Penn State University Evolution as Fact and Human Sleep Discussion 1. for the attached file (evolution as fact and theory) I need max 450 words (400-450 to

Penn State University Evolution as Fact and Human Sleep Discussion 1. for the attached file (evolution as fact and theory) I need max 450 words (400-450 total) about “The fact of evolution is that life in the past was different than it is today. The theory of evolution is the explanation for why life has changed. What did you think of Gould’s writing on this?”2. For the the nuns sleep file, I need around 500 word response. I attached a file that says how to respond and some examples. Evolution as Fact and Theory
by Stephen Jay Gould
Kirtley Mather, who died last year at age ninety, was a pillar of both science and Christian
religion in America and one of my dearest friends. The difference of a half-century in our ages
evaporated before our common interests. The most curious thing we shared was a battle we
each fought at the same age. For Kirtley had gone to Tennessee with Clarence Darrow to testify
for evolution at the Scopes trial of 1925. When I think that we are enmeshed again in the same
struggle for one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of
science, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
According to idealized principles of scientific discourse, the arousal of dormant issues should
reflect fresh data that give renewed life to abandoned notions. Those outside the current
debate may therefore be excused for suspecting that creationists have come up with something
new, or that evolutionists have generated some serious internal trouble. But nothing has
changed; the creationists have presented not a single new fact or argument. Darrow and Bryan
were at least more entertaining than we lesser antagonists today. The rise of creationism is
politics, pure and simple; it represents one issue (and by no means the major concern) of the
resurgent evangelical right. Arguments that seemed kooky just a decade ago have reentered
the mainstream.
The basic attack of modern creationists falls apart on two general counts before we even reach
the supposed factual details of their assault against evolution. First, they play upon a vernacular
misunderstanding of the word “theory” to convey the false impression that we evolutionists are
covering up the rotten core of our edifice. Second, they misuse a popular philosophy of science
to argue that they are behaving scientifically in attacking evolution. Yet the same philosophy
demonstrates that their own belief is not science, and that “scientific creationism” is a
meaningless and self-contradictory phrase, an example of what Orwell called “newspeak.”
In the American vernacular, “theory” often means “imperfect fact”—part of a hierarchy of
confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can
(and do) argue: evolution is “only” a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects
of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can’t even make up their minds
about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed
this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was
campaign rhetoric): “Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years
been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be
as infallible as it once was.”
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs
in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas
that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to
explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend
themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors
whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
Moreover, “fact” does not mean “absolute certainty.” The final proofs of logic and mathematics
flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about
the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often
do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can
only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional
assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit
equal time in physics classrooms.
Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very
beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely
understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually
emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing
the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of
evolution. He wrote in The Descent of Man: “I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show
that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the
chief agent of change. . . . Hence if I have erred in . . . having exaggerated its [natural
selection’s] power . . . I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the
dogma of separate creations.”
Thus Darwin acknowledged the provisional nature of natural selection while affirming the fact
of evolution. The fruitful theoretical debate that Darwin initiated has never ceased. From the
1940s through the 1960s, Darwin’s own theory of natural selection did achieve a temporary
hegemony that it never enjoyed in his lifetime. But renewed debate characterizes our decade,
and, while no biologists questions the importance of natural selection, many doubt its ubiquity.
In particular, many evolutionists argue that substantial amounts of genetic change may not be
subject to natural selection and may spread through the populations at random. Others are
challenging Darwin’s linking of natural selection with gradual, imperceptible change through all
intermediary degrees; they are arguing that most evolutionary events may occur far more
rapidly than Darwin envisioned.
Scientists regard debates on fundamental issues of theory as a sign of intellectual health and a
source of excitement. Science is—and how else can I say it?—most fun when it plays with
interesting ideas, examines their implications, and recognizes that old information might be
explained in surprisingly new ways. Evolutionary theory is now enjoying this uncommon vigor.
Yet amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been lead to doubt the fact that evolution occurred;
we are debating how it happened. We are all trying to explain the same thing: the tree of
evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy. Creationists pervert and
caricature this debate by conveniently neglecting the common conviction that underlies it, and
by falsely suggesting that evolutionists now doubt the very phenomenon we are struggling to
understand.
Secondly, creationists claim that “the dogma of separate creations,” as Darwin characterized it
a century ago, is a scientific theory meriting equal time with evolution in high school biology
curricula. But a popular viewpoint among philosophers of science belies this creationist
argument. Philosopher Karl Popper has argued for decades that the primary criterion of science
is the falsifiability of its theories. We can never prove absolutely, but we can falsify. A set of
ideas that cannot, in principle, be falsified is not science.
The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical attempt to falsify evolution
by presenting supposed contradictions among its supporters. Their brand of creationism, they
claim, is “scientific” because it follows the Popperian model in trying to demolish evolution. Yet
Popper’s argument must apply in both directions. One does not become a scientist by the
simple act of trying to falsify a rival and truly scientific system; one has to present an alternative
system that also meets Popper’s criterion — it too must be falsifiable in principle.
“Scientific creationism” is a self-contradictory, nonsense phrase precisely because it cannot be
falsified. I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary
theory I know, but I cannot imagine what potential data could lead creationists to abandon
their beliefs. Unbeatable systems are dogma, not science. Lest I seem harsh or rhetorical, I
quote creationism’s leading intellectual, Duane Gish, Ph.D. from his recent (1978)
book, Evolution? The Fossils SayNo! “By creation we mean the bringing into being by a
supernatural Creator of the basic kinds of plants and animals by the process of sudden, or fiat,
creation. We do not know how the Creator created, what process He
used, for He used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe [Gish
‘s italics]. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific
investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator.” Pray tell, Dr. Gish, in
the light of your last sentence, what then is scientific creationism?
Our confidence that evolution occurred centers upon three general arguments. First, we have
abundant, direct, observational evidence of evolution in action, from both the field and
laboratory. This evidence ranges from countless experiments on change in nearly everything
about fruit flies subjected to artificial selection in the laboratory to the famous populations of
British moths that became black when industrial soot darkened the trees upon which the moths
rest. (Moths gain protection from sharp-sighted bird predators by blending into the
background.) Creationists do not deny these observations; how could they? Creationists have
tightened their act. They now argue that God only created “basic kinds,” and allowed for limited
evolutionary meandering within them. Thus toy poodles and Great Danes come from the dog
kind and moths can change color, but nature cannot convert a dog to a cat or a monkey to a
man.
The second and third arguments for evolution—the case for major changes—do not involve
direct observation of evolution in action. They rest upon inference, but are no less secure for
that reason. Major evolutionary change requires too much time for direct observation on the
scale of recorded human history. All historical sciences rest upon inference, and evolution is no
different from geology, cosmology, or human history in this respect. In principle, we cannot
observe processes that operated in the past. We must infer them from results that still
surround us: living and fossil organisms for evolution, documents and artifacts for human
history, strata and topography for geology.
The second argument—that the imperfection of nature reveals evolution—strikes many people
as ironic, for they feel that evolution should be most elegantly displayed in the nearly perfect
adaptation expressed by some organisms—the camber of a gull’s wing, or butterflies that
cannot be seen in ground litter because they mimic leaves so precisely. But perfection could be
imposed by a wise creator or evolved by natural selection. Perfection covers the tracks of past
history. And past history—the evidence of descent—is the mark of evolution.
Evolution lies exposed in the imperfections that record a history of descent. Why should a rat
run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones
unless we all inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch,
could design better limbs in each case. Why should all the large native mammals of Australia be
marsupials, unless they descended from a common ancestor isolated on this island continent?
Marsupials are not “better,” or ideally suited for Australia; many have been wiped out by
placental mammals imported by man from other continents. This principle of imperfection
extends to all historical sciences. When we recognize the etymology of September, October,
November, and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth), we know that the year once
started in March, or that two additional months must have been added to an original calendar
of ten months.
The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved
transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution
(see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw
of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones
are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at
the back of the jaw. The “hammer” and “anvil” bones of the mammalian ear are descendants of
these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a
bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two
transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint—
one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil),
the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what
better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus
afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than
any ape’s of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made
each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an
unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features—increasing cranial
capacity, reduced face and teeth, larder body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test
our faith thereby?
Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position,
creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp
or bitter, indeed I am—for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a
smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the
theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record—
geologically “sudden” origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)—reflect the
predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories,
small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes
thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against
our lives, is a geological microsecond. It represents much less than 1 per cent of the average
life-span for a fossil invertebrate species—more than ten million years. Large, widespread, and
well established species, on the other hand, are not expected to change very much. We believe
that the inertia of large populations explains the stasis of most fossil species over millions of
years.
We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation
for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual
transformation within lineages, but must arise from the different success of certain kinds of
species. A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuated and stasis) than
rolling up an inclined plane.
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again
and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting
that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at
the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled
“Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax” states: “The facts of punctuated equilibrium
which Gould and Eldredge…are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted
on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible.”
Continuing the distortion, several creationists have equated the theory of punctuated
equilibrium with a caricature of the beliefs of Richard Goldschmidt, a great early geneticist.
Goldschmidt argued, in a famous book published in 1940, that new groups can arise all at once
through major mutations. He referred to these suddenly transformed creatures as “hopeful
monsters.” (I am attracted to some aspects of the non-caricatured version, but Goldschmidt’s
theory still has nothing to do with punctuated equilibrium—see essays in section 3 and
my explicit essay on Goldschmidt in The Pandas Thumb.) Creationist Luther Sunderland talks of
the “punctuated equilibrium hopeful monster theory” and tells his hopeful readers that “it
amounts to tacit admission that anti-evolutionists are correct in asserting there is no fossil
evidence supporting the theory that all life is connected to a common ancestor.” Duane Gish
writes, “According to Goldschmidt, and now apparently according to Gould, a reptile laid an egg
from which the first bird, feathers and all, was produced.” Any evolutionists who believed such
nonsense would rightly be laughed off the intellectual stage; yet the only theory that could ever
envision such a scenario for the origin of birds is creationism—with God acting in the egg.
I am both angry at and amused by the creationists; but mostly I am deeply sad. Sad for many
reasons. Sad because so many people who respond to creationist appeals are troubled for the
right reason, but venting their anger at the wrong target. It is true that scientists have often
been dogmatic and elitist. It is true that we have often allowed the white-coated, advertising
image to represent us—”Scientists say that Brand X cures bunions ten times faster than…” We
have not fought it adequately because we derive benefits from appearing as a new priesthood.
It is also true that faceless and bureaucratic state power intrudes more and more into our lives
and removes choices that should belong to individuals and communities. I can understand that
school curricula, imposed from above and without local input, might be seen as one more insult
on all these grounds. But the culprit is not, and cannot be, evolution or any other fact of the
natural world. Identify and fight our legitimate enemies by all means, but we are not among
them.
I am sad because the practical result of this brouhaha will not be expanded coverage to include
creationism (that would also make me sad), but the reduction or excision of evolution from
high school curricula. Evolution is one of the half dozen “great ideas” developed by science. It
speaks to the profound issues of genealogy that fascinate all of us—the “roots” phenomenon
writ large. Where did we come from? Where did life arise? How did it develop? How are
organisms related? It forces us to think, ponder, and wonder. Shall we deprive millions of this
knowledge and once again teach biology as a set of dull and unconnected facts, without the
thread that weaves diverse material into a supple unity?
But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I
sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that has brought new life
to evolutionary biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if only by distortion.
Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the
moment—a kind of old-time religion on our part.
But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight
and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search
to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to
present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.
[ Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” May 1981; from Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s
Toes, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, pp. 253-262. ]
Exemplary responses
Here are a few responses done in previous classes to give you some examples of what I think is thoughtful
engagement with the readings. We’re …
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