Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

Say You Want An Evolution

Confluence of two things: Julia told me last night about college professors in Texas who wanted a special edition for their biology textbooks, with references to evolution omitted. Then as seen in the break room, this morning's SF Chronicle had a front-page article about the rise of anti-evolution teachings in U.S. schools.

Apparently I'm anti-anti-anti-evolution, or three steps removed from Darwin.

To begin with, you have the people who publish, teach, learn, and accept various evolutionary theories. As a basic framework of scientific understanding, I'm completely down with this.

Then you have the anti-evolution people, who have deeply held religious objections to Darwin's teachings. (Or who claim to have scientific objections that are really a thinly-masked subterfuge for promulgating their religion. Or, for matter, who really do have genuine scientific objections, since - and here I'll admit a very shallow knowledge base, but still my understanding is that there's plenty to object to.)

Then you have the anti-anti-evolution people, who heap scorn on the religious objectors and equally ardently object to the idea that those people would have any influence in what we choose to teach.

This is where I come in, as someone who can't believe how (ironically) dogmatic the former group becomes, when they get so blanketly dismissive of anyone who would dare to question Darwin's teachings or fail to acknowledge these as the end-all, be-all of biological learning and teaching. Here, (as mentioned weeks ago, in a post where I regret prematurely turning off comments prematurely thanks to one particular spam outbreak) I really do think a lot of people in both groups are being shamefully scientifically illiterate.

Various principles of evolution are theories, highly useful but imperfect theories, that I'd consider in the same context as Newtonian mechanics, Freudian psychology, or the ideal gas law. (That last one may still be theoretically flawless, with the obvious out being that in real life none of the gases you'd work with is ideal.)

Granted, I don't actually know of any religious objection to Newtonian mechanics or to the ideal gas law. (I could imagine religious objections to a few of Freud's teachings...) Even so, if you were ever to teach any of these to students as the literal complete truth, you'd be doing them a disservice. To be sure, there's a Keep It Simple, Stupid element, but even so, they'll grow up to be scientifically illiterate if they don't understand that what they're in the process of learning is an oversimplification with some inaccuracies that they'll find out about later. (But should be encouraged to think through and question now, if their curiosity and critical thinking skills take them that way.)

Given all that, suppose for the sake of argument that you're a deeply religious Christian literalist, either about to study evolution yourself or about to see your kids studying it. Which approach is more likely to lead you at least to open your mind to the concepts at play: A straight-up, "This is truth" sort of teaching, or a more historical "This is what Charles Darwin believed to be true, this is how subsequent scientists modified these theories, and here's why it was reasonable for them to believe it"?

Having said all that, it pains me to think of people studying biology, perhaps even getting college degrees in it, without even broaching the subject of evolution. You have to learn that, even if only in a history-of-science perspective, to understand what your colleagues believe, why these beliefs may be imperfect, and what sort of analytical tools you'd use to try to square the seeming inconsistencies.

Maybe the "intelligent design" people have some reason to their theories. (I refuse to engage in any discussion of the merits of any particular theory because I just don't know enough.) I'd think (once you've already reached a level of understanding of the evolutionary teachings that were conventional wisdom) you could learn a lot from studying these theories and critically evaluating them, just as a physicist would learn a lot from seeing how quantum mechanics changes what we thought was true in the Newtonian framework, how modern psychological theories (and more importantly empirical evidence) relate to or possibly contradict what Freud taught.

I suppose the big objection to whatever you teach beyond evolution is the relative lack of empirical evidence, or more importantly the lack of correlation between why (e.g.) a Creationist believes something (faith, teachings, tradition, etc.) and whether empirical evidence supports that believe. Even so, you will have a situation where the student asks, "But teacher, I learned from the Bible that [...], isn't there a contradiction?"

And then, well, what if there is a contradiction? If you believe that every word in the Bible is literally true as written, then surely you'd have found seeming contradictions long before evolution even came up anyway. Even so, what better opportunity to teach kids critical thinking skills, how to evaluate empirical evidence, and so on? Let them draw their own conclusions, as long as they understand what the theories are.

(But would let them draw their own conclusions imply that if kids think 2 + 2 = 5, you have to humor them? Well, no. Instead of boring you with 10,000 words on the difference between pure theoretical math and experimental science, I'll just tell you to imagine putting two apples in front of your kids and then putting two other apples in front of your kids. If they somehow see five apples there, then their problems go way beyond anything worth talking about here.)

Posted by Matt Bruce at November 30, 2004 01:21 PM