The Problem With Worshipping Darwin

Charles Darwin dramatically changed the face of biological science. In fact, he invented a completely new kind of science: the evolutionary kind. All of western civilization knows this. So what’s the problem? The problem is that because this man gave society his ideas, we worship him for it. He is to us as Aristotle was to the natural philosophers, or at least this is true within the average population. Despite advances in evolutionary science, much of society tends to look back to Darwin for knowledge about evolution instead of looking to modern science and this often leads to people not understanding how natural selection actually works.

But before we get into the realm of people misunderstanding the ideas that led from Darwin, let us first look into the problems with misunderstanding the man himself. Our society likes our heroes to be flawless; the most minor of blemishes on their character and all of their previous work is called into question. Darwin has been elevated to Hero status, and the same expectations have been held to him.

A good portion of The Origin of the Species talks about Darwin’s theories and conclusions as they have to do with women. To those of us that know this part of his work, it is clear that Darwin stood in line with his, male, contemporaries at the time in thinking that women were inferior, and that one could prove this scientifically. Evelleen Richards in “Darwin and the Descent of Women” writes that everything that could be seen as supporting sexism or racism now “is either ignored or tortuously explained away and Darwin himself absolved of political and social intent and his theoretical constructs of ideological taint.” It is of my opinion that even if a man is the most corrupt person in all of history, if his theories are logically sound, his theories are logically sound. Darwin’s theories are logically sound in the terms of the time period from whence they came. And even if Darwin were to be quoted as saying “natural selection is a sham,” it wouldn’t affect the theory because the theory is logically sound. Racism or sexism perceived in Darwin’s writing now doesn’t affect the logic of his theories, and it is therefore unnecessary to defend him.

Now we will step back into the problems of understanding natural selection that arise from the worship of Charles Darwin. The chief reason that people don’t buy into evolution and natural selection is that they don’t understand it. Richard Dawkins says in “The Argument from Personal Incredulity” that in many cases people “misunderstand natural selection to be ‘random’ and ‘meaningless’” which it simply isn’t. In fact, natural selection is about as non-random as nature can get. The problem lies in that many people look to Darwin for how the theories work.

Darwin didn’t know about genes, genetics, or DNA. He didn’t know the mechanisms behind inheritance, he didn’t know what traits were being manifested from. We now know that the only random element of natural selection is when errors crop up when DNA is copied and spliced. These are occurrences on the quantum level, where random is the name of the game. Once the traits are manifested, the game changes and everything becomes non-random.

Another pitfall that comes with only looking to Darwin is that holes in Darwin’s theories may not exist anymore in science. Michael Behe is the father of what he calls “irreducible complexity,” the idea of a structure that would be useless if it hadn’t popped into being perfectly formed. Darwin himself says in the Origin that if an irreducibly complex object was found, natural selection would collapse. Behe uses this statement as proof that his examples refute natural selection; that nature requires a “maker.” Even if Behe’s examples didn’t have problems with them, however, his proof wouldn’t be substantial because the “irreducibly complex” problem can be easily solved.

Dawkins gave a wonderful example of how an apparently irreducibly complex system could evolve by evoking the metaphor of a stone arch. An arch, by itself, is irreducibly complex. Take any one stone out of place, and the whole thing comes crashing down. But the arch wasn’t built all at once; it was built supported by a wooden scaffolding, all evidence of which is completely gone. The scaffolding is the support structure that makes the incomplete arch semi-useful. Once the arch is done, the scaffold is broken down, and the arch stands on its own. Apply this to biology. A structure, such as Behe’s flagellum example may appear to be too complex to evolve. However, we do not see the remnants of supporting structures that allowed limited functionality until the flagellum or other structure was completed. Once a fully-functional device is in the gene pool, the supporting structure becomes superfluous and will eventually disappear; an organism without that supporting structure is metabolically superior. This concept of a biological “scaffold” was not surmised by Darwin, and by looking only to him, we miss the totality of evolutionary science today.

Finally, one last thing is missed when we don’t look beyond Darwin when it comes to natural selection. If one were to look at Darwin’s work, they would conclude that the only things that are able to evolve are living organisms. However, this is untrue. Modern science has learned that non-living molecules such as viruses do indeed evolve over time. In fact, theoretically any replicator (such as DNA, RNA, or something human-created) could undergo a form of natural selection and evolution simply through errors in the replicating process. This general knowledge is not only useful in the realms of inorganic life or AI projects, but is absolutely vital in the realms of public health. Knowing how and why viruses and other pathogens mutate is very important. Below is the first of six videos concerning the fight between humans and bacteria and viruses. The video says that such organisms are the only real threat to our species and talks about the downhill battle which humans will certainly lose.

Darwin had no idea about these implications of his theories. Now that we do, it makes little sense to continue looking to the past.

Darwin was an incredibly influential person. He changed the face of all science and rocked old religion to its core. However, the context in which Darwin’s theories and the theories themselves have changed to the point where the Aristotelian worship of the man is hardly necessary. It is time to move on from Darwin and look at the theories instead of the man.

Works Cited

Behe, Michael. “Darwin’s Black Box.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Dawkins, Richard. “The Argument from Personal Incredulity.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

“Evolution Episode 4: The Evolutionary Arms Race.” Posted by Gravitationalist. .

Richards, Evelleen. “Darwin and the Descent of Women.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

The Present and Future of User Interface

Interactions with computers have made some rather amazing advances. We started with punch cards and ticker tape, and technology has marched forward from there to keyboards and beyond. The last revolution in interface technology was made by Xerox when they invented the first mouse.

The mouse was a simple affair. It was just a box with a single button and two wheels: one for up and down motion, the other for left and right. Xerox was able to demonstrate how this technology could be used with virtual buttons on a computer screen. At the time, this technology was revolutionary; it was a massive step forward in making computers be user-friendly.

Looking at any computer that we use today, it is readily apparent that despite continued and exponential advancement, the basics of user interface have remained largely the same since the mouse first appeared. Our mice these days may use cameras instead of wheels to sense motion, and our buttons may be more numerous and shinier, but nothing has really changed for the average user.

Of course, a new form of interaction has rushed onto the stage: touch technology, the ability to use our fingers to manipulate what we see on a computer screen. This has been further advanced with the concept of multi-touch technology, which allows a computer to take multiple simultaneous touch actions at the same time. The most popular example of this technology is of course, the iPhone, but that is just a drop in the pond compared to what is possible on a larger scale.



The above video is a combination of technical demos demonstrating the power and intuitiveness of a multitouch interface. The display in the video was created by Jeff Han, and uses a simpler and more scalable technology than the iPhone. The iPhone detects touch from changes in electronic capacitance caused by touching the screen. However, this technology is very complicated, and very expensive to implement on a large scale.

As Kate Green writes in this article, Han’s multi-touch technology is different. His screen is a 6 millimeter thick acrylic panel. The edges of this panel are lined with infrared light emitting diodes. The light from these LEDs normally stays inside the acrylic panel, but when the panel is touched, the light is reflected out of the panel. This light is picked up by an infrared camera behind the panel, and the software is easily able to process these globs of light into distinct individual touches.

Another product that takes advantage of this technology is the Microsoft Surface. This device is the size of a table, and it takes advantage of both multitouch and image recognition technology to pull off rather impressive feats.



All this technology is pretty fancy and new. But what’s the next step? The technological world has never been content to just sit back, it’s always looking forward, and the next step will put us firmly in line towards science fiction. Holograms have always been a staple of fictionally advanced worlds, and there have been some rather significant advances in our world. However, one thing that has always seemed to not quite be possible was interactive holography. Well, we can count that dream to be solidly on track with the efforts of a team from the University of Tokyo.



The technology in the video is relatively simple. The hologram is created by an LCD screen being projected into a concave mirror. The hand tracking is created with infrared LEDs reflecting back at the two Wii Remotes (the two Wii Remotes gives the program the ability to sense depth like our eyes). Finally, the finishing touch is the ultrasonic relay which gives the user touch feedback, also called “haptic” feedback. This allows a user of this technology to touch and interact with the hologram, and feel like he or she is indeed touching that device.

What does this mean for the future? We need only to look at science fiction to tell us what’s in store for us. As these separate technologies compress and become more advanced, the devices we use will approach what science fiction has placed into our imaginations. The future is close at hand.

Works Referenced

Greene, Kate. “Touch Screens for Many Fingers.” Technology Review. MIT, January 18, 2007. Link.

Han, Jeff. “Multi-Touch Interaction Research.” New York University. 2006. Link.

Hoshi, Takayuki et al. Touchable Holography. The University of Tokyo. 2009. Link.

“iPod Touch Technology.” iPod Touch. Apple inc. 2009. Link.

Multi-Touch Interaction Experiments. Jefferson Han et al. 2006. Imbedded Video. Link.

Touchable Holography. ShindoaLab. July 16, 2009. YouTube Link.

Antoni Von Leeuwenhoek and Sperm

Hear ye, Hear ye! Come hither all ye peasants and nobles alike and open thine ears and thine eyes. I prithee thee to ponder the complexities of the scientific world that Antoni van Leeuwenhoek has bequeathed upon us! Antoni hath discovered fulsome information about how Humans, animals all things that walk and breathe reproduce! Henceforth our perception of the world shalt forever change today! We have in our midst a vicarious group that hath gone to seek the knowledge from the noble Antoni van Leeuwenhoek himself! These nobles’ art but mere proby’s of the great Antoni but hath absorbed overmany of his principles which they wish to bequeath upon to our unknowing persons in attendance. For a myriad of years, scientists from ‘round this fine earth hath seeked the truth behind human conception. Thither twas an Aristotelian theory that semen from the male specimen cometh forth to the female body and the female blood in the uterus, the coagulation, durst say, created the wee child! Our own Antoni hath reformed this position with some most noble research in the field. Antoni hath doth said that emen when collected immediately after ejaculation, hath overmany of “animalcules with long tails.” These animicules cometh and impregnate the female egg. The sperm needs the egg in order to grow and receivith nourishment inside the womb. So cometh hither all and gather ‘round to hear the findings from the probys of Antoni Himself! HUZZAH!




"Lens on Leeuwenhoek: How he made his tiny lenses." Lens on Leeuwenhoek: Welcome to the
life, times, and accomplishments of Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632 - 1723). Web. 20 Oct.
2009. .


"The process of fertilization and its stages." Pontificia Academia Pro Vita. Web. 20 Oct. 2009.
colombo/colombo〈=english>.

A Few Things That Didn't Make the Cut

Here are a few videos that I thought would be fantastic to share, but I couldn't really connect.

Video Games and Sensationalism

Most gamers know who Jack Thomson is. For those of you who don't, he is a disbarred lawyer that campaigns for the banning of games with violent and sexual content in order to protect the interests of children.

At first glance, this doesn't seem like a bad thing. Surely content should be restricted like in the movies, so that kids do not see images that are too extreme. Thomson's take on this stance is slightly twisted, and his logic fails on two points.

First of all, he points the finger at game publishers for pushing inappropriate and obscene content at kids through games such as Grand Theft Auto. These games are already rated "Mature" and aren't sold to kids. Selling a Mature rated game to a minor at major video game retailers such as GameStop is often a fireable offense.

Secondly, he also points his fingers at games like The Sims for providing nudity to players. Thomson claims that The Sims contains nudity; however, anybody who has played a Sims game knows that whenever a character would be naked they are in fact blurred out with the classic censoring pixilation.

Thomson continues to press that if one modified the game, the pixilating blur could be removed to reveal the naked models underneath. But, much to the chagrin of Thomson's argument, this claim fails on two fronts. Not only does removing the pixilation show nothing more than smooth, doll-like bodies on the Sims characters, but the player must actively modify the game in order to do so. This means that not only is the sexually obscene content non-existant, but that the players must go out of their way to realize this. With approximately the same amount of effort, a player could find a nude skin for those characters, but it would be absurd to lay blame against EA for something like that.

Thomson is only a small part of the sea of sensationalism, disinformation, and outright lies in the videogame censorship camp. They prey upon clueless parents in order to ramp up fear and gain support. Below is Fox News finely displaying such tactics.

Throughout the 20 and 21st century, society has always pushed back against the younger generation's "hip new thing." At one point, it was novels. Then it was comic books. In the 50s and 60s it was rock music. Now, videogames are the scapegoat for everything wrong with today's youth, showing that technology is simply a small facet of culture and, like all new things to a culture, will be treated with mistrust if it is not understood.

References:

"Video Game Cases – The Sims 2." JackThomson.org. 9/2/09 http://www.jackthompson.org/video_game_cases/the_sims_2.htm