which begs my question, if we can look at the human brain and say it was created by a series of accidents over millions of years, why should an alien look at our “graphstellation” and conclude it’s man-made?

Enough said!

[Image from crystalinks.com]

Book Review

The Nature of Science: A - Z Guide to the Laws & Principles Governing the Universe
By James Trefil
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, 433 pages
ISBN 0-618-31938-7

My dear sons,

We all miss your grandpa dearly. Once in a while I still “talk“ to him during contemplative moments. Is he able to “hear” me from where he is right now? Has he traveled to another world - a different dimension or parallel universe, perhaps? I’d like to think he is in a place that is free of suffering and is “interceding” for us poor mortals here on earth.

The religious may call such a place “heaven“, but it is not totally alien to science. Theoretical physicists have postulated that there may be up to 26 spatial dimensions! An English astronomer (Martin Rees) coined the term “multiverse” to suggest many universes, co-existing independently but able to interact with one another. Do you find that a bit mind-boggling? Arthur Eddington, a British physicist, once said: “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

Take a God‘s-eye-view of the Universe. The sun, which we wake up to every morning, is 1,000,000 bigger than planet earth. But our sun is just one star among 200 billion stars in the galaxy we call the Milky Way. There are 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe alone! That gives us 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. You can see how utterly and insignificantly microscopic we are relative to the size of the universe! I often think that God may well assume, for all intents and purposes, that we don’t exist!

The great physicist Isaac Newton likened his life’s work to that of a boy discovering pretty shells on the beach when “the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered” before him. As you can imagine, there is still so much we don’t know about what‘s out there, despite the huge strides made by science so far. What then is science, you ask? Well, it began fundamentally with human curiosity. We have all asked questions like why is the sky blue or grass green? As Socrates rightly said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Science offers one way to inspect this life of ours. It is a quest for knowledge using a certain set of accepted and rational procedures.

The book I am reading now, The Nature of Science by James Trefil, has a good description of the scientific methodology. There are two approaches, basically - observation and experiment. The first is by simply looking at the objects around and noting their behaviour under different circumstances. The second is to conduct experiments in a controlled environment and recording the results.

From the data we then try to determine the rationale behind the observation. This is known as a scientific theory - an explanation that best fits the data. When a better explanation comes along the old one is discarded. You should remember that words like “theory“, “principle“, “effect” and “law” are often interchangeably and imprecisely used by the scientific community. There are no hard and fast rules that all scientists adhere to.

Collecting the data is the easy part. It was the interpretation of the information that made scientific superstars out of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Newton showed in detail that the fall of an apple and the precise motions of the planets could be explained by the universal force of gravitation. Einstein demonstrated that time and space curved around massive objects with his theory of relativity.

Trefil’s book is in essence a compilation of all the major rules and regulations governing nature discovered up to the start of the 21st century. The topics are sorted into 8 categories: astronomy, chemistry, earth sciences, life sciences, mathematics, miscellany, physics and rear window. There is enough information on each area for a young person contemplating a career in science to be able to gauge where his or her interests lie.

There are some 250 such topics covered by the book, ranging from the well-known to the obscure. Moore’s Law (Every index of computer performance improves by a factor of two every two years) is in there and so is Murphy’s Law (If something can go wrong, it will go wrong). Also included are ideas with intriguing names such as the Chandrasekhar Limit (A white dwarf star can be no more than 1.4 times as massive as the Sun), the Chronology Protection Conjecture (There is an as yet undiscovered law of nature that forbids time travel), Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (The position and velocity of a quantum particle cannot both be known with absolute accuracy at the same time), Maxwell’s Demon (Can the second law of thermodynamics be violated?) and the Beauty Criterion (Scientific theories are judged on aesthetics as well as on pragmatic criteria …).

Incidentally, “Miscellany” contains concepts that don’t belong in any particular group, such as Occam’s Razor (The simplest explanation is likely to be the right one) and the Turing Test (If computers can act in such a way that human beings cannot tell if they are interacting with a machine or with a person, the machine is said to have passed the Turing Test). “Rear view mirror” looks at ideas that have been discredited, such as Spontaneous Generation (Living things arise spontaneously from inorganic material) and Perpetual Motion (It is possible to make a machine that will run forever or, better still, provide a limitless source of energy).

James Trefil is an American educator and a passionate promoter of scientific literacy. He believes that every person ought to have enough knowledge to be able to form informed opinions about issues that affect the modern world, from cloning to global warming. He has authored more than 30 books and writes in a readable down-to-earth style that makes scientific concepts accessible to laypeople like you and me. Such motivation is admirable, in my opinion. You know I believe in the democratization of ideas. Scientific literacy equips the citizens of a nation to compete in the global environment. I am all for it.

My only quarrel with scientists in general is the tendency to get a little presumptuous when it comes to matters beyond the realm of science. Take the following sentence from the book: "Evolution thus differs from so-called creation science … because there is no observation or experiment that could conceivably convince a supporter of creation science that it is wrong."

That does not necessarily make creation science wrong, does it? You cannot declare that something is wrong just because you can’t prove it wrong! That won’t hold up in court and is an argument based on flawed logic. Science has no monopoly on knowledge, as far as I‘m concerned. Anyone who believes otherwise is worshiping a religion called Scientism.

Isaac Asimov called the human brain “the most magnificently organized lump of matter in the known universe”. If we can believe in an architect for the Taj Mahal, why can’t we do the same for the brain, which is so much more complex? To really understand the true nature of science we need to identify the limits of scientific methodology. Science can give us a lot of answers but not all of them.

Coming back to your grandpa, I suppose the quickest way to know his present whereabouts is to go there myself. Science may one day allow us to communicate with other worlds, but it’ll surely not be within my lifetime.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with a few puzzles from the book to tickle your grey cells. Have you ever wondered why the sky is dark at night when there are so many stars producing light? (This is called Olbers’ Paradox.) If intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, why have we not received signals from it or detected evidence of it? (Fermi’s Paradox.) And if, in order to cross a room, we must first cross half, then half of what’s left, then half of that, then half of that …, doesn’t that make motion impossible? (Zeno’s Paradox).

Read the book, don’t wait for the movie!

Dad

How Scientists Made God Disappear!

Guess what? I’ve solved another magic trick all by myself! I’ve finally found out how scientists made God disappear! I’ve cracked it and I’m so happy I feel like Isaac Newton! Hahaha!

I came across this amazing sentence in the book “The Nature of Science”:

“Evolution thus differs from so-called creation science, supposedly based on the biblical Book of Genesis, because there is no observation or experiment that could conceivably convince a supporter of creation science that it is wrong.”

Therefore it’s wrong.

Get it?

So scientists are basically saying that it’s wrong because they can’t prove it’s wrong!

Isn’t that absolutely mind-boggling logic? Can something like that hold up in court? You’re guilty because there is no way we can prove you’re guilty?

Here‘s how the magic trick works. Let me distil it like a good scientist would into the following 3 steps:

Step 1: Demonstrate that since there is no way to prove or disprove God using science, therefore God is beyond the realm of science.

Step 2: Get the audience to agree that since God is beyond science, the subject is therefore “not science” or “unscientific”.

Step 3: Glorify the word “science” and stigmatise the word “unscientific”, making it indistinguishable from words like stupid, ignorant, uninformed, uneducated, irrational, brainless, idiotic, etc.

Voila! In 3 simple steps, you’ve turned every believer into an imbecile and wiped God off the face of the universe! So simple and yet so utterly effective! It’s one of the most impressive magic tricks I’ve ever seen and has fooled literally millions around the world!

The title of the book is really apt. I have finally discovered the nature of the beast they call science!

[Graphic is from gif.com]

Fun With Leeches

Question: How do you get rid of a leech without salt or fire?

I took the kids to Sungai Congkat this morning. It has a fast flowing stream with clear icy waters that is very popular over the weekends. It was deserted on a Friday morning. We were about to step into the water when my son found two small leeches on his leg. Now I have no experience with handling leeches. I had no salt and no fire. So we tried to drown them by keeping his feet under the cold waters. But they remained firmly stuck. I had another idea. You know how leeches walk - head over feet over head. When my son took his foot out of the water they started moving. It's very difficult to remove a leech when its head is stuck to your flesh. So I waited for the precise moment when the head was up to brush it off. It worked! But somehow it ended up next to my son's crotch! And it was inching closer and closer to his nuts!

My son, of course, was going crazy, yelling and screaming! Fortunately he was wearing swimming trunks. So I pressed his trunks to his flesh so the leech wouldn't go under. The leech got on top of his trunks and my son pulled them off frantically. I then got the leech off his swimming trunks with a stick. We tried the same technique with the other leech and it came off as well. It must be a truly memorable experience for my son. Hahaha!

Ideas That Changed the World

Book Review

Ideas That Changed the World
By Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Publisher: Doring Kindersley, 400 pages
(ISBN 0751344141)

Whenever I come to a blank in a form requesting my religion, I am tempted to write Deism. Unfortunately most people will not understand what it means. I did not know the word existed until I came across it in this book by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (FFA). Well, Deism is the “belief in God not dependent on organized religion”. It originated back in 18th century Europe when Empiricism - the idea that “reality is observable and verifiable by sense-perception” - was emerging as a major trend and Sir Isaac Newton had just made key discoveries in the laws of mechanics. This filled people with confidence that the universe was as predictable as a clock and all knowledge was within grasp. Things did not turn out as expected, but the prevailing rationale was that if man could understand God through science and mathematics, why bother with religion?

FFA is Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary, University of London. His book is basically an introduction to some of the thoughts and ideas that had guided our actions throughout history. Its pages are packed with information and thought-provoking illustrations. There are 7 sections covering ideas from 30,000 BC to the present 21st century. The topics explained include existentialism, pragmatism, godless humanism, scientific racism, anarchism, utilitarianism, romanticism, German, British, Chinese and Japanese superiority, chivalry, universal morality and regulating incest.

Why are ideas important? Well, they exert a tremendous influence on human behaviour as history has witnessed. The idea, for instance, that we could assume the power of our enemies by eating their flesh, encouraged cannibalism. The idea that strife is natural and conflicts are creative resulted in highly competitive yet cheerless societies - like a certain neighbouring state of ours. Darwin’s ideas about natural selection were used by some to justify racism and the extermination of “inferior” races like the Jews. The idea of a land promised by God to the Israelites became an excuse for the barbaric treatment of the Palestinians. Ideas offer possibilities on how things can be improved and yet produce frustration when hindered by other conflicting ideas. Ideas can destabilize when differing schools of thought clash.

The following is a sampling of the gems contained in this remarkably compact collection.

The Idea of Microscopic Life-forms
Many people held the idea (and many still do) that if life had not originated with God, it must have arisen from spontaneous generation. That is until Lorenzo Spallanzani proved that germs killed by heating could not re-appear in a sealed environment. The entire food industry was transformed by this discovery. So could life have appeared on earth – a closed system - without divine intervention?

The Idea of American Exceptionalism
Americans have always believed that their country is unique and blessed by God. The national psyche is exemplified by two beloved fictional characters. First, every American hero has to be an outsider like the Lone Ranger and has “got to do what a man has got to do”, including partaking in a little violence now and then. Second, Americans are inherently good-natured like Donald Duck and, despite constantly getting into all manner of trouble, are ultimately seeking the best for all concerned! FFA: “The same sort of self-righteousness and obedience to impulse makes American policy-makers bomb people from time to time – but always with good intentions.”

The Idea of a Weapon to End War
Did you know that Alfred Nobel, the guy who created those noble Nobel prizes, made his fortune from explosives and arms trafficking? His original intention was to promote the development of super-weapons. He reasoned that the only way to stop wars was to create weapons so terrible that no one would dare to start a fight! Alfred was apparently consumed by guilt after accidentally blowing up his own brother in an experiment!

The Idea of Unpredictability
Scientists have been trying for centuries to unveil the secrets of the Universe. They succeeded spectacularly in some ways, failed miserably in other ways. A good example of the latter is meteorology. No matter how much statistical data computers crunch, tomorrow’s weather cannot be predicted with certainty. The gulf between cause and effect appears to be so great as to be insurmountable. Chaos theory had a humbling effect. FFA: “The exposure of chaos looks like another nail in the coffin of “scientism” – yet more evidence that nature really is uncontrollable by human minds … Science seems to be self-undermined, and the faster its progress, the more questions emerge about its own competence. And the less faith most people have in it.”

This is a very well-written book and one that I recommend to all armchair philosophers.