I haven't been too active with reading or writing blogs lately - I've been traveling and trying to get some (publishable) analyses and writing done. But I just stumbled upon a blog I hadn't seen before by Ken Weiss and Anne Buchanan. Ken Weiss is an anthropologist at Penn State. He writes a lot about evolutionary concepts (some call it theory, but the math theorists don't like that). He had a published column for a while that I was a fan of - I even assign a few of them for my evolution class.
I am a fan because Professor Weiss is an ardent pluralist, comfortable with some ambiguity, and the fact that "dichotomies" are spectra, etc. This is a general philosophy I share, and use to make sense of the world and others' arguments.
So, I look forward to reading their blog, called the Mermaid's Tale (I'm not sure I'm fond of pun-ambiguity, but I guess it works in this case). It looks prolific, I don't think I'll be able to keep up.
Showing posts with label pluralism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pluralism. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
There once was a man named Chuck
I decided to write a quick Darwin Limerick, inspired by the contest over at Dispersal of Darwin, and by the concepts of pluralistic Darwinism and common descent:
I'm still working on "There once was a man named Chuck"
There once was a man from Down House
Who convinced me I'm cousin to a brown mouse
I'm glad as can be
That all life is a tree
Toe fungus to red grouse to crown louse
I'm still working on "There once was a man named Chuck"
Friday, August 15, 2008
Pluralism- Optimal versus non-optimal
Once people get passed the tired, unimaginative, recycled, anti-evolution claims that creationists often make (snore), there are still some common obstacles to a deeper understanding of how evolution has produced the wondrous diversity of life that we see around us every day. Primary among these misunderstandings are the monistic view that evolution produces perfectly optimal phenotypes, and the related idea that natural selection is the only process that shapes evolution.
Of course this point is also a bit tired and unimaginative of me to point out, since Gould and Lewontin famously wrote on this subject almost 30 years ago. And even then, they were not even considered original by everyone, as they were accused by some of strawmandering, of erecting a simplistic caricature of peoples' views on evolution to be argued against. But never fear, I think I do have an original contribution to offer - I think I've stumbled upon a really nifty example to help understand a pluralistic view of optimal versus non-optimal evolution. Like Gould and Lewontin's famous spandrels (architectural objects that originate because of constraint instead of optimal functionality) I provide a non-biological example. I hope to try out this example on my students in next year's Macroevolution course.
The Panglossian barriers of Joshua Tree
Somehow these examples of the struggle between optimal and non-optimal come to me while traveling. My previous best personal example illustrates how people by nature tend to think adaptively. We tend to ask what something was made for - even though many things could simply arise as by-products, not as optimal "for" anything. I found myself falling into this Panglossian trap myself while driving in Joshua Tree National Monument. This is a place I've been to often, as it marks the half way point between my home in Santa Barbara, and relatives' home in Tucson. We usually arrive late in Joshua Tree, leaving SB after 6:00pm to avoid the traffic of the Inland Empire. When we arrive, Joshua Tree is dark, and the star gazing is amazing. Driving in, our mini-van headlights are no match for the vast darkness of the desert, and so the road becomes a singular focus. Some times of the year kangaroo rats dart just out of our path, but others the monotony of the dirt road induces a hypnotic trance. It was in one of these trances that I began to wonder the function of the ridges of dirt that edged the road. Along the edges of the dirt roads in Joshua Tree, sand lays in a neat pile, sloping from a maximum of foot or two in height gradually to the surface of the road. Except for the tan color, it was as if I had just followed a plow through a fresh coat of fallen snow.
[I'll paste a picture here when I find one].
Perhaps these ridges are an attempt to keep animals off the road, serving as a barrier between the raw wilderness and these capillaries of civilization that penetrate the desert. "Wait a minute, what am I thinking??", I thought, jarred from my trance (or was I?). Why to the road ridges have to be "for" anything? It makes so much more sense if these are simply by-products of making a road in the desert. My snow analogy is probably right on. Probably to make and up-keep the roads, plows simply carve a path through the desert, resulting in a pile of desert sand on either side as a by-product. These are not adaptive barriers, these are simply by-products of a need for efficient auto travel. Yet it was so natural for me to assume there is some function, and I so easily came up with an explanation, just so. I can see how one could see the natural world in a similar and Panglossian fashion.
What's even more wondrous is that similar by-products can be later elaborated, to give an even more distinct, yet ultimately false, impression of optimality. Growing up in Wisconsin, we had one glorious winter when the long driveway of our farm house was plowed by a neighbor (as opposed to shoveled, or cleared with a snow-blower). Just like the sand in Joshua Tree, the plow of my childhood left a by-product of a flat clear path, in the form of piles of snow flanking our driveway. Through the winter, these banks piled high, and they packed tight. My brother and I soon found an outstanding use for these by-products. We created the most fantastical snow fort Germantown Wisconsin has ever seen. We spent hours tunneling through the banks, building rooms where the snow piled wide. The plow packed the snow tight enough that we could build shelves and windows in the walls and sunroofs in the ceilings. So spectacular was our fortress, it was hard for our friends not to wonder whether the banks were plowed for the express purpose of creating our winter wonderland. But similar to Gould and Lewontin's elegantly painted spandrels in the chapel of San Marco, and just like the sand banks of the Joshua Tree desert, my childhood snow bank was simply a by-product of a need for efficient car travel, no matter how optimal our resulting snow fort turned out.
The Pluralistic spires and arches Utah
It's true that some structures sometimes arise as by-products. But what I find even more appealing is a pluralistic interplay between optimality and non-optimality. Natural selection may be an optimizing force, but it is not all powerful. There are constraints on the system. Driving through Utah this week, I saw a perfect illustration of this in the inspirationally beautiful wild lands of Utah.
Water, when pulled by gravity, will find an optimal path to the lowest point. And water, when it courses over rock, gradually wears that rock away, leaving a trace of its path. If all rock were created equal, canyons would be arrow straight, as water would continually trace a single optimal path to the oceans. But canyons are complex because all rock is not created equal. As a result, water faces constraints to optimality. When softer rock lies adjacent to harder rock, the softer breaks away more quickly, producing a circuitous path to the lowest point. The harder rock constrains and controls the outcome, in combination with the optimizing pull of gravity on water. The spires, arches and canyons are stunning examples of the intricate interplay between optimization and constraint. With constraints imposed by heterogeneous rock alone, the structures do not appear. Similarly with water acting optimally on homogeneous rock, the structures do not appear. It is only through the interaction that this beauty arises.
Bryce canyon photo by James Gordon, posted on flickr.
The geology is amazing in its own right, and I am sure I have not done it justice by my oversimplification (e.g. I've ignored wind and ice erosion). But my point here is to focus one how these pluralistic ways of thinking can inform us of how evolution proceeds. Nothing in nature works without constraint, without trade-off. Only by seeing natural selection as one player in a complex (though undeniably natural) interplay of various processes, do we gain a more nuanced and pluralistic understanding of how evolution has shaped our world.
[Caveat: These are purely non-biological examples, meant as analogies to prime one's pluralistic thinking. However, where the rubber hits the road for evolution is with biological examples, but that is beyond the scope of the current post.]
Of course this point is also a bit tired and unimaginative of me to point out, since Gould and Lewontin famously wrote on this subject almost 30 years ago. And even then, they were not even considered original by everyone, as they were accused by some of strawmandering, of erecting a simplistic caricature of peoples' views on evolution to be argued against. But never fear, I think I do have an original contribution to offer - I think I've stumbled upon a really nifty example to help understand a pluralistic view of optimal versus non-optimal evolution. Like Gould and Lewontin's famous spandrels (architectural objects that originate because of constraint instead of optimal functionality) I provide a non-biological example. I hope to try out this example on my students in next year's Macroevolution course.
The Panglossian barriers of Joshua Tree
Somehow these examples of the struggle between optimal and non-optimal come to me while traveling. My previous best personal example illustrates how people by nature tend to think adaptively. We tend to ask what something was made for - even though many things could simply arise as by-products, not as optimal "for" anything. I found myself falling into this Panglossian trap myself while driving in Joshua Tree National Monument. This is a place I've been to often, as it marks the half way point between my home in Santa Barbara, and relatives' home in Tucson. We usually arrive late in Joshua Tree, leaving SB after 6:00pm to avoid the traffic of the Inland Empire. When we arrive, Joshua Tree is dark, and the star gazing is amazing. Driving in, our mini-van headlights are no match for the vast darkness of the desert, and so the road becomes a singular focus. Some times of the year kangaroo rats dart just out of our path, but others the monotony of the dirt road induces a hypnotic trance. It was in one of these trances that I began to wonder the function of the ridges of dirt that edged the road. Along the edges of the dirt roads in Joshua Tree, sand lays in a neat pile, sloping from a maximum of foot or two in height gradually to the surface of the road. Except for the tan color, it was as if I had just followed a plow through a fresh coat of fallen snow.
[I'll paste a picture here when I find one].
Perhaps these ridges are an attempt to keep animals off the road, serving as a barrier between the raw wilderness and these capillaries of civilization that penetrate the desert. "Wait a minute, what am I thinking??", I thought, jarred from my trance (or was I?). Why to the road ridges have to be "for" anything? It makes so much more sense if these are simply by-products of making a road in the desert. My snow analogy is probably right on. Probably to make and up-keep the roads, plows simply carve a path through the desert, resulting in a pile of desert sand on either side as a by-product. These are not adaptive barriers, these are simply by-products of a need for efficient auto travel. Yet it was so natural for me to assume there is some function, and I so easily came up with an explanation, just so. I can see how one could see the natural world in a similar and Panglossian fashion.
What's even more wondrous is that similar by-products can be later elaborated, to give an even more distinct, yet ultimately false, impression of optimality. Growing up in Wisconsin, we had one glorious winter when the long driveway of our farm house was plowed by a neighbor (as opposed to shoveled, or cleared with a snow-blower). Just like the sand in Joshua Tree, the plow of my childhood left a by-product of a flat clear path, in the form of piles of snow flanking our driveway. Through the winter, these banks piled high, and they packed tight. My brother and I soon found an outstanding use for these by-products. We created the most fantastical snow fort Germantown Wisconsin has ever seen. We spent hours tunneling through the banks, building rooms where the snow piled wide. The plow packed the snow tight enough that we could build shelves and windows in the walls and sunroofs in the ceilings. So spectacular was our fortress, it was hard for our friends not to wonder whether the banks were plowed for the express purpose of creating our winter wonderland. But similar to Gould and Lewontin's elegantly painted spandrels in the chapel of San Marco, and just like the sand banks of the Joshua Tree desert, my childhood snow bank was simply a by-product of a need for efficient car travel, no matter how optimal our resulting snow fort turned out.
The Pluralistic spires and arches Utah
It's true that some structures sometimes arise as by-products. But what I find even more appealing is a pluralistic interplay between optimality and non-optimality. Natural selection may be an optimizing force, but it is not all powerful. There are constraints on the system. Driving through Utah this week, I saw a perfect illustration of this in the inspirationally beautiful wild lands of Utah.
Water, when pulled by gravity, will find an optimal path to the lowest point. And water, when it courses over rock, gradually wears that rock away, leaving a trace of its path. If all rock were created equal, canyons would be arrow straight, as water would continually trace a single optimal path to the oceans. But canyons are complex because all rock is not created equal. As a result, water faces constraints to optimality. When softer rock lies adjacent to harder rock, the softer breaks away more quickly, producing a circuitous path to the lowest point. The harder rock constrains and controls the outcome, in combination with the optimizing pull of gravity on water. The spires, arches and canyons are stunning examples of the intricate interplay between optimization and constraint. With constraints imposed by heterogeneous rock alone, the structures do not appear. Similarly with water acting optimally on homogeneous rock, the structures do not appear. It is only through the interaction that this beauty arises.
Bryce canyon photo by James Gordon, posted on flickr.The geology is amazing in its own right, and I am sure I have not done it justice by my oversimplification (e.g. I've ignored wind and ice erosion). But my point here is to focus one how these pluralistic ways of thinking can inform us of how evolution proceeds. Nothing in nature works without constraint, without trade-off. Only by seeing natural selection as one player in a complex (though undeniably natural) interplay of various processes, do we gain a more nuanced and pluralistic understanding of how evolution has shaped our world.
[Caveat: These are purely non-biological examples, meant as analogies to prime one's pluralistic thinking. However, where the rubber hits the road for evolution is with biological examples, but that is beyond the scope of the current post.]
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Evolve: Guts
Many evolution buffs, like myself, have been watching the History Channel Series called Evolve, which are airing here in CA at 10pm on Tuesdays. These are well produced pieces that focus each week on a particular trait (eyes last week, guts this week). Both shows have been collections of ~5 narratives, mostly showing how the focal trait works in different animals. The narratives are tied together by asserting that evolution occurred (which I am quite certain it did). As such, these are not really about the historical science of evolution, but rather they are using evolution as an organizing principle to tie together experimental science on how particular traits work in different animal groups, with a preference for charismatic vertebrates. In the end, it all works quite well, and I would recommend the series.
In honor of Guts, I thought I would post a link to some of my favorite gut science. Work by Dirk Haller and (separately) Ruth Ley lies at the interface of ecology, evolution, and medicine. They wonder, how does the composition of bacteria in the gut of humans and mice affect the host - and how does that composition of bacteria get established?
You can think of the bacteria as a community, like a forest or grassland ecosystem, living inside each of us. Communities can have different levels of diversity - they can be comprised of many of just a few species. Those species could be closely or distantly related evolutionarily. And those communities could be established from environmental sources, or established by inheritance.
I saw Dirk and Ruth talk about some of this work at last years GAFOS conference, which is a conference of about 20 Americans and 20 Germans, under the age of 40, who were invited because someone took notice of his or her work. GAFOS is funded by the National Academy of Sciences and the von Humboldt Foundation. I described it in a bit more detail in a previous post, where I linked a symposium this year on the evolution of complex adaptations.
Some of the conclusions that Ruth and her colleagues have made are that certain groups of bacteria are associated with obesity of the host. There exists an experimentally generated line of sterile mice - mice that are born and live in sterile conditions, ie with no bacteria anywhere (amazing!). Some of these sterile and genetically identical mice were seeded with different bacteria, and some combinations were more likely to result in obesity of the mice, given the same amount of food.
Another interesting result is that gut bacteria tend to be passed from mother to offspring, as opposed to being obtained from the environment. This result is based on phylogenetic trees of gut bacteria from different populations. It is heritage, not locality that determines the bulk of gut bacteria.
Dirk's presentation was a really great example of pluralism, which I like to promote. He contrasted the germ theory of disease with the genetic/inherited theory of disease. He hints at a possible link between our currently germ-o-phobic society and the increase of genetic, especially auto-immune diseases like Crohn's disease and asthma. It may be that without the insult of germs, our bodies find it more difficult to distinguish self from non-self. By just having a germ theory of disease, we lose the full picture.
(These are my memories from over a year ago, so I may have some details wrong. Check out Ruth's and Dirk's presentations on this site, to see for yourselves!)
Next week Evolve, Jaws!
In honor of Guts, I thought I would post a link to some of my favorite gut science. Work by Dirk Haller and (separately) Ruth Ley lies at the interface of ecology, evolution, and medicine. They wonder, how does the composition of bacteria in the gut of humans and mice affect the host - and how does that composition of bacteria get established?
You can think of the bacteria as a community, like a forest or grassland ecosystem, living inside each of us. Communities can have different levels of diversity - they can be comprised of many of just a few species. Those species could be closely or distantly related evolutionarily. And those communities could be established from environmental sources, or established by inheritance.
I saw Dirk and Ruth talk about some of this work at last years GAFOS conference, which is a conference of about 20 Americans and 20 Germans, under the age of 40, who were invited because someone took notice of his or her work. GAFOS is funded by the National Academy of Sciences and the von Humboldt Foundation. I described it in a bit more detail in a previous post, where I linked a symposium this year on the evolution of complex adaptations.
Some of the conclusions that Ruth and her colleagues have made are that certain groups of bacteria are associated with obesity of the host. There exists an experimentally generated line of sterile mice - mice that are born and live in sterile conditions, ie with no bacteria anywhere (amazing!). Some of these sterile and genetically identical mice were seeded with different bacteria, and some combinations were more likely to result in obesity of the mice, given the same amount of food.
Another interesting result is that gut bacteria tend to be passed from mother to offspring, as opposed to being obtained from the environment. This result is based on phylogenetic trees of gut bacteria from different populations. It is heritage, not locality that determines the bulk of gut bacteria.
Dirk's presentation was a really great example of pluralism, which I like to promote. He contrasted the germ theory of disease with the genetic/inherited theory of disease. He hints at a possible link between our currently germ-o-phobic society and the increase of genetic, especially auto-immune diseases like Crohn's disease and asthma. It may be that without the insult of germs, our bodies find it more difficult to distinguish self from non-self. By just having a germ theory of disease, we lose the full picture.
(These are my memories from over a year ago, so I may have some details wrong. Check out Ruth's and Dirk's presentations on this site, to see for yourselves!)
Next week Evolve, Jaws!
Monday, August 4, 2008
Wonderful Life Part 1
Sandwalk: Science and Philosophy Book Club: <i>Wonderful Life</i>
Over at Sandwalk, Larry Moran announced a discussion forum on Gould's Wonderful Life. Too bad for me the group will meet in Ontario, which is a bit too far from South Coast, California to be practical. I'd have fun hearing other people's take.
In addition to the announcement, Larry posted critiques of the book written by Dennet and Dawkins, which I hadn't seen before. In part 1 of 2 posts, I'll make a brief statement about my own opinion of Wonderful Life. (Ahh the wonder of the internet, a vehicle so flexible as to provide a venue for an obscure evolutionary biology professor to comment on a 20 year-old book...). In part 2, I will respond to one specific sentence in Dawkins' critique of the book, that I found provocative. (...and comment on 20-year old comments on a 20-year old book).
Part 1. Wonderful Book?
Even though I tend to disagree with the main thesis (but that's exactly Gould's contrarian m.o., see link here and below), Wonderful Life is perhaps my favorite popular science book ever. I re-read this book before submitting my first grant five years ago (on ostracod phylogeny) - because Gould took the subject of arthropod anatomy, and weaved a fascinating and engaging tale, without sacrificing detail. I wanted to mimic this enthusiasm for biology in my own writing. I wanted to learn from his masterful performance, and to feel again the excitement of biology that he conveyed, and to try to relay that same excitement I feel for my own work. (The grant was funded by the way).
In addition to the amazing, other worldly, impossible animals vividly described - in a time before Science Channel computer graphics - I realize now that a huge part of the inherent interest of the book is that Gould told a story about people. It's about Walcott, constrained by dogma to shoehorn ancient animals into categories of the living. It's about Whittington, and Briggs and Conway-Morris toiling away to overturn dogma through detailed and exacting reconstructions based on the fossils. We also learn details about these characters as people, I especially remember Walcott. I remember his family, the legendary story of the Burgess shale discovery (and why it is probably false) and I remember the increasing sway that administration held for Walcott as his career advanced. Some of my favorite science books are told through the eyes of the scientists themselves: The Beak of the Finch and The Altruism Equation are two examples that come to mind.
Another positive for me is the sheer brazenness of the whole undertaking of Wonderful Life. Gould concocts the thesis that his own field of paleontology has just re-written the history of life, and has changed mankind's view of the place of humans in the universe. As Copernicus and astronomy displaced Earth (and therefore humans) from the center of the universe, a quiet revolution in paleontology was displacing humans from atop an iconographic ladder of progress, just by diligently yet passionately scratching away at some shale. I guess the non-confrontationist in me finds the thought of such audacity in self-aggrandizing story telling exhilarating.
I've argued here on Evolutionary Novelties before that this audacity allowed Gould to promote pluralism within the field of evolution by taking a stand that opposes much of the field. For Wonderful Life, the question of pluralism comes down to the idea of contingency versus determinism. If we "replay the tape" of life - could we predict the outcome?
(Here, I will indulge in a Gouldian tangent, an aside that ends up being longer than the main idea, and note that this theme of contingency versus determinism is fun to lecture about and students seem to like it. They've encountered the idea before in stories and movies like Bradbury's Sound of Thunder (read the short story, I don't recommend the movie), where a time traveler changes the present by accidentally stepping on a butterfly in the distant past. They know (I assume) that Marty McFly changed his life for the better when he traveled in time and accidentally induced his dad to stand up to Biff. They know the movie Minority Report (I asked the students this year if they know that one), where the pre-cogs can predict crimes, and people are arrested before they can commit them (most students don't know the Phillip K. Dick story the movie is based on though). Even romantic comedies have played with the idea, such as when Bill Murray's character experiences Groundhog Day over and over and over; when Drew Barrymore starts afresh every morning in 50 First Dates, while Adam Sandler tries to woo her over and over.)
In Part 2, I will address the provocative criticism written by Dawkins, and quoted on Sandwalk: "Gould expects us to be surprised. Why? The view that he is attacking—that evolution marches inexorably towards a pinnacle such as man—has not been believed for years. But his quixotic strawmandering, his shamless windmill-tilting, seem almost designed to encourage misunderstanding."
Over at Sandwalk, Larry Moran announced a discussion forum on Gould's Wonderful Life. Too bad for me the group will meet in Ontario, which is a bit too far from South Coast, California to be practical. I'd have fun hearing other people's take.
In addition to the announcement, Larry posted critiques of the book written by Dennet and Dawkins, which I hadn't seen before. In part 1 of 2 posts, I'll make a brief statement about my own opinion of Wonderful Life. (Ahh the wonder of the internet, a vehicle so flexible as to provide a venue for an obscure evolutionary biology professor to comment on a 20 year-old book...). In part 2, I will respond to one specific sentence in Dawkins' critique of the book, that I found provocative. (...and comment on 20-year old comments on a 20-year old book).
Part 1. Wonderful Book?
Even though I tend to disagree with the main thesis (but that's exactly Gould's contrarian m.o., see link here and below), Wonderful Life is perhaps my favorite popular science book ever. I re-read this book before submitting my first grant five years ago (on ostracod phylogeny) - because Gould took the subject of arthropod anatomy, and weaved a fascinating and engaging tale, without sacrificing detail. I wanted to mimic this enthusiasm for biology in my own writing. I wanted to learn from his masterful performance, and to feel again the excitement of biology that he conveyed, and to try to relay that same excitement I feel for my own work. (The grant was funded by the way).
In addition to the amazing, other worldly, impossible animals vividly described - in a time before Science Channel computer graphics - I realize now that a huge part of the inherent interest of the book is that Gould told a story about people. It's about Walcott, constrained by dogma to shoehorn ancient animals into categories of the living. It's about Whittington, and Briggs and Conway-Morris toiling away to overturn dogma through detailed and exacting reconstructions based on the fossils. We also learn details about these characters as people, I especially remember Walcott. I remember his family, the legendary story of the Burgess shale discovery (and why it is probably false) and I remember the increasing sway that administration held for Walcott as his career advanced. Some of my favorite science books are told through the eyes of the scientists themselves: The Beak of the Finch and The Altruism Equation are two examples that come to mind.
Another positive for me is the sheer brazenness of the whole undertaking of Wonderful Life. Gould concocts the thesis that his own field of paleontology has just re-written the history of life, and has changed mankind's view of the place of humans in the universe. As Copernicus and astronomy displaced Earth (and therefore humans) from the center of the universe, a quiet revolution in paleontology was displacing humans from atop an iconographic ladder of progress, just by diligently yet passionately scratching away at some shale. I guess the non-confrontationist in me finds the thought of such audacity in self-aggrandizing story telling exhilarating.
I've argued here on Evolutionary Novelties before that this audacity allowed Gould to promote pluralism within the field of evolution by taking a stand that opposes much of the field. For Wonderful Life, the question of pluralism comes down to the idea of contingency versus determinism. If we "replay the tape" of life - could we predict the outcome?
(Here, I will indulge in a Gouldian tangent, an aside that ends up being longer than the main idea, and note that this theme of contingency versus determinism is fun to lecture about and students seem to like it. They've encountered the idea before in stories and movies like Bradbury's Sound of Thunder (read the short story, I don't recommend the movie), where a time traveler changes the present by accidentally stepping on a butterfly in the distant past. They know (I assume) that Marty McFly changed his life for the better when he traveled in time and accidentally induced his dad to stand up to Biff. They know the movie Minority Report (I asked the students this year if they know that one), where the pre-cogs can predict crimes, and people are arrested before they can commit them (most students don't know the Phillip K. Dick story the movie is based on though). Even romantic comedies have played with the idea, such as when Bill Murray's character experiences Groundhog Day over and over and over; when Drew Barrymore starts afresh every morning in 50 First Dates, while Adam Sandler tries to woo her over and over.)
In Part 2, I will address the provocative criticism written by Dawkins, and quoted on Sandwalk: "Gould expects us to be surprised. Why? The view that he is attacking—that evolution marches inexorably towards a pinnacle such as man—has not been believed for years. But his quixotic strawmandering, his shamless windmill-tilting, seem almost designed to encourage misunderstanding."
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