Re: [asa] Opposing Anti-Evolution

I'm just back from two back to back meetings unfortunately conflicting with
ASA. I think I'm close to the post limit, but thought it might be helpful
to clarify what I meant.

  If evolution is making us more able to learn, then it is progress. This is
> not a moral judgment. It's the recognition that we progress from less
> learned to more learned, developmentally throughout our lives and
> evolutionarily as we evolve greater intelligence.
>

Greater ability for learning can be considered progress based on several
lines of argument. I would generally consider more learning to be progress
(though there are some topics and experiences that are not particularly
beneficial). However, biology itself cannot tell us that learning ability
is progress. For example, a comparison of people whose efforts to learn
about volcanic eruptions has gotten themselves killed with animals that
instinctively flee at evidence of danger shows that, in some circumstances,
intelligence can be detrimental. On average, intelligence is probably more
beneficial than detrimental. Even so, evolutionary biology only tells
us that organisms with greater intelligence probably on average have some
advantage relative to otherwise similar organisms who don't in surviving
long enough to reproduce. On the other hand, many organisms too simple to
have intelligence can easily out-reproduce any known intelligent organism (
e.g., bacteria).

We change in many ways developmentally throughout our lives. Some of these
changes are widely viewed positively, others negatively (e.g., the wearing
down of the body in aging). In character, some people get worse over time;
some get better; some show little change. There's nothing about being a
developmental trend that proves that something is progress in the sense of
becoming better.

Evolution has made us more able to learn. Whether that trend will continue,
stall, or reverse can only be determined with a time machine.

> I don't know anyone who would NOT want to be smarter than they are. We
> intuitively know smarter is better.
>

We may know that this is generally true (again, there are caveats about
potential misuse of intelligence for evil, etc.) through intuition, but we
don't know this through biology.

  I don't know how you can compare the evolution of intelligence with the
> slave trade. I just don't see it as an apt analogy.
>

The slave trade is merely part of the context for the quote. My point is
that a trend in a particular direction could be "progress" or "going bad"
(or, for that matter, neutral in value). Science can't tell us which
something is. That does not mean that we shouldn't evaluate things, nor
that it is wrong to see greater intelligence as desirable, but that we
cannot properly invoke evolution in support of such decisions.

Another good illustration of my point comes from a Frank and Ernest cartoon
in which a monkey at the zoo, considering people, declares that he believes
in both evolution and the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle is the
observation that one who is successful at a particular task gets promoted.
Eventually, however, a promotion takes one to a level at which one no longer
is successful. Academia, the workplace, bureacracy, etc. leaves this
individual stuck in a position in which he is incompetent rather than
returning him to a level at which he is competent. Useful work only occurs
among individuals who are still working their way up. It's easy to find
examples of humans using their ingenuity in ways that get themselves in
trouble-perhaps our capacities in that regard have outstripped our
judgement?

  --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections
> University of Alabama
> "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>

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Received on Tue Aug 8 15:45:46 2006