Intro to Darwin Day

Good evening. I’m Clay Naff of Nebraska Citizens for Science.

On behalf of NCFS, Center for Inquiry, and Lincoln Secular Humanists, welcome to Darwin Day.  

We’re gathered at a historic moment. Nearing the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea is today the champion of all scientific theories. Contrary to what you might hear from the Discovery Institute, or the Institute for Creation Research, or from the recently convicted huckster Kent Hovind, at this moment evolution stands as the best-grounded, most fruitful theory in science.   

But wait a moment, I hear you say. This has got to be an exaggeration. What about gravity? Surely, gravity is better established than evolution. After all, you can drop a brick and prove gravity every time. Nothing in evolution is as clear as that.  

Well, true enough. But when you drop something, you’re proving the fact of gravity, not the theory. And for that matter, although it takes a little longer, we can easily prove the fact of evolution as well. That’s why flu vaccine is different every year. No one this side of the looney bin denies that germs evolve.  

So, both gravity and evolution are facts, and facts are important, no question of that. But what makes science a really enriching, satisfying pursuit is that it leads to theories. Now, contrary to the popular use of the term, in science a theory is not a hunch or a guess. It’s the payoff that comes at the end of a scientific journey, the explanation in terms of scientific principles for all the facts that have been gathered about a particular subject. To be scientific, a theory not onlyt has to explain, it has to be predictive, tested, reliable, coherent … and fruitful.  

That’s where the theory of evolution outshines all the rest. Now, don’t get me wrong. Gravity is great. When Newton first realized that the force that makes an apple fall was the same one that keeps the Moon in orbit, that was huge. Not only did we now have a formula for calculating the force of attraction between any two objects, but Newton’s theory encouraged other scientists to start thinking in terms of universal laws in all fields. But as you may know, Newton did not have the last word in gravity. Along came Einstein, and with his general theory of relativity he came up with a superior explanation for gravity – one that tests out better than Newton’s. In brief, Einstein showed that gravity is an effect of mass warping space and time.  

Einstein beats Newton, because for example his theory predicts the orbit of Mercury more accurately. General relativity also predicts many new and startling things that have been shown to be true: that the gravity of a really large mass will bend light, for example, or that a clock in the presence of a powerful gravitational field will slow down.  

But here’s the rub: while there’s absolutely no doubt that Einstein was on to a good thing, there is equally no doubt that there’s something not wholly right with his theory.  

On the one hand, if you scale down to the really, really small, general relativity just falls apart. Subatomic particles apparently don’t give a hoot about time, space or gravity. They could care less about the rules of relativity. Instead, they march to the beat of quantum probability. This means that, from its inception, general relativity has been incoherent with quantum physics. Einstein himself recognized this problem from the start. He spent the last decades of his career in a fruitless search for a “Grand Unified Theory” to close the gap.

But that’s not all. You see, to prevent his theory from predicting that the Universe would have collapsed into a dot eons ago, Einstein shoved in an arbitrary term, a little thing that he liked to call the “cosmological constant.” It’s a number that represents an arbitrary push-back against the gravitational tendency of all mass to clump together. Again, Einstein himself saw the problem, and later called the cosmological constant his "greatest blunder.” It turns out that Einstein was right and then some. The universe is dominated by what cosmologists, for lack of a better term, call “dark energy.” It’s causing space itself to expand in all directions, at an accelerating rate. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but in case you haven’t been out to the Holmes Lake observatory lately, you might want to take your next opportunity, because one day there won’t be anymore stars out there to see.  

This amounts to a crisis for the theory of gravity. Cosmologists are baffled. Some think that dark energy is an inverse property of gravity itself. Others think it is a quantum phenomenon. The leading candidate for an explanation – string theory – is utterly untestable. Anyway you look at it, gravity is a theory in trouble. But of course no one doubts the fact of gravity at all.

By contrast, both the fact and the theory of evolution have never been healthier. Thanks to streams of evidence from every direction, evolution’s cup brimmeth over. With exciting new finds ranging from feathered dinosaurs to “Lucy’s baby,” the fossil record is more complete than ever. Phylogenetics, the new science of determining relations among species by genetic analysis is filling in the tree of life in greater detail than ever. And new computer simulations are demonstrating the phenomenal creativity and problem-solving ability of the Darwinian algorithm. That recipe? Random variation of heritable traits + nonrandom selection by the environment  = adaptive evolution.  

You can see some of the simulations for yourself. For starters, just google “Conway” and “game of life.” There’s no blood or sex involved. Just a grid, some dots, and a few simple rules, but, oh my what a lot of fascinating complexity arises in a few generations. (For a more serious exploration of Darwinian evolution in a computer, google avida and msu.)

Darwin’s insights are being used to solve problems in a wide range of fields, from medicine to economics, but the possibilities are just dawning. At the same time, unfortunately, there are still many who want us to remain cloaked in the darkness of ignorance. They fear that an understanding of evolution will cause people to lose faith, to lose morality, and to honor only the survival of the fittest.  

This is complete nonsense, and only a profound and even willful ignorance of evolution could engender such fears. It is true that evolution gives us solid ground for an alternative to creationism, but that is hardly the same as losing faith. And far from destroying morality, evolution gives us profound insights into why morality exists in all human societies and why it is always precarious. As for survival of the fittest, consider this. Complex life represents nothing less than the self-sacrificing cooperation of billions of cells to advance their mutual interests through a half-share in offspring. Think about it: every cell in your body does its duty so that a sperm and an egg may unite and carry the torch unto a new generation.

For creatures like us, then, survival of the fittest does not mean that monsters like Stalin or Saddam Hussein come out on top. To be sure, many have misinterpreted evolution. In Darwin’s day, the poet Tennyson wrote of “nature red in tooth and claw.” In our day we can plainly see that for homo sapiens, survival of the fittest means that cooperation, wisdom, and love must prevail. A deep understanding of evolution can not only help us to grasp this truth, it can help to make it real.

And so, in anticipation of a deeper understanding, it’s my great pleasure to introduce our remarkable keynote speaker. Alan Kamil is director of the School of Biological Sciences at UNL, where he also serves as a professor. His doctoral training was in psychology, and he’s brought that to bear in his biological research, much of which focuses on the evolution of intelligence in birds. You want to know how Clark’s nutcrackers find hidden seeds, Al’s your go-to guy.  Unlike the stay-at-home scientists lamented by President Schmidly at Friday’s lecture, Al does a lot of field research, and as director of UNL’s Cedar Point Biological Research Station he’s encouraged students to as well. But Al’s also a big-concept guy who reads widely outside the strictures of a subdiscipline, even venturing into the murky waters of philosophy of science. But if there’s one thing he loves to read above all others, it’s a good biography of Charles Darwin. So tonight, we’re going to have the benefit of his many interests and insights.  Please welcome Al Kamil.