The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays,   ISBN:9780979014123

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HOW TO DO BETTER THAN TO QUOTE SOME BERLINSKI?

(FYI, this 2009 book "The Deniable Darwin" -- which adds to its title "& Other Essays" and runs 557 pages -- TAKES "The Deniable Darwin" part From the pathbreaking 1996 article by that name published in Commentary magazine in 1996. In its next 1996 issue, Commentary published responses as well as David Berlinski's "responses to the responses").

HERE I POST PART OF HIS 1996 REPLY TO HIS CRITICS (AND SYMPATHIZERS!):

DAVID BERLINSKI REPLIES:

SOME READERS SEEM TO have been persuaded that in criticizing the Darwinian theory of evolution, I intended to uphold a doctrine of creationism. This is a mistake, supported by nothing that I have written...

The rational alternative to Darwin's theory is intelligent uncertainty.

A number of letters raise similar points; I have distributed my comments over a number of responses.

IN MAINTAINING THAT EVOLUTION is a process that has not been observed, H. ALLEN ORR writes, I appear to have overlooked examples of evolution like the speckled moth, which undergoes mimetic changes in wing coloration as the result of environmental pollution, or the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Mr. Orr is correct that there are such examples; I scruple only at the conclusions he draws from them. Changes in wing color and the development of drug resistance are intraspecies events. The speckled moth, after all, does not develop antlers or acquire webbed feet, and bacteria remain bacteria, even when drug resistant. The most ardent creationists now accept micro-evolution as genuinely Darwinian events. They had better: such are the facts. But the grand evolutionary progressions, such as the transformation of a fish into a man, are examples of macro-evolution. They remain out of reach, accessible only at the end of an inferential trail...

PAUL R. GROSS IS anxious lest in criticizing Darwinian theory I give comfort to creationists. It is a common concern among biologists, but one, I must confess, to which I am indifferent. I do not believe biologists should be in the business of protecting the rest of us from intellectual danger.

I did not say in my essay that the fossil record contains no intermediate forms; that is a silly claim. What I did say was that there are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No paleontologist writing in English (R. Carroll, Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, 1988), French O. Chaline, "Modalites, rythmes, mecanismes de l'evolution biologique: gradualisme phyletique ou equilibres ponctues?," reprinted in Editions du CNRS, 1983), or German (V. Fahlbusch, "Makroevolution, Punkwalismus," in Palaontologie 57, 1983), denies that this is so. It is simply a fact. Darwin's theory and the fossil record are in conflict. There may be excellent reasons for the conflict; it may in time be exposed as an artifact. But nothing is to be gained by suggesting that what is a fact in plain sight is nothing of the sort...

The idea that evolution proceeds by means of many different forces is both unanswerable and uninteresting. To his credit, this is something Richard Dawkins recognizes.

It may well be true that my concerns for the logical niceties of Darwinian theory are out of date, as Mr. Gross suggests. So much the worse for evolutionary biology. To those of us on the outside, Darwin's theory will continue to seem seriously infected by conceptual circularity.

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From the title, it would appear that the essays collected in this book, which span the years 1996- 2009, might all be subtitled, "Doubts About Darwin". Could they? Yes and no. Page 17 reveals where these essays first appeared. Three of them, "The Deniable Darwin" (1996), "Has Darwin Met His Match?" (2002), and "A Scientific Scandal" (2003) appeared in Commentary magazine. Here they are reprinted in their entirety, along with letters about the articles (many of them taking issue with Berlinski), and, what is even more delightful, Berlinski's replies, which also appeared in the magazine. These essays, the subsequent letters, and the author's replies easily fall under the "Doubts About Darwin" rubric.

That barely exhausts this volume, however, which spans more than 550 pages. Two essays, "On the Origins of the Mind" and "What Brings a World into Being?" were reprinted in The Best American Science Writing. Berlinski considers, respectively, the brain and physics; and information and DNA. Anyone who has dipped into A Tour of the Calculus A Tour of the Calculus knows what a delightful and unique writer Berlinski is. I've read numerous popular science writers, from Carl Sagan to Nigel Calder, Paul Davies to Heinz Pagels, Steven Weinberg to Rene Thom, and with a few exceptions like Rudy Rucker, few approach the prose style of Berlinski. The best pieces here in that vein include "The Soul of Man Under Physics"; "The End of Materialist Science?"; "Godel's Question"; "Was There a Big Bang?"; "Where Physics and Politics Meet"; and the not-to-be-missed final essay, "The State of the Matter.

What of the rest? These include short, imagined conversations with the Argentine writer Jorges Luis Borges, book reviews, and humorous and thoughtful op ed pieces, some of them from Commentary. Editor David Klinghoffer had to pick and choose from the author's prolific output. One essay I wish had been included is Berlinski's rejoinder to Daniel Dennett's article in Nature magazine about Darwin's theory being like a universal acid. But that will have to wait. May one hope for a second volume? But for everyone who closed The Devil's DelusionThe Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions wanting more, or even those who have perused his popular science books: the incorrigible Dr. Berlinski.

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The inimitable David Berlinksi, mathematician and literary stylist, is a free thinker--not in the common sense of skeptics who revel in denying religion on principle, but in the sense of assessing arguments on the basis of evidence, not on the basis of mere consensus or social pressure. He long ago found Darwin evidentially challenged and began to say so--cutting against the grain.

He continues to say so, and so educates his readers in critical thinking and good writing. May his number increase. If you are tired of the stereotypical and monotonous defenses of Darwinism and denunciations of intelligent design that clutter and litter the press, read this important book. If you read nothing else, consult, "The Deniable Darwin," an essay in Commentary that rocked the readership in 1996.

By the way, Dr. Berlinksi is neither a Christian nor a practicing Jew. But even if he were one or the other (or a member of any other religion) it would make no difference for the force of his arguments. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of poisoning the well.

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In the essays in this book, David Berlinski turns the skeptical eye of science upon science itself. Such criticism of science, which has never been encouraged by the scientific community, is especially necessary at this time, when the traditional skepticism of science has been dramatically transformed. For under the influence of Darwinism in biology, cosmology, and psychology, credulity has become a virtue and incredulity a vice.

Jerry Coyne states peremptorily on page 231 of his book Why Evolution is True that "evolution operates in a purposeless, materialistic way," through random mutation and natural selection. But most people in human history would have disagreed that the natural world can be understood in purely material terms and as devoid of purpose or intelligence. Kenneth Miller in Only a Theory worries that the notion of intelligence in nature could lead to a closing of the scientific mind. But everyone from Anaxagoras to Aristotle to Leonardo to Newton to Leibniz to Maxwell to Einstein has thought that the natural world displays intelligence. That there is nothing in reality except matter is not a conclusion of any science, nor is it a conclusion of science that there is no causation that cannot be explained by physics and chemistry.

It is against the unthinking dogmatism of Coyne, Miller, and most other publishing scientists that Berlinski argues. In The Deniable Darwin he turns his penetrating, skeptical, and erudite mind not only upon the scientific influence of Darwin, but also upon the unscientific spirit that he engendered. My personal favorite in this collection is The End of Materialist Science, which has been incorporated with small alterations as the final chapter of his excellent book The Advent of the Algorithm. The repartee displayed in the three articles subtitled "David Berlinski and His Critics" is also very delightful.

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Dr. Berlinski is an award winning writer those work was twice honored in the Best American Science Writing series. He has a PhD from Princeton, did a postdoc in math and molecular biology at Columbia, and has taught at Stanford and 3 other leading universities. This work reprints many of Dr. Berlinski's articles first published from 1996 to 2009. Many of the articles I have read in their original, including those from Commentary which put Berlinski in the limelight as a Darwin Doubter. As I reread the essays, I have noticed things that I never noted before, thus the chapters in this book seem fresh. Berlinski is an excellent writer, although his style for me, as one who reads mostly in the area of cell biology, takes some thought to adjust to. He noted that many people believe in God and others believe in science, creating a deliberate dichotomy which over generalizes but makes a clear point. Clarifying the title, Berlinski writes that what he denies is more than what Darwin concluded about the origins of life, but also especially the spirit that Darwinism has engendered in science today, namely the dogmatism of many scientists that prevents them from seriously considering doubting Darwinism, the problems with evolutionism. The main group that defends this dogmatism is the so-called misnamed National Center for Science Education. His main theme is "the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences ... not a view that the scientific community has ever encouraged. The sciences require no criticism, many scientists say, because the sciences comprise a uniquely self-critical institution, with questionable theories and theoreticians passing constantly before stern appellate review. ... Individual scientists may make mistakes, but like the Communist Party under Lenin, [they claim that] science is infallible because its judgments are collective. Critics are not only unwelcome, they are unneeded." Berlinski then eloquently documents that science is very fallible.