August 13, 2012, 3:53 pm
By David Barash
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Those of us engaged in teaching, writing and speaking about science are participating in a Great Deception – well-intended, to be sure, but a deception nonetheless. The gist of that deception is that we teach science as a list of established findings rather than what it really is: The world’s best and most rewarding process of “finding.” Students and the general public are for the most part receptive to learning about science, but all too often, this means learning what we place before them, consuming our discoveries, then waiting for the next course.
The reality, on the other hand, is that it’s the kitchen, not the dining room, where the exciting stuff happens. More to my point, it’s in the imagination of the chefs, those who try new combinations and invent new recipes.
Enough with the culinary metaphor. My point is that…
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August 7, 2012, 2:10 pm
By David Barash
Iconic phrase from the old TV show, Dragnet; now reduced to an endangered species (Wikipedia)
I have a great fondness for experiences, ideas, certain people, many animals, places, even some things. And I assume you do, too. Among these sources of delight, respect, and appreciation, I would include regular old-fashioned facts, although with the full recognition that not all of them are equally verifiable, or even equally definable. Nor are they equally pleasant, although part of the pleasure comes from knowing that they have that traditional, pre-postmodernist virtue: being true. Nonetheless, I would like to think that it isn’t only practicing scientists who grant facticity a special place, and that we do so not only when it comes to comprehending and communicating about the natural world but also in our daily…
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August 2, 2012, 5:45 pm
By David Barash
The AR-15, a semi-automatic version of the military M16 rifle, marketed by Colt for civilian sales. “Thanks” in large part to the NRA, there are no federal restrictions on private ownership of these weapons in the US. Do you feel safer knowing that your neighbor might well have one of these?
David Barash: Not surprisingly, gun control is once again on people’s minds. For those Brainstorm readers tired of my opinions, I’m happy to “host” the thoughts of Dr. Michael Shermer, who writes a regular column for Scientific American, is the force behind Skeptic magazine, author of many excellent books dealing especially with evolution and why people believe weird things, and – interestingly – is a self-described libertarian.
Michael: It is too soon to tell what the motive was behind the accused James Holmes…
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July 31, 2012, 4:01 pm
By David Barash
Hip, hip hooray for the NRA, ever-watchful guardian of humanity!
The global arms trade in conventional weapons is in the neighborhood of $60-billion, much of it fueling mayhem, misery, and mass killings around the world. Last week, however, UN negotiators were unable to meet their deadline for writing a comprehensive and much-anticipated Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). And a large share of the blame for that failure rests with that paragon of personal and social responsibility, our own beloved and ever-vigilant National Rifle Association.
That’s correct: Our cherished, life-affirming Second Amendment right to bear arms with which to murder our fellow citizens was evidently threatened by these—as it would be, of course, by any—efforts to establish limits on the sale of automatic weapons to identified…
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July 28, 2012, 6:00 pm
By David Barash
Fitzroy massif on a – rare – clear day: Climbable, but just barely, and not by me! (photo by Yoav Altman)
Call me David. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing and drooling at the ice giants marching about me here in the Pacific Northwest, such that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking the hats off any Republican I meet — then, I account it high time to get back into the mountains as soon as I can. (Nearly always, without a copy of Moby Dick.)
Or, when that isn’t immediately possible, to think and write about those mountains once again.
“Learning the ropes” applied originally to seamanship, but it aptly…
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July 24, 2012, 10:23 am
By David Barash
As far away as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and as close as your local gun-toting lunatic.
I’m not so naïve as to think that the Aurora tragedy will cause any change in the stunning U.S. refusal to engage in anything that even approaches minimally common-sense gun control. (How crazy is it, for example, that people on terrorist watch lists are still permitted to purchase assault rifles?) The Republican Party is besotted with the NRA, while the Democrats are scared silly of it. And of course, following every massacre, the claim will be made, as it has been before, that if only the populace were more armed—not less—we would have witnessed a classic Gunfight at the OK Corral, with citizen Wyatt Earp blowing away the bad guy(s) … just like in the movies.
Nor am I so egotistical as to think that my biological a…
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July 21, 2012, 7:52 am
By David Barash
Dawn in Puerto Encantado, Venezuela. Sex, anyone?
A little while ago, I worried that the next time someone asked me about the book, Sex at Dawn, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, I might vomit. An over-reaction? Perhaps. And one likely composed, in part, of simple envy, since their book seems to have sold a lot of copies. At least as contributory, however, is the profoundly annoying fact that Sex at Dawn has been taken as scientifically valid by large numbers of naïve readers … whereas it is an intellectually myopic, ideologically driven, pseudo-scientific fraud.
Written by people who don’t know diddly-squat about evolutionary biology, and—worse yet—who don’t know how much they don’t know, Sex at Dawn purports to demonstrate that human beings are “naturally” polyamorous, that…
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July 18, 2012, 10:43 am
By David Barash
Isaac Newton, painted by Godfrey Kneller. The late Sir Isaac wasn't shy about making use of a prior "scientific consensus."
Responding to a recent post by our own Mark Bauerlein, a commenter (flailing—and failing—to find justification for her disavowal of the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming) noted that she was “trying [unsuccessfully, one gathers] to think of a concept that is more ‘anti-science’ than consensus.” I find this observation to be uncharacteristically thought-provoking on her part, although in this case she is—characteristically—wrong-headed and downright uninformed. I fear, however, that she is not alone.
It may be that some people, lacking any real concept of science, are indeed under the impression that consensus is somehow inimical to the scientific …
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July 13, 2012, 4:37 pm
By David Barash
A discoverer dude, not a creator god (Wikipedia)
Early in my teaching career—sometime in the mid Paleozoic—I employed short essay exams in my undergraduate animal behavior class at the University of Washington. (Now that the enrollment has metastasized from 24 to 300, I’ve regretfully turned to computer-graded multiple choice questions.) One of those now-extinct short essays asked students to explain, briefly, Darwin’s primary scientific contribution. I still remember one student’s answer: “He invented evolution.”
Sorry, no cigar … and no credit. (The correct answer, btw, isn’t even that Darwin discovered evolution or that he presented abundant evidence in its favor; rather, he came up with the most plausible explanation for the mechanism whereby evolution proceeds: namely, natural…
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July 7, 2012, 11:11 am
By David Barash
A book worth eyeing
Brethren and cistern, the text for my sermon today comes—sorta—from Psalm 115 (5), specifically: “They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see.” I’m thinking of the know-nothing creationists among us, about whom the first part regrettably does not apply: They have mouths (and ostensibly brains), but the two are evidently disconnected, such that they speak a lot. Much too much.
And as it happens, their topic has often been eyes, which they probably have … although they persist in being unable to see the evidence all around them, evidence that is no less than an eye-full.
Ever since the Rev. William Paley, and presumably even before, believers in Special Creation have pointed to the eye as a prime example of something that could not…
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July 3, 2012, 10:19 am
By David Barash
Logo of the PRI - aka the "Institutional Revolutionary Party" (Wikipedia)
It’s been refreshing to see Mexico in the news of late, and for its internal politics rather than drug/gang violence. It has also been interesting to contemplate the name of the long-ruling Mexican political party, the PRI—en espagnol: El Partido Revolucionario Institucional—and to wonder how many people have noticed the oxymoron embedded therein. The “Institutional Revolutionary Party”? How does one go about institutionalizing a revolution?
Rather than answer, I’d prefer to open the flood-gates to oxymorons generally. Here are a few of my favorites:
Affordable housing
Airline schedule
All alone
Anxious patient
Baggy tights
Business ethics
Christian scientist
Civil war
Compassionate…
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June 29, 2012, 7:40 am
By David Barash
Renowned "Face on Mars" photographed by an early Viking mission, and later shown to be an illusion caused by local geology and the sun's angle (Wikipedia)
I’ve previously explained my contention that when it comes to evolution and human beings, what we don’t know is if anything more interesting than what we do. (Indeed, my latest book looks specifically at an array of evolutionary mysteries—including but not limited to homosexuality, female orgasm, menopause, and consciousness—laying out some of the most prominent hypotheses for each.)
Among these mysteries, of course, is religion, and among the reasonable hypotheses thus far adduced, there are several based on what I call “overshoot.” The basic idea is that natural selection can favor a given trait, which under certain circumstances ends …
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June 28, 2012, 10:14 am
By David Barash
The five available "Ice and Fire" books; two more are anticipated (Wikipedia)
To my mind, there is nothing in the world of fantasy literature that comes close to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have gleefully read it aloud to each of my daughters, taking the liberty of making one small change every time: I modified the pronouns describing the hobbits, Merry and Pippin, thus making them young women (and in the process correcting the only weakness I perceive in that marvelous story – the inadequate number of important female characters). In retrospect, I only regret that I didn’t perform a comparable sex change on Frodo, too.
This summer, my free-time, purely pleasurable, largely inconsequential reading has been monopolized by the runner-up to Tolkien: George R.R. Martin’s A…
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June 23, 2012, 7:55 am
By David Barash
Ilona Barash (MD, PhD), leading a "pitch" up Coyne Crack, Indian Creek, Utah. (Photo by Yoav Altman)
Rock and roll. Rock-a’bye baby. Rock around the clock. Hard Rock Café. Rock my world. “We will, we will rock you.” There is rock and there is rock. What really rocks me is the real stuff.
My daughter, Ilona, and her husband, Yoav, just climbed Half Dome in Yosemite, not via the exhausting but safe backside trail that concludes with a few hundred vertical feet of scary fixed cables—as I have done—but straight up the vertical face, as befits the world-class mountaineers that they are. I take some responsibility (albeit no credit) for my daughter’s accomplishments, having introduced her to the magic of mountains … even as I dearly wish she would take up shuffleboard instead!
When it comes to…
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June 19, 2012, 7:07 am
By David Barash
Reverse side of the New Hampshire quarter, featuring the Old Man of the Mountain. “We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds,” wrote David Hume in The Natural History of Religion.
Memes aside, what are some other evolutionary hypotheses for religion? It is not sufficient simply to say that people worldwide turn to religion to meet certain psychological needs, otherwise unmet: explaining great mysteries such as death, or the meaning of life, or because it provides solace, a sense of belonging, meeting our “spiritual” needs, and so forth.
The problem is that these don’t suffice as biology, which requires us to ask: Why do people need explanations for death, or for the meaning of life? Why do people need the solace that religion evidently provides, etc.? Why do people have spiritual…
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June 15, 2012, 2:36 pm
By David Barash
Prospero, Ariel and a sleeping Miranda, from a 1797 painting by William Hamilton (Wikimedia Commons)
Last week my wife and I attended a movie that was—not surprisingly—preceded by previews, during which we nearly walked out, figuring that anything associated with such garbage was liable to be trash, too. Fortunately, we stayed, and it wasn’t. Nonetheless, my painful memory of those previews (one in particular, advertising what threatens to be an abominable piece of cinematic ordure titled Ted) left me inclined to write for you, dear readers, a jeremiad on the decline and imminent fall of Western Civilization.
Let me be clear. I am no prude. Indeed, our language at home would make the proverbial sailor blush. But fart jokes simply for the sake of fart jokes, constant and indiscriminate use of…
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June 13, 2012, 11:21 am
By David Barash
My brilliant Brainstorm colleague, Todd Gitlin, just wrote very effectively about the inexcusable failure of economists to learn from our current Great Recession. I must agree. His point is so cogent and contagious, moreover, that I feel moved to interrupt my ongoing meditations on the evolutionary biology of religion to point out that the dismal science isn’t alone in its suitably dismal refusal to acknowledge failure and refusal to learn thereby … while also paradoxically retaining a status that greatly exceeds its worth and its wisdom.
Thus, it seems to me that supposed experts in national security, international relations, and strategic studies have been at least as derelict. Maybe more so. Almost to a person, they failed to anticipate nearly every major event of the last few decades: Marcos’s fall in the Philippines, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the collapse of the…
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June 10, 2012, 5:08 am
By David Barash
Schematic of a typical bacteriophage virus injecting its genome into a bacterium; could religions be doing this to us? (Wikipedia)
One hypothesis for the evolutionary basis of religion doesn’t rely on the traditional concept of biological adaptation. Rather, it proposes that Homo sapiens has been saddled with—or parasitized by— a tendency that is maladaptive. Not surprisingly, this idea comes from the fertile mind of a great evolutionary biologist who is also renowned (or infamous) as a vigorous opponent of religion: Richard Dawkins. Among Dawkins’ many intriguing ideas, one of the most widely accepted has been that of “memes,” which are essentially the cultural equivalent of genes. (Personal disclosure: Richard Dawkins is a friend, not only a fellow evolutionary biologist but also a…
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June 7, 2012, 7:33 am
By David Barash
Alice and the White Queen (who reputedly believed in six impossible things every day before breakfast). Illustration for the fifth chapter of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1865) by John Tenniel
I freely admit it: It’s possible that my current series of blogs on the evolutionary biology of religion is a waste of time, yours as well as mine. Maybe religion isn’t an evolved human trait after all, but instead, entirely a product of culture, learning, and social tradition. To be sure, the religions of humankind are extraordinarily diverse, and, moreover, they are clearly passed on from person to person, nearly always from parents to children, but via transmission that is cultural, not genetic.
The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about 2,500 years ago, tells the following story….
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June 3, 2012, 4:29 am
By David Barash
(Flickr/CC photo by Johnragai)
Let’s continue talking about God and evolution, a combination that generates more than its share of high-energy radiation, most of it in the infra-red rather than the visible spectrum. But instead of looking into the alleged cohabitation or, alternatively, the conflict between the two, let’s look at religion as an evolutionary mystery: Nearly all human societies have some sort of God concept, and most people (excepting in some modern northern European societies) believe in some sort of God. Which leads one to ask, Why? In later posts, I’ll explore some possible explanations, hypotheses as to the “adaptive significance” of religious belief. For starters, let’s look into what may seem to be the simplest, most direct explanation: that belief in God is widespread be…
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