The Binary Circumstance

The Edge Foundation, Inc. has an interview with Ernst Mayr.  All quotations in this post are from the article.

Born in 1904 (quick, do the math), Ernst Mayr is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Mayr is one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists. His work has contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept. His theory of peripatric speciation has become widely accepted as one of the standard modes of speciation, and is the basis of the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Furthermore, his writings reflect, not only a technical expertise in biological subjects, but also a broad and penetrating understanding of the deeper philosophical issues involved.

In my previous post, I noted that only 13% of the American population believes that the human race was produced solely by evolution.

Thus, the following comments by Mayr in this interview caught my eye:

MAYR: Because of the historically entrenched resistance to the thought of evolution, documented by modern-day creationism, evolutionists have been forced into defending evolution and trying to prove that it is a fact and not a theory. Certainly the explanation of evolution and the search for its underlying ideas has been somewhat neglected, and my new book, the title of which is What Evolution Is, is precisely attempting to rectify that situation. It attempts to explain evolution. As I say in the first section of the book, I don’t need to prove it again, evolution is so clearly a fact that you need to be committed to something like a belief in the supernatural if you are at all in disagreement with evolution. It is a fact and we don’t need to prove it anymore. Nonetheless we must explain why it happened and how it happens.

MAYR: Now a third one of Darwin’s great contributions was that he replaced theological, or supernatural, science with secular science. Laplace, of course, had already done this some 50 years earlier when he explained the whole world to Napoleon. After his explanation, Napoleon replied, "where is God in your theory?" And Laplace answered, "I don’t need that hypothesis." Darwin’s explanation that all things have a natural cause made the belief in a creatively superior mind quite unnecessary. He created a secular world, more so than anyone before him. Certainly many forces were verging in that same direction, but Darwin’s work was the crashing arrival of this idea and from that point on, the secular viewpoint of the world became virtually universal.

This exchange had me ROFL:

EDGE: How do you account for the fact that in this country, despite the effect of Darwinism on many people in the scientific community, more and more people are god fearing and believe in the 8 days of creation?

MAYR: You know you cannot give a polite answer to that question.

EDGE: In this venue we appreciate impolite, impolitical, answers.

MAYR: They recently tested a group of schoolgirls? They asked where is Mexico? Do you know that most of the kids had no idea where Mexico is? I’m using this only to illustrate the fact that ­ and pardon me for saying so ­ the average American is amazingly ignorant about just about everything. If he was better informed, how could he reject evolution? If you don’t accept evolution then most of the facts of biology just don’t make sense. I can’t explain how an entire nation can be so ignorant, but there it is.

One final quote, then go read the entire article.

MAYR: What’s the object of a selective act? For Darwin, who didn’t know any better, it was the individual — and it turns out he was right.

An individual either survives or doesn’t, an individual either reproduces or doesn’t, an individual either reproduces very successfully or it doesn’t.

Although he didn’t use the term "binary circumstance", probably because he doesn’t yet realize that I invented it to describe this dualism, that’s what he’s clearly talking about.

Now go read the whole thing.  In his 100 years, he had a fascinating and productive life.

Ernst Mayr died on February 3, 2005.

The Dino Rossi camp which is challenging Christine Gregoire’s victory in the 2004 Washington State governor’s race, alleges that 1,108 felons voted illegally, the vast majority of them in King County, a democratic stronghold.

It’s been eighty years since the Scopes "Monkey Trial" which took place in 1925 in Dayton, TN.  The trial was dramatized in a partly-fictionalized stage version and 1960 movie, Inherit The Wind.

The actual trial was a challenge to the 1925 Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in Tennessee public schools.  Scopes, a math and science teacher was found guilty of violating the law and fined $100.  The decision was thrown out on appeal on a technicality and dismissed without further appeal. The Butler Act, however, remained on the books until 1968.

In 1968, the US Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that bans such as the Butler Act were unconstitutional, because they contravened the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, since their primary purpose was religious.

Fast forward to 2005 and there are still many who would ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools if they could get away with it.

The New York Times, in conjunction with this article [reg. req.] about "Unintelligent Design" published the results of a poll which are not available online.

Which statements reflect your views on the origin of human beings?

1) We evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process.

   13% agree (16% Democrats, 9% Republicans)

2) We evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process.

    28% agree (23% Democrats, 23% Republicans)

3) God created us in our present form.

    55% agree (51% Democrats, 66% Republicans)

Unsure of the three choices: 5% (5% Democrats, 2% Republicans)

Unfortunately, another hard-living writer has reduced his life to a cliché.

Personally, I can’t remember ever reading anything by Hunter S. Thompson, though I probably have, and I’ve certainly read authors who were influenced by him.

Thompson influenced a generation of writers who saw a model in his over-the-top writing style.

Some of his closest literary peers were William Burroughs, Ken Kesey, William Kennedy and Tom Wolfe — of whom Thompson was an early champion.

"Hunter was unique in American literary journalism — a voice so distinctive, so enduring, that he will be remembered with Twain, Lardner, Mencken and Hemingway," said P-I Managing Editor David McCumber, who edited many of the columns Thompson wrote for The San Francisco Examiner in the 1980s.

There is something paradoxical about a man credited with being so creative, even though he drank and drugged his way through life and in the end blew his brains out with a gun.

Thompson is credited with creating "gonzo journalism."

An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson was a practitioner of a new kind of non-fiction writing in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story, breaking traditional rules of news reporting and purposely slanting the text — gonzo journalism.

Writers making themselves an essential component of the story?  Do they mean like fake journalists and bloggers?

If self-destruction and ultimately suicide are the final outcome of a life spent in the practice of gonzo journalism, we might see a huge epidemic of suicides in the coming years.

Use this link to buy books by and about Hunter S. Thompson.