Nick Matzke at the Dayton County Courthouse where the Scopes Trial was held in 1925. (photo from ~2014)
Merry Kitzmas to all! Today is the 19th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, aka the Dover Panda Trial, held from September-November 2005, and decided on December 20, 2005.
Next year, 2025, will be the 20th anniversary of Kitzmiller, as well as the 100th anniversary of Tennessee v. Scopes, aka the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Stuck as I am, in Australia/New Zealand with 3 little kids, I expect I will have to follow events from afar. But I will use this thread to accumulate links & dates for relevant events as they come up. And please contribute ones you come across!
I expect that many are glum about current politics and science, but I recall a similar feeling in 2004, and that Kitzmiller v. Dover was one of the early signs that committed citizens could move events in a pro-science direction. May 2025 be another such time!
One of the intermediate steps that Granville Sewell does not
mention, and which Eric Hedin sort-of-knows occur. (a), Reconstruction
of a very early vertebrate, the fossil Nuucichthys, which lived
518 million years ago, with (b) its inferred position shown on the vertebrate phylogeny. From a paper by Rudy Lerosey-Aubril & Javier Ortega-Hernández, CC BY 4.0 From Wikimedia.
Physicist Eric Hedin has posted to the Discovery Institute site
Evolution News on 27 November 2024
an argument that the processes of physics cannot
account for intelligent life. As he is a well-trained physicist (whose Ph.D.
degree was from my university), and who has done experimental
work on plasma physics, we can expect a mathematically sophisticated
argument which would give us all pause.
Well, here’s the guts of his argument, from the Evolution News post:
In fact, for making anything other than large-scale conglomerations of matter (such as stars and planets), nature has only one tool in its bag — the electromagnetic force. This tool primarily manifests as the electric force, causing opposite charges (such as electrons and protons) to attract, and like charges to repel. It is completely indiscriminate, and cannot select between multiple options, preferring one charge over another, except for the rule that the bigger the charges and the closer the distance between them the stronger the resulting force. Can you imagine such blind, brute forces pulling together countless atoms of specific elements into the necessary configurations to result in a functioning laptop computer?
and
The “boundaries of science” refers to the common-sense conclusion that nature is limited in what it can produce to outcomes consistent with the laws and forces of nature. Natural processes are sought and found to be sufficient for natural phenomena, such as star formation or precipitation.
However, attempting to naturally explain the origin of some things found within our universe comes into conflict with the boundaries of science. Positing a natural explanation for the origin of the universe itself, the origin of the specific suite of physical parameters finely tuned to allow life, the origin of life itself, and the origin of conscious, intelligent minds, all defy what we have discovered about the limits of natural processes.
And basically, that’s the argument. Evolutionary biology does not pretend to address the origin of the universe, or the issue of fine-tuning in physics, and even the origin of life is outside its scope, though adjacent. But somehow Hedin knows that physical forces cannot explain “the origin of conscious,
intelligent minds”. I wonder how he knows that.
Ellipes minuta – pygmy mole cricket. Dr. Sturtevant notes, "This insect is a small oddity. Despite its name, the diminutive pygmy mole crickets are not true mole crickets, or even crickets for that matter. They are classified as belonging in the same sub-order as grasshoppers."
Figure 1. Intelligent, but closed-minded. Not entirely flattering.
According to the Pew Research Center, confidence in scientists has ticked up slightly, though it remains lower than it was before the pandemic. That is one of the conclusions of a report, Public Trust in Scientists and Views on Their Role in Policymaking, by Alec Tyson and Brian Kennedy. Pew surveyed nearly 10,000 US adults in October and discovered that Americans (mostly) perceive scientists as intelligent, honest, and focused on real-world problems. They see communication as a weak area and think that we are good at working in teams, though how they know about teamwork is a puzzle to me.
At least they think we are reasonably bright; they also find us socially awkward, cold, superior, and closed-minded. Figure 1 shows how these perceptions break down according to political party: Democrats and their fellow travelers (whom I shall call Democrats) have a considerably more favorable view of scientists than Republicans and their fellow travelers (whom I shall call Republicans). I was somewhat bemused by the claim of roughly half of Republicans that scientists "[d]on't pay attention to moral values of society," and wondered precisely what and whose moral values they have in mind.
Bombus mixtus – bumblebee, photographed on a thistle immediately after a spring shower. The hairs on the abdomen are wetted where a raindrop hit. Located Nanaimo Lakes, Vancouver Island. Canon 20D, 100 mm macro.
![[Ernst Mayr in caricature]](/uploads/2024/Matzke_Scopes.jpg)
![[An intermediate step]](/uploads/2024/Nuucichthys.png)
