Weekend Post - Changing your mind

A lot of people seem to think that changing your mind is a sign of weakness. It offends their sense of pride to think that they might have been wrong about something. I think that’s silly. Changing your mind, based on reason, rational discourse and, above all, new evidence is a perfectly respectable thing. That’s how humanity makes progress.

Unfortunately the pressure to stick with existing beliefs can be intense. We all know the stories about the Roman Catholic Church’s persecution of Galileo for his support of the Copernican view that the Earth rotated around the Sun, not the other way round. He even spent the last decade of his life under house arrest for suggesting such a thing, after being bullied into recanting his scientific beliefs. For 75 years after his death the Church banned the printing of any of his works all because they couldn’t bear the thought that they might be wrong about the nature of the solar system. OK, it was probably more because they realised that once one belief was undermined then nothing was sacred any longer. All their other beliefs might be questioned.

The other extreme is a story told by Richard Dawkins in his best-selling book, The God Delusion. He describes an occasion when he was a student. An elderly and highly respected professor attended a lecture at which a visiting American academic publicly disproved the professor’s cherished theory. According to Dawkins, who was also at the lecture, instead of arguing with the American, or just ignoring his ideas, the elderly professor walked right to the front of the lecture hall, shook the visitor firmly by the hand and loudly said “My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.”

Clearly I’m not going to say that all scientists are as generous and open-minded and this. Scientists aren’t immune from arrogance and self-deception but their method is. The nature of the scientific method is that someone proposes a hypothesis, scientists decide how to test it and then do their level best to disprove it. Its important to understand that they do NOT try to prove the theory, they actively try to disprove it.

In fact that’s one of the key tests of whether something is genuinely scientific or not. Just ask yourself, can an idea be disproved? That’s why Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic theories aren’t science, it’s why astrology isn’t scientific and why, despite what some political “scientists” will tell you, Marxism is many things but scientific isn’t one of them. On the other hand, Einstein’s theories of Relativity could be disproven tomorrow, they just haven’t been yet. It’s why Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection is scientific. It’s why evolution in general is a scientific concept. All it would take is a single fossil to be found in the wrong sequence and the idea would need to be reconsidered. That hasn’t happened yet.

The ability to change your mind is critical in science. Just a couple of weeks ago the New York Times published an article by Professor Richard Muller of University of California, Berkeley, a so-called “climate change skeptic” who had undergone a change of mind. Having previously identified problems with some of the research into global warming, he then undertook a thorough review of the evidence and found himself changing his mind. He said:

“I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

His research took into account all the objections the various climate change deniers had recently raised but he was able to reject them all. He also then published all of his findings online so the rest of us can review them as well if we want. (You should have a look, it includes data from Botswana as well.)

I don’t want this to be about climate change, that’s another issue, the point is that this scientist did what science demands. He saw the evidence, in fact he gathered much of it, he analyzed it thoroughly and saw that in certain areas his skepticism was misplaced. Like Dawkins’ professor he did the honorable thing and admitted he had been mistaken and changed his mind.

Of course life would be a lot simpler if we all had the courage to do this. I know from personal experience that my political views evolved and there came a point when I had to renounce certain labels I had used to describe my politics. It wasn’t easy to do this. I was once called a traitor for changing my mind. And that’s just politics. When certain religious groups will cheerfully have you condemned to death for changing your mind and either adopting a different religion, or worse still, abandoning superstition entirely, I can understand why many people decide to keep it secret. They continue to regularly visit their place of worship and go through the motions even though deep down they don’t believe in the core beliefs any more. This internal psychological dissonance is toxic.

Maybe if all political, religious and cultural groups were willing to accept that changing one’s mind is a natural and inevitable thing then life might be a little more tolerable. We might have slightly fewer excommunications, jihads, fatwas and killings. We might even be a bit more rational.

Weekend Post - Theories

Does anyone deny gravity? Is there anyone who believes that gravity doesn’t exist, that things aren’t somehow attracted to massive objects and, if possible, move towards them? Are there gravity-deniers out there prepared to jump off a high building to prove their point?

Of course not. No sane person denies the facts of gravity. But that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been debate about HOW gravity works. The first great description of gravity came from Isaac Newton who described how objects attract each other and was the first to describe the mathematics of it. His “Inverse Square Law” described how gravity’s strength diminishes in proportion to the square of the distance between two objects. Double your distance from a large object and the gravitation attraction will only be one quarter of what it was. At ten times the distance the gravity will be a mere hundredth of what it was. All of this is true, certainly true enough for everyday purposes. True enough for getting spacecraft to the moon and back. True enough for almost all circumstances.

It explains things like the tides. Few people who’ve travelled to the coast have thought much about tides, why the sea level rises and falls twice a day and I suspect most people find it surprising that the water is being pulled away from the center of the Earth by the gravitational attraction of the moon. They would find it even more perplexing that the tide rises on both the side closest to the Moon AND the side furthest away. How can that be? (The first person to email me the correct explanation will get a prize.)

The problem is that although Newton described the mathematics of gravity he didn’t explain how it actually happened. He referred to objects attracting each other but didn’t say how they do this. How can a star like our Sun exert an instantaneous force on a planet like Earth from such an enormous distance? Newton didn’t know.

C/o Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_theory_of_relativity

It took a couple of centuries for a convincing explanation to come along. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity contained a lengthy list of new ideas but perhaps the most revolutionary was that space, the three-dimensional framework within which we operate, is indistinguishable from a fourth dimension, time. Einstein and his followers talk a lot about “space-time”, a combination of the three dimensions of space that we know and another dimension that reflects time. The less well-known thing is this was how Einstein was able to explain what gravity actually was. He suggested that space-time is curved. The reason that satellites move in a curve around the earth is because the mass of the Earth has warped the space-time through which the satellite moves. Imagine water circulating around a bath plughole and you get an idea of what it would look like if we could see in 4 dimensions. The satellite is actually taking the easiest route. This also explains how gravitational attraction appears to happen faster than the speed of light. Gravity is no longer an action that happens over a distance, it’s an object just following the simplest path.

Here’s the key point. Einstein’s “Theory” of General Relativity is a theory. It’s a way of explaining thing, including gravity. There is no “theory of gravity” because there’s no need. Gravity is like radiation, reproduction and rain, we don’t need proof that these things exist, the evidence is overwhelming. Theories are ways of explaining WHY and HOW known things happen, not that they DO happen.

The controversy isn’t with gravity, it’s with the other great known fact. Evolution.

Evolution happens, it’s as simple as that. It’s been observed in a wide variety of creatures, their characteristics adapting gradually as a result of changes in their environment. That isn’t denied by anyone who’s seen the evidence. Fossils show that creatures in the past were different to similar creatures today and the further back you go in the fossil record, the bigger the differences are.

There is no “theory of evolution” just like there’s no “theory of gravity”. There ARE however theories of HOW and WHY evolution happens and what makes species gradually change. So far, just as Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity explains gravity well, the best explanation we have for evolution is Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. Despite what you might think, and unlike Einstein’s theory, Darwin’s suggestion is remarkably simple to understand. It has only two basic ideas. When species reproduce they combine their genes randomly and this occasionally leads to offspring with particular strengths or weaknesses. The second element is just as simple to understand. Those random variations that give the offspring a better chance of reproducing and passing on his or her genes to the next generation are most likely to stick around. That’s all there is to it. Over time and thousands of generations these slight changes bring about a much bigger overall change to the species as a whole.

So far, just like Einstein’s theory, Darwin’s has shown considerable strength. Both make predictions that can be tested and so far no test of either theory has failed. Of course it might fail tomorrow and then we’ll need to come up with a new, better theory but so far there’s no need.

For now, despite what certain belief-based groups will tell you, we can stick with both General Relativity and Natural Selection as the best theories we have to explain the FACTS of gravity and evolution.

Weekend Post - Two types of thinking?

It’s been said that there are two types of people: those that divide humanity into two types and those that don’t.

Crudely dividing humanity into “types” is always a very dangerous pastime. Despite what some will say you can’t divide humanity into black and white, straight or gay or even male or female. In all cases there are people in between. One of the most ridiculous books in recent years was entitled “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” by “Dr” John Gray. To my shame I have a copy of this fatuous book beside me as I write this. No, I didn’t pay for it. Nor did I steal it.

I put the “Dr” in quotes for the simple reason that he doesn’t have a real doctorate. His obtained his PhD from Colombia Pacific University, a now closed diploma mill. I know I risk being accused of an “ad hominem” attack but can you trust the work of a person who buys a fake degree and who got his first two degrees from that fabulous old fraud, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?

Whether you can or not you can certainly reject his ridiculously simplistic, crude and wholly unscientific idea that men are basically cavemen and women are conversationalists and that the way they communicate is radically different. Some may argue that I’m also being simplistic but too bad. Simplistic ideas can only be described simplistically.

Of course I’m not going to deny that there are differences between women and men, between girls and boys, of course there are. No matter how strong our liberal convictions may be, anyone who’s had kids knows that at least part of the nature of girls and boys is biological. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give them all equal opportunities and expose them to the same experiences and influences, but it genuinely helps to understand the differences that affect them.

I suggest that instead of reading fake, pseudoscientific claptrap like Gray’s book you read instead a book by Steven Pinker called The Blank Slate (available in all good book shops or online). My favourite quote from the book (also beside me as I write and this one I DID pay for) discusses the differences between men and woman and goes like this:

“So men are not from Mars, nor are women from Venus. Men and women are from Africa, the cradle of our evolution, where they evolved together as a single species.”

The evidence is that the differences between the minds of men and women are trivial at most and are only based on averages. Although men tend to be slightly better at three-dimensional reasoning than women this is only on average. There are plenty of women who can easily reverse a car, just slightly more men. There are plenty of men who demonstrate empathy, just more empathetic women. The most interesting difference is that on many measures men are more varied than women and are more often found at the extremes. Male mathematical geniuses outnumber their female counterparts but there are also many more men and boys with autism than girls.

A recent study, published in Science, and conducted by the University of British Columbia in Canada looked at the two types of thinking that humans demonstrate. The first is intuitive, the other analytical. The intuitive process makes snap judgments based on “mental shortcuts”, the analytical process is the one that takes longer to consider things in a more “reasoned” manner. The Los Angeles Times gave one of the questions the study had used as an example. See how you answer it.

“A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”

Most people intuitively respond by saying the ball costs 10 cents but it’s only when they think analytically that they realize their mistake. The answer is 5 cents. Go back and think about it again if you doubt this.

We all have both of these thought processes and each of them has their role to play. When our distant ancestors were in the bush and they heard a rustling sound from behind the grass they had to act intuitively. They didn’t have the time to think analytically, it could be a lion, they had to act intuitively. Analytical thinking in those circumstances only benefits the hungry lion. Analytical thinking is good when you have the time to indulge in it.

The focus of this study was controversial to some. It looked at religious belief and found that people who think more analytically were less likely to be religious. Religious belief was much more often found in people who thought more intuitively.

What this means for religious belief I’ll leave up to you. It doesn’t mean religion is right or wrong, it just helps us to understand where beliefs based on faith come from. It’s clear that they certainly don’t come from reason.

Weekend Post - Why do zebras have stripes?

Why do zebras have stripes? New research suggests it might be more complicated than you think.

While it would be nice to think that zebras have stripes just so our country can have a cool national symbol I’m afraid we can be that self-centered. The zebra came first.

Let’s begin with an age-old question. Is a zebra a white horse with black stripes, or a black horse with white stripes? We now know the answer. It turns out that when they’re growing in their mother’s uterus zebras begin dark-skinned but develop white stripes before they’re born. You have to wonder why this would happen. What advantages does it offer the baby zebra to invest all that energy into growing such a complicated pattern instead of growing stronger bones, a bigger brain or stronger muscles.

Image c/o Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zebra_camouflage.jpg

Camouflage is an obvious answer. It might seem surprising to those of us who live in a country with lots of zebras but most people around the world find it shocking to think that a zebra’s stripes might offer it camouflage. How on earth, they wonder, can an animal with such a vivid pattern of such contrasting colors hide in a grey, green and brown environment? That’s until you see them in the wild and you realize that black and white merges at a distance to grey, providing excellent cover in grass, trees and bush.

Clearly that’s something that gives an individual zebra a chance at avoiding lions. Experts estimate that around 4-5 million years ago the first zebras began to appear. Presumably the first horse-like creatures with a hint of stripes must have had a slight advantage over their non-striped cousins. Critically, it must have given them a greater chance of surviving long enough to pass on their genes to their offspring. The unfortunate ones without the stripes would have been more likely to be visible in the bush and provide lions with lunch. Nature, in effect, selected the striped ones to pass on their improved genes. That’s why this type of evolution is called “natural selection”. It’s not a breeder, supernatural or not, who does the selecting, nature does it.

However, it might be a bit more complicated than just being able to hide from lions in long grass. Scientists from Sweden and Hungary recently came up with another reason why stripes might be useful. Based on some simple experiments they found evidence that stripes protect zebras from blood-sucking insects like horseflies.

They started with the knowledge that horseflies are more attracted to darker horses than to paler ones. They wondered whether stripes might somehow disrupt the attraction the dark skins held for the blood-sucking flies. That’s exactly what they found.

The researchers placed various boards of different colors and patterns in the fields surrounding a horse farm in Hungary. These boards were all covered in glue that trapped any flies that landed on them. At the end of the day the researchers just had to count the trapped flies to see which pattern attracted the most. They expected to see most flies on the darker boards, least on the palest and the stripy boards somewhere in between.

In fact they did confirm that darker boards seem to attract more flies but the surprising thing was that stripes were even less attractive to the flies than a white board. When they tried to work out which pattern of stripes were least attractive they discovered that it was exactly the pattern you find on a zebra.

So now it’s a bit more complicated. Stripes provide camouflage and enable the zebra effectively to hide from predators but they also might provide protection against bites. For this new factor to be plausible the researchers need to suggest a way in which this offers the zebras a greater chance of having babies than another that gets bitten more. The spread of disease is an obvious possibility. Fewer fly bites probably means a lower chance of fatal disease.

But there’s more than just this. Other scientists have suggested that stripes enable a herd of zebras to more effectively confuse predators and enhance their chance of escape. It’s even been suggested that the stripes are a complex form of heat regulation.

This is a great example of how evolutionary pressure is complex and often involves a wide variety of influences. It’s one of the things that makes science so wonderfully interesting. Easy, simple answers are often just too easy and too simple. Science is like the rest of life and truth. Deliciously complex.

Sources

You can see the BBC coverage of the story see here. A bit more detail can be seen at The Journal of Experimental Biology here. For a bit of background on the evolution of the horse see the Wikipedia page here. For more detail on the zebra see here.

Weekend Post - Evolution is happening all around us, we just don’t see it.

Evolution is happening all around us, we just don’t see it.

The problem with witnessing evolution happening is that it’s slow. VERY slow. Not as slow as mountain formation and continental drift but nevertheless really, really slow.

Let’s just recap. Evolution is the slow change in form of a species over multiple generations. Each generation perhaps changes a little, tiny, almost invisible amount but after many generations a noticeable change can be seen.

The changes happen because of the way that plants and animals reproduce. Almost all of them reproduce sexually. Two parents share their genetic information to produce a child. Some of the mother’s characteristics show up in the child, some of the father’s but occasionally there’s an error in the mix and strange things emerge, some of them good, others bad. Every so often one crops up that gives the child an advantage, the sort of advantage that will improve his or her chances of reproducing and passing on that advantage to their offspring. Nature, in effect, selects that child to pass on his or her genes more than a child without the advantage. That’s what Darwin called Natural Selection.

The problem with witnessing human evolution is that most of us don’t even consider making babies for at least 20 years. Even those of us who are VERY lucky will only ever see perhaps 7 generations in our family. I for instance met my great-grandparents and with luck I might meet my own great-grandchildren but seven generations isn’t enough for any major change in form to emerge.

That’s why geneticists are forced to choose other species to examine, ones that breed much more rapidly. Their favourite is the fruit fly. That’s because they can breed only 10 days after birth, allowing dozens of generations to be examined in a year. Also, even though they have an extremely simple genetic make-up with only 4 chromosomes (humans have 23) they nevertheless share most of the genes for disease that humans possess.

Perhaps the most famous example of evolution actually being observed was the Peppered Moth. This was a common moth in England that was normally white with black speckles but a tiny proportion were born much darker. The paler moths were clearly at an advantage when they rested on the pale, lichen-covered trees they called home and the darker ones never lasted very long before predatory birds had them for lunch.

As the Industrial Revolution began and the countryside became more and more polluted it was noticed that over many generations the moths gradually changed their coloring to match the increasingly darkened environment. Eventually 98% of the moths were born black. Clearly the moths with the paler coloring became increasingly visible to the birds that ate them and the ones who happened to be darker were more likely to avoid the birds. The darker ones passed on this genetic advantage to their children and over time almost the entire population became dark.

The Peppered Moth: Before (Picture taken by Olaf Leillinger)

The Peppered Moth: After (Picture taken by Olaf Leillinger)

Rather wonderfully, when the pollution finally subsided and the environment became paler again, the moths gradually changed back to their original color. Although this wasn’t a change of species into another it certainly demonstrated that the form of a species can change remarkably rapidly when the environment demands it.

Similar effects have been seen in fish, for instance the South American guppy, again with a fairly rapid change in their camouflage. As with the Peppered Moth camouflage is a great way of staying alive, or of being eaten by a predator if it fails, before you get a chance to pass on your genes.

What about humans? Are genetic mutations going on right now that might give some people an advantage? Certainyly. There’s a town called Limone sul Garda in Italy where a small proportion of the community have a mutated version of a protein that protects them against cardiovascular disease. They’ve even been able to trace the mutation back 300 years to the original “mutant”, a man called Giovanni Pomarelli. Drug companies are doing their best to make an artificial version of the protein that you and I can take. It’s either that or we send our children to that town in Italy to make babies with Signor Pomorelli’s descendants and get the gene into our family as well.

Sources

For a good introduction to evolution see the Wikipedia page here. That page contains a summary of Natural Selection but there's a fuller description here.

If you want to know more about the fruit fly see the Wikipedia page here. For details on their disease gene similarity to humans see here.

There's a very good summary of the evolution of the Peppered Moth here. Details of the micro-evolution of the South American guppy can be seen here and a profile of the biologist concerned, John Endler here.

Finally you can see details of the fascinating advantageous mutation in Italy here and here.

Weekend Post - Faster than light?

There might be a revolution in science any moment now. Or maybe not.

A few weeks ago Italian scientists said that they thought they’d broken one of the fundamental laws of nature. They claimed that they had managed to force a beam of particles to travel faster than the speed of light. Admittedly only very slightly faster than light, but even a little bit would have been enough. Their beam of neutrinos had travelled all the way from the CERN laboratory in Geneva, a trip of 730km, across the border into Italy and they arrived 60 billionths of a second earlier than light would have covered the same distance. If this is true, if something really can travel faster than light, faster than 300,000 kilometers per second, then our understanding of the universe has been incomplete. After the results were announced the international media was full of headlines asking "Was Einstein wrong?"

If true, this won’t be the first time that a revolution like this has occurred in science. When Einstein first proposed his laws of relativity there was an enormous backlash against them because they contradicted the theories of Isaac Newton and the scientific establishment of the time couldn’t accept that. However, a few experiments later it was found that Einstein was right and that Newton was out-dated. Of course that doesn’t mean Newton’s theories and equations aren’t relevant, they still are in almost all circumstances. Engineers building bridges, scientists launching spacecraft, even soldiers firing guns all use Newton’s laws and they work just fine for them. It’s only in extreme circumstances that Newton’s laws stop working and Einstein’s have to be used instead.

What might have happened in Italy is something similar. Nobody is actually saying that Einstein’s theories were wrong, it’s just that they might have been only 99% correct, they might not explain everything, there might be things that his theories don’t predict or explain.

Or, and this is much more likely, the results from Italy might just be wrong. To their credit the Italian scientists have published their results and have given the international scientific community the opportunity to tear them to pieces. That’s the way the scientific process works. You have an idea, you test it, you publish your results and your colleagues do their best to find a flaw in what you’ve done. It’s not a competition, it’s just a rigorous way of testing ideas. Unlike supernatural belief systems, criticism and testing are welcomed as ways to get closer to the truth.

One of the least well understood aspects of the scientific method is that there’s a difference between facts and explanations. Gravity, for instance, is a fact. If you’re unsure, feel free to lean too far out of a top floor window and in the next few seconds you’ll be convinced. Similarly evolution is a fact. It’s been seen in a variety of quickly reproducing animals over several generations. It can be seen in fruit flies, moths and fish. These aren’t denied by anyone who has seen the facts. They don’t need any more proof. Things fall to the ground, planets are attracted to stars, animals gradually change their form to adapt to their environment over time.

What’s differs are the possible explanations. With gravity, Newton just proposed that there was an attraction between bodies but he couldn’t explain how that might happen, he just came up with rather wonderful equations to explain and predict it. But those ideas later turned out to be very slightly imperfect. That’s when Einstein came along with the idea that the structure of space and time was curved by matter. That was a better explanation of everything and filled the gaps in Newton’s explanation. A step forward. Likewise with evolution. Initially we were told that species didn’t naturally change, they were static. Then biologists began to notice what they called “speciation”, that what once identical species seemed to have changed their form to adapt to different environments. Everyone who’s seen the evidence agrees that species adapt over time, the evidence for that is clear. Then Darwin came along with his explanation, natural selection. So far, that’s the best explanation we have for the variety and adaptation of species, humans included. Maybe one day another scientist will come up with an improved explanation. So far there doesn’t seem to be a need, Darwin’s theory appears to be holding out perfectly well, just like Einstein’s.

That’s the wonderful thing about science. Whether the Italian results are right or wrong, scientists will be happy. If Einstein’s ideas continue to adequately explain things then we’re happy. If however, there’s something his theories can’t explain? Fantastic, the universe is even more marvelous and complex than we thought already.

Sources

There's a good summary of the experiment in Nature. You can see the reaction to this story by doing a Google search like this.

You can see a summary of Newton and his theories here and of Einstein here. The experiments by Sir Arthur Eddington that provided the first experimental support are discussed in Eddington's biography here.

For a summary of the scientific method see here. If you're feeling a bit more adventurous read this on Karl Popper and "empirical falsification" as the basis of science. Learn that and you understand it all.

For background on Darwin and natural selection as his explanation for evolution see here.

Evolution is as true as gravity

In response to a very uninformed letter to Mmegi, entitled "We have never been gorillas".

-----

Your correspondent, Shine Namane, who wrote a letter last Friday entitled "We have never been gorillas" doesn't seem to understand anything about evolution.

To begin with he suggests that evolution has taught us that human beings were "originally a gorilla or a chimpanzee". This is simply not true. Our current understanding of humanity's origins is that both humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor, another species that is now extinct. Nobody in the world believes we're descended from chimps or gorillas.

He also suggests that "christians believe that evolution is a lie". Again untrue. The Roman Catholic church accepts evolution. So do the Anglicans and Methodists. It's actually a fairly small set of fundamental biblical literalists who believe that the Bible accurately describes the origins of either the universe or life.

He also seems to overlook, or perhaps he simply hasn't seen, the vast amount of evidence for evolution. Museums around the world are stocked with transitional fossils, the DNA evidence is overwhelming and evolution can even be seen to happen in certain species that conveniently reproduce very quickly.

Mmegi readers shouldn't infer from Mr Namane's letter that there is any real intellectual and academic opposition to evolution. Darwin's theory of natural selection is as respected as Newton's theory of gravity or Einstein's theories of relativity.

Finally, far from being "degrading", "ridiculous" and "a lie", a truthful understanding of our origins can only give us a better sense of our place in nature, something that the enlightened see as magnificent, awesome and uplifting.

Science & religion - Botswana Guardian

My recent letter celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and 150th anniversary the publication of his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection seems to have stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest.

A couple of people have written in subsequently attempting, rather feebly, to argue against the wealth of evidence that supports Darwin’s breakthrough in our understanding of our origins. They have come up with the usual rubbish that Darwin was a racist and that his theory has turned out not to be 100% correct.

On the charge of racism I must point out that Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery and committed to, what was in those times, a radical philosophy based on the essential equality of all people, regardless of “race”. One key implication of his theory that we are all descended from a common ancestry is that regardless of our superficial differences we are all fundamentally the same, beneath the skin. His language may have been “of his time” but his sentiments were definitely not.

Of course his theories weren't perfectly correct. He wasn’t 100% correct but neither were Newton, Einstein or indeed any other scientist. Darwin existed long before we really began to understand genetics so he can't really be blamed for not grasping what we now know. Neither can Newton be blamed for not foreseeing Einstein's discoveries centuries before they emerged.

All a scientist can hope to do is to take us one step further towards understanding the universe a little better. Darwin was visionary enough to do this.

I think it's a bit hypocritical for religious zealots to criticise science and progress using nothing more than ancient scriptures and legends. I don’t think Darwin should be criticised by people who can only find answers in ancient superstitious texts that, amongst other things, support slavery, sacrificing children and smiting infidels and heretics.

Stephen Jay Gould, the paleontologist and biologist, stated that science and religion are “non-overlapping magisteria”. He means that the two are so separate that they can’t really be argued together. One is based on logic, reason and evidence, the other is based on legend, superstition and assumption. They are like oil and water and can’t be mixed. I actually disagree, I think that many of the claims of religion CAN be tested. We can test, for instance, the effect of prayer to see if people who are prayed for get better more quickly than those who aren’t (they don’t by the way).

However I do sometimes think that certain arguments between science and religion are a waste of time. Logic conflicts with illogic. Reason fundamentally conflicts with superstition. One actively seeks facts, the other seems often to be devoted to fiction.

See, there IS hope...

Darwin Day - Botswana Guardian

Thursday 12th February 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and this year is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s great work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

This is surely something to celebrate.

Very few scientists or thinkers have been able to revolutionise the way we think about our origins, our planet and our future. Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin are probably the two that have had the greatest impact of them all. Each of them changed our entire world-view and what’s more, each of them has repeatedly been proved largely correct. The nature of science is itself evolutionary, theories are slowly adjusted, corrected and redirected but both Einstein and Darwin have been shown to be fundamentally correct.

Darwin’s discovery of natural selection as an explanation for our origins was truly remarkable. It explained, as some had already thought, that superstition was no longer needed to explain our origins. Darwin’s alternative explanation was based on the observation that each generation varies slightly from it’s parents and the one best suited to it’s environment will be the one most likely to pass on it’s genes to it’s children. Over many generations the species will adapt slightly to become more suited to it’s environment. Nature, not a mystical being, selects who will pass on their genes. It’s elegant, scientific and, above all, demonstrably true.

Despite what some religious groups maintain, nobody has been able to disprove the theory. The evidence is there in the fossil record, showing an enormous picture of gradual change over the millions of years life has existed on Earth. Huge numbers of so-called “transitional fossils” have been found, showing the forms of life that occurred between other forms, bridging the gaps between the two.

Evidence for evolution can be seen around us. Our bodes are so obviously similar to other creatures, our DNA is so closely related to our ape cousins, even some of the ways we behave demonstrate our origins.

Evolution can even be seen around us. Tragically HIV is one of the best examples of an evolving organism. HIV has evolved in the years we’ve know of it’s existence. We all know about growing antibiotic resistance, the difficulty in fighting TB and malaria, all of those are examples of evolution in action. Why are we so special that it hasn’t happened to us as well? It takes us perhaps 20-30 years before we reproduce whereas bacteria do it in minutes. It’s no surprise that it’s not obvious to the naked eye how humans evolve.

Unfortunately poor Darwin had his memory tarnished by a series of liars following his death. Despite what you night hear, Darwin didn’t convert to religion on his deathbed, he didn’t say an eye couldn’t emerge by natural selection and he didn’t change his mind about evolution at any point. All those stories were made up by liars who weren’t prepared to accept the evidence.

As has been said before, “Darwin took us to a hilltop from which we could look back and see the way we came.” His discovery improved humanity enormously. We should celebrate Darwin and everything he did for us. Happy Birthday Charles.