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Philosophy Science and Religion for Everyone Duncan Pritchard
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Philosophy Science and Religion for Everyone 1st Edition Mark Harris
FoundationalIssues-whyshouldanyonecareaboutthescience-and-religion debate?Howdoscientificclaimsrelatetothetruth? Isevolutioncompatible with design?
Faith and Rationality - can faith ever be rational? Are theism and atheism totally opposed? Is God hidden or does God simply not exist?
Faith and Science- what provides a better explanation for the origin ofthe universe - science or religion? Faith and physics: can they be reconciled? Does contemporary neuroscience debunk religious belief? Creationism and evolutionary biology - what constitutes science and what constitutes pseudo-science?
Practical Implications - is fundamentalism just a problem for religious people?Whataretheethicalimplicationsofthescience-and-religiondebate? Do logic and religion mix?
Thisbookisdesignedtobeusedinconjunctionwiththefree'Philosophy,Science and Religion' MOOC (massive open online course) created by the University of EdinburghandhostedbytheCoursera platform(www.coursera.org).Thisbookis also highly recommended foranyone lookingfor aconcise overviewofthis fascinatingdiscipline.
Mark Harris, Duncan Pritchard, James Collin, David de Pomerai, Michael Fuller,DavidFergusson,EmmaGordon,SarahLaneRitchie,S.OrestisPalermos,Alasdair Richmond, Katherine Snow, and Till Vierkant all teach and researchinPhilosophy,ScienceandReligionattheUniversityofEdinburgh,UK. J.AdamCarterteachesPhilosophy at theUniversity ofGlasgow,UK, and Ian Church teachesPhilosophy at Hillsdale College, USA, whileJeremy Kidwell teachestheologicalethicsattheUniversityofBirmingham,UK.
Philosophy, ScienceandReligion
FreeOnlineCourse Series
This completely free andopen online course series introduces you tosome ofthemaindebates attheintersection ofphilosophy, science, and religion, andisdesignedtobeusedinconjunction withPhilosophy, Scienceand ReligionforEveryone. Each week a distinguishedguestlecturer talks you throughsomeofthemostimportantquestions andissuesintheirareaof expertise. Theseriesissplitintothreecourses: ScienceandPhilosophy, Philosophy andReligion, andReligion and Science, each ofwhichis introducedby instructorsfrom theUniversity ofEdinburgh.No prior knowledgeisrequired. Students whosuccessfully completethecourse are eligible foracertificate from theUniversity ofEdinburgh.
ThisMassiveOpenOnlineCourse(MOOC)serieshasbeencreatedby theUniversityofEdinburgh'sEidynresearchcentre(www.eidyn.org),thanks togeneroussupportfromtheJohnTempletonFoundation, andis offeredby Coursera.
All rightsreserved. No part ofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor utilised inanyform orbyanyelectronic,mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, includingphotocopying andrecording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission inwriting fromthepublishers.
Thescience-and-religiondiscourseissosignificantthatit'shardlypossibletolive in theWestern world and not hold anopinion on it. The discourseis, however, almostuniversally construedintermsofa'debate', andadebatethat'scharacterisedby 'conflict'aboveall.Thefactthatthediscourseunderliessomehighlyvolatilesocialandpoliticaldisagreementsaddsfueltothefire(andthesedisagreements are especially live inNorth America, especially concerning climate change, the place of 'evolution versus creation' in high school education, and in bioethics concerning'pro-lifeversuspro-choice').Arguably,there'stoomuchheatandlittle lightinthesedisagreements.Addingphilosophy tothemix('Philosophy, Science, and Religion'), this booktakes theview thatthe science-and-religion debatecan movebeyondhostility tobecomeamajorforcebehindanewkindofintellectual enlightenmentinmodem culture.
At present, it's possible to see the science-and-religion debate as a nearperfect example of C. P. Snow's famous Two Cultures idea, that there's an intellectual gulfbetweenthenatural sciences andhumanities subjects sodeep thatmeaningfuldialogueisalmostimpossible. Wearealltoofamiliarwiththe many inexpert andover-confidentcommentatorson both sides of the scienceand-religion divide who weigh in blithely, with theeffectthatalltoooftenthe misunderstandingandhostility areentrenchedduetoapoorgraspoftheissues atstake. Thenewatheismdebateandthecreationversusevolutiondebateare good examples of areas dominated by clashes of ideologies rather than the productiveexchangeofideas.Asaresult,theconflicthypothesis-thatscience andreligionareirreconcilably at warwitheachother-lookssettobeperpetuated indefinitely. And yet, the academic discipline of philosophy, science, and religion, which bringstogetherthousandsofscientists, philosophers, historians, and theologians (among other kinds of scholars), has demonstrated again and again the superficiality of the view that science and religion have to be completely atloggerheads.
Why,then,istheconflicthypothesis sopervasive?Partlyit'sbecausetheconflictstory'sells'inthepopularmedia,andpartly it's becauseitsuitstheagendas ofthevocalfewontheextremesidesofthedebate.Moreimportantly,though,it's becausethe conflicthypothesisisa'social construct',anideathatseemssoobvious that a society will largely believe it without question, because that idea
2 MarkHarris andDuncanPritchard
supports(orlegitimates)awidespreadassumptionofthatsociety.Inthiscase,that assumptioniswhat'sknownasthe 'secularisationthesis',theideathattraditional religiousbeliefsandpracticesmustinevitablydeclineinthefaceofmodemscepticismandrelativism,withaspecialemphasisonthe superiorityofmodemscience and technologyfor providing essentialknowledge andtruths.
It's not our purpose to investigate the rights and wrongs of the secularisation thesis,northewaysinwhichitentwineswithideologiesandpracticesattheheart of Western culture,such as neo-liberalism and different forms ofdemocracyand socialwelfare.Allofthesearehotlydisputedbyacademicsin thesocialsciences, nottomentionpublicfiguressuchaspoliticians,joumalists,andreligiousleaders. Instead, we want to point the way to the new kind of intellectual enlightenment that we mentioned above, where the gulf between the 'Two Cultures'is bridged bythemedium ofphilosophy. Thisbooksetsoutsomeofthemainparametersat play in bridging that gulf. The book accompanies the University of Edinburgh's freely-availableMOOC ('Massive Open OnlineCourse')inPhilosophy, Science, andReligion(availablefromwww.coursera.org),butitcanalsobereadinitsown rightasastand-aloneintroductiontothefield.
The philosophy, science, and religion field of scholarship has always held questions of ultimate meaning and purpose to its heart; not only does the field embraceallofsuchbigquestionsaskedbyscienceandbyreligion,butinallowing philosophy totakethe lead in showing howthe different sciences and religionscancometogether,thefieldintroducesbigquestionsofitsownconcerning thenature ofknowing,thenature of seeking, andthenature ofenquiry. Clearly, the potential questions that can be asked and tackled here are enormous, both in magnitudeandinnumber,andwe'veneeded tobe selective incompiling this book. Chapters that address the central philosophical questionsof howthesciences and religions relate to the concepts of truth, logic, free will, and reason are centre-stage in the book (Pritchard and Orestis, Collin, Pritchard, Carter, Church,Vierkant),alongwiththegeneralquestionofhowandwhythescienceand-religion debate is important in the first place (Fuller). But the book also looks at issues arising from specific sciences. The natural sciences where science-and-religionquestionsmostfrequentlyarise-physics(Harris), biology (Richmond), and the neurosciences (Ritchie) - are mined, especially for their ability to shed light on religious claims. Moreover, chapters covering the formidable debates of our times - especially concerning fundamentalism (Gordon), evolution and creationism (de Pomerai and Harris), creation and cosmology (Fergusson and Snow),and theethical implications of the scienceand-religion debate (Kidwell) - appear. Each chapter includes a set of study questions directly related to the text, which could be used (for instance) in a discussion group,ortoprovide inspirationforstudentessaysordissertations in the area. Importantly (since this book is intendedmerelyasa starting pointfor a rich fieldof furtherresearch), each chapter has a shortlistof suggested reading if you're interested in taking things further,which is divided into introductory and more advanced texts (along with some suggestions for internet
resources). The book closes with a glossary of key terms throughout, so that you can't get lost working your way through these issues. The result is a book that we hope offers an enlightening, while also accessible, overview of the Philosophy, Science, andReligion debate.
MarkHarrisandDuncanPritchard Edinburgh,April 2017
1
How do scientific claimsrelate to the truth?
S. OrestisPalermosandDuncanPritchard
Scientificrealism
Oftenwe refer to claims as being "scientificallyproven."For example, thatthe earthrevolvesaroundthesun,thatinthecentreofourgalaxythereisablackhole, thatwateris8i0,andsoon."Scientificallyproven"claimsaretakentoconstitute paradigmaticinstancesofknowledgeandtheyareheldtobeindubitableorabsolute truths.Acorollary assumption is that scientific knowledge is a cumulative body of knowledge, which grows simply by addingnewtheories tothe existing body of "scientifically proven" theories. On this view, scientific knowledge steadilyprogresses towardsgreaterlevelsof understanding,bringingthe human intellecteverclosertothe truenatureoftheworld.
Withinphilosophyofscience,thisviewisknownasscientificrealism.Itholds thatwell-confirmedscientifictheoriesareapproximatelytrue andthat theaimof scienceistogivealiterallytrueaccountoftheworld.Itisperhapsthemostwidely heldview of the scientificprogress,with part of itsappealcoming from the fact that,iftrue,itwouldelegantlyexplainthesuccessofthe scientificenterprise.Yet thehistoryandphilosophyofsciencedemonstratethatarguinginitssupportmay notbeaseasyasonewouldhavehopedfor.
Logicalempiricism
Thefirstphilosophersofsciencewhoattemptedtoarguethatscienceisacumulativebodyof proven knowledge thatapproximatestruthare known asthe logical empiricists.Theywereagroupofyoungintellectuals,includingPhilippFrankfor physics, Hans Hahnfor mathematics, Otto Neurath for economics, and the philosophersMoritzSchlick(whojoinedthegroupin 1922)andRudolfCarnap(who joinedin 1926).Accordingtotheirview,scientificknowledgefollowsthemethod ofinductivism: inthisview,scientifictheoriesareconfirmedbyinductive inferences(see induction) from an increasing number of positive instances toa universallyvalidconclusion.Forexample,Newton'ssecondlawseemsconfirmedby manypositive instancesfromthe pendulumtoharmonicoscillatorsandfreefall, amongothers.We canthink of scientific theories assetsoflawsofnature.Laws
Howdo scientific claims relate to truth? 5
ofnature aresentences that express true universalgeneralizations,andtheytake theform, 'Forallobjectsx, ifFxthen Gx'(e.g.,Newton'ssecondlawwouldread as follows: if an external force acts on a body of mass m, then the body will accelerate).
The logical empiricists held that true universal generalizations are confirmed whenasufficientlylargenumberofpositiveinstances(andnonegativeinstances) havebeenfoundforthem.Inotherwords,inductionwasattheheartofthelogical empiricists' criterion of verification (which is why proponents of this view are sometimesknown as verificationists): aclaim orstatementisscientific ifthere is awayofempiricallyverifyingit(i.e.,ifthereisawayoffindingpositiveempiricalinstancesconfirmingthatclaimorstatement).
The inductive methodology, however, is problematic on twogrounds.First, itistooliberalasamethodfordemarcatinggoodsciencefrompseudo-science. Political theories such as Marxism or Freud's psychoanalysis would equally meetthe requirements of inductivism.AFreudianpsychoanalyst could appeal toplentyofpositiveinstancesofpeople'sdreamsthatcanconfirmthevalidity ofFreud'sanalysisofthe Oedipuscomplex,for example. But is thissufficient tolicensethescientificstatusofFreud'spsychoanalysis?Similarly,peoplethat read horoscopes can claim that there are positive instances in their monthly working schedule confirming the horoscope's warning that it is going to be a verydemanding workingmonthforAquarians! Doesthismeanthathoroscopes arescientific?
Second, induction, althoughitmay be agoodmechanismfordrawing inferences,fallsshortofsupportingthelogicalempiricists'claimthatscientifictheoriesandthe claims theysupport amount toprovenknowledge.The problemis thatinductioncannotbegivenanon-circularjustification.Thisisknownasthe problem of induction. Induction cannot be justified via deduction, since althoughalargeobservedsample(e.g.,thateveryswanobservedsofariswhite) mightimplythatthecorrespondinguniversalclaimistrue(e.g.,thateveryswan is white), itdoesnotdeductivelyentailit(i.e., there mightnonethelessbe,say, a black swan). But one cannotnon-deductivelyjustifyinduction, either. Induction allows us toform beliefsaboutunobserved matters of factonthebasisof evidenceprovidedbypastandpresentobservations.Butinorderforsuchinferences to be rational - such that they can amount to proven knowledge in the waythelogicalempiricistssuggested-weneedthefurtherassumptionthatthe futurewillresemblethepast.Theproblem,however,isthatthisfurtherassumption is circular, in that it relies for its support on induction itself. It is not a matteroflogicthatthefutureresemblesthepast,afterall,andouronlyrational basisfor this claim is that the future has previouslyresembled the past, butof course this basis is itself an inductive reason. Therefore, given that circular reasoningdoesnotjustify,thereisnowayofjustifyingouruseofinduction. Againstthebackdropofthesedoubtsagainsttheinductivemethodology,logical empiricismappearedtolosethebattleofdemonstratinghowsciencemightamount toacumulativebodyofprovenknowledgethatapproximatestruth.
Falsificationism
Not all was lost for the idea that scientific knowledge is a cumulative body of knowledge that gets closer to truth, however.Karl Popper-undoubtedly one of the most influentialphilosophersofscience-attemptedtodemonstratehow the scientificmethodmaystillbedeductivelyvalid.Hearguedthat,despitetheapparentprevalenceofinductionwithinscience,thevalidityofscientifictheoriesdoes notoriginate fromthevalidityoftheinductivemethodbutinsteadfromwhat he calledfalsificationism.
Contra the logical empiricists, Popper thought that the distinctive method of sciencedoesnotconsistinconfirminghypotheses,butinfalsifyingthem,looking for one singular crucial piece ofnegative evidence that may refute the whole theory.According to Popper, science proceeds by a method ofconjectures and refutations: scientists start with bold(theoretically andexperimentally unwarranted) conjectures about some phenomena, deduce novel undreamt-ofpredictions,andthengoaboutfindingpotentialfalsifiersforthosepredictions.Currently accepted scientific theories have passed severe tests and have survived, without being falsified yet. Ifa theory does not pass severe tests, and/or ifthere are no sufficient or suitable potential falsifiers for it, the theory cannot be said to be scientific.Thehistoryofscienceis full oftheories that enjoyedarelativeperiod ofempirical success until they were eventually falsified and rejected: from the caloric theory ofLavoisier (which regarded heat as an imponderable fluid) to Stahl'sphlogistontheoryintheeighteenthcentury,andtoNewton'sethertheory.
Science hasgrown across centuriesbydismantlingandrejecting previously successful theories - scientific progress is characterized and made possible by falsification.
AccordingtoPopper,falsificationismisthedistinctivemethodofscience.Itis adeductive(insteadofinductive)method,wherebyscientistsstartwithboldconjectures, and deduce novel predictions, which then they go about testing. Ifthe predictionsprovewrong, the conjectureis falsifiedandreplacedwithanewone. Ifthe predictions prove correct, the conjecture is corroboratedandwill continue to be employed to make further predictions and pass more tests, until proven wrong. In this sense, the logicalvalidity ofscientific theories does not originate from confirmation they receive from evidence but from surviving the empirical teststhatcouldrefutethem.Solongasatheorysurvivessuchtests,scientistsmay take their theory to be valid. Ifit fails, they can take it to be conclusively false. AccordingtoPopper,then,sciencedoesnotapproximatetruthbyhavingitstheories confirmed, but by rejecting theories that have been proven wrong. In this sense, sciencetendstotruthbyavoidingfalsity.
This was an ingenious attempt to save scientific realism. Reality, however, turnedouttobemuchmorecomplex thanPopper'ssimple deductive scheme.In dailylaboratorysituations,scientistsnever test ascientifichypothesisor conjecture by itself. Nor can they deduce any empirical consequence out ofany bold conjectureeither.Thisproblem,knownastheproblemofauxiliaryhypotheses, isthetopicofthenextsection.
Howdo scientific claims relate totruth? 7
Theproblem ofauxiliaryhypotheses
Before Popper developed falsificationism as the method ofscience, the French physicistandscientistPierreDuhemhadalreadyrealizedthatnoscientifichypothesiscanbetestedinisolation, butonlyinconjunctionwithothermaintheoretical hypotheses,plussomeauxiliaryones.ConsiderNewton'slawofgravity.Scientists never test the hypothesis ofgravitation byitself, but alwaysinconjunction with othertheoreticalhypothesesHI,H2,H3(e.g.,Newton'sthreelawsofmotion)plus some auxiliary hypothesesA1,A2,A3 (e.g.,AI says that the mass ofthe sun is muchbiggerthanthemassofotherplanets;A2saysthatnootherforceapartfrom thegravitationaloneisactingontheplanets;A3reportsthatplanetaryattractions are weaker than attractions between the sun and the planets). Now, suppose we deducefromthissetofmainandauxiliary hypotheses some observable evidence eandwe proceedtotest whether e occurs ornotinnature:
ButwedonotknowwhetheritisHorHI orH2 orH3 orAl orA2 orA3, orany combination ofany ofthese main and auxiliary hypotheses, which is refuted by thenegativeevidence.
TheproblemofauxiliaryhypothesespresentedaseriousconcernagainstPopper's attempt to demonstrate how scientific knowledge may progress in a deductively validmanner.While Popper's falsificationism providedanelegantsolutiontothe problemofinductionthatwasfacinglogicalempiricism,thecomplexityofscientific theoriesandtheirinterconnectednesswithauxiliaryhypothesesaswellasothertheories makes it impossibleto apply the falsificationist method inaclear-cutmanner. Andevenifitwere assumed thatelaboratingfurther onfalsificationismcouldprovideasolutionoutofthisproblem,suchthatscientistscoulddirectcounterevidence toisolatedhypothesesand selectivelyrefutethem,theemergingfieldofthehistory ofsciencedemonstratedthatfalsificationhardlyeveroccursinpractice.
Howdo scientificclaimsrelatetotruth? 9
Thestructureofscientificrevolutions
Problemssuchastheabovemadeapparentthelimitsofexperimentalevidenceanrl the impossibility of the very idea of a 'crucialexperiment',able toestablishone wayoranotherthefortunesofanytheory.Againstthisbackdrop, in1962, theUS historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn offered a highly influential, radically new conception of how science grows and unfolds, in a seminal book entitled TheStructureofScientificRevolutions.
Both the logical empiricists and Popper had thought of scientific knowledge asalargely incrementalaffair.As scientificinquiryproceeds, andnewevidence isfound,ourscientificknowledgeaccumulates(byeitherinductivelyconfirming or deductively falsifying theoretical hypotheses). In this way, we gradually acquire better and better scientific knowledge. Scientific progress would be secured by the rightscientificmethod, which would deliver theories more and more likely tobetrue.
However,onthebasisofhishistoricalanalysis,Kuhnarguedthatneitherlogical empiricism nor falsificationism work in practice. He noted that every scientific theoryisborninanoceanofcounterevidenceandthatitisonlythroughtimethat noveltheoriesproducecorroboratingevidence. IfPopper'sfalsificationismwere correct,suchthattheoriesshouldberejectedassoonastheyaremetwithcounterevidence,thenscienceasweknowwouldn'thaveexisted.
Kuhn began his career in physics and attempted to provide a more realistic picture of the scientific progress that chimed with the historical data. During a postdoctoralpositionatHarvard,hehadthechancetostudyandteachacoursein thehistoryofsciencededicatedtoAristotelianphysics.Thedifficultyencountered in making sense of outmoded lines of reasoning had a profound influence in the wayKuhncametorethinkscientificinquiryasanon-cumulativeprocessofknowledgeacquisition,withnodistinctive(inductiveordeductive)method.Mostimportantly, it reshaped radically Kuhn's view of scientific progress by rescinding the link between progress and truth, understood as the ability of a theory to capture thingscorrectly.
Instead, Kuhn suggested that science ischaracterized by three-stage cycles of normal science, crises, and scientific revolutions.During normalscience,ascientific community works on a well-defined scientific paradigm. Although Kuhn never definedexactly the notion of 'scientific paradigm', he thought a scientific paradigm(orwhathelatercalleda 'disciplinary matrix') wouldtypicallyinclude the dominantscientific theory, the experimental and technological resources, no less than the system of values of the community at a given time (e.g., how the communitymayvaluejudgementsofsimplicity,accuracy,plausibility,andsoon). Inaddition,ascientific paradigm includesalsowhatKuhncalled 'exemplars', i.e., concrete solutions to problems that students encounter from the early stages of theirscientificeducation,whetherinlaboratories,onexaminations,orattheends of chapters in science texts (1962/1996, Postscript, p. 187).Any scientific communityinperiodsofnormalscienceacquiresitsidentitybyworkingonanaccepted textbook (be it Ptolemy's Almagest, or Newton's Principia) and solving
well-defined problems or puzzles within a well-defined textbook tradition. No attempttotest,falsify,orrefutetheacceptedparadigm takes place duringperiods ofnormalscience.
Only when a sufficiently large number of anomalies -which cannot be done awaywith-accumulatedoestheacceptedparadigm undergoaperiodofcrisis.In periodsofcrises,anewparadigmmaycometothefore,andthecrisisresolvesinto a scientific revolution when the scientific community decides to abandon the old paradigmandshiftconsensusaroundthenewparadigm.Kuhnstressedhowtheory choiceinthesecasesisnotdeterminedbytheallegedsuperiority ofthenewparadigmovertheoldone.Theconsensus-gatheringprocessisnotdeterminedbythe newparadigm beingmore likely tobetrueorcorrectthantheoldone, butbythe increase in the puzzle-solving power of the new paradigm. The new paradigm should be able to solve more puzzles than the old one, and thus Kuhn redefined scientificprogressintermsofincreasedpuzzle-solving.Butthisshiftoffocusfrom Popper's falsification to Kuhn's puzzle-solving hasfar-reachingimplicationsfor therationalityoftheorychoice.
Kuhn famously claimed that scientific paradigms (say, Ptolemaic astronomy andCopernicanastronomy)areincommensurable.Incommensurabilitymeant lack ofa 'common measure' to evaluate two paradigms-in other words, lack of a common measure for rational choice between paradigms. Different paradigms use different scientific concepts, methodology, resources, and even systems ofvalues. Forexample, competingparadigmsmay use the same word to refertothesameaspectoftheworldbut meanentirelydifferentthings. 'Mass' inNewtonianphysicsisconserved, whereasinEinsteinian mechanics 'mass'is convertiblewithenergy. 'Gravity'inNewtonian physicsisaforcethatisinnate totheobjects, whereas, accordingtoEinstein, 'gravity'istheeffectofcurvature inspace-time.Paradigmsalso define methods, problem-fields,and standardsof solution.Asaresult,thereceptionofanewparadigmoftennecessitatesaredefinitionofthecorresponding science. Oldproblemsmaybedeclared unscientific (e.g., what is the special weight of phlogiston?) while problems that that were previouslynon-existentortrivialmaybecometheveryarchetypesofsignificant scientificachievement(e.g., is gravity justaforcethatisinnateineveryobject, shouldwe try to explain it in terms ofparticle exchanges, orisitthe curvature of space-time?).
Becauseofsuchincommensurablefeaturesbetweenparadigms,Kuhnnotedthat paradigm shifts resemble psychologists' Gestalt switches rather than rational, objective decision-making processes. His radicalconclusionwas that 'although theworlddoesnotchangewithachangeofparadigm,thescientistafterwardworks inadifferentworld'(1962/1996,p.121).
Seenfromthepointofviewofscientificrealism, theaboveanalysisishighly problematic. First, it has the unwelcome consequence that science, far from beingacumulativebodyofknowledgethat tendstotruth, isinsteadinterrupted and revolutionary. Due to the phenomenon of incommensurability, it might be impossible to find connections between the newand the oldtheory. If scientific revolutionsinvolveradicaltheoreticalchange,thenthenewscientificknowledge
thataccruesafter thescientificrevolutionisunlikely toincorporatethe body of scientificknowledgeconstitutedbythe oldscientifictheory. Whatwas 'known' before is not supplemented with additional scientific knowledge, but rather replacedinitsentiretywithacompletelynewbodyofscientificknowledge.New theoriesdo not grow on top ofthe old ones but next to them. Second, Kuhn's appealtothenotionofincommensurabilitydoesnotonly renderscienceanoncumulativebodyofknowledge.Italsopresentsadeeper,perhapsmoreworrying concern:ifitisimpossibletocomparethecontent,methodologies,andstandards of evaluation of different scientific theories, then scientists are facing the possibility of scientific relativism- the idea that any theory could be valid from within its own point ofview, with noway ofcomparing the relative validity of competingtheories.
Scientificrelativism
Thepossibilityofscientificrelativismwasan unwelcomeresultofKuhn'sview andimmediatelyattractedcriticism.Tosolvethisproblem,Kuhnsuggestedthat scientists could compare scientific paradigms on the basis ofepistemic norms such as simplicity, predictive accuracy and broad scope. It soon transpired, however, that such criteria would not promote rational paradigm choice. The way such epistemic norms may be interpreted and the weight that might be ascribed to themdepend, in fact, on the very paradigm that they arecalled to assess. Simplicitymightmeanonethingforproponentsofquantummechanics andquiteanotherforproponentsofEinsteinianmechanics.Andwhile simplicitymightbeofparamountimportancetoproponentsofEinsteinianmechanics, proponentsofquantummechanicsmightfirstandforemostfocusonpredictive accuracy.
To save science from the threat of relativism, Imre Lakatos attempted to providearationalreconstructionofthescientificprogressonthebasisofaview that he calledsophisticated falsificationism. Lakatos disagreed that scientific theory choice is irrational, although he agreed with Kuhn that falsificationism "cannot kill" as fast as Popper thought. Once facedwith counterevidence, scientists rarely, if ever, abandon their theories. Instead, they attempt to make adjustmentstothemby adding auxiliary hypotheses. Forexample, ifthetrajectory ofa planet deviates from what was estimated by Newtonian mechanics, scientists do not thereby abandon theNewtonian paradigm. Instead, they postulateanexplanationfortheobserveddeviationbyaddinganauxiliary hypothesis-for example, that there might be a second, so far unobserved planet that perturbs thetrajectoryofthefirstplanet. Lakatos' historical data indicated that this is standard practice within science. He also argued that it is a perfectly acceptablepractice,solongastheadditionalauxiliaryhypothesisthatisinvoked to save the initial version of the theory generates new expectations that can themselvesbeempirically tested.Forexample,it wouldn't doifscientistspostulated that the second planet had some special properties that would prevent any available or future technological equipment from ever detecting it. But it
Howdoscientificclaimsrelatetotn1th? 11 would be perfectly acceptable if scientists used Newtonian mechanics to esti matethe massand position ofthesecond planet such thatthey coulddevise an experimenttoconfirmordisconfirmwhethera planet withtheexpectedproper ties exists. Lakatos thought that so longas scientistsmodify theirtheoriesina way that creates new expectations, their theories will qualify as 'theoretically progressive' such that they may count as scientific. Lakatos, ofcourse, further notedthatgoodscientifictheories mustbeboth 'theoretically'and 'empirically progressive,'meaning that some oftheirpredictionsarecorroborated- i.e., tum outtoagreewiththefacts.However,solongasatheoryistheoreticallyprogres sive, itcanatleastqualifyasscientificsuchthatitsproponentscankeephaving faithinit.
ThereisapotentialproblemwithLakatos'sophisticated falsificationism,how ever.The problem stems from the fact that itis always possible for scientists to tum a stagnantscientific theory into an empiricallyprogressiveone. Think, for example,ofHeliocentricism.HeliocentricismwasfirstproposedbyAristarchusof Samos in the 3rd century BC. As soon as it was put forward it was faced with overwhelmingcounterevidence, while none ofitspredictions could become cor roborated.Nevertheless,inthesixteenthcentury,CopernicustookupHeliocentri cismagainand,byproposingapredictivemathematicalmodeloftheheliocentric system,hegeneratedpredictionsthatweresubsequentlycorroborated.Eventually Heliocentricism becametheacceptedview withinastronomy.
According toPaul Feyerabend-a friendand colleagueofImreLakatos -this possibilitytoturnastagnanttheoryintoan empiricallyprogressiveonemeantthat scientists, fromtheirpointofview,could stay withanyscientifictheoryevenifit is facing counterevidence or suffers from a lack of corroborating instances. AccordingtoFeyerabend,neitherlackofempiricalcontentnorconflictwithexper imentalresultsmakesit irrational forscientiststoretain and elaborate apoint of viewthat pleases them.
Employingsuchaliberal approachtoscientifictheory choicemayinitiallyseem counterintuitive and counterproductive. Feyerabend, however, noted thatit actu ally has a particularly positive epistemic effect. Following Kuhn, Feyerabend noted thatreality is, inWilliamsJames'words, a "blooming buzzingconfusion" or, in Benjamin Whorf's words, a "kaleidoscopic flux of impressions." In the absenceofany background theories orassumptions, we would beatalossabout how toperceive the world in ameaningfulway.Consider, forexample,an ultra soundscanattheearly stagesofa pregnancy. In the beginning, theparents-to-be lookatthedoctor'sscreen, buttheyhavenoclueaboutwhattheyarelookingat. Onthecontrary,thedoctor'strainingandexperienceallowshertoclearlyperceive someofthe baby'sanatomical features and directthe futureparents'attentionto them.Thisphenomenon,wherebyone'sprevioustrainingandexperienceallows one to perceive the world in specific ways is known as the theory-ladenness of observation, anditiswidelypervasivewithinscience,constantlyaffectingscien tists'interpretationofalmosteveryexperimentalresult.Butwhilethetheory-laden natureofobservationsisparticularly helpful withrespecttomakinganyscientific observationsatall,Feyerabendnotedthatitalsohasanegativeeffect.Itmaymake
Feyerabend argued that the only way for scientists to avoid this negative effectof thetheory-ladennessof observation, suchthatthey couldhaveaccess to as much evidence as possible, would be for them to 'think outside the box' with the help of alternative paradigms. Therefore, Feyerabend thought that Lakatos' sophisticated falsificationism, which suggested that scientists could staywithanyscientifictheory,wasawelcomeresult,becauseitencouragedthe proliferation of scientific point of views that could reveal each other's weaknesses.
Onthewhole, scientificrelativismdeniesthatscienceisacumulative bodyof knowledgeorthatthereexistsarationalcriterionfortellingwhichscientifictheoriesbetterapproximatetruth.Atthesametime,however,scientificrelativismdoes not present science as an arbitrary practice. So long as a theory is theoretically progressive-meaningthatnewmodificationsleadtonovelpredictions-scientists can rationally stay with the theory even if none of its predicted expectations becomescorroborated(wepreviouslyconsideredtheexampleofHeliocentricism).
Onthe onehand, this may disallow proponents of agiven theorytotellwhether theirtheoryapproximatestruthbut,ontheotherhand,itallowssciencetoprogress as awhole. The constant proliferation of theories allows scientiststoexplore all possible scientific hypotheses, while maximizing the evidence they can use in ordertotestthemandsubsequentlyimprovethem.Inthissense,whileitisimpossibletotellwhetherscientifictheoriesaretrue,scienceasawholeprogressesfaster asitretainsonlythosetheoriesthatcansuccessfullywithstand thecriticismprovidedbythemaximumamountofrivaltheoriesandtheevidencetheycollectively generate.
It should be noted, however, that scientific relativism remains a controversial thesiswithonly a few philosophers of science siding withit.Amongstthe many objectionsraisedagainst theview,acentralworryconcernsthenotionofincommensurability.Aswehave seen, thethreatofincommensurabilityliesatthecore oftheclaimthatitisimpossibletocomparethevalidityofcompetingparadigms, thereby making it impossible to rationally choose betweenthem. Scientists and philosophers of science, however, argue that incommensurability is an obscure theoreticalnotion with fewpractical consequences. While competingparadigms mayindeedbeincommensurableinsomeways, thephenomenonisnotaspervasive as Kuhn and other philosophers of science (mostnotably Feyerabend) have suggested.Itisarguedthat,sofar,ithasalwaysbeenpossibletocomparebetween competingparadigms, andthisraisesdoubtsabouttherelativistnatureofscience anditsinabilitytoapproximatetruth.
Chaptersummary
• We began with scientific realism, which is the view that well-confirmed scientific theories are approximately true and that the aim of science is to give a literally true account of the world.
Next we looked at logical empiricism. This attempts to offer an account of scientificknowledgeinterms of whetherthe scientificclaiminquestioncan be supported by empirical evidence. In this proposal, the scientific method is essentially inductive.
This commitment to induction at the heart of the scientific method is problematic, however, for at least two reasons. The first is that it may end up treating lots of theorizing that we would notregard as scientific asgenuine scientifictheory. The second is that induction is itself problematic, since it seems to lack any justification.
One response to these problems is to appeal instead to falsifiability as an account of the scientific method, whereby we seek out evidence which decisively falsifies a bold scientific conjecture. Falsificationism has the advantage of making the scientific method deductive rather than inductive.
Falsificationismis itself problematic,however, in that scientific hypotheses are never tested in isolation, but rather as part of a wider whole which includes other relevant theoretical claims and auxiliary hypotheses. When faced with counterevidence, it is thus not straightforward which scientific claim should be rejected, and so falsification is undermined.
We then looked at Kuhn's account of scientific progress. Rather than treating such progress asbeing a gradual expansion.of scientificknowledge, he instead argued thatsuch progress infactoccurs whena new scientificparadigmreplacesanolderparadigm.Crucially,hearguedthatthenewparadigm may well beincommensurable with the oldparadigm, suchthat ratherthan scientific progress involving the accumulation of scientific knowledge, it instead involves a radical replacement of the old scientificknowledge with the new.
Finally,welookedatscientificrelativism,whichistheideathatanyscientific theory could be valid from within its own point of view, with no way of comparing the relative validity of competing scientific theories. We noted how some aspects of Kuhn's account of scientific paradigms, particularly the idea that different scientific paradigms could be incommensurable with one another, could provide support for scientific relativism.Wealsoconsidered some other potential sources of support, such as the theory-ladenness of observation.
Studyquestions
I. 2. What is scientific realism? Try to express the proposal in your own words. What is the difference between an inductive inference and a deductive inference?
3. What is logical empiricism, and what account of the scientific method does it offer?
4. What is the problem of induction, and how does this create difficulties for logical empiricism?
5. Whatis falsificationism?Why isthisaccountofthescientific methoddeductive rather than inductive?
6. Whatistheproblemofauxiliaryhypotheses,andwhydoesitposeparticular difficulties for falsificationism?
7. What is a scientific paradigm? What does Kuhn mean when he says that different scientific paradigms can be incommensurable with each other?
8. What is scientific relativism, and how might the incommensurability of scientific paradigms lend support to this view?
9. What is the theory-ladenness ofobservation, and how might it lend support to scientific relativism?
Chalmers,A. F. (1999). WhatIs This Thing Called Science? (3rd Ed.) (Milton Keynes: Open University Press). [One ofthe most widely used contemporary introductions to philosophyofscience,andforgoodreason,asitisasuperboutlineofthemainissuesin thisarea:accessible,authoritative,andveryreadable.]
Ladyman, J. (2002). Understanding Philosophyof Science (London: Routledge). [One of the best introductory textbooks ofthe past two decades. Accessible, well-written and informative.]
Advancedreadings
Gillies, Donald (1993). Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell).[Anexcellent,ifintellectuallydemanding,accountofcontemporarythemesinthe philosophyofscience.SeeespeciallythechapteronlogicalempiricismandPopper.] Goldacre, Ben (2009). Bad Science (London: Harper Collins). [We can't recommend this book highly enough. Although itisnot atext on the philosophy ofscience, readingthis book will give you a fantastic introduction to the scientific method and why it is so important.]
Internetresources
Anderson,HanneandHepburn, Brian(2015). 'ScientificMethod',StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy, E. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/. [An excellent overview of the main philosophical issues with regard to scientific methodology.]
Chakravarty,Anjan(2011). 'Scientific Realism',Stanford EncyclopediaofPhilosophy, E. Zalta(ed.),https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/.[Aninsightfulsurveyof philosophical work on scientific realism, written by one ofthe leading figures in the debate.]
Hansson,SvenOve(2014). 'ScienceandPseudo-Science',StanfordEncyclopediaofPhilosophy, E. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/. [A useful
Niiniluoto, Ilkka (2015). 'Scientific Progress', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-progress/. [Acomprehensive, if rather technical in places, survey of the main philosophical accounts of scientific progress.]
2
Faith andphysics
Cantheybereconciled?
MarkHarris
Introduction
Thischaptertakesanunconventionalapproachinordertocuttothechase.There areplentyofcomprehensivepresentationsoftheopportunitiesandchallengesthat physics poses for Christiantheology. Cosmology and quantum physics always feature prominently, but are notthemselvescrucial for deciding the relationship betweenphysicsandreligiousfaith.TheBigBangtheory,forinstance,isusedby boththeistsandatheistsalikeasevidenceforandagainst(respectively)beliefin a Creator God.And on the other end of the length scale, the indeterminacy of quantummechanicsisinvokedbymanytheologianstosupporttheirbeliefthatthe universeisopentoGod'sactionintheworld,whilescepticscitetheamazingsuccessoftheverysamequantummechanicsasproofthatthere'snoneedtobelieve in such a God. But the experiments and theories themselves are silent on such higher-orderinterpretations.Hence,thischapterwilltake aquitedifferentangle. The primary factor in assessingthe relationship between physics and faith, I'll suggest, is not the physics of the unimaginably big and the unfeasibly smallfascinating and counter-intuitive as it may be- but the elusive concept of worldview.
There'sawidespreadassumptiontodaythatscienceandreligionarelockedin conflict.While thisassumptionringstrue in specificcasessuchas the creationevolutiondebate,it'sfarfrombeinguniversallyvalid.Takethecaseoffundamentalphysics.Forsure,manyphysicistswouldanswerthequestioninthischapter's title withanemphatic 'no'. Butformyself-aphysicist-turned-theologianwho's hadstrongreligiousbeliefsforaslongasIcanremember-myreactionwouldbe anequally-emphatic'yes'.AndIknowotherphysicistswho'dsaymuchthesame. Clearly,then,theissueisn'tas straightforward asablanketassumptionthatthere must always be conflict between science and religion: the answers given are as much dependentonthe individual asonthephysics, or,tobeprecise, asmuchon theindividual'sworldview as on the interpretation of scientific evidence. For it makesa difference what are our individual predispositions andpresuppositions, especiallythosemoreintangiblebeliefsthatweoftentakeforgrantedbecausethey informourentireviewoftheworld.Someofthosebeliefsmightbereligious,but manyarenot;thepointisthatfewofthemaresubjecttoscientificscrutinyinthe
Surelyone of the most umbrella-like of all terms, worldview isasdifficult to defineas 'faith'.Anindividual's worldviewmustincludetheirbeliefsastohow physicsrelatestotheothernaturalsciencesandtotherealityofthenaturalworld, aswellashowthe natural worldmightrelatetootherpotential realities,suchas thesupernatural.Physics, asan empiricalscience, cannot by its own means test these beliefs: they aremetaphysical(literally 'beyond physics'). Some of these metaphysicalbeliefsarereligiousinnatureandconcerntheentirelyotherworldly, butmanyarenot(e.g.varietiesofrealism,determinismandreductionism).The factthatsomeoftheselatter beliefsarevirtuallytheconsensusinphysicsdoesn't make them any less metaphysical. My point is that, whether we're religious believers,agnosticsoratheists,ourphysicsisdonewithinawidermatrixofbasic metaphysical beliefs which (becauseoftheir worldview character) weoftentake forgrantedandcan'ttest empirically(i.e.scientifically), evenifwe'reconscious ofthem.Thesebeliefsinformthewaysthatweinterpretourscienceconceptuallysometimes dominating the direction of whole research fields- but we can't work in theoppositedirection, using the science toevaluateour metaphysical beliefsinanydirectway.Wecanarguethatphysicsismoreconsistentwiththis or thatmetaphysical position, but we can't testour argumentempirically.And ifthisistrueofawidespreadmetaphysicalassumptioninphysicssuchasreductionism,itmustalsobetrueofthosereligious(oranti-religious)interpretations of physics that inspire such controversy. Hence, while some, such as myself, will maintain that physics is fully compatible with religious faith, others will insistupontheexactreverse.Whoisright?Thephysicsitselfiscompatiblewith bothapproaches.
Physicsiswidelysaid to havea uniqueabilitytoshine lightonphysicalreality atitsmostfundamental level.Butinordertodoso,physicistsmustmakemany assumptions.Indeed,thewidespreadassumptionthatphysicsisthemostfundamental of the natural sciences, and that all others relate to it, is a consequence ofreductionism, ametaphysical belief whichcan'titself be establishedempirically in any direct way. Moreover, whether theorists or experimentalists, most physicistsassume a form of realism -inspite of the fact that quantum physics has led to variousanti-realist challenges-and a strong belief in the uniformity ofnature, thatphysicalrealityissystematic, regularandpatternedeverywhere, and that these patterns may be understood rationally (the idea that is often expressed as the 'laws of nature/physics'). This requires reliance on physical modelstoexplainorsummariseobservations.Amodeliseffectivelyascientific metaphor,orananalogy,awayofexplainingsomething wedon'tunderstandin termsofsomething wedo.Aclassicexampleisthebilliardballmodelofagas, whichassumesthatgasmoleculesinacontainerbouncearoundliketinybilliard
balls. Whether the gas molecules really are like tiny billiard balls is another question:thepointisthatthemodelmakestheanalogysufficientlywellthatwe can successfully predict experimental observations on the gas (within limits). The next assumption is that the uniform patterns we think we see in nature, which we try to describe using models, are universal. This means that we can eliminate local variables. For instance, in an experiment we discard the vast arrayofdataweobservewhicharenotuniversallysystematicinfavourofthose (usually much sparser) data that are.Note that this means that we inevitably bringtheoreticalexpectationstothelab:wecan'tperformanexperimentwithout having a pre-conceived theoretical framework already in place. This is often summarised by the famous phrase ofN. R. Hanson that, 'All data are theoryladen'. In other words, our observations come with theoretical baggage which already goessomewaytowards interpretingthem.
Byandlarge,theseassumptionsseemtoholdupwhentheycanbetested.But notice that, in order to test them, we need toassumethem. Thiscircularityis an inherent weakness in the empirical method, identified by David Hume in his famousEnquiryConcerningHuman Understandingof1748.Ithasadevastating consequenceforanaturalsciencelikephysics,sincethiscircularitymeansthatwe canneverknowforsurethatourexperimentsandtheoriestrulyrevealrealityasit isinitself.Wecanperfonnexperiments,andwecanconstructmodelsandtheories to explain them, but we have noway of knowing how good their purchase is on 'reality' exceptbyperfonningmore experiments, constructingmore theories and soon.Evenwhen weseemtomake advancesinourunderstanding, wecan'trest securethatwe'veachievedthefinal,mostdefinitiveanswer.Scientificknowledge is inherently provisional, which is whyboth religious and anti-religious rhetoric thatmakemetaphysicalclaimsonthebasisofscience(e.g.abouttheexistenceof God)can'tbesupporteddirectlybythescienceitself.Thisalsomeansthatreality claimsmadefromsciencearemetaphysical,goingbeyondwhatsciencecandemonstrateinandofitself.Thismaysoundincredible(giventhepredominantlyrealist assumptions in science), but tosay, for instance, that electronsreally exist, is to go beyond what physics or chemistry can actually demonstrate of themselves usingtheirownempiricalmethods(althoughit'struethattheexistenceofelectrons as real entities is consistent with a vast body of science when interpreted using realist metaphysics). Thepointisthatananti-realistbeliefintheelectron-where the electron is a kind of convenient fiction to make the theories work - would satisfytheempiricalsciencejust aswell.
Physicshasvariedinitscommitmenttorealistversusanti-realistinterpretations of its theories, especially since the advent of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. One individual physicist may take a different metaphysical stancefromanother,oftendependingonwhatparticularprobleminphysicsthey're thinking about. In other words, the metaphysical assumptions that underpinthe practice of physics infiltrate every aspect of the science, and they're subtle and complex.It'shardlysurprising,then,iftherelationshipbetweenphysicsandfaith turns out to be equally subtle and complex.To see this more clearly, it's worth lookingatthehistoricaldimension.
Thehistoricaldimension
Inanyhistoricaldiscussionofthescience-faith relationship,conflictattractsspecialinterest.Inthebiologicalsciences,thereligiousdebatessurroundingthereception ofDarwin'stheoryof evolution-stillasfurious todayas atanytime inthe past-arethemostobviouscasesinpoint,whileinthephysicalsciencesattention tendstofocus onevents such asthe1633 trialofGalileo.Here,Galileowascondemned bythe Roman Catholic Church for teaching theCopernican cosmology and was required to recant. The popular perception of such stories today is that theydemonstratethatscienceandreligionareengagedinafighttothedeathover fundamentalmattersoftruth.However, modernhistorians(e.g.Brooke)studying theGalileoaffairarguethatthisconclusionmisunderstandsthedisputebyattemptingtoforceunsustainable polarities betweenscienceandfaithintothestory.For itseemsthatmanyofthemostnotableearlymodernscientistsworkinginwhatwe nowcallphysics(including Galileo)werenotonlyreligiousbelieversthemselves, but were able to integrate their science with the widespread religious beliefs of their time.Indeed, there's a case for sayingthat, far frombeinginimicaltoearly modern science, Christianityin fact provideda fertile ground for the intellectual plantingandgrowthofscientificmethod.
It'scertainlytruethat Galileo madeexplicit use oftheology fromtimetotime to support his science, especiallyregarding the sensitive questionofwhetherhis work went against biblical teaching.Aparticular bone of contention concerned biblical passages like Joshua 10:13 ('and the sun stood still, and the moon stopped'), which, takenliterally,indicated(againstCopernicus)thatthesunwent around the earth. Galileo engaged with this challenge in various ways, but it's especially worth noting his use of the ancient 'two books' metaphor, whereby God's purposes were said tobe disclosed both by Scripture (the book of God's words), and by nature (the book of God's works).This meant thatbiblicalinterpretationcouldbeunderstoodtocomplement,notconflictwith,naturalphilosophy (i.e. science). In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), Galileo answeredhiscriticsbycontendingthat
toprohibitthewholescience[ofastronomy,includingCopernicus'theoryof heliocentricity] would be to censure a hundred passages of holy Scripture whichteachusthatthegloryandgreatnessofAlmightyGodaremarvellously discernedinallhisworksanddivinelyreadintheopenbookofheaven.
Galileo's pointwas that therelevant biblical passagesagree withthe science that God'sgloryisrevealedinnature.Aprohibitionofthenewsciencewouldtherefore beanindirectcensureoftheBibleitself.
Galileowas certainly not thefirsttomake use ofthe 'twobooks' analogy, and neither washe the last, buthe did provide an important twist onit which echoed perhapsthemostsignificantconceptual advance inthehistoryofphysics,namely therealisationthat physical law couldbe expressed in mathematical tenns.Inhis work, TheAssayer (1623),Galileoexplainedthatthe'grandbook'oftheuniverse
was written in the 'language of mathematics', and that we'd wander in a 'dark labyrinth' if we couldn'tunderstand this language. Hispoint was that traditional theologicalandphilosophicalreasoningwerenolongersufficientforunderstanding nature: new tools must be brought to bear, especially mathematical tools. Nowadays, mathematicsis sobasictothe physicalsciencesthatit'seasy tomiss the novelty of this point, but the development of physics as an 'exact' science wouldhavebeenimpossiblewithoutsuchamovebyGalileo(andothers, suchas Kepler,DescartesandNewton)toconnectphysicalrealitydirectlytomathematics. It hardly needs saying that it's a metaphysical move; significantly, it was legitimated by the essentially religious conviction thatnature was governed by mathematicallawsofnaturegivenbyGod,thedivineLawgiverwhowasamathematician atheart. Thereligiouscontextofthetimewasahelp,notahindrance, here,since itprovidedthemetaphysicaljustificationforthiskeyadvanceinscientificmethod.
Manyotherscientistsoftheperiodsawtheirscienceinreligiousterms.Newton isnotable,notleastforthetheologicalbackgroundtohisviewthatspaceandtime form a fixed and absolute frame of reference for all entities and events. The significanceofthisviewcanhardlybeunderstated,sinceitformsthebackboneofthe Newtonian deterministic universe which held sway until Einstein's discovery of relativityinthetwentiethcentury,anditstillinformsagreatdealof(non-relativistic) physics. Newton's critics complained that his conception of space as unchangeable, infinite and eternal was practically divine: was Newton exalting space to becomeGod, orwasNewton reducing God tospace?Newtonwas in factdoing neither,sincehedidn'tseespaceasathingwhichexistedinitsownright.Instead, Newton believed that space arises where any being exists, even an insubstantial being like God. Space is infinite, eternal and absolute precisely because God is everlasting and omnipresent: space is an 'emanative effect of God', asNewton explainedinhisDeGravitatione.Time,likewise,isabsoluteandinfiniteinextent, arising from the eternal existence of God: 'he [God] constitutes Duration and Space'(General Scholium to the Principia). Famously, Newton also described spaceasthe'sensorium'ofGod:therealmofGod'sactivity,wherethedivinewill isplayedout.ThisprovidedNewtonwithatheologicaljustificationforhisradical claimthatthelawsof motionandgravitationwere universal: sincespacewasthe sensoriumofGod,andsincethelawsofnatureweretheoutworkingsofGod'swill inspace,thenthelawsmustbeuniversal inextentandinfluence.
Nowadays,wetakeNewton'sachievementsinphysicssomuchforgrantedthat they are virtually physics 'common sense'. So it's worth remembering that, not onlyweretheseachievementsnotcommonsenseatthetime,buttheywereaccompanied by theological and metaphysical reasoning which supported and interpreted the scientific work. Newton didn't see the clear blue water that we do between scienceandreligion, andneither, it appears, didheseeconflictbetween themasinevitable. Instead,Newtonmadeexplicitly religiousargumentsinorder to justifyhisground breaking views ofspace, timeandthelawsofnature. These viewsarenow foundationalinmodemphysics,evenif we've forgottenNewton's religiousarguments.Whateverwe mightthinknowoftherightnessorwrongness of religious arguments like those ofNewtonand Galileo, it's impossible to deny Faithandphysics
Hence,it'snotdifficulttodemonstrateadegreeofmutualsupportbetweenthe scienceoftheearlymodemperiodandthereligiousfaithofitsscientificpractitioners.Itbecomesratherhardertodemonstratethisformorerecentphysicists,especially those working since roughly the mid nineteenth-century, when science became'professionalised' as anexpertise in its own right. Nevertheless, several figures stand out, such asArthur Eddington, Albert Einstein and John Polkinghome: physicists who were convinced of the compatibility of their science with their religious faith, and who have taken the conversation between the two into new constructive areas. Eddington's work in the earlyyears of quantum theory, examiningitspotentialimpactonhumanconsciousnessandspirituality, isnotable in presagingsome of the important currents of discussiontoday, whilePolkinghome's much more recent proposal that God's action in the world may be compared with (or made possiblethrough) the physics of chaos theory stands as one oftheprimeexamplesof modemattemptstointegratecommonconcernsinphysicsandtheology.
Einstein'sis probablythe mostoft-quoted voice in the whole modemscienceand-religiondialogue, especially in his famous aphorism, 'Science without religionislame,religionwithoutscienceis blind'.Clearly,Einsteinrejectedtheidea that science and religion could only exist in conflict, but his religious views are notoriously difficult to pigeonhole into any conventional religious orthodoxy: whilehedidn'tespousethepersonalGodofmonotheism,neitherdidheembrace atheism. Infact,hismanyrecordedinvocationsofGodseemedtofunctionlargely as a means for Einstein to voice his metaphysical instincts about nature. For instance, whenaskedhowhe'dfeel if his theory of general relativityhad failed experimental verification, Einstein is reported to have responded, 'Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct'. Here, Einstein's confidence appearstohave stemmed from whatcanonly bea gutinstinct, an aesthetic intuitionthatthe rightness of his work extendedbeyondtheempirical. Einsteinisby nomeansalonehere: manyphysicistsspeakoftheirexperiencesofaweatuncoveringnewinsightsintothesecretsofnature,andtheyoftendosoinlanguagethat's moreathomeinreligiousand artisticcircles. Itcanbedifficulttoseparatetalkof standingonholygroundfromtalkofthesupremely beautifulinthiscontext,and such experiencespoint toa widelyfelthunch thatphysics pointstowards deeper levels of reality than the strictly scientific. I hardly need say that this hunch is sharedbythoseinthecreativearts,too,andalso,significantly,byreligiousbelievers.Forthat reason,I tumnowtoconsidertheaestheticdimensionsofphysics.
to the work of a supremely intelligent Creator.But the case for design suffered sucha severe blow fromDarwin's theoryof evolution(see Chapter4)thatit fell outoffavourinthemainstreamsciencesfromthemid-nineteenthcenturyonwards. The Intelligent Design (ID) movement in conservative Christianity hasin recent decades attempted to revive the argument from design as a bona fide scientific principle, but this has been met with widespread opposition by the mainstream naturalsciences.Nevertheless, the wider issuessurrounding 'design'haveresurfacedin theintriguingdebatesurrounding 'finetuning', therealisationthatmany details of ouruniverse,especiallyfundamentalphysicalconstantslike the speed of light andthechargeof the electron, are balancedsopreciselythat if they had been even minutelydifferent, then stars and planets could neverhave appeared, still less life on earth.For many theists (including ID advocates), fine tuning is directevidencethattheremustbeaFineTuner(i.e.aCreator)whocarefullybalancedthephysicallawsandconstantsatthecreationoftheuniversesothatintelligentlifewouldonedayevolve.Butmanyothers(includingsometheistssuchas myself)areunconvincedbythislineofreasoning,onthegroundsthatthereexist alternativenaturalisticexplanationsforfinetuning.Theprimarysuchexplanation isthatouruniverseisoneofmanyuniverses,andoursissimplytheonewherethe conditions have fallenoutto be just right for life.Andalthough this 'multiverse hypothesis'iswidelyheld inmodemcosmology, it'simpossible totestit empirically(atleastatpresent),sowefindthattwodivergentmetaphysicalexplanations of the same empirical 'fine tuning' science emerge, one which argues from the science straight to God (i.e.where God is the explanatory Fine Tuner), and the otherwhichgoesfromthesciencetoanaturalisticbutuntestableexplanation(i.e. themultiverse).Choosingbetweenthemlargelycomesdowntoworldviewagain, and since it'spossible to find religiousbelievers on both sides of this divide, we can'tevenconcludethataperson's attitude towards finetuningissimplyamatter ofwhether ornottheyalready believe in God.There'smoreatplayhere, andwe canseethisinthewaythatphysicistsrespondsubjectivelytotheaestheticdimensionsoftheirwork, wheretheargumentfromdesign re-appearssubtly.
The argument from design never disappeared from modem physics, but went underground, surfacing incognito at those points when scientists wax lyrically aboutthewondersoftheirdiscoveries.For,despitethefactthatthere'snoobvious empirical content to such talk, physicists are often tempted to seetheir work in grandmetaphysicaloreven theological terms.StephenHawking's final wordsin A BriefHistory ofTime area well-knownexample, wherehespeculatesthat discoveryof afinaltheoryofeverythingwillallowusto 'knowthemindof God'.
Inlight ofHawking'swell-known atheism, thislineispresumablyarhetorical flourish,butformanyreligiouslymindedphysiciststhefundamentalrationalityof nature inspiresan aesthetic and religious sense of wonder attheawesome divine 'mind'behindit.Atheological move relatedtothe argument fromdesignispossible here: the fact that we humans have been gifted with minds that are able to discernthe rationality implanted into nature confirms that we aremade in God's image, or, inother words, that Godisa personal andrational beingnotunlikeus. Of course, there aremany otherphysicistswhoare unimpressed with thislineof
reasoning,butwhoareneverthelessconvincedthatdeepandfundamentalrationalityunderpinstheuniverse,evenifwecan'tsaywherethisrationalitycomesfrom. It might be more accurate to identify this belief in deep rationality with that of Platonism(and especiallywith itsconvictionthatthereexisteternaltranscendent 'forms'whichprovidethepatternsforeverythinginthematerialuniverse),rather than withtheargumentfordesignitself.Butthepointisthat bothpositions (Platonismandtheargumentfromdesign)arecloselyrelatedtoeachotherinsourcing the order of nature beyond empirical research, in therealms of themetaphysical orevensupernatural.It'sinevitable,then,thatthesearchforthesecretofphysics' successtakesustorealityatitsdeepestandmostultimatelevel.
Physics, mathematics and reality
Physicscan'trevealdirectlytheultimatesourceofitsexplanatorypower,although itsheavyrelianceonmathematicsasatooltorepresentreality(andtomanipulate it theoretically) suggests that the answer lies somewhere in the metaphysics of mathematics.Wehave noidea why mathematics shouldbe such apowerful tool in physics, unlessthedeep reality weseek is fundamentallymathematical (i.e. a Platonist solution).The great theoretical physicist, Eugene Wigner, commenting in 1960 onthe strange ability of mathematical physics to capture deep physical truths, said itall with the title of his famouspaper, 'TheUnreasonableEffectivenessofMathematicsinthePhysical Sciences'.Asanexample,Wignerpointedto the strange factthat complex numbers (numbers based onthe idea that-1 might havea square root)appearto befundamentaltonature:
It isdifficult to avoid theimpressionthat a miracleconfronts ushere ... The observationwhichcomesclosesttoanexplanation...isEinstein'sstatementthat theonlyphysicaltheorieswhichwearewillingtoacceptarethebeautiful ones.
Twothings are worthhighlighting.First,thatWignerhere, andrepeatedly inthis paper, calls upon the miraculous -a religious concept-in order to capture the mysteryofwhymathematicsand physicswork; there'snolawofnatureorlogic tellinguswhytheyshouldwork-it'sliterallyamiracle,transcendingnature.We shouldcontinuallybedelightedbyit;it'sagift,hetellsusattheendofthepaper. Wigner might speak of miracle, buthe says nothing about faithor a deity.However,a Christian such asmyself easily makestheleapfromWigner's 'miracle'to thedivine rationalitythatunderpinsthecosmos:ChristthedivineLogosbywhom andin whomall wasmade(John 1:3; Colossians I:16),lawsofnatureand mathematicsincluded,whicharetherationalandcreativeoutworkingsofChrist'sdivine nature.Wepoorhumanscanglimpsethembecausewe-equallymiraculously-tapinto thedivine rationality.Science may not have an explanationfor its unreasonable effectiveness, butfaithdoes, andaperfectlyrationalexplanationatthat, basedon coherent andsystematic reflection within theChristian worldview.
Thesecond pointIwanttodrawfromWignerishisconvictionthatourphysical theories touch upon a deeper truth than simple rightness.Another theorist, Paul
Dirac, famously took this fascination with elegance to extremes, saying, 'It is more important to havebeauty in one's equations than to havethem fit experiment'.Thisclaimhasbeenthesourceofmuchdebateinphysics,butDirac'sbasic pointthatscientificdiscoveriesareevaluatedongroundsthatareaestheticaswell asexplanatoryisinescapable. In addition tothe simple wondennent thatphysicistsoftenexpressatthemysteriesofnature-awondennentthatbearssimilaritieswiththeargumentfromdesign-physicistsalsousetheiraestheticsensibilities inevaluatingtheoriesandmodels,theirdeeplyheldconvictionsthatnewdiscoveriesaboutnaturewillbebeautifulaswellasintelligible.Thechemist-philosopher Michael Polanyi points out that the successful scientist is driven by a kind of 'scientific passion', even though this passion is supremely un-empirical itself. There's a vast number of potential facts and features of the natural world that crowd in on any scientific study, and unless the scientist is guided by her own subjectiveandintangibleinterestsandpassions,thenshe'llbelostinamorassof impossibilities, unabletoseethewoodforthetrees.Likewise,Polanyiadvocates creativity-not unlike the creativity ofthe artist-asan essential skill for a scientisttoacquire, because(especiallyin the caseofamajordiscovery) itenables thescientisttofashionanewvisionoftheworld,avisionwhich,onceithasbeen apprehendedbyhercolleagues,changesthescientificframework(i.e.intellectual 'worldview') irreversibly. But it's impossible to construct this new framework logicallyfromthe perspective oftheold: the worldmustbe seenentirelydifferently,re-created.
Scientific progress is as haphazard, creative and intuitive as it is logical and systematic.Acaveatisinorder, though: it's possible togotoofarwiththisway of thinking, and to conclude incorrectly that science is relative and subjective. Thatwouldbeentirelywrong, butitneedstobeemphasisedthat,intheirsearch for the secrets ofnature, physicists find thatimagination, painstakinglylearned skills, creativityandintuitionareinvaluable. Inotherwords,ifwe're tomakea truly critical comparison between physics and faith, we need to look at the humandimensionsofboth.Whenwedoso, wefindanumberofstunningpoints ofcontact in the metaphysical assumptions that underpin physics, andthe ways inwhichbelieverscometofaith,similaritieswhichgobeyondwhatisempirically testableintothedomainofworldview.Ithereforeconcludethat,inthisway,faith andphysicsarereconcilable,whilebeingentirelydistinguishablefromeachother.
Chaptersummary
Thepopularconceptionthatphysicsandreligiousfaithcannotbereconciled, likethemoregeneralassumptionthatscienceandreligioninevitablyconflict with eachother, is a massive over-simplification of a highly complex issue. A common strategy for exploring the relationship between physics and religion is to focus on areas of physics that challenge our views of reality. Notwithstanding these challenges, I've suggested that we can get more directly at the relationship by examining worldview.
Becauseitcapturesmanyofouruntestableassumptions, worldviewincludes our personal attitude to faith claims, as well as our understanding of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Scientific methodology hasanimportantbearinghere, andphysicsmakesanumberofmetaphysical assumptions which mustalso be incorporatedinto worldview, including the unifonnity of nature and the relationship between scientific models and reality.
The history of physics indicates that many of its early practitioners were committedreligious believerswhosawnoessentialconflictbetweentheir science and their faith, and who were often ready tojustify their science with theologicalarguments. Ironically, sincemodemphysics profits from these advances it effectively accepts these theological arguments tacitly.
Theargumentfrom design has beenanimportantfeatureofnaturaltheology for millennia and was often invoked by scientists up until around the mid-nineteenth century. The ways that physicists today call upon beauty and elegance in nature bear similarities with the argument from design, insofarasdeep-levelsubjectiveinsightsarebeingmadethatarenotempirically testable: the science is leading the scientists beyond the science, as it were.
In fact, such deep-levelanalysesareessentialto thedoingofscience: to be effective in scientific work, a scientist needs to develop skills such as intuition, creativity and an eye for the aesthetic.
All of the above demonstrates that, although physics is popularly perceived as being systematic and relentlessly rigorous, inpractice it also uses untestableassumptionsand intuitionswhichare notunlike theworldviewhunches that infonn the faith ofreligious believers. I therefore conclude thatphysics is no more irreconcilable with religious faith than is any other branch of considered human thought.
Study questions
Which areas of physics present the sharpest challenges to religious faith?
Which present the biggest opportunities?
Are there areas of faith that should be rejected or revised on the grounds of physics? And are there areas of physics that can't be accepted by faith?
Is faith helpful in interpreting counter-intuitive areas of physics?
What is the relationship between physics and other natural sciences? How might we go about demonstrating or testing it?
Does physics teach us anything about the nature of God?
How would you relate mathematics to reality?
Doesphysicsunveilbeautywritteninthefabricofnature,ordoesthebeauty reside in our perception?
Introductoryreadings
Barr, Stephen M. (2003) ModernPhysics andAncientFaith (Notre Dame: University of NotreDame Press). [Acomprehensiveaccount ofhow religious faith may come to terms with key areas ofmodem physics.]
Brooke, John Hedley (1991) Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). [An influential account ofthe history ofthe science-and-religion debate, arguing for complexity over conflict.]
Bussey, Peter (2016) Signpoststo God:HowModernPhysics & AstronomyPointthe Way toBelief (Downers Grove: IVP Academic). [An accessible treatment ofthe interaction between physics and Christianity, arguing for compatibility.]
Advancedreadings
Koperski, Jeffrey (2015) ThePhysicsofTheism: God, Physics, andthePhilosophyofScience (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell). [A sophisticated exploration ofthe big philosophical and theological questions raised by modem physics.]
Polanyi, Michael (1958, 1962) PersonalKnowledge: TowardsaPost-CriticalPhilosophy (London, New York: Routledge). [A classic in the philosophy ofscience, exposing the many human dimensions ofthe ways in which science is done and understood.]
Wigner, Eugene (1960) 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences' CommunicationsinPureandApplied Mathematics 13: 1-14. [The title says it all.]
Internetresources
De Cruz, Helen (2017) 'Religion and Science', TheStanfordEncyclopediaofPhilosophy, E. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr20I7/entries/religion-science. [A wide-ranging introduction to the subtleties of the relationship between science and religion.]
The Institute of Physics online resources, www.iop.org/resources/index.html. [A useful repository ofup-to-date news and educational resources on the world ofphysics.]
Whenspeaking of creationism, it's important not to be too sweeping. There's a widevarietyofcreationistbeliefs,andit mightbemoreaccuratetospeakof creationisms, as Ronald Numbers demonstrates in his magisterial The Creationists. Onethingcanbesaidforcertain:creationismisareligiousposition,heldbymany Christians andMuslims worldwide. This chapter focuses especially on the most distinctivekindofcreationism,Christianyoung-earth creationism(YEC),which tendstorejectbiologicalevolutionwholesale,andtomaintainthattheearthisonly a matter of severalthousands of years old, perhaps 6,000. Notable organisations whichpromotethiskindofYECmaintainahighpublicprofile-AnswersinGenesis,theInstituteforCreationResearch,andtheCreationResearchSociety-cateringformanymillionsof adherentsintheUSAandworldwide.
Atfirstsight,thedebatebetweenYECandevolutionarybiologytugsattheheart ofwhatitmeansto'doscience'.Bothsidesclaimtobe'scientific'-with 'creation science', 'scientific creationism', and 'floodgeology' being prominent examples onthecreationistside-andbothsidesaccusetheotherofbeing 'un-scientific'or, in other words, of being a 'pseudo-science' at best. There's a strong argument, however,forsaying thatthis isn'tprincipallyadebate about how science should bedone,butaboutfromwherewederiveourphilosophicalandtheologicalauthority tomakeclaimsabouttheworld. Thisisexactlythestancethatweshalladopt inthischapter.
Whilemainstreamevolutionarybiologistsarecommittedtoaprocessofobservation,hypothesising,andtestingstrictlywithintheconfinesofthenaturalworld, YECintroducesatranscendentsourceoftruth(theBible)whichtrumpsallothers. The formergroup,like all natural scientists,derivetheirauthority fromthe epistemological assumption knownas methodologicalnaturalism, butYEC further insists upon twosupernaturally caused events-creation andflood-thatchange thewholepicture.TheupshotforYECisthattherevelationofChristianScripture takesprecedenceoverallempiricalresearchontheoriginanddevelopmentoflife, along withthe age ofthe earth. If that research isn't consistentwith aliteralistic reading of Scripture, then the research is either modified until it is, or rejected outright.There'sasense,then,thattheendlesscontroversiesbetweencreationand
Thischapterwillattempttoexplainthestateofplayherebychartingthehistorical evolution ofYEC and its strategies, before presenting an overview of evolutionary scienceforcomparison.
Oneofthesupremeironiesofthecreation-evolutiondebateisthatYECisarelatively recentphenomenon, only gainingwidespreadmomentuminthetwentieth century.YECdrawsinspirationforitsbiblicalliteralismnotfromlong-standing Christian tradition, but from a key phase in the history of science. Two linked developmentsintheseventeenthcenturyareimportanthere.First,bycombining theProtestant Reformation's insistenceuponthe comprehensive perspicacity of theBiblewiththe newly emerging empiricismofthe natural sciences, anumber ofthinkersbegantotreatbiblicaltextsatfacevalueasasourceofdataaboutthe natural world, much like data from other, non-scriptural, sources. Second, the ageoftheearth,andanaccountofitsphysicalhistory,becameofspecialinterest. The most celebrated attempt to date the earth was that of Archbishop James Ussher, whoin1648madeuseofbiblicalgenealogies(e.g.Gen.5),ancientnear easterntexts, andastronomicalresultstocalculatethatcreationhadoccurredon Sunday evening, 23 October 4004 BCE, and the flood on Sunday, 7 December 2349 BCE. In the same way, early accounts of the physical history of the earth tookthebiblicalstories ofcreation and flood as providingreliable descriptions of what must have happened. Thomas Bumet's Sacred Theory ofthe Earth (l684, 1690) is notable for treating the biblical flood story (Gen.6-9), not in terms of divine action, but in naturalistic terms. In thisway, Burnet explained the form which the earth has today, including the shape of its continents. Not only did Burnetsetatrendingeologicalthinkingforthe nextcentury andahalf (which saw the biblical flood as decisive in shaping the earth we see now), his modelisessentiallyidenticaltothatofcontemporaryYEC,asputforwardinthe seminalYEC text, The GenesisFlood (authored by John Whitcomband Henry Morris, and published in 1961). In Bumet's model, the pre-flood earth was totally smooth,butcontainedgreatundergroundcavitiesofwater ('thefountains ofthe greatdeep'; Gen.7:11).Thefloodwascausedby thesecavitiesbeingbroken up, and whenthe waters had subsided afterwards, the present shape of the seas and continents was left. While this model flies completely in the face of mainstream geology today, thanks to Whitcomb and Morris it's adhered to by millionsofcreationistsworldwide.
Inbetweentheseventeenthandtwentiethcenturies,thescientificunderstanding oftheearthanditslifeformsadvancedatawhirlwindpace. Bythemid-nineteenth century,developmentsingeology,palaeontology,andbiologywereindicatingthat the earth was very old indeed, and that life had evolved over millions of years.
These developments werenotespecially troubling, however, formanyconservative Christians, who had found ways of harmonising the new science with the Bible. When faced with a biblical text (Gen.I) which appears to insist that the physicaluniversewascreatedinsixdays,manynineteenth-centuryChristianstook refuge inthe day-age theory (where each Genesis 'day' was readasfigurativeof a much longer scientific period of perhaps millions of years) or the gap theory (where an immense time gap was understood to have occurred between God's creationofthe universeinGen.I:1andthesixdaysdescribedfromv.3onwards). These 'old-earth creationist' strategies, however, fell out of favour with many twentieth century Americans who, faced with new social pressures around what shouldbetaughtinhighschools,preferredtoadoptthemostradicalalternativeto themainstreamscientificpicture,thatofYEC.
Theinfamous 'Scopestrial'of1925wasawatershed.Here,theschoolteacher, JohnScopes, was prosecuted by thestateofTennesseeforteachingevolution in defiance ofa state law prohibiting it. The trial became a showcase for the creation-evolutiondebate,withtheculpabilityofScopeshimselfoflessimportance thanthequestionofwhethertheBibleormodemscienceshouldtakeprecedence inteachingaboutorigins.Thecourtproceedingswerewide-ranging,concerning notsomuchtheinterpretationofthescience,buttheauthority andinterpretation of Scripture, and the wider impact upon ethical and political questions. In the event, the court found Scopes guilty, which had the effect of legitimating antievolutionary teachingforsometime.Thiswasby nomeanstheendofthematter though, and the debate started so publicly by the Scopes trial has ever since pitchedtwoopposingworldviewsagainsteachother,withfundamentalistChristianity on the one side and modernity (as represented by evolutionary science) onthe other.
'Truescience'?
As Edward Davis's article, 'Science Falsely So Called',suggests, thecontextof theScopestrialwasthegrowthoffundamentalistChristianityinAmericansociety, ledbyfiguressuchasWilliamJenningsBryan,oneofthemainplayersinthetrial. ThismovementwasattemptingtoestablishitsconservativebrandofChristianity asanintellectual positioninitsownrightagainstwhatwereseentobeliberalising tendencies based on scientific naturalism, especially German biblical criticism and Darwinism. The fundamentalist argument was that these tendencies were examplesofafalsescience,whichsteadfastlyrefusedtocountenancemiraclesand supernaturalism. True science, on the other hand, would be open-minded about such things, and crucially would support a literal interpretation of the Genesis creationstories.
But this 'true science' did not reach its definitive formulation until 1961, when Whitcomb and Morris published their The GenesisFlood, ensuring that YEC wouldthereafterbeastatementaboutthe significance ofNoah'sfloodas much as astatementabout the age oftheearth andthefailings ofevolutionary science. It's no exaggeration to say that this single book has done more to
influence the shape ofYEC as we know it now than any other. Effectively repackaging the earlier ideas of Seventh-day Adventist George McReady Price (1870-1963) along with the far earlier ideas ofUssher andBurnet (but with barely a nod to any of them), this book made the case that the biblical flood provideda catastrophic anddivinelycausedalternative tothe naturalistic paradigms providedby mainstream geology and palaeontology. As withthe earlier fundamentalists,WhitcombandMorrisseethisasamatteroftruescience(their own) against false science (i.e. the mainstream, especially evolution), and for similarreasons.TheBiblemustbeheldascompletelytrustworthyindescribing the two divinely caused events of creation and flood - the biblical flood is a witness and a warning, they believe, and to doubt this isto doubt God's power tosavehumansouls-whichmeansthattruesciencemustbeginwiththerevelation of Scripture andmustnot moderate itthrough human philosophies suchas evolution. Therefore, human beings, like all other life, were created by God in the (literal) six days of the initial creation, before the flood swept them away (exceptforwhatwaspreservedontheArk).Thismuchwasaliteralre-assertion of thebiblical text, like the earlier fundamentalists.Butunlike the earlier fundamentalists, Whitcomband Morris engageextensively with geology and palaeontology, and much of The Genesis Flood gives a re-interpretation of geologicalevidenceinordertosupporttheirviewthatthefloodwasauniversal cataclysm, and theearth isvery young.
It'snotourpurposetoassessWhitcombandMorris'sargumentsindetailhere: many others,suchasMontgomery, havedonethistogreateffect,illustratingthat WhitcombandMorristreattherelevantscienceinahighlyselectiveway,thebetter forthemtotwistitintotheirversionofBumet'sseventeenth-centurymodelofthe earth(andsuchistheforceoftheirrhetoricthatitcomesoverashighly plausible tothose Christians who havelittle knowledge of mainstream geology and evolutionarybiology). What we do want to highlight, however, is the calls which creationists such as Whitcomb and Morris make on the philosophy of science. Invoking FrancisBacon's(1561-1626)ideathatscience is principally inductivemaking generalised inferences from many direct observations-creationists frequently claim that historical sciences such as palaeontology and evolutionary biology can't be scientific because they can't make direct observations of what actuallyhappenedinthepast.Instead,thebestthatsuchsubjectscandoistomake untestableandhypotheticalspeculations,goestheargument.It'sinterestingtonote that Darwin himself faced this accusation over Origin ofSpecies. The fact that Darwin and his successors were not deterred, however, but slowly built up the enormous edifice of evolutionary science we know today, indicates two things: first, thatempiricalscience ismore sophisticated thanBaconian induction might suggest,andsecond,thatifthecreationists' 'truescience'isstrictlyBaconian,then it canbear only a passingresemblance tothe natural sciences oftoday. In short, there are good reasons forjudgingYEC to be stuck in a pre-nineteenth century viewof science,both inmethod andcontent.
Dobzhansky famously wrote that 'nothing in biology makes sense except in the lightofevolution'. Evolutionistheunderlyingprocessthatgaverisetotheprodigious variety of living organisms on earth (biodiversity), including ourselves. It hasgeneratedcountlessnewspeciesduringthehistoryoflife, ofwhichmorethan 99%arenowextinct. Each speciesisadapted toitslocalenvironment(ecological niche),butchangesinclimate,geography,orbioticfactors(otherorganisms)alter thatenvironmentovervarying time-scales, causingextinctionorprovidingopportunitiestodiversifyintonew,betteradaptedspecies(speciation).Fivemassextinctioneventshavepunctuatedearth'shistory-themostrecentwipingoutdinosaurs ca.66millionyearsago(Ma);there'slittledoubtthatasixthhasbeensetinmotion by human-induced climatechange.
CurrentevolutionaryideasstemprincipallyfromDarwin,notablyhisOriginof Species. Evolution can be summarised as 'descent with modification', but this phraserequiresunpacking.Animals or plantsnormallygive rise to similaroffspring,despiteminorvariations.Theso-calledneo-Darwiniansynthesiscombines Darwin's insightswiththoseof genetics stemmingfromMendel'scontemporaneousworkonthe inheritance of traits. 'Descent'inmulticellularorganismsusually involves two sets of genetic information (DNA), derived respectively from the fatherandmother.Thisdiploid genomecompriseslongsequencesofDNA(chromosomes) which include the genes - each specifying one or more proteins that contribute to characteristics of the offspring. Variant versions of the same gene (alleles) often differ in function to a greater or lesser extent. However, proteincoding genes comprise only a small fraction of the total DNAgenome; much of the rest has regulatory functions that aren't yet fully understood. Somegenes are duplicated, and extra copies may become redundant(pseudogenes)orspecialised for new functions. Darwin envisaged a 'tree of life' whose branches diverge into newspecies 'twigs': thefactthatalllivingthingsuseDNAastheirgeneticmaterial, with similar mechanisms for translating that information via RNAinto proteins, impliesthat theyhavediversified from acommon ancestor.
Genetic variation
Importantly,however,thegenestransmittedtooffspringaren'tinvariant.Beyond the mixing of parental genes that occurs during gamete development (animal sperm or eggs; plant pollen or ova), there are also random changes in the DNA sequenceresultingfrom geneticmutation, causedbyradiationor chemicaldamage.Usually such damage is accurately restored by DNArepair to the original sequence,butsometimesthisfails,resultinginapointmutation. Suchchangescan occur within agene orinits neighbouring regulatory regions, though sometimes largergeneticchangesarise.DNAsequencechangeswithinaprotein-codinggene commonly alter the encoded protein. Again, the outcomes vary considerably,
ranging from deleterious effects on function (human genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anaemia), throughmarginal or zero ('neutral')effects, to functional improvements - enabling that individual to reproduce more successfully in a changingenvironmentordifferentecologicalniche.Suchbeneficialmutationsare admittedlyrare, butcan spreadrapidlywithinapopulationprovidedthereissufficientselectionpressure.
Selection
If space andfood are abundant, populations of organismswillexpandgeometrically,asfirstnotedbyMalthus.Whenresourcesbecomelimiting,thisisnolonger possible. Darwin's key driver for evolution is natural selection; essentially, a given setof environmentalconditions(mainly bioticfactorssuchasfoodsupply, predation, or disease)promotes the reproductive success of individuals carrying certainfavourablemutations,butalsoselectsagainstother(lessfavourable)mutations. Selection canbe appliedartificiallyby humans, asin selectivebreeding of crop plants, livestock animals, or pets, generating the huge variety of modem breedswithintheshorttime-scaleofhumanhistory.Inadvertentartificialselection isalsowelldocumented,notablytheabilityofpeststoevolvepesticideresistance. The distinction between favourable and unfavourable mutations is contextdependent rather than absolute. The sickle-cell mutation is common in West Africanpopulations, eventhoughfull-blownsickle-celldisease(individualswith twomutatedgenes)isusuallyfatal.However, carriersofthe sickle-celltrait(one normalandonemutatedgene)aren'tonlyhealthybuthaveincreasedresistanceto malaria.Thecombinedeffectofallgenesonanindividual'sreproductivesuccess (reflectedin progeny numbers)is described by the aggregate term.fitness; this is whatisimpliedby 'survivalofthe fittest'.
Artificial selection has produced significant changes within very short timescalescomparedtotheageoftheearth(4.5billionyears)andoflifeonitssurface (3.7billionyears).Thesetimingsareintumbasedonthegeologicalrecord,using best estimates fortheagesof differentrockstrata derived frominvariantrates of isotopedecay.It's therefore plausible thatgeological time-spans are sufficient to allowthe diversification oflifeonearththrough evolution bynatural selection.
Species
ThetaxonomicsystemusedtodayoriginatedwiththeSwedishnaturalistLinnaeus, whoemployedmorphologicalcriteriatoclassifyanimalsandplants.Eachdistinct typeoforganismhasaLatinbinomialclassification-thefirstnamedenotingthe genusorgroupandthesecondthespecies.ThusthegenusHomoincludestheonly extant member, Homo sapiens, plus extinct species such asH. erectus, H. neanderthalensis andH.floresiensis. Genera aregroupedinto families (e.g. orchidsOrchidaceae; grasses-Poaceae), andfamilies into orders(beetles-Coleoptera; bees,etc.-Hymenoptera).Ordersarefurthergroupedtogetherintoclasses(Hexapoda in this case), and these in tum into phyla sharing a common body-plan.
The phylumArthropoda includes insects, arachnids(spiders, etc.), crustaceans, andmyriapods.DNAsequencingprovidesindependentinsightsintotheunderlying genetic relationships between organisms, largely confirming an evolutionary basis for Linnaean classification, but also providing examples of deep genetic differences between superficially similarorganismsandunexpectedlycloselinks between dissimilar-looking species. Since DNA mutation occurs at a relatively constant rate, one caninferthetimingofbranchpointswhenspeciesdivergedby constructing phylogenetic treesbasedonDNAsequencedata.
New species often arise through reproductive isolation, e.g. when organisms colonise an island. In the Canary Isles, for instance, certainplantgeneracontain numerousspeciesthatarefarmorediversethantheircontinentalrelatives; examplesincludebuglosses(Echium)andspurges(Euphorbia).Thisresultsfromadaptive radiation, whereby the progeny of founder individuals adapt to a variety of available ecological niches. Several Canarian Euphorbia species have evolved cactus-likeformsadaptedtodrought,eventhoughtruecactibelongtoanunrelated family.Botharosebyconvergentevolution,wherebysimilaradaptations(affordinganoptimaldesignsolution)havearisenindependentlyindifferentgroupsthat don'tshareacommonancestorwiththesametrait.Box-camera eyesinvertebrates andcephalopodsprovideanotherclassicexampleofconvergence.Relatedspecies areusuallyunabletointerbreed, thoughinsomefamilies(e.g.orchids)hybridisationiscommon,suggestingthatreproductivebarriersaren'talwayserectedduring speciation.
Gradualismversuspunctuatedequilibrium
There's a long-standing debate over the rate of evolutionary change. One of the maindifficultiesindiscerningthisregardstheincompletenessofthefossilrecord, withsoft-bodiedorganismsespeciallypoorlyrepresented.Evenforspecieswhose hardpartsarereadilypreserved(molluscanshells,vertebratebones),therearegaps andanomalies inthefossilsequence, thoughoccasionallyanear-completeseries of intermediateslinksearlywithmodemforms(e.g.elephants).Theseexemplify 'gradualism', denotingslowprogressiveevolutionovertime.
In apparent contrast to gradualism stands the theory of punctuated equilibria, whichpostulateslongperiodsofstasispunctuatedbyperiodsofveryrapidevolutionarychange.Thismaybesomethingofanopticalillusion:beyondtheacknowledged incompletenessofthefossilrecord, periodsofrapidevolutionoftenfollow mass extinction events, when surviving species diversify to fill environmental niches occupied previously by now-extinct organisms. Long periods of gradual evolutionarychangearethuspunctuatedbyburstsofrapidadaptiveradiationthat arebriefingeologicalterms, butstillspan millions ofyears.
Moreover, manygenes operate intightly controlled networks, suchthat mutations ina regulatory'upstream'genecan havemultiplepleiotropiceffectsonthe 'downstream' genes whose expression it controls. This is particularly true of the so-called mastergenesthatdirect animalandplant development-such as the homeoticHoxgenesgoverningregional identityinmanyanimals,orheterochronic
genes specifying developmental timing. Mutations in these genes could lead to radicalchangesin bodyplanorlifehistory, potentiallycontributingtorapidevolutionarychange.
Theoriginoflife
Descentbymodificationimpliesacommonancestor,anorganismthatmusthave emergedduringthefirstbillionyearsofearth'sexistence.PresumablythisorganismalreadyusedDNAasitsgeneticmaterial,andprobablyresembledtheArchaebacteria thatsurvive today in extreme environments such ashydrothennal vents and hotsprings. Inferred conditions on the young earth's surface were probably conducivetospontaneousfonnationoforganicmoleculesprovidingvitalbuilding blocksforlife. However, it's ahugeleapfrom puddles of primevalsoupcontainingtherequisiteingredientstoalivingcellcapableofreproducingitselfandpassing on its DNA. Possibly the earliest life-fonns were based on RNA, which can act both as genetic material (RNA genome in retroviruses) and also carry out many protein-like catalytic functions (ribozymes).ButRNA-basedlife fonnshave left no descendants today, and other possibilities remainopen. Recent discoveriesof planets orbiting other stars raise the possibility of life evolving elsewhere in the universe. But maybe ours is a rare type of planet, unusually favourable for the evolution of life based on the unique chemical properties of carbon in a watery environment.
For much of earth's history, life was microbial, leaving fossilised mats and three-dimensional stromatolites generated by unicellular bacteria (prokaryotes). Higherorganisms-fungi, plants,or animals-aremostlymulticellular, allowing differentcellstospecialiseforparticularfunctions(differentiation),suchasanimal nervesormuscles.Thisbecamepossiblethankstotheemergenceofnoveleukaryoticcells,whichareessentiallycombinationsoftwoormoreprokaryoticcells,one livingsymbioticallywithinanother-Margulis'endosymbionthypothesis.Atleast two intracellular organelles within plant cells originatedinthisway: the energyproducingmitochondriaandphotosyntheticchloroplasts,eachderivedfromadifferent prokaryoticancestor.Animalcellspossess mitochondriaonly,butthehigh efficiency of their energy production (using oxygen) is essential for active lifestyles.Thus, evolution caninvolve elements of cooperation and networking; it's notall 'redintoothandclaw'.
Theoriginofanimals
During the Ediacaran era (635-542 Ma), the oceans were inhabited by strange organisms that lack obvious affinities with familiar animals or plants.Within a relatively brief period, tenned the 'Cambrian explosion' (starting ca.542 Ma), thesebiotavirtuallydisappeared,andwerereplacedbyanimalsbelongingtomodernphyla-includingarthropods,sponges,combjellies,marinewonns,andchordates.Theseassignmentsaresupportedbyexceptionallywell-preservedCambrian fossils,includingtracesofsoftbodyparts.However,manyofthesefossilsremain
For Gould, these anomalies represent novel body plans that did not survive the ravages of natural selection and hence became extinct. Provocatively, he claimsthat if the 'tape of evolution' werererun from the Cambrian, we might findourselvestodayinaworlddominatedbyaverydifferentselectionoforganisms.Gouldemphasisestherandomnessofsurvival intheevolutionarylottery, scotchingany notion ofprogressfrom 'lower'to'higher'fonns,culminatingin humans.
However,ConwayMorrisinterpretsthesefossilsverydifferently,asintennediatesor ancestorsintheappearanceofnewanimalgroups.Hefocusesparticularlyonconvergentevolution, adducingnumerousexamplesofthisprocessand arguing that only certain design 'solutions' actually work to enhance fitnesshencethese adaptations recur repeatedly in independent lineages. The example ofbox-cameraeyeswascitedearlier:likewisetheconvergentadaptationsagainst droughtadoptedbyAmerican cacti and someCanarianEuphorbias. Extrapolatingspeculativelyfromthis,intelligentbipedallifemaybeapredictableoutcome from prolonged evolution ina benign planetary environment.
One suggested compromise is that these now-extinct Cambrian animals belonged to majorclass-level groups (asdistinctfrommodemgroupsas insects are from crustaceans), butdid notrepresentcompletelydifferentbody-plans corresponding to vanishedphyla.
Evolutionofbehaviour
Evolutionmoulds notonlyphysicalattributesbutalso patterns ofanimalbehaviour.Because 'fitness'is measured by successintransmittingone's genes to offspring, reproductivetraits have been subjected tointensesexual selection in one orboth sexes,affectingstructuresandbehavioursinvolvedincourtshipandmating.The elaboratetail feathers of malepeacocks affordoneobviousexample,as dotheheavyantlersofmanymaledeer.Sinceexaggeratedphysicalorbehavioural attributes are interpreted as indicators of a sexual partner's fitness, these can become runaway evolutionarytrends.
Plantpollinationbyspecificinsectscreatesselectionpressuresforbothspecies, leadinge.g.todeeperflowersandlongermouthparts-atrendwhichmaybecarried to astonishing extremes. The 30 cm-long spur of the Madagascan Comet Orchid requires ahawkmoth pollinator whose similarly long proboscis allowsit tofeedonnectaratthebaseofthespur.Thereis,however,acost:thisplantcannot befertilisedby otherinsects, andbothorganismsaremutuallydependentonone another. They have co-evolved, and if either became extinct, the other would be doomed. Innumerable otherexamples of mutualdependency betweenorganisms are known; often (though not always), there is clear benefit to both in such associations.
Inparasitism,thebenefitsseementirelyone-sided.Parasitesgainnutrientsand a sheltered environment (though host immune responses attempt to combat the
DaviddePomerai andMarkHarris invader),whilehostssuffermildtodebilitatingdisease.Levelsofparasitismaffect patterns ofbehaviour such as host dominance hierarchies andreproductive success.Here,anarms-raceisinprogress: asthehostevolvesnewimmunestrategies tocontroltheparasite,naturalselectionencouragesthelattertoevolvebetterways ofcounteringorevadingthem.
Evolutionofhuman culture
Humanssharemorethan98%oftheirDNAwithchimpanzees,andratherlesswith other great apes. Patterns of animal behaviour are often instinctive rather than learned, suggesting they're 'hard-wired' in the nervous system by that animal's genes.Thatsaid,mostbehaviourscanbemodifiedbylearningthroughexperience. Otherbehavioursarelearnedfromparentsorgroupmembers,resultingin'cultural variants'particulartolocalgroupings. Humanstakethistoextremes:diversecultureshaveevolvedrapidlyovertime,asdocumentedinbothwrittenandarchaeologicalrecords.
Creation,evolution, andscience
We're nowin a position to answer the question in our title. The precise definition of 'science' is notoriously difficult to pin down, but the overview in the previoussectionhashopefullydemonstratedthatevolutionarysciencequalifies onmanycounts,notleastforitsamazingexplanatoryscopeacrossahugerange ofbiologicalquestions, foritsincorporationofmanydiversekindsofscientific enquiry within itself (including branches of physics and chemistry which no onedisputesas 'science'), andforitsability tospawnfertilenewresearchprogrammes. The accusation of YEC, that evolutionary theory isn't scientific, seems churlish (to put it mildly) in light of this phenomenal success. It's true that evolutionary history is not accessible by means of direct experimentation inthelaboratory, butthisdoesn't precludea basicempiricisminhistorical scienceslikeevolutionarybiology,geology,andastronomy:theyproceed, justlike the other natural sciences, by means of a cyclical process of observation, hypothesising,searchingformoreevidence,andrevision/rejectionoftheinitial hypothesis.
In comparison, YEC fails dismally as an empiricalscience. Indeed, there's a strongcaseforsuggestingthatYECdoesn'tevenqualifyasa'pseudo-science'on this score. YEC makes claims (hypotheses) that are open to empiricaltestingprincipallytheyoungageoftheearth, andtheworldwideextentandcataclysmic characterofNoah'sflood-butthesehave beenshowntobeentirely falseby the mainstream empirical sciences countless times, andyet YECpersists in making theseclaims.Inotherwords,YECissuchafailureasascience(andevenapseudoscience)thatit can't reasonably beclaimedtobeone.YECtakesitscertaintynot from any body of knowledge about the natural world but from a transcendent source(theBible),uponwhichitwillnotbudgeasingleinch.
Creationismand evolutionarybiology 37
It'sthereforeourargumentthatevolutioniscertainlyscientific,butcreationism (in the form of YEC) is neither scientific nor pseudo-scientific; it's metaphysical.
Chaptersummary
There are various creationisms, but young-earth creationism (YEC) in particular has persistently challenged the scientific claims and status of evolutionary biology.
YEC arose in the twentieth century, arguably as a conservative religious backlash against progressive modernism. YEC offers its own distinctive 'science', which posits a young earth and a worldwide flood which shaped the earth's present geology and fossil record mere thousands of years ago.
Both sides of the creation-evolution debate accuse the other of not being scientific, although theirdefinitionsof science seem tobe widelydivergent.
While the claimsof evolutionary biology arebasedonpainstaking observation and experimentation of the natural world by thousands of individuals workingacrossawidespectrumoflifesciences,thoseofYECmustconform above all to a literalistic reading of the Bible, as the primary source of evidence concerning origins.
One particular bone of contention concerns the question of whether study of the past can be truly scientific, since it can't be observed in the laboratory. YEC argues that the evolutionary history of life is an un-scientific hypothesis which rejects the pre-eminent status of the Bible as a source of both scientific and religious truth.
But mainstreamevolutionary science is committed to methodological naturalism and does not rely on transcendent sources of truth. Instead, sophisticated methods of study have been developed to investigate the history of life in empirical terms. The starting assumptions of evolutionary biology arequitedifferent toYEC, andwhilethe former's fallsquarelywithinthose of mainstreamscience,YEC represents atotallydifferentworldviewwhich cannot be described as 'scientific' in any conventional sense.
Studyquestions
How would you distinguish science from 'pseudo-science'?
The ancientscripturesofChristianity, Judaism, and Islamshowevidenceof ancient cosmologies and ancient scientific ideas. Should religious believers take account of modem scientific views when reading these texts?
How would you characterise the hermeneutical approach of YEC to the biblical text? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
Describe the essential character of those sciences that deal with the natural world of the past, in relation to the sciences that proceed by direct,
laboratory-basedwork(e.g.chemistry).Arethedifferencesimportantenough to mean that the former sciences should always be qualified in some way (e.g. as 'historical sciences')?
5. How dotheso-called 'historical sciences'relate to thestudyofhuman history (i.e. 'history')?
6. How important is Baconian induction in the natural sciences today?
7. How important is Darwin's natural selection as an evolutionarymechanism in modem evolutionary biology?
Introductoryreadings
Conway Morris,Simon (2003) Life'sSolution:InevitableHumans in alonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress).
Darwin,C.(1859).TheOriginofSpecies,ed.J.Burrow,Harmondsworth,Penguin,reprinting of first edition of 1859. [Where it all began: Darwin's generous, comprehensively arguedexpositionanddefenceoftheevidencefornaturalselection.]
Gould, Stephen Jay (1989) WonderfulLife: TheBurgess Shale and theNature ofHistory (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books). [This and the Conway Morris title should be read alongsideeachotheraschartingoneofthemostactivedebatesinsciencetoday.]
Montgomery, David R. (2012) The Rocks Don�Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood(NewYork:W.W.Norton&Co). [Anaccessiblediscussionofthewaythatthe biblicalflood storyshapedthe development ofthemodern scienceof geologyandof YEC]
Eldredge, Niles and Stephen Jay Gould (1972) 'PunctuatedEquilibria: AnAlternative to Phyletic Gradualism.'In Models in Paleobiology, ed. T.J.M. Schopf (San Francisco: FreemanCooper),82-115.[Thelandmarkpaperwhichintroducedtheideaofpunctuated equilibriumintoevolution.]
McCalla,Arthur(2013) TheCreationistDebate: TheEncounter betweentheBibleandthe Historical Mind(NewYork, London: Bloomsbury). [Ahighly-penetratingoverview of the originsandsignificanceofcreationisms.]
Numbers, Ronald L. (2006) The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism toIntelligent Design(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress).[Aseminalclassic,takingacritical butsympatheticviewofYEC.]
Whitcomb,JohnC.andHenryM.Morris(1961) The GenesisFlood: TheBiblicalRecord andItsScientificImplications(Phillipsburg,NJ: Presbyterian& Reformed).[ThefoundingtextofYEC.]
Internetresources
Answers in Genesis, answersingenesis.org [Perhaps themost active ofallYECorganisationsintheChristianworldcurrently.]
BioLogos, www.biologos.org [An evangelical Christian organisation which challenges YEC and is dedicated to introducing believers to mainstream scientific accounts of origins.]
Reasons to Believe, www.reasons.org [The prominent old-earth creationist organisation, ledbyastronomerDrHughRoss.]
4
Is evolution compatiblewith design?
AlasdairRichmond
Introduction
Theinterplay betweenDarwinandDesignisperhapsthemostimportanttopic uniting philosophy, science and religion. Several vital questions concern the impactofCharlesDarwin'sevolutionvianaturalselectiononourideasabout humanoriginsandthepossibility ofinferencesfrom theorganisedcomplexity ofthe biologicalworldtothe existence ofaDivineCreator/Designer.Darwinismaimstoexplaintheexistenceoforderedcomplexitybyshowinghowitcan arise in increments from simple beginnings. Darwinism does not postulate a directing complexity overseeing our development or argue complexity out of existence.
In his classic exposition ofDarwinism, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins argues that the only live options there are for explaining biological complexityareDesign(i.e.byaDivineagent)orevolutionbynaturalselection. (Notthatthese twoviewsarenecessarily logicallyincompatible, ofcourse.. .) Dawkins also says that beforeDarwin, there was norationally credible option but to believe in Design.One might disagree with one or other side ofthis dilemmaandyetagreewithDawkinsthat,betweenthem,DarwinismandDesign exhaustthepossibleways to explain the originofspecies. Whateverother differences they may exhibit, Design inferences and Darwinism share at least a commitment to viewing biological complexity asextraordinaryand in needof specialexplanation.Thekey differenceisthatwhenitcomestoexplainingbiologicalcomplexity,Darwinismneedmakenoreferencetodirectingintelligence, whereasDesignargumentsseeacceptingsuchanintelligenceasrationallycompellingorotherwiseindispensable.
Biologistsandgeologistshadspeculatedthatspeciesmighthavedeveloped,i.e. thateachspeciesdidnotnecessarilyrepresentaseparatecreation,beforeDarwin. Indeed, ideasaboutthemutabilityofspecieswereseriouslyentertainedby(e.g.) St.ThomasAquinas(1224--1274)amongstothers.Likewise,thelogicalpossibility ofalternatives to Design inferences was well-articulated at least as far back as David Hume and arguably far further still- e.g. back to Epicurus. Epicurus speculatedthat the worldcontainedan infinite amount ofmatter (in the form of minute, indivisible particles or atoms) which constantly circulated throughout
Isevolutioncompatiblewithdesign? 41 otherwiseemptyinfinite space.Given enough time (i.e. eternity), suchrandom motionofmatterwould,suggestedEpicurus, be boundtoresultinanydegreeof relativelystable,organisedcomplexity-withoutanyexternaldirection,oversight orDesigner.(Comparetheoldthought-experimentwherebyaninfinitenumberof monkeys leftlong enough before an infinite number oftype-writersareboundto generateHamleteventually.. .) With these premises, eternitywill leave nopossiblestateunactualised,andhighlyorderedpocketsinotherwiseunremittingchaos arenotremarkable.Withnoindependentlimitontheageoftheuniverse,Epicurus couldpostulateasmuchtimeashecouldneed.
This 'Epicurean'view is one ofpure, unchannelledrandomness: thereisno mechanismfavouringeitherthegenerationofcomplex parts or theirpreservation once generated. Amongst other problems, 'Epicurean' evolution may remove the surprising character oforder in our world, but only by removing the surprising character ofeveryphysically possible occurrence. In addition, modemcosmologystronglysuggestsourspacetimehasexistedforonlyafinite amountoftime andholdsonlyfinite amounts ofmatter-bothfarshortofthe literal infinities needed to make our existence necessary under Epicurus' hypothesis.
DavidHume'sposthumouslypublishedDialoguesConcerningNaturalReligion offers extended critiques ofDesign inferences via the character Philo. PhiloraisesanumberofDesign-relevantpoints, e.g. aboutinferringaninfinite cause from (apparently) finite effects. However, in Hume'sEighth Dialogue, Philorevisits"theoldEpicurean hypothesis" ofinfinite movingmatter evenly distributedthroughoutaninfiniteuniverse. However,PhilomakessomesignificantchangestoEpicurus.First, Philoimaginesthatmatterisfiniteinextent,so "everypossibleorderorposition mustbetriedaninfinitenumberoftimes.This world, therefore, with all its events, even the most minute, has been produced and destroyed, and will again be produced and destroyed" (1776, Gaskin ed. 1993: 84). Philo's second alteration to Epicurus comes closer to evolution proper, viz. duration is endless but matter only capable offinite distributions, so"everypossibleorderorposition must be tried an infinite numberoftimes" (ibid.). Furthermore, Philopostulatesan"Cl!conomyofthings, bywhichmatter can preserve that perpetual agitation, which seems essential toit, yet maintain a constancy in its forms" (1776, Gaskin ed. 1993: 85).This move reflects the need for a genuinely evolutionary theory to have at least two components: it mustexplain both thegenerationofvariantsandtheir differential survival,i.e. wherevariantscomefromandwhyonlysomesurvive.(Rememberthisbipartite structureofevolutionarytheories whenwecometoPopper'sclaimthatnatural selection restson a tautology.) Philofurtherspoints outthatanyanimal which arose withpartsexternallyill-adaptedeither tocarryoutaspecific function, or withpartsinternallyill-adaptedtooneanother,couldnotsurvive.Itsconstituent parts would quickly be dispersed and thrown back into the melting-pot until suchtime asthey underwent incorporation ina morestable animal.Theworld isnotfilledwith hybrid forms composed ofill-matched halves, butratherwith animalswhosepartsarefittednotmerelytotheir environmentbutalsotoeach
other.Hume grasped the important needfor internal adaptation ofpartswithin organisms as well as external adaptation of organisms to their environment. HumeprefiguresDarwin'srecognitionthatgeneration,survivalandpropagation are not miraculous ifthe right conditions obtain.
AsDarwin himself graciously conceded (e.g. in the 'Historical Sketch' prefixed to the Origin ofSpecies), others had suggested before him firstly, that specieswerenotimmutablebutshowedclearevidenceofchangeovertime,and secondly, that manynow-diverseforms oflife might wellhave had acommon ancestor. (Among the forerunners of evolutionary theory was philosopher Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804.) Amongst Darwin's direct influences, Charles's grandfatherErasmusDarwin(1731-1802)publishedaworkcalledZoonomia (1794-1796),whoseviewson'generation'CharlesDarwinheldtohaveanticipatedJean-BaptisteLamarck'sviews,andwhichintumforeshadowednatural selection. Lamarck's Philosophie Zoo/ogique (1809) postulated that the environmentdrovechangesinanimalorganisationandphysiology.Lamarckfurther postulated that acquired characteristics were transmitted directly and that Naturepossessesaninnatedrivetowardsimprovementsobeneficialcharacteristics were more likely to be generated than harmful ones. This supposed "Le pouvoir de la vie" ('life force' or, more accurately, 'complexifying force') should generateorderanddriveanimal species towards greatercomplexity. In Lamarckian evolution, organisms acquire advantageous new traits, said traits being handed on to succeeding generations once acquired.However, how this force worked, by what mechanism new traits arose and (especially) how acquired traits were transmitted from parents to offspring wereall mattersleft unexplainedbyLamarck.
DespiteimportantforerunnerslikeErasmusDarwinandLamarck,CharlesDarwinwasthefirstpersontoadvanceanempiricallydriven,testableexplanationfor biological complexity. Natural selection is of enduring relevance to questions touchingontheintersectionofscience,philosophyandreligionbecauseitmarks amajorachievementinexplainingtheoriginsofbiologicalcomplexityandmaybe evenlife itself interms thatfitwith naturalism. Darwin laida new emphasis on inheritance as the factorexplaininghow new featuresarose andrelativeadaptations as explaining how some features come to survive and predominate. What makesDarwin'scontributionbothsopowerfulandsocontroversialishisoffering anexplanationoftheoriginsofspecies(andbiologicalcomplexitygenerally)that needsnoappealtoexternaloversightorDesign.NoteDarwinismisnotadoctrine ofpurechanceorpurerandomness:evolutionbynaturalselectionisnotarandom process, evenifitproceedswithoutexternaldirection.
Genotype andphenotype
Despite some similarities withLamarck's theory, Darwin's Origin ofSpecies emphasised that inherited characteristics (i.e. not acquired ones) were key to understanding evolution. However, the problem that no known mechanism
could explain Lamarck's transmission of acquired characteristics could perhaps have been urged against Darwinism too until modem genetics. DNA provides a durable vehicle for the genetic information (not all of which gets actualised in any one organism) which composes the genotype. The DNA molecule is sufficiently durable to transmit this information accurately, although occasionally experiencing errors in the copying process, the allimportantmutations.
Twocrucial conceptsin genetics are the genotype and the phenotype. The former is (roughly) the genetic information which issues in the overall shape of the organism, while the latter is the macroscopic structure of the animal itself. The (Darwinian) order of causation runs from genotype to phenotype, not vice-versa. The genotype undergoes changes, expressed in organisms' structurefromgenerationof generation.Darwinismrequiresnomechanismby which phenotypic traits (advantageous or not) can be handed on to offspring onceacquired.Ratherthanexhibiting pureorunchannelledrandomness,natural selection isnotentirelyamatterofunpredictablechance.Instead,Darwinism is a theory of channelled chance: random at the level of mutation but non-random at the level of selection - albeit that Darwinism attributes the channelling to unconscious nature and not to any Designer or overseeing intelligence.
Assuminggenotypicchanges('mutations')willbe random,somewillproduce changes in the phenotype which increase the survival prospects of an animal. However, the majority of changeswill not be beneficial-beingatbest survivalneutral or (more probably) harming survival prospects. Natural selection is the processwherebyadvantageouschangestendtoaccumulateinapopulation.Here's the non-randombit: those (randomlygenerated)traits whichtend topromote the survivaloftheirrecipientswilltendtosurviveandthusgettransmitted-the(again randomlygenerated)traitsthatdon't helptheir recipientstendtodieout.Animals withadvantageouschangestendtosurvive longerand breedmorethantheirlessfavoured rivals, and so, advantageous changes tend to accumulate. Successful phenotypespreserve the genotypes which shaped themand thus such genotypes cometopredominate.
TeleologyandAristotle'sfourcauses
Onekeyphilosophicalproblemcentredonevolutionconcernsthestatusofteleology: explanations that appeal to goals in explaining (e.g.) structure, function orbehaviour. (ItisnotcoincidentalthatargumentstoDivineDesignthatappeal totheorderofthe worldare alsocalled TeleologicalArguments.) Forexample, onemightsaythatanorganismwitheyespossessorgansofsightinordertoform imagesofitssurroundings. (Orthata bat haswingsso that it can fly.)Here, the explainingfeatureisthepurposeforwhichthe eyesorwings)exist.Buthowcan agoalhelptoexplainwhyanorganismshowsthe featuresitdoes?BeforeDarwin, philosophicalviews ofexplanation bygoal-seeking wereessentiallythose
Isevolutioncompatiblewithdesign? 45
ofAristotle.Aristotledividedexplanationbycausesintofourcategories,according to the kind of cause involved. The two categories that concern us are the efficientcause(theinitiatingeventorwhatAristotlecalled 'whatstartedit')and the finalcause (the purpose orgoal).The efficient cause is more a cause as we ordinarily conceive it - whatever initiates the object's existence or a change in itsexistence. Darwiniannaturalselectionofferedtoexplaingoal-seekingbehaviour (and hence structures like eyes) solely via efficient causation. A handy summary:
How canthepurposeorendofapieceofbehaviourserveasitscause?Here is the answer: Organisms that were able to serve that purposewere selected for; servingthatpurposeisthat partofthechainof eventsthatcausesorganismsthatdobehaveinthatwayto surviveanddevelop.
(Cartwright, 1986: 208)
Paley's 'Watchmaker'analogy
Darwinism and Design agree that the manifest arrangement of parts in living thingsrequiresexplanation. ClassicDesignargumentsincludeWilliamPaley's (1802)"Watchmaker"argument.Imaginefindingafunctioningwatchonahillside. Where we might be inclined to believe a stone rested on the hillside forever without feeling any need for special explanation for its existence, the watch'sintricatepartsandtheirobviousorderingtoanendinvitespecialexplanation. Paleyarguedthat notthewatch'smereexistenceorevenitscomplexity per se invite special explanation but what needs explanation is the watch's manifest ordered complexity towards a clearly identifiable goal or end-state. Such goal-oriented order invites a functional explanationlike those we apply inothercases. Paleythought onlyintentionalactionby aDesignercan explain orderingofpartstoanend. (Theneedforintentionalexplanationofthewatch's goal-directedaspectswouldonlyincrease if we discovered the watch contains mechanismsthat allow it to make other watches, just as livingthingsreplicate themselves.) Darwinism agrees with Paley that cases of organised biological complexity (andself-replicatingliving forms in particular) invite explanation. Where Darwinism departs from Paley is in introducing the notion of gradual changethroughtheconferringof selectionaladvantageandnotbydirectexternal oversight.
Darwinismandtheism: twopitfalls
Discussions of Darwin and theism might need to steer clear of two (popular) pitfalls: one isclaimingthat Darwinism hasleft the status oftraditionalDesign ArgumentscompletelyunaffectedandtheotheristoclaimingthatDarwinismhas settledthematterofGod'sexistence(inthenegative)onceandforall.Thesetwo extremities are not the only sustainable views. One mightinsteadhold that Darwinismhastransformedthe Designdebateinwaysthat Darwin'scritics havenot
alwaysabsorbedorrespondedtoconstructively,butthinkthatDarwinismhasnot rendereddebatesoverGodobsoleteorotherwiseprovedbeliefirrationalorotherwise unsustainable. Darwinism may sit ill with sometraditionaltheistic conceptions (e.g. Biblical literalism), but it does not necessarily replace or refute all theistic arguments.
One can be a thoroughgoing Darwinian and still not subscribe to the view that Darwinism has somehow refuted religion, or exposed religious belief as beingirrationalorabsurd.WhileDarwinism'ssuccessishardtoreconcilewith the central claims of 'Intelligent Design' theories, Darwinism has left other arguments about God's existence untouched. For example, the issue of socalled 'cosmic fine-tuning' - namely, why does the physicalworldshowthe exactlyright set of conditions to make the evolution of life possible? Other epistemic/evidential arguments besides Design ('teleological') arguments include the Cosmologicaland Ontological arguments. Likewise, existential arguments for belief or acquiring belief include Blaise Pascal'sWager, S0ren Kierkegaard's 'Leap of Faith' arguments, Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Form of Life' arguments, etc.
Naturalselectionandthestatusofintelligentdesign
Determiningwhatascientifictheoryiscanbeaninvolvedmatter,butonesuggestion might run thus: a scientific theory is an explanatory framework that tries to uniteasmanyempiricalphenomenaaspossibleunderthesimplest possiblelaws andmakesdetailed,quantitativeandtestableempiricalpredictions.ConsiderEinstein's(SpecialorGeneral)Relativity-thesetheoriesbetweenthemunitedahost ofgravitational,electromagneticandopticalphenomenawhilepredictinghitherto unobserved phenomena (like time dilation, space-time curvature, gravitational waves, etc.) that could be subjected to preciseobservationaltests.Relativity has sofarbeen completelyvindicated byobservation andcontinues togeneratenew, detailed predictions that form a basis forongoing research programmes. Now, at the riskof over-compressingseveral interestingdebates inthephilosophyof science, the fact that atheoryhasbeen successful insurviving tests doesnot necessarily support unrestricted claims for the theory's truth- presumably it is ofthe essenceofscientifictheoriesthattheycan (atleastinprinciple)beoverturnedby newdata,howeverwell-confirmedtheyhavebeenhitherto-butequallyitwould seemperversetorejectthebest-confirmedoftheavailabletheoriesonthebasisof thatsuccess.
SomeopponentsofDarwinismcalledforequalclassroomtimeandstatefunding for teaching Creationist alternatives tonatural selection, notably Intelligent Design ('ID'). If conflicts with the United States constitutional strictures on classroom promulgation of religious doctrine are to be avoided, ID has to be a scientifically motivated movement, i.e. onedriven bythe (presumablydisinterested) scientific appraisal of the data; it is not supposed to be an exercise in apologetics for any given faith or religious position. Key arguments for ID includetheclaimthat Darwinismcannotexplaintheoriginsoflifeorthatsome
biologicalstructuresshow evidence of 'irreduciblecomplexity',i.e.complexity thatisinexplicableintermsofgraduated,step-by-stepaccumulationofnaturally evolvedchanges.
There are numerous grounds for reservations about ID as a currently viable legitimatescientificthe01y.WhilenotallversionsofIDexhibitallthesetraits,ID oftenseemstoexhibitversionsofthefollowing:
1) Vagueness of concepts. There is as yet no sign of anything like consensus or agreed definition as to what ID is, nor what observational (quantitative or qualitative) evidence would support it. Such consensus is not essential for science to progress in a given field, but the absence of such consensus discourages clear testing and results.
2) Lack of quantitative predictions. Darwinism, especially as applied to (e.g.) population-geneticsor the differentialspreadoftraits,makesmany detailed empiricalclaimsthatcanbeexpressedindirectlytestablequantitativeterms, and has passed every test it has been put to thus far. (Cf. the increasing evidence of intermediate steps between modem-day species in the fossil record, ever-increasing evidence of the development of complexity through incremental change, etc.)
3) Inattention to/downplaying of apparent falsifiers. E.g. several instances of alleged"irreduciblecomplexity" that have proved tobeall-too-reducible.A popular ID claim isthat the emergence oflife is an exceptiontothe second law of thermodynamics. However, that law says (roughly) only that the entropy of an isolated system will either stay the same or tend to increase overtime.Theaccumulatingbiologicalorderinallourancestralreplicators wasmorethanoffsetbytheaccumulatingdisorderinthenutrientsandother essential materials they pulled in from outside. Neither life nor proto-life nor indeed the Earth itself is an isolated system.
4) Misrepresentation of the nature, aims and testing-conditions of Darwinism. E.g.claimsthatDarwinismisadoctrineof"purerandomness",that"survival ofthefittest"isanunscientificandunfalsifiabletautologyorthatDarwinism "cannot explain the origins of life", etc.
5) Bad historical grasp of science. E.g. some ID supporters still invoke Lord Kelvin's 1862 calculation that the Earth could only have existed for between 24 and 400 million years (i.e. too short a time for the complex life-forms we observe to have evolved) - neglecting to mention that Kelvin made his calculation long before anything was known of the roles of (e.g.) nuclear fission in producing geothermal heating or of nuclear fusion in heating the Sun. Kelvin's calculations were broadly correct, assuming the Earth's and Sun's heat were due solely to then-known chemical processes (like combustion) and withoutinvolving nuclear processes. Kelvin made his calculation in good faith and with all the thenknownscientificfacts at hisdisposal; totrot the same calculation out now is unsustainable.
Isevolutioncompatiblewithdesign? 47
6) Settingtoo muchstorebymereconsistencywithexperienceandnotenough store by testable predictions. (E.g. some supporters of ID still cite approv inglyPhilipGosse's'Omphalos'-seebelow.)IDseemstotrafficexclusively ineitherunfalsifiablehypotheses(likePhilipGosse's)orfalsifiedhypotheses. Ofcourse,oneandthesameclaimcannotbebothunfalsifiableandyetfalsi fied, but as yet there seems to be no successful, unfalsified, quantitative predictions from ID.
So,theabove suggestIDiseithernotreallyascientific theoryatall,oratbest, a scientifictheoryvastlyinferiorinpredictiveandexplanatoryresourcestoDarwinism.WhetherID mighthavebeenscientificallyviablehadthedatabeendifferent is another question- and one to which an affirmative answer couldbe given in theorywithout it followingthat ID asthedata standis a viablescientifictheory. Afterall,hadthedatabeen(very)differentfromwhattheyare,geocentriccosmologycould havebeenscientificallyviable-butthey aren'tanditisn't.
Evolutionand falsifiability
Design arguments need not imply Biblical literalism. However, one historical Creationiststoryaffordssomeinstructivepoints.In 1857,PhilipGosse,natural ist and devout member of the Plymouth Brethren, published a book called Ompha/os:AnAttemptto UntietheGeologicalKnot(London,JohnVanVoorst). GossesoughttocombineBiblicalaccountsofCreationwithgeologicalevidence thattheEarthhadalonghistory.HeconcludedtheBiblicalaccountwasliterally true (i.e. the Earth was createdin sixdays), but thatthe Earth was createdwith layersof sedimentandfossilsinplace. He hoped(and apparently expected) that thisattemptedreconciliationwouldfindfavourwithbothscientificandreligious parties to the disputes over the Earth'sage and thehistoryoflife thereon.Alas, neither side adopted Gosse's view en masse: scientists dismissedthe claim as arbitraryanduntestable;theologiansdismisseditasinvolvingGodplayingwhat waseffectivelyamassiveprankorotherwiseintroducinganeedlessdiscontinu ityintothephysicalworld.
InfairnesstoGosse,heheldthatCreationwastheonlyalternativetoaccepting aneternal andessentiallycyclicalsuccessionoflife-forms.(Asitwere, chickens succeedingeggssucceeding chickens, forever.)GivenCreationmustbeanirrup tionintothecausalorder,GossearguedthatanycreatedEarththatcontainedtrue archetypes for subsequent life would have to bear false traces of a non-existent past.Thus, ifAdamwasthepatternof allsubsequentpeople,hemusthavehada navel (or"omphalos" in Greek).However, sinceAdamwasmade fromclayand notbornofamother,hisnavelonlyresembledthevestigialremainsofanumbilical cordwhichinfactneverexisted.Likewise,Eden'snew-madetreeswouldcontain growthrings,evidenceofmaturationtheyneverunderwent.
Gosse accepted this hypothesis was practically unfalsifiable for any nine teenth century observer, but held that unfalsifiability was inevitable for
Isevolutioncompatiblewithdesign? 49
Creationist hypotheses. For any conceivable physical observation, Gosse's hypothesis can be made proof against it. Whether it be growth rings in trees, sedimentationinrocksortherecessionofgalaxies, all couldbefalse evidence ofanUr-Creation, anon-existentprimordialworldpriortotheactualCreation. However, Gosse can't explain why fossils show the particular shapes and arrangements they do. (Why we do only find fake remains of extinct saurians andnotthoseofcentaurs?) Iffossils areeitheraDivine test (aclaimGossedid not make) or an inevitably misleading by-product of Creation, no functional relationship existed between the remains. However, if the fragments once formedpartofliveanimals,thenwecanrelatethemtoothercreaturesbyseries of structural correspondences. Likewise, if the distribution of fossils in rockstrata results from gradual evolutionary change, then what we see is what we would expect: layers of creaturesof similar ages embeddedin rocks ofsimilar ages. However, if we attribute mass extinctions to a single all-encompassing Flood, then we must explain why creatures from different stages of evolution diedobligingly inlayers.
Perhaps surprisingly, Karl Popper (1976: 168) once claimedDarwinismwas "notatestablescientifictheorybutametaphysicalresearchprogramme". Popper thought"survivalof the fittest" was tautologous, i.e. thatsurvivaldefines which adaptations are successful and survival is defined in terms of adaptive success: "Adaptation or fitness is defined by modem evolutionists as survival-value, and canbemeasuredbyactualsuccessin survival: thereishardlyanypointintesting a theory as feeble as this" (op. cit.: 171). In defending this claim, he invokes a speciesoftheEpicurean'evolvingmatter'hypothesisofferedbyHume'sPhiloto exemplifyhisviewoftheessentiallymetaphysicalnatureofDarwinism:
However, contraPopper,"survival of the fittest" describeswhat tendstohappen, and is emphatically non-tautologous. The 'fittest' organisms (i.e. the best adapted)arenotwhoeverjusthappenstosurvive.Aucontraire: successfuladaptations"confer fitness by an engineer's criterionof design, notby the empirical fact of their survival and spread" (Gould, 1991: 42). Contingency also shapes whetherefficientmutationsflourish. (Having anecktenincheslongerthanyour grazing rivals has little impact on your survival chances if a gigaton meteorite hitsyourenvironment.)An organism'sfitness canbe measured byinvestigating it and itsenvironment without knowing the coming sweep ofevents.Assessing an animal's survival involves historical investigation. Again, an evolutionary theorymustexplaina)thegenerationofvariantsandb)theirdifferentialsurvival.
Popper's notion that survival and adaptive success are necessarily related blurs thisdistinction.
ContraPopper,Darwinismmakeseminentlytestableandfalsifiableclaims,e.g. that when gaps inthefossil record arefilled, those gapswill befilled(andmany have been filled) with the remains ofcreaturesthat areexplicable in Darwinian terms,i.e.nosuddenvastleapsacrossgenetic'designspace'inasinglegeneration. OtherDarwinianexplanatoryprinciples(e.g.thatbilateralsymmetryinanyorganism is best explained by locomotion) lead to falsifiable, quantifiable predictions whichcanbetestedinarangeofcases.
1\vocautionarynotes
Finally,twosuggestions forwaysnottoreadDarwinism.
Firstly, Darwinism does not straightforwardly equate evolutionary survival with progress, orstilllesswith anymoral(orother)value. Thebest-adaptedare not therefore necessarily the morally best. Likewise, it does not follow from natural selection that the best-adapted survivors must be the most ruthless or self-centred organisms. Natural selection has favoured butterflies rather more thansabre-toothedtigers: the butterflyhassurvivedandthesabre-toothedtiger hasn't. Should weconcludethat whateverattributesbutterflieshave thatsabretoothedtigers lackaresomehow more 'progressive'?So-calledSocialDarwinists (who may have only the slightest acquaintance with what natural selection actuallyinvolves) seem to assume too quickly that 'progress' must be towards greater fierceness, hostility and general chest-beatingtoughness.Butisthe butterflymore 'fit'thanthe sabre-toothed tiger?Shouldweconcludethatevolution ismore likelyinthelong term toselect for prettiness ofwingsover fierceness? Notions of moral worth and value are best kept firmly decoupled from notions ofevolutionary 'unfitness'.
Secondly,ifPoppermisconstruedthenatureof"survivalofthefittest",hewas in good company. Sometimes philosophers try to tum an empirical research programme into ametaphysical schema by treating a well-confirmedtheoryas thoughitwereanecessarytruth.Somehaveproposedtowriteevolutionthrough naturalselectionintothe verydefinition oflife, thereby undermining anyclaim that natural selection is non-tautologous. Such definitions effectively dismiss Creationism a priori and have deeply counter-intuitive consequences. While Creationismmayormaynotberight,itisnotlogicallyincoherent.Furthermore, suchdefinitionsdistorttheempiricalstatusofDarwin'stheorybymakingamere analytic truth thatlife evolved. Neither consequence seems palatable.As Margaret Boden says:"To argue that 'creation biology' is false, or explanatorily inferiorto scientificbiology, one must treat evolution as a universalempirical characteristic oflife, not as ana prioricriterionof it" (ThePhilosophyofArtificialLife,Oxford,OxfordUniversityPress,1996,ed.Boden,Introduction:24). Defining life based on evolution could oblige us to conclude that something couldpassallourexternalcriteriaforlifeandstillprovenottobealivebecause itprovednottohaveevolved.
Chaptersummary
Precursors of Darwinism include the purely random 'atomistic' theories of EpicurusandHume, andthespecificallyevolutionaryhypothesesofErasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Lamarckpostulatedthatthereisaninnatedrivetowardscomplexityinliving things, and that organisms both acquire advantageous traits and pass them totheiroffspring. ThemechanismsbehindLamarck'stransmissionofadvantageous traits and pouvoir de vie remain mysterious.
Epicurus postulated that infinite matter circulating through eternity would eventuallygenerateanyimaginabledegreeofapparentorderandcomplexity. However, cosmological history is too short for such pure 'Epicurean' randomness to be plausible and hence this theory fits ill with observation.
Where Epicurean evolution is a theory of pure randomness, evolution by natural selection offers a theory of channelled randomness. Evolution is random at the level of mutations but non-random when it comes to the preservation and spread of adaptively advantageous traits.
Where Aristotelean biology explained goal-seeking behaviour via a special 'teleological'kind of causation, Darwinism explainsgoal-seekingbehaviour and parts via ordinary efficient causation.
Contrary to claims by (e.g.) Karl Popper, Darwinism makes falsifiable and quantifiable conjectures. Evolutionary fitness and survival are not synonymous, and hence 'survival of the fittest' (i.e. the best-adapted) is not a tautology.
Whateverotherdifferencesthey mayhave, DarwinismandDesignbothtake biological complexity seriously, i.e. as a phenomenon inviting special explanation.
Design inferences are by no means the only arguments for believing in God.
Darwinismdoesnotequatesurvival-valuewith(especiallymoral)'progress' or 'worth'.
Writing evolution (by natural selection) into the very definition of life misrepresents the empirical and scientific status of Darwin's theory, and risks distorting and diminishing his achievement.
Studyquestions
1. How does natural selection differ from Lamarckian evolution?
2. How does natural selection differ from pure ('Epicurean') randomness?
3. What might it mean to say that natural selection is a process of channelled randomness?
4. Does it make sense to talk of a non-intentional teleology?
5. How do genotype and phenotype relate?
6. Is "survival of the fittest" a tautology, or are there differences between the notions of endurance through stability and survival through adaptation?
7. Why might there be a conflict between traditionalArguments fromDesigns (e.g. Paley's "Watchmaker") and evolution by natural selection?
8. How did Philip Gosse attempt to reconcile the fossil record with Genesis, and was this attempted reconciliation successful?
9. What resources might there be for falsifying evolution?
I0. What implications might natural selection have for our ideas of teleology?
Primary sources
'About Darwin: Dedicated to the Life and Times of Charles Darwin', www.about darwin.com/ [Useful regularly updated guide to Darwin, his works and literature abouthim.]
Darwin,C.(1859).TheOriginofSpecies,ed.J.Burrow,Harmondsworth,Penguin,reprinting of first edition of 1859. [Where it all began: Darwin's generous, comprehensively arguedexpositionand defenceoftheevidencefornaturalselection.]
'DarwinOnline', TheComplete Works ofCharlesDanvin Online, maintainedbyJohnvan Wyhe, Cambridge University Library http://darwin-online.org.uk/ [Highly recommendedelectronicdatabaseofDarwin'sworks.]
Paley, W. (1802).Natural Theology, ed.M. Eddy andD. Knight, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2006. [Enduringly importantaccount of inferencestoDesign fromobserved nature;includesthefamous 'Watchmaker'analogy for inferringDesign fromorganised biologicalcomplexity.]
Introductoryreadings
Dawkins,R.(1985). TheBlind Watchmaker.Harmondsworth:Penguin. [Classicintroductionto/defenceofDarwinism.Arguespersuasively thatonlyDarwinismorDesignoffers live optionsfor addressing the biological. Offers convincing rebuttalsto ahostof criticismsofDarwinism.)
Dennett,D.(1995).DanvinsDangerousIdea,Harmondsworth:Penguin.[Comprehensive survey of philosophical implicationsofDarwinism.]
Gould, S. (1976). 'Darwin's Untimely Burial', Natural History 85: 24-30. Reprinted in Gould's Ever Since Danvin, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991: 39-45. Online at: www. stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_tautology.html [Brilliantly writtenresponseto some perennialmisreadingsofDarwinism.]
Hume, D. (1776/1993). Dialogues ConcerningNaturalReligion and the NaturalHistory ofReligion, ed.J. C.A. Gaskin, Oxford: Oxford,University Press. [Wide-ranging dialoguesurvey ofrationalgroundsforbelief-includesaclassiccritiqueof DesigninferencesthatforeshadowsDarwin.]
Ruse, M., 1973, The Philosophy ofBiology, London: Hutchinson. (Reprint Prometheus Books 1998.) [Thorough, clear survey for philosophy-minded readers of key issues in evolution.]
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other."
"I see. But isn't there any third party in the case?"
"Yes—Ulric Fiennes, the sculptor, you know. But he can't have her at his place because his wife's there, and he's really dependent on his wife, because his sculping doesn't pay. And besides, he's at work on that colossal group for the Exhibition and he can't move it; it weighs about twenty tons. And if he went off and took Olga away, his wife would lock him out of the place. It's very inconvenient being a sculptor. It's like playing the double-bass; one's so handicapped by one's baggage."
"True. Whereas, when you run away with me, we'll be able to put all the pottery shepherds and shepherdesses in a handbag."
"Of course. What fun it will be. Where shall we run to?"
"How about starting to-night and getting as far as Oddenino's and going on to a show—if you're not doing anything?"
"You are a loveable man, and I shall call you Peter. Shall we see 'Betwixt and Between?'"
"The thing they had such a job to get past the censor? Yes, if you like. Is it particularly obscene?"
"No, epicene, I fancy."
"Oh, I see. Well, I'm quite agreeable. Only I warn you that I shall make a point of asking you the meaning of all the risky bits in a very audible voice."
"That's your idea of amusement, is it?"
"Yes. It does make them so wild. People say 'Hush!' and giggle, and if I'm lucky I end up with a gorgeous row in the bar."
"Then I won't risk it. No. I'll tell you what I'd really love. We'll go and see 'George Barnwell' at the Elephant and have a fish-and-chips supper afterwards."
This was agreed upon, and was voted in retrospect a most profitable evening. It finished up with grilled kippers at a friend's studio in the
early hours. Lord Peter returned home to find a note upon the halltable.
"My lord,
"The person from Sleuths Incorporated rang up to-day that he was inclined to acquiesce in your lordship's opinion, but that he was keeping his eye upon the party and would report further to-morrow. The sandwiches are on the dining-room table, if your lordship should require refreshment.
"Yours obediently, "M. B ."
"Cross the gypsy's palm with silver," said his lordship, happily, and rolled into bed.
CHAPTER XI
Lord Peter Clears Trumps
"Sleuths Incorporated's" report, when it came, might be summed up as "Nothing doing and Major Fentiman convinced that there never will be anything doing; opinion shared by Sleuths Incorporated." Lord Peter's reply was: "Keep on watching and something will happen before the week is out."
His lordship was justified. On the fourth evening, "Sleuths Incorporated" reported again by telephone. The particular sleuth in charge of the case had been duly relieved by Major Fentiman at 6 P.M. and had gone to get his dinner. On returning to his post an hour later, he had been presented with a note left for him with the ticketcollector at the stair-head. It ran: "Just seen Oliver getting into taxi. Am following. Will communicate to refreshment-room. Fentiman." The sleuth had perforce to return to the refreshment room and hang about waiting for a further message. "But all the while, my lord, the second man I put on as instructed by you, my lord, was a-following
the Major unbeknownst." Presently a call was put through from Waterloo. "Oliver is on the Southampton train. I am following." The sleuth hurried down to Waterloo, found the train gone and followed on by the next. At Southampton he made inquiries and learned that a gentleman answering to Fentiman's description had made a violent disturbance as the Havre boat was just starting, and had been summarily ejected at the instance of an elderly man whom he appeared to have annoyed or attacked in some way. Further investigation among the Port authorities made it clear that Fentiman had followed this person down, made himself offensive on the train and been warned off by the guard, collared his prey again on the gangway and tried to prevent him from going aboard. The gentleman had produced his passport and pièces d'identité, showing him to be a retired manufacturer of the name of Postlethwaite, living at Kew. Fentiman had insisted that he was, on the contrary, a man called Oliver, address and circumstances unknown, whose testimony was wanted in some family matter. As Fentiman was unprovided with a passport and appeared to have no official authority for stopping and questioning travelers, and as his story seemed vague and his manner agitated, the local police had decided to detain Fentiman. Postlethwaite was allowed to proceed on his way, after leaving his address in England and his destination, which, as he contended, and as he produced papers and correspondence to prove, was Venice. The sleuth went round to the police-station, where he found Fentiman, apoplectic with fury, threatening proceedings for false imprisonment. He was able to get him released, however, on bearing witness to Fentiman's identity and good faith, and after persuading him to give a promise to keep the peace. He had then reminded Fentiman that private persons were not entitled to assault or arrest peaceable people against whom no charge could be made, pointing out to him that his proper course, when Oliver denied being Oliver, would have been to follow on quietly and keep a watch on him, while communicating with Wimsey or Mr. Murbles or Sleuths Incorporated. He added that he was himself now waiting at Southampton for further instructions from Lord Peter Should he follow to Venice, or send his subordinate, or should he return to London? In view of the frank behavior of Mr. Postlethwaite, it seemed probable that a
genuine mistake had been made as to identity, but Fentiman insisted that he was not mistaken.
Lord Peter, holding the trunk line, considered for a moment. Then he laughed.
"Where is Major Fentiman?" he asked.
"Returning to town, my lord. I have represented to him that I have now all the necessary information to go upon, and that his presence in Venice would only hamper my movements, now that he had made himself known to the party."
"Quite so. Well, I think you might as well send your man on to Venice, just in case it's a true bill. And listen".... He gave some further instructions, ending with: "And ask Major Fentiman to come and see me as soon as he arrives."
"Certainly, my lord."
"What price the gypsy's warning now?" said Lord Peter, as he communicated this piece of intelligence to Bunter. Major Fentiman came round to the flat that afternoon, in a whirl of apology and indignation.
"I'm sorry, old man. It was damned stupid of me, but I lost my temper. To hear that fellow calmly denying that he had ever seen me or poor old grandfather, and coming out with his bits of evidence so pat, put my bristles up. Of course, I see now that I made a mistake. I quite realize that I ought to have followed him up quietly. But how was I to know that he wouldn't answer to his name?"
"But you ought to have guessed when he didn't, that either you had made a mistake or that he had some very good motive for trying to get away," said Wimsey.
"I wasn't accusing him of anything."
"Of course not, but he seems to have thought you were."
"But why?—I mean, when I first spoke to him, I just said, 'Mr. Oliver, I think?' And he said, 'You are mistaken.' And I said, 'Surely not. My name's Fentiman, and you knew my grandfather, old General
Fentiman.' And he said he hadn't the pleasure. So I explained that we wanted to know where the old boy had spent the night before he died, and he looked at me as if I was a lunatic. That annoyed me, and I said I knew he was Oliver, and then he complained to the guard. And when I saw him just trying to hop off like that, without giving us any help, and when I thought about that half-million, it made me so mad I just collared him. 'Oh, no, you don't,' I said—and that was how the fun began, don't you see."
"I see perfectly," said Wimsey. "But don't you see, that if he really is Oliver and has gone off in that elaborate manner, with false passports and everything, he must have something important to conceal."
Fentiman's jaw dropped.
"You don't mean—you don't mean there's anything funny about the death? Oh! surely not."
"There must be something funny about Oliver, anyway, mustn't there? On your own showing?"
"Well, if you look at it that way, I suppose there must. I tell you what, he's probably got into some bother or other and is clearing out. Debt, or a woman, or something. Of course that must be it. And I was beastly inconvenient popping up like that. So he pushed me off. I see it all now. Well, in that case, we'd better let him rip. We can't get him back, and I daresay he won't be able to tell us anything after all."
"That's possible, of course. But when you bear in mind that he seems to have disappeared from Gatti's, where you used to see him, almost immediately after the General's death, doesn't it look rather as though he was afraid of being connected up with that particular incident?"
Fentiman wriggled uncomfortably.
"Oh, but, hang it all! What could he have to do with the old man's death?"
"I don't know. But I think we might try to find out."
"How?"
"Well, we might apply for an exhumation order."
"Dig him up!" cried Fentiman, scandalized.
"Yes. There was no post-mortem, you know."
"No, but Penberthy knew all about it and gave the certificate."
"Yes; but at that time there was no reason to suppose that anything was wrong."
"And there isn't now."
"There are a number of peculiar circumstances, to say the least."
"There's only Oliver—and I may have been mistaken about him."
"But I thought you were so sure?"
"So I was. But—this is preposterous, Wimsey! Besides, think what a scandal it would make!"
"Why should it? You are the executor. You can make a private application and the whole thing can be done quite privately."
"Yes, but surely the Home Office would never consent, on such flimsy grounds."
"I'll see that they do. They'll know I wouldn't be keen on anything flimsy. Little bits of fluff were never in my line."
"Oh, do be serious. What reason can we give?"
"Quite apart from Oliver, we can give a very good one. We can say that we want to examine the contents of the viscera to see how soon the General died after taking his last meal. That might be of great assistance in solving the question of the survivorship. And the law, generally speaking, is nuts on what they call the orderly devolution of property."
"Hold on! D'you mean to say you can tell when a bloke died just by looking inside his tummy?"
"Not exactly, of course. But one might get an idea. If we found, that is, that he'd only that moment swallowed his brekker, it would show that he'd died not very long after arriving at the Club."
"Good lord!—that would be a poor look-out for me."
"It might be the other way, you know."
"I don't like it, Wimsey. It's very unpleasant. I wish to goodness we could compromise on it."
"But the lady in the case won't compromise. You know that. We've got to get at the facts somehow. I shall certainly get Murbles to suggest the exhumation to Pritchard."
"Oh, lord! What'll he do?"
"Pritchard? If he's an honest man and his client's an honest woman, they'll support the application. If they don't, I shall fancy they've something to conceal."
"I wouldn't put it past them. They're a low-down lot. But they can't do anything without my consent, can they?"
"Not exactly—at least, not without a lot of trouble and publicity. But if you're an honest man, you'll give your consent. You've nothing to conceal, I suppose?"
"Of course not. Still, it seems rather——"
"They suspect us already of some kind of dirty work," persisted Wimsey. "That brute Pritchard as good as told me so. I'm expecting every day to hear that he has suggested exhumation off his own bat. I'd rather we got in first with it."
"If that's the case, I suppose we must do it. But I can't believe it'll do a bit of good, and it's sure to get round and make an upheaval. Isn't there some other way—you're so darned clever——"
"Look here, Fentiman. Do you want to get at the facts? Or are you out to collar the cash by hook or by crook? You may as well tell me frankly which it is."
"Of course I want to get at the facts."
"Very well; I've told you the next step to take."
"Damn it all," said Fentiman, discontentedly; "I suppose it'll have to be done, then. But I don't know whom to apply to or how to do it."
"Sit down, then, and I'll dictate the letter for you."
From this there was no escape, and Robert Fentiman did as he was told, grumbling.
"There's George. I ought to consult him."
"It doesn't concern George, except indirectly. That's right. Now write to Murbles, telling him what you're doing and instructing him to let the other party know."
"Oughtn't we to consult about the whole thing with Murbles first?"
"I've already consulted Murbles, and he agrees it's the thing to do."
"These fellows would agree to anything that means fees and trouble."
"Just so. Still, solicitors are necessary evils. Is that finished?" "Yes."
"Give the letters to me; I'll see they're posted. Now you needn't worry any more about it. Murbles and I will see to it all, and the detectivewallah is looking after Oliver all right, so you can run away and play."
"You——"
"I'm sure you're going to say how good it is of me to take all this trouble. Delighted, I'm sure. It's of no consequence. A pleasure, in fact. Have a drink."
The disconcerted major refused the drink rather shortly and prepared to depart.
"You mustn't think I'm not grateful, Wimsey, and all that. But it is rather unseemly."
"With all your experience," said Wimsey, "you oughtn't to be so sensitive about corpses. We've seen many things much unseemlier than a nice, quiet little resurrection in a respectable cemetery."
"Oh, I don't care twopence about the corpse," retorted the Major, "but the thing doesn't look well. That's all."
"Think of the money," grinned Wimsey, shutting the door of the flat upon him.
He returned to the library, balancing the two letters in his hand. "There's many a man now walking the streets of London," said he, "through not clearing trumps. Take these letters to the post, Bunter. And Mr. Parker will be dining here with me this evening. We will have a perdrix aux choux and a savory to follow, and you can bring up two bottles of the Chambertin."
"Very good, my lord."
Wimsey's next proceeding was to write a little confidential note to an official whom he knew very well at the Home Office. This done, he returned to the telephone and asked for Penberthy's number.
"That you, Penberthy?... Wimsey speaking.... Look here, old man, you know that Fentiman business?... Yes, well, we're applying for an exhumation."
"For a what?"
"An exhumation. Nothing to do with your certificate. We know that's all right. It's just by way of getting a bit more information about when the beggar died."
He outlined his suggestion.
"Think there's something in it?"
"There might be, of course."
"Glad to hear you say that. I'm a layman in these matters, but it occurred to me as a good idea."
"Very ingenious."
"I always was a bright lad. You'll have to be present, of course."
"Am I to do the autopsy?"
"If you like. Lubbock will do the analysis."
"Analysis of what?"
"Contents of the doings. Whether he had kidneys on toast or eggs and bacon and all that."
"Oh, I see. I doubt if you'll get much from that, after all this time."
"Possibly not, but Lubbock had better have a squint at it."
"Yes, certainly. As I gave the certificate, it's better that my findings should be checked by somebody."
"Exactly. I knew you'd feel that way. You quite understand about it?"
"Perfectly. Of course, if we'd had any idea there was going to be all this uncertainty, I'd have made a post-mortem at the time."
"Naturally you would. Well, it can't be helped. All in the day's work. I'll let you know when it's to be. I suppose the Home Office will send somebody along. I thought I ought just to let you know about it."
"Very good of you. Yes. I'm glad to know. Hope nothing unpleasant will come out."
"Thinking of your certificate?"
"Oh, well—no—I'm not worrying much about that. Though you never know, of course. I was thinking of that rigor, you know. Seen Captain Fentiman lately?"
"Yes. I didn't mention—"
"No. Better not, unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Well, I'll hear from you later, then?"
"That's the idea. Good-bye."
That day was a day of incident.
About four o'clock a messenger arrived, panting, from Mr. Murbles. (Mr. Murbles refused to have his chambers desecrated by a telephone.) Mr. Murbles' compliments, and would Lord Peter be good enough to read this note and let Mr. Murbles have an immediate answer.
The note ran:
"Dear Lord Peter,
"In re Fentiman deceased. Mr Pritchard has called. He informs me that his client is now willing to compromise on a division of the money if the Court will permit. Before I consult my client, Major Fentiman, I should be greatly obliged by your opinion as to how the investigation stands at present.
"Yours faithfully, "Jno. Murbles."
Lord Peter replied as follows:
"Dear Mr. Murbles,
"Re Fentiman deceased. Too late to compromise now, unless you are willing to be party to a fraud. I warned you, you know. Robert has applied for exhumation. Can you dine with me at 8?
"P. W."
Having sent this off his lordship rang for Bunter.
"Bunter, as you know, I seldom drink champagne. But I am inclined to do so now. Bring a glass for yourself as well."
The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter," said he, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason!"
CHAPTER XII
Lord Peter Turns A Trick
Detective-Inspector Parker came to dinner encircled in a comfortable little halo of glory. The Crate Mystery had turned out well and the Chief Commissioner had used expressions suggestive of promotion
in the immediate future. Parker did justice to his meal and, when the party had adjourned to the library, gave his attention to Lord Peter's account of the Bellona affair with the cheerful appreciation of a connoisseur sampling a vintage port. Mr. Murbles, on the other hand, grew more and more depressed as the story was unfolded.
"And what do you think of it?" inquired Wimsey. Parker opened his mouth to reply, but Mr. Murbles was beforehand with him.
"This Oliver appears to be a very elusive person," said he.
"Isn't he?" agreed Wimsey, dryly. "Almost as elusive as the famous Mrs. Harris. Would it altogether surprise you to learn that when I asked a few discreet questions at Gatti's, I discovered not only that nobody there had the slightest recollection of Oliver, but that no inquiries about him had ever been made by Major Fentiman?"
"Oh, dear me!" said Mr. Murbles.
"You forced Fentiman's hand very ingeniously by sending him down with your private sleuth to Charing Cross," remarked Parker, approvingly
"Well, you see, I had a feeling that unless we did something pretty definite, Oliver would keep vanishing and reappearing like the Cheshire Cat, whenever our investigations seemed to be taking an awkward turn."
"You are intimating, if I understand you rightly," said Mr. Murbles, "that this Oliver has no real existence."
"Oliver was the carrot on the donkey's nose," said Peter, "my noble self being cast for the part of the donkey. Not caring for the rôle, I concocted a carrot of my own, in the person of Sleuths Incorporated. No sooner did my trusting sleuth depart to his lunch than, lo and behold! the hue and cry is off again after Oliver Away goes friend Fentiman—and away goes Sleuth Number Two, who was there all the time, neatly camouflaged, to keep his eye on Fentiman. Why Fentiman should have gone to the length of assaulting a perfect
stranger and accuse him of being Oliver, I don't know I fancy his passion for thoroughness made him over-reach himself a bit there."
"But what exactly has Major Fentiman been doing?" asked Mr Murbles. "This is a very painful business, Lord Peter. It distresses me beyond words. Do you suspect him of—er—?"
"Well," said Wimsey, "I knew something odd had happened, you know, as soon as I saw the General's body—when I pulled the Morning Post away so easily from his hands. If he had really died clutching it, the rigor would have made his clutch so tight that one would have had to pry the fingers open to release it. And then, that knee-joint!"
"I didn't quite follow about that."
"Well, you know that when a man dies, rigor begins to set in after a period of some hours, varying according to the cause of death, temperature of the room and a lot of other conditions. It starts in the face and jaw and extends gradually over the body. Usually it lasts about twenty-four hours and then passes off again in the same order in which it started. But if, during the period of rigidity, you loosen one of the joints by main force, then it doesn't stiffen again, but remains loose. Which is why, in a hospital, if the nurses have carelessly let a patient die and stiffen with his knees up, they call in the largest and fattest person on the staff to sit on the corpse's knees and break the joints loose again."
Mr. Murbles shuddered distastefully.
"So that, taking the loose knee-joint and the general condition of the body together, it was obvious from the start that somebody had been tampering with the General. Penberthy knew that too, of course, only, being a doctor, he wasn't going to make any indiscreet uproar if he could avoid it. It doesn't pay, you know."
"I suppose not."
"Well, then, you came round to me, sir, and insisted on making the uproar. I warned you, you know, to let sleeping dogs lie."
"I wish you had spoken more openly."
"If I had, would you have cared to hush the matter up?"
"Well, well," said Mr. Murbles, polishing his eye-glasses.
"Just so. The next step was to try and find out what had actually happened to the General on the night of the 10th, and morning of the 11th. And the moment I got round to his flat I was faced with two entirely contradictory pieces of evidence. First, there was the story about Oliver, which appeared more or less remarkable upon the face of it. And secondly, there was Woodward's evidence about the clothes."
"What about them?"
"I asked him, you remember, whether anything at all had been removed from the clothes after he had fetched them away from the cloak-room at the Bellona, and he said, nothing. His memory as to other points seemed pretty reliable, and I felt sure that he was honest and straightforward. So I was forced to the conclusion that, wherever the General had spent the night, he had certainly never set foot in the street the next morning."
"Why?" asked Mr. Murbles. "What did you expect to find on the clothes?"
"My dear sir, consider what day it was. November 11th. Is it conceivable that, if the old man had been walking in the streets as a free agent on Armistice Day, he would have gone into the Club without his Flanders poppy? A patriotic, military old bird like that? It was really unthinkable."
"Then where was he? And how did he get into the Club? He was there, you know."
"True; he was there—in a state of advanced rigor. In fact, according to Penberthy's account, which, by the way, I had checked by the woman who laid out the body later, the rigor was even then beginning to pass off. Making every possible allowance for the warmth of the room and so on, he must have been dead long before ten in the morning, which was his usual time for going to the Club."
"But, my dear lad, bless my soul, that's impossible. He couldn't have been carried in there dead. Somebody would have noticed it."
"So they would. And the odd thing is that nobody ever saw him arrive at all. What is more, nobody saw him leave for the last time on the previous evening. General Fentiman—one of the best-known figures in the Club! And he seems to have become suddenly invisible. That won't do, you know."
"What is your idea, then? That he slept the night in the Club?"
"I think he slept a very peaceful and untroubled sleep that night—in the Club."
"You shock me inexpressibly," said Mr. Murbles. "I understand you to suggest that he died—"
"Some time the previous evening. Yes."
"But he couldn't have sat there all night in the smoking-room. The servants would have been bound to—er—notice him."
"Of course. But it was to somebody's interest to see that they didn't notice. Somebody who wanted it thought that he hadn't died till the following day, after the death of Lady Dormer."
"Robert Fentiman."
"Precisely."
"But how did Robert know about Lady Dormer?"
"Ah! That is a point I'm not altogether happy about. George had an interview with General Fentiman after the old man's visit to his sister. George denies that the General mentioned anything to him about the will, but then, if George was in the plot he naturally would deny it. I am rather concerned about George."
"What had he to gain?"
"Well, if George's information was going to make a difference of half a million to Robert, he would naturally expect to be given a share of the boodle, don't you think?"
Mr. Murbles groaned.
"Look here," broke in Parker, "this is a very pretty theory, Peter, but, allowing that the General died, as you say, on the evening of the tenth, where was the body? As Mr. Murbles says, it would have been a trifle noticeable if left about."
"No, no," said Mr. Murbles, seized with an idea. "Repellent as the whole notion is to me, I see no difficulty about that. Robert Fentiman was at that time living in the Club. No doubt the General died in Robert's bedroom and was concealed there till the next morning!"
Wimsey shook his head. "That won't work. I think the General's hat and coat and things were in Robert's bedroom, but the corpse couldn't have been. Think, sir. Here is a photograph of the entrancehall, with the big staircase running up in full view of the front door and the desk and the bar-entrance. Would you risk carrying a corpse downstairs in the middle of the morning, with servants and members passing in and out continually? And the service stairs would be even worse. They are right round the other side of the building, with continual kitchen traffic going on all the time. No. The body wasn't in Robert's bedroom."
"Where, then?"
"Yes, where? After all, Peter, we've got to make this story hold water."
Wimsey spread the rest of the photographs out upon the table.
"Look for yourselves," he said. "Here is the end bay of the library, where the General was sitting making notes about the money he was to inherit. A very nice, retired spot, invisible from the doorway, supplied with ink, blotter, writing-paper and every modern convenience, including the works of Charles Dickens elegantly bound in morocco. Here is a shot of the library taken from the smoking-room, clean through the ante-room and down the gangway —again a tribute to the convenience of the Bellona Club. Observe how handily the telephone cabinet is situated, in case—"
"The telephone cabinet?"
"Which, you will remember, was so annoyingly labeled 'Out of Order' when Wetheridge wanted to telephone. I can't find anybody who
remembers putting up that notice, by the way."
"Good God, Wimsey. Impossible. Think of the risk."
"What risk? If anybody opened the door, there was old General Fentiman, who had gone in, not seeing the notice, and died of fury at not being able to get his call. Agitation acting on a weak heart and all that. Not very risky, really. Unless somebody was to think to inquire about the notice, and probably it wouldn't occur to any one in the excitement of the moment."
"You're an ingenious beast, Wimsey."
"Aren't I? But we can prove it. We're going down to the Bellona Club to prove it now. Half-past eleven. A nice, quiet time. Shall I tell you what we are going to find inside that cabinet?"
"Finger-prints?" suggested Mr. Murbles, eagerly.
"Afraid that's too much to hope for after all this time. What do you say, Charles?"
"I say we shall find a long scratch on the paint," said Parker, "where the foot of the corpse rested and stiffened in that position."
"Holed it in one, Charles. And that, you see, was when the leg had to be bent with violence in order to drag the corpse out."
"And as the body was in a sitting position," pursued Parker, "we shall, of course, find a seat inside the cabinet."
"Yes, and, with luck, we may find a projecting nail or something which caught the General's trouser-leg when the body was removed."
"And possibly a bit of carpet."
"To match the fragment of thread I got off the corpse's right boot? I hope so."
"Bless my soul," said Mr. Murbles. "Let us go at once. Really, this is most exciting. That is, I am profoundly grieved. I hope it is not as you say."
They hastened downstairs and stood for a few moments waiting for a taxi to pass. Suddenly Wimsey made a dive into a dark corner by the porch. There was a scuffle, and out into the light came a small man, heavily muffled in an overcoat, with his hat thrust down to his eyebrows in the manner of a stage detective. Wimsey unbonneted him with the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat.
"So it's you, is it? I thought I knew your face. What the devil do you mean by following people about like this?"
The man ceased struggling and glanced sharply up at him with a pair of dark, beady eyes.
"Do you think it wise, my lord, to use violence?"
"Who is it?" asked Parker.
"Pritchard's clerk. He's been hanging round George Fentiman for days. Now he's hanging round me. He's probably the fellow that's been hanging round the Bellona. If you go on like this, my man, you'll find yourself hanging somewhere else one of these days. Now, see here. Do you want me to give you in charge?"
"That is entirely as your lordship pleases," said the clerk, with a cunning sneer. "There is a policeman just round the corner, if you wish to attract publicity."
Wimsey looked at him for a moment, and then began to laugh.
"When did you last see Mr Pritchard? Come on, out with it! Yesterday? This morning? Have you seen him since lunch-time?"
A shadow of indecision crossed the man's face.
"You haven't? I'm sure you haven't! Have you?"
"And why not, my lord?"
"You go back to Mr. Pritchard," said Wimsey, impressively, and shaking his captive gently by the coat-collar to add force to his words, "and if he doesn't countermand your instructions and call you off this sleuthing business (which, by the way, you do very amateurishly), I'll give you a fiver. See? Now, hop it. I know where to find you and you know where to find me. Good-night and may
Morpheus hover over your couch and bless your slumbers. Here's our taxi."
CHAPTER XIII
Spades Are Trumps
It was close on one o'clock when the three men emerged from the solemn portals of the Bellona Club. Mr. Murbles was very much subdued. Wimsey and Parker displayed the sober elation of men whose calculations have proved satisfactory. They had found the scratches. They had found the nail in the seat of the chair. They had even found the carpet. Moreover, they had found the origin of Oliver. Reconstructing the crime, they had sat in the end bay of the library, as Robert Fentiman might have sat, casting his eyes around him while he considered how he could best hide and cover up this extremely inopportune decease. They had noticed how the gilt lettering on the back of a volume caught the gleam from the shaded reading lamp. "Oliver Twist." The name, not consciously noted at the time, had yet suggested itself an hour or so later to Fentiman, when, calling up from Charing Cross, he had been obliged to invent a surname on the spur of the moment.
And, finally, placing the light, spare form of the unwilling Mr. Murbles in the telephone cabinet, Parker had demonstrated that a fairly tall and strong man could have extricated the body from the box, carried it into the smoking-room and arranged it in the arm-chair by the fire, all in something under four minutes.
Mr. Murbles made one last effort on behalf of his client.
"There were people in the smoking-room all morning, my dear Lord Peter. If it were as you suggest, how could Fentiman have made sure of four, or even three minutes secure from observation while he brought the body in?"
