Evolution's Bottom Line

I've been getting the feeling lately that us Ph.D.s have a tendency toward smugness and condescension when addresses the public about our area of expertise. I got that feeling from Garry Wills recent NY Times op-ed piece with which I mostly agreed. Another example is the recent one titled "Evolution's Bottom Line" by Holden Thorp. It has the same smug feel. I can agree with some of the particulars, like:

THE usefulness of scientific theories, like those on gravity, relativity and evolution, is to make predictions. When theories make practicable foresight possible, they are widely accepted and used to make all of the new things that we enjoy - like global positioning systems, which rely on the theories of relativity, and the satellites that make them possible, which are placed in their orbits thanks to the good old theory of gravity. Creationists who oppose the teaching of evolution as the predominant theory of biology contend that alternatives should be part of the curriculum because evolution is "just a theory," but they never attack mere theories of gravity and relativity in the same way. The creationists took it on their intelligently designed chins recently from a judge in Pennsylvania who found that teaching alternatives to evolution amounted to the teaching of religion. They prevailed, however, in Kansas, where the school board changed the definition of science to accommodate the teaching of intelligent design. Both sides say they are fighting for lofty goals and defending the truth. But lost in all this truth-defending are more pragmatic issues that have to do with the young people whose educations are at stake here and this pesky fact: creationism has no commercial application. Evolution does.

In a gross oversimplification of his argument, let me say that he goes on to claim that the theory of evolution has been the enabler of all the recent advancements of modern science and technology. Students growing up in a place that sees the much more philosophical theory of intelligent design as an alternative to the hard science of evolution are doomed to be runners up in the race of human progress. The main problem I have with his piece is that he's set up a straw man and then smugly knocked it down. The straw man is the assumption that anyone who might believe in a creator - anyone who doesn't find the current content of our scientific knowledge to be a sufficient explanation for how all this began and came to be what we observe around us - must also discount the process of evolution as the driver for any change in the natural world. Of course, that isn't the case. Any student of science can understand the principle of evolution and would see that it must happen. That same person can reasonably come to conclusion that, as an explanation of origins, neither a creator nor 13 billion years of random mutations is something that be understood or proved based on our extremely limited ability to scientifically observe either of those processes. Chances are, that person is in no danger of being the odd man out in the quest of "...finding the innovations to improve society and compete globally." Some more from the op-ed piece:

So evolution has some pretty exciting applications (like food), and I'm guessing most people would prefer antibiotics developed by someone who knows the evolutionary relationship of humans and bacteria. What does this mean for the young people who go to school in Kansas? Are we going to close them out from working in the life sciences? And what about companies in Kansas that want to attract scientists to work there? Will Mom or Dad Scientist want to live somewhere where their children are less likely to learn evolution... In his most recent State of the Union address, President Bush mentioned our problems in science education and promised to focus on "keeping America competitive" by increasing the budget for research and spending money to get more science teachers. I hope he delivers, but we can't keep America competitive if some states teach science that has no commercial utility. Those smart youngsters in India and China whom you keep hearing about are learning secular science, not biblical literalism. The battle is about more than which truth is truthier, it's about who will be allowed to innovate and where they will do it. Sequestering our scientists in California and Massachusetts makes no sense. We need to allow everyone to participate and increase the chance of finding the innovations to improve society and compete globally. Where science gets done is where wealth gets created, so places that decide to put stickers on their textbooks or change the definition of science have decided, perhaps unknowingly, not to go to the innovation party of the future. Maybe that's fine for the grownups who'd rather stay home, but it seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school.