Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge
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DARWIN'S LAST BOOK, on worms, received this commentary in the
October 1881 Punch. (The illustration does not appear in the book under
review.)
STEPHEN JAY GOULD
DARWIN ON TRIAL,
by Phillip F.
Johnson. Washington, D.C., Regnery Gateway, 1991 ($19.95).
I teach a course at Harvard with philosopher Robert Nozick and lawyer Alan
Dershowitz. We take major issues engaged by each of our professions- from
abortion to racism to right-to-die-and we try to explore and integrate our
various approaches. We raise many questions and reach no solutions.
Clearly, I believe in this interdisciplinary exercise, and I accept the
enlightenment that intelligent outsiders can bring to the
puzzles of a discipline. The differences in approach
are so fascinating- and each valid in its own realm. Philosophers will dissect
the logic of an argument, an exercise devoid of empirical content, well past
the point of glaze over scientific eyes (and here I blame scientists for
their parochiality, for all the world's empirics cannot save an argument
falsely formulated). Lawyers face a still different problem that makes their
enterprise even more divergent from science-and for two major reasons.
First, the law must reach a decision even when insufficient evidence exists
for confident judgment (Scientists often err in the opposite direction of
overcaution, even when the evidence is compelling, if not watertight.) Thus,
in capital cases, the law must free a probably guilty man whose malfeasance
cannot be proved beyond a doubt (a moral principle that seems admirable to
me but would not work well in science). We operate with probabilities; the
law must often traffic in absolutes.
Second, there is no "natural law" waiting to be discovered "out there" (pace
Clarence Thomas in his recent testimony). Legal systems are human inventions,
based on a history of human thought and practice. Consequently, the law gives
decisive weight to the history of its own development-hence the rule of precedent
in deciding cases. Scientists work in an opposite way: we search continually
for new signals from nature to invalidate a history of past argument. (As
a sometime historian of science, I wish that scientists, like lawyers, would
pay more attention to, and have more reverence for, their pasts-but I understand
why this is not likely to happen.)
Phillip F. Johnson is a law professor at Berkeley and "a philosophical theist
and a Christian" who strongly believes in
"a Creator who
plays an active role in worldly affairs." His book has received great
"play" in print and television, largely (I suppose, because such unconventional
products rarely emanate from the symbolic home of California "flowerpower."
The press loves an oddity. This publicity is certainly no measure of the
book's merit, as I shall argue. Now, I most emphatically do not claim that
a lawyer shouldn't poke his nose into our domain; nor do I hold that an attorney
couldn't write a good book about evolution. A law professor might well compose
a classic about the rhetoric and style of evolutionary discourse; subtlety
of argument, after all, is a lawyer's business. But, to be useful in this
way, a lawyer would have to understand and use our norms and rules, or at
least tell us where we err in our procedures; he cannot simply trot out some
applicable criteria from his own world and falsely condemn us from a mixture
of ignorance and inappropriateness. Johnson, unfortunately, has taken the
low road in writing a very bad book entitled Darwin on Trial.
In a "classic" of antievolutionary literature from the generation just past,
lawyer Norman Macbeth (1971) wrote a much better book from the same standpoint,
entitled Darwin Retried (titles are not subject to copyright). Macbeth
ultimately failed (though he raised some disturbing points along the way)
because he used an inappropriate legal criterion: the defendant (an opponent
of evolution) is accused by the scientific establishment and must be acquitted
if the faintest shadow of doubt can be raised against Darwinism. (As science
is not a discipline that claims to establish certainty, all its conclusions
would fall by this inappropriate procedure.)
Johnson's current incarnation of this false strategy, Darwin on Trial,
hardly deserves to be called a book at all. It is, at best, a long magazine
article promoted to hard covers-a clumsy, repetitious abstract argument with
no weighing of evidence, no careful reading of literature on all sides, no
full citation of sources (the book does not even contain a bibliography)
and occasional use of scientific literature only to score rhetorical points.
I see no evidence that Johnson has ever visited a scientist's laboratory,
has any concept of quotidian work in the field or has read widely beyond
writing for nonspecialists and the most "newsworthy" of professional claims.
The book, in short, is full of errors, badly argued, based on false criteria,
and abysmally written. Didn't anyone ever teach Johnson not to end chapters
with "announcement sentences" or to begin subsequent sections with summaries?
Chapter 6, for example, ends with a real zinger: "We will look at that claim
in the next chapter." The very next chapter then begins with the maximally
lively: "Before we try to get any answers out of the molecular evidence,
we had better review where we stand." Mrs McInerney, my tough but beloved
third-grade teacher, would have rapped his knuckles sore for such a construction,
used by Johnson at almost every chapter transition.
Johnson is not a
"scientific creationist" of Duane
Gish's ilk-the "young earth" Biblical literalists who have caused so much
political trouble of late, but whom we beat in the Supreme Court in 1987.
He accepts the earth's great age and allows that God may have chosen to work
via natural selection and other evolutionary principles (though He may also
operate by miraculous intervention if and when He chooses). Johnson encapsulates
his major insistence by writing: "in the broadest sense, a
'creationist' is simply a person who
believes that the world (and especially mankind) was designed, and
exists for a purpose." Darwinism, Johnson claims, inherently and
explicitly denies such a belief and therefore constitutes a naturalistic
philosophy intrinsically opposed to religion.
But this is the oldest canard and non sequitur in the debater's book. To
say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college
bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate
methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature.
We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.
If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism
disproves God, then I will find Mrs. McInerney and have their knuckles rapped
for it (as long as she can equally treat those members of our crowd who have
argued that Darwinism must be God's method of action). Science can work only
with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny other types
of actors (like God) in other spheres (the moral realm, for example).
Forget philosophy for a moment; the simple empirics of the past hundred years
should suffice. Darwin himself was agnostic (having lost his religious beliefs
upon the tragic death of his favorite daughter), but the great American botanist
Asa Gray, who favored natural selection and wrote a book entitled
Darwiniana, was a devout Christian. Move forward 50 years: Charles
D. Walcott, discoverer of the Burgess Shale fossils, was a convinced Darwinian
and an equally firm Christian, who believed that God had ordained natural
selection to construct a history of life according to His plans and purposes.
Move on another 50 years to the two greatest evolutionists of our generation:
G. G. Simpson was a humanistic agnostic, Theodosius Dobzhansky a believing
Russian Orthodox. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else
the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious
beliefs-and equally compatible with atheism, thus proving that the two great
realms of nature's factuality and the source of human morality do not strongly
overlap.
But Johnson's major premise-the inherent Godlessness of Darwinism- could
be wrong, and he might still have a good argument for the major thrust of
his text: the attempt to show that Darwinism is a dogma, unsupported by
substantial and meaningful evidence and propped up by false logic. But here
he fails utterly, almost comically (Macbeth's 1971 book is much better).
Johnson's line of argument collapsed in two major ways, the second more serious
than the first. I feel a bit more forgiveness in this first category-familiarity
with the facts of biology-because the field is immense and alien to Johnson's
training. Still, the density of simple error is so high that I must question
wider competence when attempts at extension yield such poor results. To cite
just a few examples from the compendium of Johnson's factual and terminological
errors: On page 16, he claims that all immediate variation for natural selection
comes from mutation: "Darwinian evolution postulates two elements. The first
is what Darwin called 'variation,' and what scientists today call
mutation." He then realizes that he has neglected sexual recombination,
the vastly predominant source of immediate variation in sexual species, but
he makes his error worse by including recombination as a category of mutation.
On page 30, he reports that "sexual selection is a relatively minor component
in Darwinist theory today." But sexual selection is perhaps the hottest Darwinian
topic of the past decade, subject of at least a dozen books (which Johnson
has neither noted nor read-a sure sign of his unfamiliarity with current
thinking in evolutionary theory). On page 41, he states that polyploidy (as
a result of doubling of chromosomes) can occur only in "hermaphrodite species
capable of self-fertilization"-and therefore can play little role in major
change (for self-doubling does not yield markedly new qualities). But the
evolutionarily potent form of polyploidy is not the autoploidy that he equates
with the entire phenomenon, but alloploidy, or doubling of both male and
female components after fertilization with pollen of a different species.
On page 60, he calls the German paleontologist Otto Schindewolf a saltationist,
whereas Schindewolf's subtle theory contained a central element of insensible
change in a process that he called proterogenesis (gradual seepage of juvenile
traits into adult stages). Schindewolf spent most of his career studying
small and continuous changes in ammonite suture patterns. On page 103, Johnson
raises the old chestnut against a natural origin of earthly life by arguing:
"the possibility that such a complex entity could assemble itself by chance
is fantastically unlikely." Sure, and no scientist has used that argument
for 20 years, now that we understand much more about the self-organizing
properties of molecules and other physical systems. The list goes on.
Second, and more important for documenting Johnson's inadequacy in his own
realm of expertise, he performs abysmally in the lawyer's domain of the art
of argument. To begin, he simply does not grasp (or chooses not to understand)
the purpose and logic of evolutionary argument. I have already illustrated
his central conflation of Darwinism with hostility to religion. I was
particularly offended by his false and unkind accusation that scientists
are being dishonest when they claim equal respect for science and religion:
"Scientific naturalists do not see a contradiction, because they never meant
that the realms of science and religion are of equal dignity and importance.
Science for them is the realm of objective knowledge; religion is a matter
of subjective belief. The two should not conflict because a rational person
always prefers objective knowledge to subjective belief. "Speak for yourself,
Attorney Johnson. I regard the two as of equal dignity and limited contact.
"The two should not conflict," because science treats factual reality, while
religion struggles with human morality. I do not view moral argument as a
whit less important than factual investigation.
Johnson then upholds the narrow and blinkered caricature of science as experiment
and immediate observation only. Doesn't he realize that all historical science,
not just evolution, would disappear by his silly restriction? Darwin, he
writes, "described The Origin of Species as 'one long argument,' and
the point of the argument was that the common ancestry thesis was so logically
appealing that rigorous empirical testing was not required. He proposed no
daring experimental tests, and thereby started his science on the wrong road."
But Darwin spent 20 years collecting facts for evolution. The Origin
is one long compendium of observations and empirical confirmations. To be
sure, Darwin's method is not generally experimental, for singular and complex
past events are not so explained by any historical science. Darwin thought
long and hard about proper methodology of confirmation for historical science
and used Whewell's "consilience of induction," or bringing of widely disparate
information under a uniquely consistent explanation. Darwin wrote of his
method in 1868: "This hypothesis may be tested.. . by trying whether it explains
several large and independent classes of facts; such as the geological succession
of organic beings, their distribution in past and present times, and their
mutual affinities and homologies."
Not only does Johnson misconstrue the basic principles of our science (as
I have shown), but he also fails to present cogent arguments in his own brief
as well. His development of a case is fatally marred by three pervasive
techniques of careless or unfair discourse.
First, omissions that unjustly castigate a person or a claim. On page 5,
Johnson recounts the tale of H. F. Osborn and his error in identifying a
pig tooth as a human ancestor: "Osborn prominently featured 'Nebraska Man'...
in his antifundamentalist newspaper articles and radio broadcasts, until
the tooth was discovered to be from a peccary." True, but who made the
correction? Although Johnson does not tell us, the answer is H. F. Osborn,
who properly tested his claim by mounting further collecting expeditions,
discovering his error and correcting it-in other words, science working at
its best.
On page 74, in his lick-and-promise tour through the history of vertebrates,
we learn that no intermediary has ever been discovered between rhipidistian
fishes and early amphibians. Yet Johnson never mentions the first amphibians,
Ichthyostega and Acanthostega (featured in all paleontological
texts) with their conserved features of a fishy past: small tail fins, lateral
line systems, and six to eight digits on each limb. On page 76, he admits
my own claim for intermediacy in the defining anatomical transition between
reptiles and mammals: passage of the reptilian jaw-joint bones into the mammalian
middle ear. Trying to turn clear defeat to advantage, he writes: "We may
concede Gould's narrow point." Narrow indeed; what more does he want? Then
we find out: "On the other hand, there are many important features by which
mammals differ from reptiles besides the jaw and ear bones, including the
all-important reproductive systems." Now how am I supposed to uncover fossil
evidence of hair, lactation and live birth? A profession finds the very best
evidence it could, in exactly the predicted form and time, and a lawyer still
tries to impeach us by rhetorical trickery. No wonder lawyer jokes are so
popular in our culture.
Second, consider Johnson's false use of synecdoche. The art of having an
item or part stand for the whole is a noble trope in poetry and the
classical, unfair trick of debate. Professions are big, and everyone
makes a stupid statement now and again. As an honorable opponent, you cannot
use a single dumb argument to characterize an entire field. Yet Johnson does
so again and again-and this, I suppose, represents the legal tactic of "poke
any hole and win acquittal." Thus, Johnson quotes a few ill-informed statements,
representing opposite extremes around a golden mean held by nearly every
evolutionist-that natural selection is either meaningless as a tautology
or necessarily and encompassingly true as an a priori universal principle.
Now both claims have been advanced, but they are held by tiny minorities
and unsustained by any strong or enduring argument. The principle of natural
selection does not collapse because a few individuals fall into fallacies
from opposite sides of claiming too little or too much. Similarly, the consensus
that science and religion are separate and equally valuable is not brought
down by the fact that Julian Huxley unites them on one side, while Will Provine
holds that science implies atheism on the other. Minorities are not necessarily
wrong (or science would never advance), but only the cogency of their data
and arguments, not the mere fact of their existence, brings down old theories.
As his third trick, Johnson continues to castigate evolutionists for old
and acknowledged errors. T. H. Huxley, paraphrasing Dryden's famous line
about Alexander the Great's drunken boasting, stated that life is too short
to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once. In law, the
illogicality of an important precedent might bring down a current structure
like a house of cards. But in science, a bad old argument is just a superfluous
fossil. Nothing is gained by exposing a 30-year-old error-save the obvious
point that science improves by correcting its past mistakes. Yet Johnson
continually tilts at such rotted windmills. He attacks Simpson's data from
the 1950s on mammalian polyphyly (while we have all accepted the data of
mammalian monophyly for at least 15 years). He quotes Ernst Mayr from 1963,
denying neutrality of genes in principle. But much has changed in 30 years,
and Mayr is as active as ever at age 87. Why not ask him what he thinks now?
Johnson's grandiose claims, backed by such poor support in fact and argument,
recall a variety of phrases from a mutually favorite source: "He that troubleth
his own house shall inherit the wind" (Proverbs
11:29, and source for the famous play that dramatized the Scopes trial);
"They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8: 7).
But Darwin on Trial just isn't good enough to merit such worrisome
retorts. The book is scarcely more than an acrid little puff-and I therefore
close with a famous line from Darwin's soulmate, born on the same day of
February 12,1809. Abraham Lincoln wrote: "'And this, too, shall pass away.'
How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling
in the depths of affliction!"
| Origin and Evolution of life | Life on Earth | Natural Selection | Darwinian Poetry | 15 Answers to creationist nonsense | Daily Darwin | BHA | Intelligent Design | Horizon: ID on Trial | |
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Wolves at the door :Articles and Letters from New
Scientist
Inherit The Wind
The sanctity of ideas
Brady : Is it possible that something is holy to the celebrated
agnostic?
Drummond : Yes,the individual human mind.In a child's power to master
the multiplication table,there is more sanctity than in all your shouted
amens,and holy holies and hosannas.An idea is a greater monument than a
cathedral,and the advance of man's knowledge is a greater miracle than all
the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.
The price of technological progress
Drummond : But,now are we to forego all this progress because Mr Brady
now frightens us with a fable? Gentleman,progress has never been a bargain,you
have to pay for it.Sometimes I think there is a man who sits behind a counter,and
says,"alright,you can have a telephone,but you lose privacy,and the charm
of distance. Madam you may vote but at a price,you lose the right to retreat
behind the powder puff,or your petticoat.Mister you may conquer the air,but
the birds will lose their wonder,and the clouds will smell of gasoline. Darwin
took us forward to a hilltop,from where we could look back and see the way
from which we came,but for this insight,and for this knowledge,we must abandon
our faith in the pleasant poetry of
Genesis.
Reason as a power of the brain and subjective morality
Brady : We must NOT abandon faith.Faith is the most important thing.
Drummond : Then why did God plague us with the power to think? Mr
Brady,why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other
creatures of the Earth,the power of his brain to reason.What other merit
have we? The elephant is larger,the horse is swifter and stronger,the butterfly
is far more beautiful,the mosquito is more prolific,even the simple sponge
is more durable.Or does a sponge think?
Brady : I don't know.I'm a man,not a sponge.(Crowd laughs)
Drummond : Well,do you think a sponge thinks?
Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think,it thinks.
Drummond : Do you think a man should have the same privilege as a
sponge?
Brady : Of course.
Drummond : This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a
sponge,he wishes to think! (Crowd applauds)
Brady : But your client is wrong.He is deluded,he has lost his way.
Drummond : It's sad that we don't all have your positive knowledge
of what is right and wrong, Mr Brady.
Rationality undermines belief (Reductio ad Absurdum)and morality founded
on belief
Drummond : How old do you think this rock is?
Brady : I am more interested in the Rock of Ages,than I am in the
age of rocks (Crowd joins him laughing)
Drummond : Dr Page of Overland College tells me this rock is at least
ten million years old.
Brady : Well,well,Colonel Drummond,you managed to sneak in some of
that scientific testimony after all! (Sniggers)
Drummond : Look Mr Brady,these are the fossil remains of a marine
prehistoric creature, found in this very county,and which lived here,millions
of years ago,when these very mountain ranges were submerged in water.
Brady : I know,the Bible gives a fine account of the flood.But your
professor is a little mixed up on his dates. That rock is not more than six
thousand years old.
Drummond : How do you know?
Brady : A fine biblical scholar,Bishop Usher has determined for us
the exact date and hour of the creation.It occurred in the year 4004 BC.
Drummond : Well er...that.....that's Bishop Usher's opinion.
Brady : Not opinion,it's a literal fact,which the good Bishop arrived
at through careful computation of the ages of the prophets as set down in
the old testament.In fact,he determined that the Lord began the creation
on the 23rd of October,4004 BC at er....9am.
Drummond : That eastern standard time?
Brady : Hmph.
Drummond : Or rocky mountain time? It wasn't daylight saving time,was
it? Because the Lord didn't make the sun until the fourth day.
Brady : That is correct.
Drummond : That first day,wha....what d'you think,it was er...twenty-four
hours long?
Brady : The bible says it was a day.
Drummond : Well,there was no sun,er....um...how do you know how long
it was?
Brady : The Bible says it was a day!
Drummond : Well,was it a normal day,a literal day,a twenty-four hour
day?
Brady : I don't know.
Drummond : What d'you think?
Brady : I do not think about things that I............do not think
about.
Drummond : Do you ever think about things that you DO think about?!
Isn't it possible that it could have been twenty-five hours,there's no way
to measure it,no way to tell,COULD IT HAVE BEEN TWENTY-FIVE HOURS?
Brady : It's possible.
Drummond : Then you interpret that the first day as recorded in the
book of Genesis,could have been a day of indeterminate length?
Brady : I mean to state,that it is not necessarily a twenty-four hour
day.
Drummond : It could have been thirty hours,could have been a week,could
have been a month, could have been a year,could have been a hundred years,or
it could have been ten million years.
Co-prosecution council: I protest! This is not only
irrelevant,immaterial,it is......illegal.I demand to know the purpose of
Mr Drummond's examination,what's he trying to do?
Brady : I'll tell you what he's trying to do,he wants to destroy
everybody's belief in the bible,and in God.
Drummond : That's not true and you know it.The Bible is a book,it's
a good book,but it is not the only book.
Brady : It is the revealed word of the almighty God,spake to the man
who wrote the Bible.
Drummond : How do you know that God didn't spake to Charles Darwin?
Brady : I know,because God tells me to oppose the evil teachings of
that man.
Drummond : Oh,God speaks to you?
Brady : Yes!
Drummond : He tells you what is right and wrong?
Brady : Yes!
Drummond : And you act accordingly?
Brady : YES!
Drummond : So you,Matthew Harrison Brady,through oratory or legislature
or whatever,you pass on God's orders to the rest of the world!! Well,meet
the prophet from Nebraska! Is that the way of things,is that the way of things?
God tells Brady what is good? To be against Brady,is to be against God.
Brady : NO!!! Each man is a free agent.
Drummond : Then what is Bertram Cates doing in a Hillsboro jail? Supposing
Mr Cates had the influence and the lung power to railroad through the state
legislature,a law saying that only Darwin could be taught in the schools?
Brady : Ridiculous,ridiculous! There is only one great truth in the
world.
Drummond : The Gospel,the Gospel according to Brady.God speaks to
Brady and Brady tells the world! Braaaady,Braaady,Brady almighty!
Brady : The Lord...The Lord is my strength.
Drummond : Suppose that a lesser human being,suppose a Cates or a
Darwin had the audacity to think that God might whisper to him,that an un-Brady
thought might still be holy,must a man go to prison,because he differs with
the self appointed prophet? Extend the testaments,let us have a book of Brady!
We shall hex the pentetuke and slip you in neatly between numbers and
deuteronomy!!!!!!
Brady : My friends.....
Drummond : Your honour....
Brady : My followers.......
Drummond : The witness is excused
Brady : You know what I stand for....what I believe,I believe in the
truth of the book of Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus,Numbers,Deuteronomy,Joshua,Judges,Ruth,First Samuel,Second Samuel,First
Kings,Second Kings,Isaiah,Jeremiah,Lamentations,Ezekiel!!!!!!
Judge: The court is adjourned until ten o'clock tomorrow morning."
Subjective morality
Brady : He confuses material things with the great spiritual value
of the revealed word.Why do you bewilder this child.Does right have no meaning
to you sir?
Drummond : Realising that I may prejudice the case of my client I
must tell you that right has no meaning for me whatsoever. (Tumult from crowd)
But TRUTH has meaning,as a direction.But,it is one of the peculiar imbecilities
of our time that we place a grid of morality upon human behaviour,so that
the action of every man must be measured against a an arbitrary latitude
of right and a longitude of wrong,in exact minutes, degrees and seconds,s....
Howard d'you know what the he...er,d'you understand what I'm talking about?
Howard : No,sir.
Drummond : Maybe someday you will.That's all son thankyou.You're excused.
Brady : This boy may not understand,but I do.I've seen what you can
do to a jury.Twist and tangle.Nobody's forgot the Endicott publishing case,where
you made the jury believe that the obscenity was in their own minds.It was
immoral what you did to the jury.Tricking them, ,judgment by confusion.You
think you can get away with it here?
Drummond : I am not trying to get away with anything.I am simply trying
to prevent the clockstoppers from dumping a load of medieval nonsense into
the United States constitution.
Judge : This is not a Federal court,Colonel Drummond.
Drummond : Well,damn it,you have to stop them somewhere."
Brady : Your honour,it's obvious what he's trying to do,he is trying
to make us forget the lawbreaker,and put the law on trial."
Spencer Tracy and Frederic March in "Inherit the Wind"
Henry Drummond and Matthew Brady