Deconstructing David Hume.

 Reconsidering David Hume’s Critique of Design Thinking

Robert Schedinger

Recently, one of my philosophy colleagues, upon learning of my interest in intelligent design, asked me what I thought about the criticisms leveled at design thinking by 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. According to my colleague, many think Hume destroyed once and for all the intellectual coherence of design theories. Therefore, he assumed I would have an opinion on the matter. I am not trained as a philosopher, and I had to confess that I had little knowledge regarding Hume’s arguments against design. But this question sent me scurrying to the library for some unplanned research. And I’m glad for this, for after engaging with Hume’s work, I came to the unexpected and somewhat ironic conclusion that while Hume’s arguments might have had some currency in their 18th-century context, the findings of modern science have actually rendered them much less convincing.

Hume’s anti-design arguments are found in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Here, he uses the character Cleanthes as the spokesperson for design, with Philo being the one to convey Hume’s own critical thoughts. A major part of Hume’s critique revolves around what he sees as the great dissimilarity between the world of nature and the world of human artifice. All knowledge, he says, comes through experience and we experience humans designing things all the time. But nature is unique and completely unlike the world of human contrivance, leaving us devoid of experience to draw on. We can thus draw no analogy between the work of human designers (of which we have much experience) and a designer of nature (which is singular and unlike anything produced by humans). 

The Argument for Design

In one passage, Hume has Cleanthes clearly state the argument from design:

Look around the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines….The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the production of human contrivance….Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed.

But Hume does not buy Cleanthes’s analogy:

If experience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature; both the effect and cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and causes, which we know, and which we have found, in many instances, to be conjoined with each other.

Since nature, in Hume’s view, is unique and unlike anything we can ascribe to human contrivance, we have no experience of nature being designed and cannot analogize it to human artifice, of which we have much experience. 

What the Future Held

Little could Hume know what the future would hold — the discovery that at the cellular level, all organisms are driven by molecular machinery that looks and acts uncannily like the machines produced by humans, but far more sophisticated. Whether it be the bacterial flagellum with its rotor, stator, clamps, and bushings, the efficient whirring of the ATP synthase, or the mechanical movements of the kinesin walking protein (see below), every cell is a vast factory of biochemical processes and information processing being carried out by a nano-technology of unbelievable complexity and sophistication, but a technology nonetheless. Hume’s argument for the dissimilarity between natural and human-designed entities begins to melt away. If living organisms are indeed built on a nano-technology that mimics human-designed technology, and if similar effects do have similar causes, then molecular machines must be intelligently designed just like human machines. Cleanthes’s analogy seems to hold in a way that Hume could never have foreseen.

William Paley may be hinting at Hume’s critique in the following passage from Natural Theology:

I have sometimes wondered why we are not struck with mechanism in animal bodies as readily and as strongly as we are struck with it, at first sight, in a watch or a mill. One reason of the difference may be, that animal bodies are, in a great measure, made up of soft flabby substances, such as muscles and membranes; whereas we have been accustomed to trace mechanism in sharp lines, in the configuration of hard materials, in the moulding, chiselling, and filling into shapes of such articles as metal or wood. There is something, therefore, of habit in the case; but it is sufficiently evident that there can be no proper reason for any distinction of the sort. Mechanism may be displayed in the one kind of substance as well as in the other.

Hume wanted to maintain the distinction between nature and human artifice as the heart of his argument against design. But modern science sides with Paley. Below the level of flabby muscles and membranes, organisms do indeed display the sharp lines of mechanism. 

Mind and Matter

In a second criticism of Cleanthes, Hume has Philo say to his friend:

Let us once more put the argument from design to trial. In all instances which we have ever seen, ideas are copied from real objects, and are ectypal, not archetypal….You reverse this order, and give thought the precedence. In all instances which we have ever seen, thought has no influence upon matter, except where that matter is so conjoined with it, as to have an equal reciprocal influence upon it.

In other words, minds can only influence matter making up the body to which the mind is attached. Here again, modern science undermines Hume’s point. We now know about quantum theory and the collapsing of the wave function of an elementary particle when it is observed and measured. Minds profoundly influence matter at the most fundamental level, not to mention research showing the possible influence of mind on random number generators or even in intercessory prayer. And certainly, the world of human culture and technology powerfully testifies to the power of mind to force matter into configurations that would never occur if left to natural laws (as I type this on a plastic keyboard). Hume’s criticism falls flat. Minds have transformed the world of matter. 

In a somewhat humorous tip of the cap to irreducible complexity, Paley noted how a structure like the epiglottis could not have evolved gradually from a simpler form, because with only half an epiglottis, we would all choke to death! Paley comes off to me as a far keener observer of nature than Hume. And now from the vantage point of 21st-century science, we can see even more clearly the bankruptcy of Hume’s skepticism. There is no sense in which we can say that Hume destroyed the intellectual coherence of design thinking. Paley could already see this in 1802. How much more clearly can we see it today in the light of modern scientific advancement? 

On the Latin trinity.

 

Anglicans vs. Athanasius?

 

A frank airing of views re:the trinity.

 

Tertullian the Unitarian Christian?

 

Yet another clash of titans

 

Man as natural element?

 Complementary Design: Nature and Gardens

Eric Hedin

We are familiar with the compelling design features of planet Earth as a place for life and the abundance of evidence for design seen in the human body. But we may be less familiar with the complementary design of nature, the physical realm accessible to humans, and what I’ll call gardens. 

The latter of these terms denotes human stewardship of Earth. It is not my invention. The Genesis narrative, while proclaiming Earth “good” and human beings as having been formed with intention, uses “garden” as an epitome of their mutually beneficial interactions.

Consider some ways that humans have complemented the natural features of Earth to their mutual benefit. Complementary features speak of intelligent design in multitudes of different scenarios. For example, a key that opens a lock is almost always a result of intentional design. A radio receiver that can pick up a local broadcast signal as I drive my car across town involves multiple layers of design. Finding at a department store shoes and clothing that fit comfortably (although a somewhat rare experience) could hardly happen without intentional design. 

Our Desperate Needs

One of the overarching themes of the garden is need. Humans as physical beings are desperately needy. Air, water, food, and shelter represent our basic survival needs, and the global features of our planet have answered these needs for billions of people throughout human history.

The concept of a garden also embodies mutual flourishing. A vegetable garden can produce edible food, but we will flourish more if we learn how to nourish the soil to enhance the yield and nutritional content of the plants. Clearing weeds, mulching, watering, and warding off pests are all familiar activities to gardeners. Is the Earth healthier when well-tended? I visited a small-scale organic farm recently — just a few acres — and the variety of vegetables and flowers in all stages of growth was a thing of beauty. If land could express satisfaction at flourishing to its full potential, this small farm exemplified the mutual benefit of a tended garden.

Less Is More

Evidence of intelligent design shines forth when we consider how the complementarity of human need and tended earth enhances the well-being of both. But design is seen not only in the traditional sense of garden as a plot of vegetables. One of my favorite recreations when I was younger was visiting national parks and other wilderness areas. In these natural environments, the Earth provides the grandeur and beauty, while human involvement seems to serve best with the motto, “Less is more.” 

Hiking a mountain trail to a remote lake in the North Cascades would have been overwhelmingly difficult, however, without the efforts of those who made and maintained the trails that penetrated into some extremely rugged terrain. Many people each year find needed refreshment from the stress of everyday life by visits to scenic recreation areas. Again, we can discern design by seeing the complementary aspects of human need and the beneficial meeting of those needs through appropriate stewardship of Earth’s resources.

Shifting our focus now to the “need” expressed by humans for the products of our technologically sophisticated society, design is evident in both the availability of the many essential raw materials and in our intelligence and ingenuity to be able to create from these materials the astounding array of products that most of us have come to regard as essential.

Did civilization need readily available fuel to power a developing technology? Fossil fuels, produced over hundreds of millions of years on Earth, have provided the majority of our energy needs for generations. Forests have provided structural materials for houses, furniture, and more. Limestone quarries have yielded building material for cathedrals and courthouses. The surface crust of our Earth has been enriched to provide metallic ores and almost every other element in the periodic table. A wide variety of these minerals are critical for civilization to continue to develop, including the transition to more “Earth-friendly” Technologies:

The types of mineral resources used vary by technology. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite are crucial to battery performance, longevity and energy density. Rare earth elements are essential for permanent magnets that are vital for wind turbines and EV [electric vehicle] motors.

Foresight and Design

In almost every conceivable aspect of our lives, what we perceive as a need can be met by resources made available to us by events in Earths history that long pre-date our existence. Foresight and design certainly come to mind as suitable descriptions of this beneficial arrangement.

Although this subject lends itself to avenues of discussion leading in many directions, I would like to return to the traditional sphere of garden as a park-like enhancement to nature’s palette. When visiting a beautiful park, one is struck by the cultivated beauty resulting from the complementary effects of the gardener’s efforts and nature’s resources.

When I lived in Washington State, my family visited the beautiful Butchart Gardens in British Columbia. This transformed limestone quarry is a stunning example of human design and stewardship, healing, as it were, a scar on Earth’s surface left from extraction of material to meet our needs.

With a former quarry as a canvas, Jennie Butchart envisioned transforming this space into a beautiful garden haven, overflowing with lush greens and colourful blooms. The result of her vision is The Gardens…

Complementary design is seen (and enjoyed) through humans imagining and creating beauty beyond the possible outcomes of natural forces or non-human life.

Nurturing Life and Beauty

In Tolkien’s Return of the King, Gandalf expresses his understanding of the service of stewardship, nurturing life and its beauty: 

…the rule of no realm is mine… But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task…if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN, THE RETURN OF THE KING (NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1994), 741-2.

Our stewardship of nature involves a choice. Choosing to put forth our effort and creativity to enhance and beautify the natural realm available to us implies that we are not merely physically complex objects governed by the laws of physics. We participate as sub-creators in a designed system — a physical realm in which our own freedom allows us to complement the outcomes of nature to our mutual benefit. 

Cecil Rhodes: a brief history.

 

Yet another clash of titans

 

More uncommon sense from Tom Sowell

 

Werner Von Braun: a brief history.

 

Saturn V : a brief history.

 

The empire of the gene restored?

 Genes Rule? The Evidence of Identical Twins

Denyse O Leary

For some decades, we heard claims from studies of identical twins (formed when one fertilized egg splits) that everything from exam results to homosexuality might hinge on genetics. Therefore, any similarity in later choices or behavior might be due to genetic factors (read “predetermined” or “inevitable” here). How has that assumption held up, especially in the age of genome mapping?

Identical twins comprise roughly 1 in every 250 births. Studies of twins who were separated at birth have been especially prized because the twins were assumed to grow up in different environments. Thus any significant similarities pointed to genetic influences.

Several problems emerged, though. For one thing, what about the assumption that separation at birth means that twins experience different environments? Children may be born into practically any environment but they are generally adopted into middle-of-the-road ones. Twins separated at birth may also be aware of each other’s existence; they may even know each other. Plus, the psychological tendency we have when encountering twins is to notice similarities more readily than differences so similarities, rather than differences, tend to be socially reinforced. But the critics who raised these issues were typically ignored in the rush to see genetics behind every similarity. 

Meanwhile, there were two bigger problems.

Identical Twins Diverge Genetically as They Age

Genome mapping has changed the picture a good deal. The fact that twins diverge as they age was reported in Nature back in 2005. A 2021 study found that about 15 percent of identical twins vary from each other significantly in genetics. In any event, a 2022 UC Berkeley open-access Study found that “age plays a more important role than genetics in determining which genes in our bodies are turned on or off, influencing our susceptibility to disease”:

                 In other words, while our individual genetic makeup can help predict gene expression when we are younger, it is less useful in predicting which genes are ramped up or down when we’re older — in this study, older than 55 years. Identical twins, for example, have the same set of genes, but as they age, their gene expression profiles diverge, meaning that twins can age much differently from each other.

YAMAMOTO, R., CHUNG, R., VAZQUEZ, J. M. ET AL. TISSUE-SPECIFIC IMPACTS OF AGING AND GENETICS ON GENE EXPRESSION PATTERNS IN HUMANS. NAT COMMUN 13, 5803 (2022)

So, it turns out, even if we didn’t start out that way, we all end up being unique.

The Effort to Prove that Genes Rule! Involved Some Avoidable Lapses

In an article published at Aeon last month, science writer Gavin Evans, author of Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race (OneWorld 2019), who follows twin studies, looks back on an era when the haste to establish genetic explanations for human behavior involved throwing ethics aside.

In the mid 20th century, Sir Cyril Burt (1883–1971), a British psychologist and eugenics enthusiast, claimed to have participated with colleagues in studies on separated identical twins that established the importance of heredity. But then, as Britannica decorously puts the matter:

After Burt’s death, striking anomalies in some of his test data led some scientists to reexamine his statistical methods. They concluded that Burt manipulated and probably falsified those IQ test results that most convincingly supported his theories on transmitted intelligence and social class. The debate over his conduct continued, but all sides agreed that his later research was at least highly flawed, and many accepted that he fabricated some data. However, the soundness of his earlier work justified his reputation as the foremost pioneer of educational psychology in Britain.

BRITANNICA, THE EDITORS OF ENCYCLOPAEDIA. “SIR CYRIL BURT”. ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, 27 FEB. 2023. ACCESSED 8 JULY 2023

Evans tells the same story a bit more colorfully:

Shortly after he died in 1971, Burt’s records and notes were all burnt, after which his reputation imploded. Two of his researchers, whose names appeared as co-authors on his papers, could not be traced (when asked about them, Burt had said they’d both ‘emigrated’ — but he didn’t know where) and a third he clearly invented. In The Science and Politics of IQ (1974), the American psychologist Leon Kamin noted that in 1955, when Burt claimed to have tested 21 separated identical twins, he put the correlation between their IQs at 0.771, yet in the 1960s, when his twins cohort numbered 53, he gave the identical three-decimal figure, which Kamin said had a statistically minuscule chance of occurring. Some circumstantial details that Burt claimed to have found among his twins also raised eyebrows: of a pair born to a wealthy mother and then adopted, he claimed one was raised in splendour on a Scottish country estate, and the other was left to a shepherd (like Perdita in The Winter’s Tale). The killer blow was delivered by his approved biographer, Leslie Hearnshaw, a one-time Burt enthusiast who in 1979 concluded that all of Burt’s twin studies were invented. 

GAVIN EVANS, “THE MYTH OF MIRRORED TWINS,” AEON, JUNE 27, 2023

Evans found similar, though less dramatic, problems with Thomas J. Bouchard ’s research at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research:

his methods and conclusions did not impress other researchers. One problem was self-selection. His identical twins had known each other for an average of nearly two years before contacting him; some had known each other as young children; and it seems likely that those who were most alike were most likely to contact him. Kamin, the professor who rumbled Burt’s fraudulent studies, and his colleague said there was pressure on the twins to come up with cute stories, and that Bouchard’s studies had ‘a number of serious problems in the design, reporting, and analyses’.

“THE Myth OF MIRRORED TWINS,” AEON, JUNE 27, 2023

What Is It About Twins?

Is there something existential about twins that draws (and maybe, skews) research? Evans thinks so:

Much of the magic evaporates when we lift the lid on the sensational tales of parallel lives. What emerges in place of this seductive mirror myth of the hidden double are more mundane tales of everyday difference, revealing the unique selfhood that is part of the inheritance of all people — including those with genetic doppelgängers.

“THE MYTH OF MIRRORED TWINS,”. AEON, JUNE 27, 2023

Yes, it seems we are all condemned to just be ourselves, even if we are one of a set of twins.

Yet more on tiny houses

 

Merodach: the Watchtower society's Commentary

 MERODACH

Insight on the scriptures

The Hebrew form for Marduk, the most important Babylonian god, whose downfall was foretold to coincide with Babylon’s overthrow.—Jer 50:2.

The Babylonian Kings Merodach-baladan (Isa 39:1) and Evil-merodach (2Ki 25:27) were undoubtedly named after this god. With the rise of Babylon to prominence, because of King Hammurabi’s making it the capital of Babylonia, Merodach likewise increased in importance. The attributes of earlier gods came to be assigned to him, and it is thought that the Babylonian priests altered the mythological accounts to make Merodach the slayer of Tiamat and the creator of the world and of man. Babylonian texts identify Marduk (Merodach) as the son of Ea (the god presiding over the watery element), the consort of Sarpanitu, and the father of Nebo.

The kingship over Babylon was closely associated with the image of Merodach at his temple, Esagila, for the rulers of Babylon were not installed by coronation but became kings by taking hold of the hand of Merodach. The ceremony was repeated each year at the New Year’s festival. Even during the time that Assyria controlled Babylonia, the kings of Assyria were required to come to the city of Babylon each year for the New Year’s festival and legalize their claim to the throne by taking hold of Merodach’s hand.

Jeremiah the prophet, with respect to Babylon’s fall, foretold that Merodach would “become terrified.” This came true in the sense that Merodach proved to be unable to preserve the dignity of the Babylonian World Power, and since the conquerors of Babylon were worshipers of other deities, his future became very uncertain, filled with foreboding.—Jer 50:2; 

Ancient humans and the case for devolution/revolution.

 Our Ancestors Are Evolving, Just to Keep Up!

Denyse O Leary

Recently, archeologists came up with an interesting find from 30,000 years ago in what is now Moravia, part of the Czech Republic: Ravens lived among humans.

over 30,000 years ago, during the Pavlovian culture, ravens helped themselves to people’s scraps and picked over mammoth carcasses left behind by human hunters.

Ravens live in human settlements today, of course, with one notable difference:

The archeologists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution noted that “The large number of raven bones found at the sites suggests that the birds, in turn, were a supplementary source of food, and may have become important in the culture and worldview of these people.”

UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN, “RAVENS IN PREHISTORY: SCIENTISTS UNEARTH A 30,000-YEAR-OLD RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMANS,” SCITECHDAILY, JUNE 29, 2023. ONE OF THE PAPERS IS OPEN ACCESS.

Today we barbecue chickens instead of ravens…

Famed for Their Smarts

We are also told, “Ravens have a very wide food spectrum, and are curious and flexible in their behavior.” They are also famous for their intelligence. One consequence is that they likely figured in the culture of that day, as the researchers suggest, just as they do in many modern cultures. But this is a much more complex picture of an early society than we are accustomed to hearing about.

Another recent find has been Neanderthal cave engravings from 57,000 years ago:

Research in recent decades has revealed a great deal about the cultural complexity of Neanderthals. However, relatively little is known about their symbolic or artistic expression. Only a short list of symbolic productions are attributed to Neanderthals, and the interpretation of these is often the subject of debate. In this study, Marquet and colleagues identified markings on a cave wall in France as the oldest known Neanderthal engravings… Based on the shape, spacing, and arrangement of these engravings, the team concluded that they are deliberate, organized and intentional shapes created by human hands.

PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE, “NEANDERTHAL CAVE ENGRAVINGS IDENTIFIED AS OLDEST KNOWN, MORE THAN 57,000 YEARS OLD,” PHYS.ORG, JUNE 21, 2023. THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

Some of us can remember when Neanderthal artwork was an “academic Bombshell.”

Why a Bombshell?

Because materialists need to maintain the idea that the human mind arises purely from animal instincts. That’s hard to establish unless researchers can find human forms with less-than-human minds. Therefore some group must be co-opted into the role. And, while many of us have Neanderthal genes, Neanderthals no longer exist as a separate group. So they can’t lobby against such treatment.

Nonetheless, the weight of evidence will eventually force a confrontation with a stark fact: The human mind has no evolutionary history. It appears suddenly and invents technologies with increasing speed over time. More than that we don’t really know and maybe can’t know. The history was made up, not dug up.

For some, it’s a hard swallow. As paleobiologist Rui Diogo, associate professor at Howard University, notes, negative biases of all kinds about our forebears have long been part of science, education, and popular culture.

One example of how biased narratives are still present in science today is the numerous depictions of human evolution as a linear trend from darker and more “primitive” human beings to more “evolved” ones with a lighter skin tone. Natural history museums, websites, and UNESCO heritage sites have all shown this trend.

RUI DIOGO, “HOW POWER PERVADES PORTRAYALS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION,” SAPIENS, 20 JUN 2023.

David Coppedge made the same Observation — about evolution as a “path to whiteness” — at Evolution News back in 2021.

Professor Diogo quite properly singles out racist and sexist portrayals. But an overarching theme has been the need to promote the idea of a gradual development of human-like intelligence. As it happens, ancestors way stupider than their descendants are just not what paleontologists have been digging up. And histories that are made up rather than dug up tend to collapse.

Black history month a brief history.

 

Even yet more primeval tech vs. Darwinism.

 How the “Other” ATP Synthase Saves the Planet

David Coppedge

ATP synthase has been featured here many times because of its exquisite rotary mechanism and efficient operation. Viewers of animations like ours on YouTube usually need little convincing that it looks designed. And when they learn more details, like its 6,000-rpm speed, its crankshaft, and three-part ATP manufacturing center, the intuition becomes difficult to dislodge, even when evolutionists insist it emerged by chance. It’s a well-deserved icon of intelligent design.

The one most often referred to is the F-type of ATP synthase shown in the video. But there’s another one — the V-type ATPase — that is no less wondrous. It looks similar to the F-type, but V-type ATPases (let’s call them VHA) work in reverse: instead of using the proton motive force generated by the electron transport chain to manufacture ATP, they spend the ATP “energy currency” molecules to pump protons into organelles, thereby increasing the acidity. They are often found on the membranes of vacuoles that need H+ ions to lower the pH for phagocytosis or other types of digestive or recycling functions. Scientists have now shown they are more widely distributed in the cell than thought.

Our body cells contain both types of ATPase. But why do I say that these VHA rotary engines save the planet? A report by Daniel P. Yee in Current Biology tells the story. 

 It Begins in the Ocean

Diatoms, dinoflagellates, and coccolithophores are dominant groups of marine eukaryotic phytoplankton that are collectively responsible for the majority of primary production in the ocean.

Primary production represents the bottom of the food chain, on which higher organisms depend. Photosynthetic microbes in the ocean are the major players. For present purposes, we can ignore the authors’ evolutionary story about how these marine microbes obtained their VHAs by some “selective advantage.” It suffices to focus on what the molecular machines do: 

Since intracellular digestive vacuoles are ubiquitously acidified by V-type H+-ATPase (VHA), proton pumps were proposed to acidify the microenvironment around secondary chloroplasts to promote the dehydration of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) into CO2, thus enhancing photosynthesis.

We report that VHA is localized around the chloroplasts of centric diatoms and that VHA significantly contributes to their photosynthesis across a wide range of oceanic irradiances.

More photosynthesis means more primary production, and more support for a diverse biosphere.

Based on the contribution of diatoms to ocean biogeochemical cycles, VHA-mediated enhancement of photosynthesis contributes at least 3.5 Gtons of fixed carbon per year (or 7% of primary production in the ocean), providing an example of a symbiosis-derived evolutionary innovation with global environmental implications.

Once again, the evolutionary tale is non-essential for the surprising implication: all life benefits from the enhancement of photosynthesis provided by VHA molecular motors in diatoms. The 7 percent number is undoubtedly much higher if the other dominant groups of marine phytoplankton are factored in. Additional tests showed the research team that similar VHA-mediated enhancement of photosynthesis occurs in coccolithophores, dinoflagellates, and probably in all photosynthetic organisms.

The paper’s diagram of VHA in Figure 2 looks almost identical to the F-type ATP synthase except for the direction of proton (H+ ion) flow. Both types could be described by ID proponents as irreducibly complex molecular engines based on the parts list alone:

The VHA is a holoenzyme protein complex that is composed of 16 subunits, with a membrane spanning V0-domain and cytosolic facing catalytic V1-domain (Figure 2A). Transcriptomic analysis of synchronized cultures of T. pseudonana [a centric diatom] demonstrated constitutive mRNA expression of all VHA subunits, suggesting that VHA is important throughout the cell cycle (Figure 2B). However, the VHA holoenzyme can have multiple subcellular localizations and functions.

While the familiar F-type ATP synthase is localized to the mitochondria (in animals) or chloroplasts (in photosynthetic microbes and plants), V-types are found in other subcellular locations. They perform more functions due to their proton-pumping action that can adjust pH of their surroundings. This has made them difficult to study. A few functions are known.

But How Many Others Are There?

In diatoms, VHA has been reported in the membranes of vacuoles, chloroplast endoplasmic reticulum (cER), and silica deposition vesicles (SDVs), where it is strictly required for biomineralization of the silica cell wall and cell division. The complexity and functional versatility of VHA are challenges for genetic manipulation approaches that would constitutively destabilize multiple physiological functions and confound phenotypic interpretation. They also rule out the use of transcriptomics to infer the physiological role(s) of VHA, as these analyses cannot not provide information about the subcellular localization of the VHA holoenzyme.

The authors were excited about another implication of their discovery: carbon sequestration. Because VHA machines substantially enhance photosynthesis, it means more carbon is converted into CO2 which the chloroplast needs for sugar synthesis. The slight pH decrease provided by the VHA proton pumps changes the chemistry to favor CO2 production, which would be bad; but simultaneously, it creates a gradient that favors moving the CO2 into the chloroplast instead of into the cytoplasm where it would escape into the atmosphere. As a result, more oxygen is released by photosynthesis, less CO2 is released into the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and when the diatoms die and fall to the ocean floor, they take the solid carbon with them. V-type ATPases thus perform another global function for the biosphere: a carbon-concentrating mechanism (CCM).

VHA is a universal feature of eukaryotic cells and is present in a number of organelles, including endosomes, phagosomes, macropinosomes, lysosomes, Golgi, and melanosomes. Since VHA invariably acidifies the lumen of each of these organelles to pH ≤ 6, we deduce that VHA in the cER/PP membranes of T. pseudonana must accomplish a similar effect. This is significant, because at pH ≤ 6.3, the majority of DIC [dissolved inorganic carbon] equilibrates to CO2. Hence, we propose that VHA promotes CO2 accumulation in the microenvironment external to the chloroplast. Consistent with model simulations of DIC fluxes in the diatom CCM, some of the CO2 would diffuse back into the cytoplasm (pH ∼ 7.2). However, the higher pH in the chloroplast stroma (pH ∼ 8.15) establishes a more favorable partial pressure gradient for CO2 diffusion into this compartment (Figure S3B). The next steps follow the established CCM of microalgae. In the stroma, CO2is immediately hydrated into HCO3− under catalysis by carbonic anhydrase, which is shuttled into the thylakoid lumen where pH is ≤ 6 due to H+ pumping associated with photosynthetic electron transport chain. At the acidic pH, HCO3− dehydrates into CO2 and diffuses into the pyrenoid matrix, saturating RuBisCo to maximize carbon fixation rates.

A Remarkable Synergy

This shows a remarkable synergy of molecular machines and chemistry in a highly localized microenvironment. VHAs acidify the chloroplast exterior, helping carbonic anhydrase use the excess CO2 to produce more bicarbonate ions. The pH gradient favors these negative ions to flow toward the proton motive force being generated by the electron transport chain (Complexes I-IV) that are powering the F-type ATP synthase motors (Complex V). As the bicarbonate ions dehydrate back to CO2 where the pH drops inside the chloroplast, they saturate Rubisco enzymes that convert the CO2 into nutrients for life. 

Notice this careful pH-mediated series of delicate chemical reactions. Within this microenvironment, CO2 gets utilized where needed, but is not released into the atmosphere. The products of Rubisco favor carbon compounds that will get buried in the ocean floor. The result? A carbon-concentrating mechanism that helps the atmosphere gain more oxygen but less carbon dioxide, while enriching the biosphere with nutrients. VHA, the “other” ATP synthase, saves the planet! VHA should be seen as a key player in the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the food chain, and the climate. 

Nearly Unrestrained Wonder

The authors can hardly restrain their wonder at all this:

In summary, O2 production, 13C-NanoSIMS, and 14C-P-E measurements demonstrated that VHA significantly contributes to photosynthetic carbon fixation that is retained as biomass. Given that diatoms contribute nearly 50% of carbon fixation in the ocean, the component of photosynthesis that depends on VHA represents between ∼7% and 25% of oceanic primary production, or between 3.5 and 13.5 Gtons of fixed carbon per year (Table S3). These numbers can only increase after accounting for VHA-mediated photosynthesis in other secondary endosymbiotic phytoplankton (Figure 1) and photosymbiotic invertebrates. In addition, diatoms constitute about half of the biomass that sinks into the ocean’s interior. Based on our measurements of the contribution of VHA on both gross and net productivity in diatoms, VHA-mediated carbon fixation is poised to significantly contribute to the biological pump that shuttles organic carbon to the ocean’s interiorand, on a geologic time scale, to the biomass buried in the continental margin that formed fossil fuel deposits. Even by the most conservative estimate, the cooption of VHA for the enhancement of photosynthesis is a symbiosis-derived evolutionary innovation with global environmental implications.

Some future day, when biologists finally admit that evolution is incapable of innovation of complex finely tuned cooperative systems, all scientists will marvel at the intelligent design that gives us air to breathe and edible carbon to ingest under a moderate climate. Some of us are ahead of that time.

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia: a brief history.

 

A clash of Titans again

 

Yet another clash of Titans.

 

Juneteenth a brief history.

 

Bridget Mason :a brief history.

 

Dale Tuggy on the apostle's Creed

 

Conditionalism: a brief history

 

Gunter Bechly on rightly reading the record

 

David Berlinski continues to deconstruct scientism.

 Blind Ambition — Revisiting Searle’s Chinese Room

David Berlinski

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Science After Babel, the latest book from mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. This article is adapted from Chapter 18.

I believe. I want. I do. What could be simpler? Intelligence is the overflow of the mind in action. In dreaming or desiring, on the other hand, I occupy a world bounded entirely by memory, meaning, and belief: I need do nothing. That overflow is entirely internal. In either case, our intelligence is directed toward specific objects or states of affairs. I believe — what? That Clearasil Starves Pimples or that Pepsi Is the Choice of a New Generation; I desire — what? That the young Sophia Loren might step smoldering from the television set for perhaps an hour or that I might win a MacArthur Fellowship (the academic equivalent of the Irish Sweepstakes). What I believe (or desire) and what is believed (or desired) are connected by something very much like an intentional arrow, a kind of miraculous metaphysical instrument. The relationship between my thoughts and their objects is thus strange from the first. But this relationship between what I think and what I think about is duplicated in language itself: like the thoughts that they express, the sentences of a natural language transcend themselves in meaning.

From the Inside Out

In seeing things from a first-person stance, with the entire world revolving around my own ego — a kind of Ptolemaic system in psychology — I direct the arrow of intentionality from the inside out, infusing the objects and properties of the external world with all of the significance that they ever possess. I assume, of course, that others do as much. Read forward, the arrow of intentionality goes from what I feel to what I do; read backward, from what is done to what is felt. The sense that we are all in this together arises only as the result of a supremely imaginative kind of back-pedaling; the interpenetration of two human souls, when it occurs, is wordless.

There is more. Each of us acts in the world as both subject and object: we do, and things are done to us. In moving away from the lunatic solipsism in which my ego exists in the absence of all others, I endow those human beings in my own perceptual ken with more or less the same cognitive states that I myself enjoy. This is the basis for a sense of sympathy. The endowment itself, I presume, may be reversed, as when I myself figure in someone else’s awareness as an imaginatively constructed subject of experience. But here is a queer, artful point. The inferences that I make about others, others make about me. My inferences about others I cannot verify, but their inferences about me represent something like the backward wash of a familiar wave. A subject acting simultaneously as a psychological object enjoys a unique Archimedean perspective on the system of inferences by which mental life in the large is constructed.

This confluence of circumstance suggested to the American philosopher John Searle a very deft argumentative maneuver, something akin, really, to a movement in judo. His arguments were prompted by work undertaken at Yale by the psychologist Roger Schank. Like many other American theorists, Schank has approached the problem of artificial intelligence with a kind of bluff, no-nonsense sense that getting a machine to understand something is a matter of attending to the details in a patient, straightforward way. In a photograph at the back of his book, The Cognitive Computer, he stands with his arms folded over his ample belly, scowling directly into the camera, an expression of earnest ferocity on his face, as if to suggest that by the time he got through with them, those computers of his would either shape up or ship out. His aim, as he explains things, is to teach the digital computer to comprehend simple stories of the sort that might be told to children. 

The exercise is set out without irony. The education of the digital computer in this regard commences with what Schank calls a script — a kind of running, rambling background account in which the saliencies of various stories are set out and explained. With the scripts in hand, the computers are prepared to make sense of what they read. They are then interrogated with a fine eye directed toward telling whether they have understood what they have absorbed. In fact, Schank’s machines do get quite a bit right; the record of their conversation is admirable, and the unbiased reader often has the feeling that just possibly he is reading something strange and remarkable.

It is against this conclusion that Searle has set his face. It is a simple fact, Searle begins, that he is utterly ignorant of the Chinese language. Suppose that he were to be locked in a room with a large sample of Chinese script — the samples, say, arranged on cardboard sheets. Now imagine that Searle were to be given “a second batch of Chinese script together with a set of rules for correlating the first batch with the second.” The rules are in English. A third collection of scripts is presented Searle. And another set of rules. This makes for three separate sets of Chinese symbols and two sets of English rules.

From Searle’s point of view, the material he confronts is an incomprehensible jumble. From the outside, where sense is made of all this, those Chinese symbols have a specific meaning. The first corresponds to a general script — the sort of thing that a computer would need in Schank’s setup to make sense of a story. The second is actually a story in Chinese. The third represents a list of Chinese questions. From time to time, those questions are presented to Searle with a nudge and a wink and a tacit request that he say something. In answering, Searle consults his set of rules. The two sets enable Searle to match the questions to the story by means of the background script. In this respect, Searle remarks, he is precisely in the position of the digital computer.

How Searle Sees

But (a very excited, explosive but!) under such circumstances would there be any inclination to say that a subject so situated understands the meaning of the symbols he is manipulating? An observer might come to this conclusion. Put a question in Chinese to this character, after all, and he answers in Chinese. Yet this is not at all how Searle himself sees things. Whatever he may be able to say in Chinese, he remains confident that he understands nothing of what he has said and is prepared to champion his ignorance defiantly. Some great notable aspect of what it means to understand a language has simply been overlooked.

For the most part, computer scientists have tended to ignore Searle’s argument and the point of view that it represents. It had long been known in science that you cannot beat something (a research grant) with nothing (a destructive argument), and what Searle had to offer them was nothing at all. Analytic philosophers responded promptly to Searle. The results are confusing. A great many superbly confident rebuttals appear to contradict one another. As for myself? When pressed on the point, I tend to run my hands through my hair or tug mournfully at my ears, gestures I am convinced that suggest that I have something tack-sharp to say were I willing only to say it.

Making EVs practical?

 

On Yorktown 1781

 

The king of titans defends his throne

 

Sounds about right.

 

Mathematics: mother or daughter of creativity?

Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?

Robert J Marks jr. 

Some think math is invented. (See an article by Peter Biles.) Evidence, though, points towards discovery. Simultaneous mathematical discovery supports this viewpoint. Many mathematical breakthroughs are sometimes independently reported by two or more mathematicians at roughly the same time. The most famous is the simultaneous discovery of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Newton was secretive about his discovery and shared his results with only a few members of the Royal Society. When Leibnitz published his discovery of the calculus, Newton charged him with Plagiarism. Today, historians agree that the discoveries were independent of each other.

Some Other Examples

Here are some other lesser-known examples of simultaneous discovery.

The Papoulis-Gerchberg Algorithm (PGA). The PGA is an ingenious method for recovering lost sections of functions that are bandlimited. (I describe the PGA in detail in my Handbook of Fourier Analysis.) The PGA was first reported by Athanasios Papoulis1 but was first published in an archival journal, independently, by Gerchberg2. The discoveries occurred independently of each other.

The Karhunen–Loève Theorem, independently discovered by Kari Karhunen3 and Michel Loève4, showed that certain random processes could be represented as an infinite linear combination of orthogonal functions, analogous to a Fourier series.  

Non-Euclidean Geometry. Euclid published Elements circa 300 BC. His work wonderfully established Euclidean geometry. It was only in the first half of the 19th century that three men — J´anos Bolyai, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Nikolai Lobachevsky, independently discovered non-Euclidean geometry. Jenkovszky et al.5 note: “The striking coincidence of independent discoveries… after more than two thousand years of stagnation, may seem almost miraculous.”

Space-Variant Processing. Here’s a personal example. During my graduate work, I developed a method for performing general space-variant processing. My advisor, John F. Walkup, found out that the same method was simultaneously discovered at Stanford by his PhD advisor’s research group. Rather than competing, we agreed to publish all of our findings in the same issue of the journal Applied Optics.6-7

Einstein’s Shoulders

In the context of the argument for discovery, some inventions can curiously be considered discovered rather than invented. Isaac Newton famously said that “if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Einstein built on Newton’s discoveries in classic physics and, in turn, stood on Newton’s shoulders with the formulation of relativity. Modern physicists stand on Einstein’s shoulders. The advancement in technology can likewise be considered standing on an ever-increasing stack of shoulders. This is certainly the case in artificial intelligence. Rosenblatt and Widrow’s early work on AI led to discovery of error backpropagation neural network training that led to deep convolution neural networks, deep learning, and the generative AI we use today.

Inventions can be discovered. An example of an invention being discovered by two men is the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone. But according to the Library of Congress:

Elisha Gray, a professor at Oberlin College, applied for a caveat of the telephone on the same day Bell applied for his patent of the telephone … Bell’s lawyer got to the patent office first. The date was February 14, 1876. He was the fifth entry of that day, while Gray’s lawyer was 39th. Therefore, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Bell with the first patent for a telephone, US Patent Number 174,465 rather than honor Gray’s caveat.

If true, both Gray and Bell were standing on the shoulders of those who proposed the telegraph and glimpsed the possibility of the telephone.

Philosophers might contemplate the similarity of the discovery of invention with the debate between predestination and free will. If inventions and advancements in mathematics are discovered, the future is, in a sense, predestined by our discoveries. The pros and cons of the debate will continue well beyond the arguments presented here.

References

A. Papoulis. A new method of image restoration. Joint Services Technical Activity Report, 39, 1973–74

R.W. Gerchberg. Super-resolution through error energy reduction. Optica Acta, Vol. 21, pp. 709–720, 1974.

Kari Karhunen ‘Zur Spektraltheorie Stochastischer Prozesse’, Ann. Acad. Sci. Fennicae, (1946), 37

Michel Loève ‘Probability Theory’, Princeton, N.J.: VanNostrand, 1955

László Jenkovszky, Matthew J. Lake, and Vladimir Soloviev. “János Bolyai, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Nikolai Lobachevsky and the New Geometry: Foreword.” Symmetry 15, no. 3 (2023): 707.

R.J. Marks II, J.F. Walkup, M.O. Hagler and T.F. Krile “Space-variant processing of one-dimensional signals,” Applied Optics, vol. 16, pp.739-745 (1977).

Joseph W. Goodman, Peter Kellman, and E. W. Hansen. “Linear space-variant optical processing of 1-D signals.” Applied Optics 16, no. 3 (1977): 733-738.

A battle royale of titans?

 

Dale Tuggy on how to make the gospel Trinitarian.

 

On honor among politicians.

 

China 2.0? Cons.

 

Phoebe : the Watchtower Society's Commentary.

 PHOEBE

Insight on the scriptures

(Phoeʹbe) [Pure; Bright; Radiant].

A Christian sister of the first-century congregation in Cenchreae. Paul, in his letter to the Christians at Rome, ‘recommends’ this sister to them and calls on them to render her any needed assistance as one who “proved to be a defender of many, yes, of me myself.” (Ro 16:1, 2) It may be that Phoebe delivered Paul’s letter in Rome or else accompanied the one who did.

Paul refers to Phoebe as “a minister of the congregation that is in Cenchreae.” This raises the question as to the sense in which the term di·aʹko·nos (minister) is here used. Some translators view the term in an official sense and hence render it “deaconess” (RS, JB). But the Scriptures make no provision for female ministerial servants. Goodspeed’s translation views the term in a general sense and translates it “helper.” However, Paul’s reference is evidently to something having to do with the spreading of the good news, the Christian ministry, and he was speaking of Phoebe as a female minister who was associated with the congregation in Cenchreae.—Compare Ac 2:17, 18.

Phoebe served as “a defender of many.” The term translated “defender” (pro·staʹtis) has the basic sense of “protectress” or “succorer,” so that it implies not mere cordiality but a coming to the aid of others who are in need. It may also be rendered “patroness.” Phoebe’s freedom to travel and to render notable service in the congregation may indicate that she was a widow and possibly a woman of some material wealth. So, she may have been in position to use influence in the community in behalf of Christians who were being wrongly accused, defending them in this way; or she may have provided refuge for them in time of danger, serving as a protectress. The record gives no details.

Dale Tuggy challenges the Jesus=God hypothesis.

 

Dale Tuggy on the Athanasian creed

 

Even more on why the skilled trades are not a consolation prize.

 

King of titans?

 

The stones continue to cry out.

 

Dating methods get the third degree

 Fossil Friday: Alleged Precambrian Fossil Unmasked as Rotten Beehive

Gunter Bechly

When the Covid pandemic struck in 2020 a scientific conference in India was cancelled, and some stranded scientists used their unexpected free time as an opportunity for a field trip to the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters in central India, a famous UNESCO World Heritage site of ancient rock art. One of these scientists was paleontologist Gregory Retallack, a retired professor from the University of Oregon and expert on Ediacaran fossils. The Maihar Sandstone rocks of the cave have been attributed to the Upper Vindhyan strata, which are of contentious Precambrian age between 1,600 to 541 million years old (Nature 2021, Kwafo et al. 2023). Retallack noticed strange impressions high up on the walls of the cave, which he identified as three specimens of the fossil Ediacaran organism Dickinsonia. Retallack found that “the fossils are identical with Dickinsonia tenuis from the Ediacara Member of the Rawnsley Quartzite in South Australia.”

This would have represented not just the first record of Dickinsonia in India, but would have also confirmed the younger Ediacaran age of the Bhimbetka rocks and rewritten our understanding of the plate tectonic history of the Indian subcontinent. Retallack published his remarkble discovery with a team of five co-authors in the high-impact journal Gondwana Research (Retallack et al. 2021). The prestigious

       journal Nature commented that the “fossil from dawn of animal life found in India’s famous caves … offers insights into the range of emerging complex life” (Nature 2021). Of course, the sensational discovery attracted worldwide media coverage from the New York Times to the Weather Channel.

                 

Isn’t Science Cool?!

Well, earlier this year a new study by a team of scientists from the University of Florida and from India turned the cool science into a real bummer. The scientists revisited the site and discovered that the assumed Ediacaran fossils are neither of Ediacaran age nor represent fossils at all, but are just the recent remains of decayed and fallen beehives. The patterns of remaining wax, where the beehives were attached to the cave wall and fell off, just accidently happened to resemble the shape of Dickinsonia fossils at first glance. That’s a big oopsie. The debunking evidence was so overwhelming (Meert et al. 2023, also see Kwafo et al. 2023 and Pandey et al. 2023) that even the original authors publicly admitted their mistaken identification (Retallack et al. 2023), for which they have even been praised as a kind of heroes of science (University of Florida 2023). Of course, this retraction renders all the grandiose conclusions about the age of the rocks and the paleogeography of India moot as well (University of Florida 2023, Kwafo et al. 2023).

There is another point I would like to mention: It is a common creationist meme often repeated on social media that paleontologists engage in circular reasoning because they date the rocks with fossils and the fossils with the rocks they are found in. This is simply not true in many cases, where different dating techniques like radiometric datings and paleomagnetography supplement biostratigraphic evidence. But the present case also illustrates that the trope is not totally off. Here is what the scientists commented (University of Florida 2023): “Correcting the fossil record puts the age of the rocks back into contention. Because the rock formation doesn’t have any fossils from a known time period, dating it can be difficult.” Read the last sentence again and let it sink in.

Hard Rocks, Soft Science

It is also interesting to note that an old dating of 900 million years and a younger dating of 550 million years are both supported by the same radiometric U-Pb dating technique of Upper Vindhyan zircon crystals (Lan et al. 2020, Nature 2021). So, radiometric methods clearly are not as reliable and precise as many scientists love to think. This does not mean that the consensus geological timeline is totally wrong, but it at least shows that questioning such datings is not irrational either. That renowned scientists can engage in Rorschach play with accidental patterns on rock walls and produce peer-reviewed scientific papers with far-reaching evolutionary conclusions from such pseudoscientific endeavours will likely raise further justified doubts in paleontological evidence for evolution in general. Even though the fossil rocks are hard, the interpreting science often seems to be very soft!

References

Kwafo S, Singha A, Pandit M & Meert J 2023. Reply to the comment by Retallack et al. (2023) on “Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz”. Gondwana Research 118, 160–162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.02.016

Lan Z, Zhang S, Li X-H, Pandey SK, Sharma M, Shukla Y, Ahmad S, Sarkar S & Zhai M 2020. Towards resolving the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ and age-fossil inconsistency within East Gondwana. Precambrian Research 345:105775. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precamres.2020.105775

Meert JG, Pandit MK, Kwafo S & Singha A 2023. Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz. Gondwana Research 117, 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.01.003

Nature 2021. Fossil from dawn of animal life found in India’s famous cave. Nature India February 17, 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/nindia.2021.30

Pandey SK, Ahmad S & Sharma M 2023. Dickinsonia tenuis reported by Retallack et al. 2021 is not a fossil, instead an impression of an extant ‘fallen beehive’. Journal of the Geological Society of India 99, 311–316. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12594-023-2312-2

Retallack GJ, Matthews NA, Master S, Khangar RG & Khan M 2021. Dickinsonia discovered in India and late Ediacaran biogeography. Gondwana Research 90, 165–170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2

Retallack GJ, Master S, Khangar RG & Khan M 2023. Discussion on “Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz” by Meert, et al. (2023). Gondwana Research 118, 163–164. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2023.02.006

University of Florida 2023. Mistaken fossil rewrites history of Indian subcontinent for second time. ScienceDaily February 1, 2023. https://www.sciencedaily.co

Michael Denton on why there must first be light.

 Denton Explains How Light Sustains Human Life

Michael Denton

On a classic episode of ID the Future, biochemist and medical doctor Michael Denton explores a “miraculous convergence of properties” for life. The topic is Denton’s book Children of Light: The Astonishing Properties of Sunlight That Make Us Possible, part of his Privileged Species book series that also includes The Miracle of Man, The Miracle of the Cell, The Wonder of Water, and Fire-Maker. Here, Denton lets his astonishment flow freely in an interview with host Sarah Chaffee, with topics ranging from the light of the sun to key chemicals here on Earth. “The atmosphere lets through just the light we need,” says Denton, “and the sun puts out just the light we need. It’s a remarkable coincidence…The atmosphere does just what is needed for life on Earth.” Taken together, it’s an astonishing array of evidence showing how finely tuned Earth is for human life. And the common-sense conclusion, Denton says, is that a designing intelligence is the most adequate explanation for the properties on our planet that make life like us possible. This is Part 1 of a two-part discussion. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

A big little house?

 

David Berlinski deconstructs scientism

 Ovid in His Exile

David Berlinski

Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Science After Babel, the latest book from mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. This article is adapted from Chapter 14.

Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia University was the scene of many strange experiments. One day, a very young chimpanzee escaped from the building and, flushed with its freedom, began to gambol and frolic on the pathetic square of shabby and well-worn grass that served as a lawn in front of the building. A crowd quickly collected. The mathematician Lipman Bers joined me. A scruffy puppy noticed the commotion and scooted into the square where the chimpanzee was playing. The two animals promptly became friends, but the puppy, it soon became apparent, was less intelligent than the chimpanzee. Again and again he would find himself maneuvered into absurd and humiliating positions. “So stupid,” snorted Bers, referring to the dog. Pleased and flattered by the attention, the chimpanzee began to refine his act and play to the crowd, using gestures, and even facial expressions — the universal rictus of triumph, for example — that everyone recognized. After a while, the chimpanzee’s frantic owner, a rather dishy young woman, I recall, collared him in the courtyard and the game was over. As the chimpanzee was led away, he waved to the crowd, a true sportsman. The puppy sat on its haunches and panted assiduously.

The Incompetent and the Indifferent

I learned later from Bers that research biologists were trying to teach the chimpanzee American Sign Language. They had been working with an older animal, but evidently the beast, while learning some signs, grew unsurprisingly to detest his owners, who finally shipped him to a zoo in San Diego. There he occupied himself unprofitably in attempting to teach the other animals to sign, a splendid case of the incompetent endeavoring to instruct the indifferent.

“A vast tragedy,” Bers remarked sentimentally, “like Ovid in his exile.”

I mention this sad little story only to remark on its ironic conclusion. For a time during the 1970s, a number of biologists were actually convinced that they had taught chimpanzees and great apes to talk; many of them reported long conversations, chiefly about bananas (Me: More!), that they held with their charges. Their research was no sooner published than it was accepted and believed, largely, I think, because a crude Darwinian theory — there is no other — made it difficult to imagine that profound and ineradicable differences exist between human beings and the rest of the animal world. Penny Peterson at Stanford, Herbert Terrace at MIT, and David Premack at the University of Pennsylvania all convinced themselves that somehow the great apes had sat in stony silence throughout the vast reaches of biological time only because they lacked human conversational companionship.

Nothing to Say

The inevitable, skeptical reaction soon set in. Videotapes taken of chimpanzees revealed, when carefully analyzed, that what had passed for chimpanzee conversation was nothing more than prompted signings in the best of cases — a record of the beast’s pathetic endeavor to say whatever it was that his trainer wished him to say; in the worst of cases, the beast simply babbled (More Me More More!), his signs utterly devoid of meaning. Herbert Terrace, who had wasted years in browbeating the poor creatures, examined videotapes of his own encounters with his animals and came away shaken. Some work, of course, continues, but to little effect. Ever credulous, scientists now report that they have engaged the dolphin in stimulating conversation. Next year, no doubt, it will be the turkey.

Seventeenth-century Jesuits wondered why dogs do not talk. Their conclusion bears repeating. They have nothing to say.

Yet another clash of titans