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Title: Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale by Judith Hooper ISBN: 0-393-05121-8 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Careful presentation of the evidence
Comment: The story of the peppered moths is presented here in an engaging manner and with ample references to the original literature. The author has interviewed many persons and studied the various aspects very carefully. Much information is brought together for the first time. The problem faced by the Darwinists at the middle of the 20th century was that there was no convincing case study in support of their theory. Ambitious academic scientists seized upon the peppered moths as offering the best hope for such an example. The moths were thought to shift over the generations from a light-colored version to a dark-colored one as the degree of industrialization increased and soot accumulated on trees making them darker, due to birds preferentially eating the light ones that stood out against the background of the trees on which they rested.
The troubles with this are many-fold, and the author deserves credit for bringing them out so clearly. She notes for example, that the peppered moths had already been offered up in the 1890s to the Darwinists, but they had then rejected the example since they knew that birds don¹t eat these moths. In fact bats are the major predators, since the moths are only active at night and during the day rest under branches of trees where birds can't see them.
The case history was created by the Darwinists of the mid 1950s through careful fudging of experiment design and the author lays out the case for this conclusion. She even has checked the weather records to see if a change in conditions could have caused the abrupt change in the results observed in the field in the critical experiments, and finds that the weather was very stable. She describes many aspects of bad design, points that today would inevitably cause an experiment to be rejected, such as using different proportions of laboratory-raised moths for the light and the dark strains and putting out densities of moths far greater than occur in nature. As the author notes, one expert called the experiments an example of 'unnatural selection'
The person who carried out the experiments, Bernard Kettlewell, is painted by the author as a victim of the pressures from the people above him, especially Prof. Henry Ford of Oxford. The desire of the Darwinists for a good example supporting their theory for the celebration of the centenary of The Origin of the Species in 1959 also was a factor.
The review in the headnote of this listing from the respected Publishers Weekly captures the essence of the book very well.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent account of how science can be subverted
Comment: Why does the theory of evolution matter? And what demonstrable evidence can we point to that shows its mechanism operating within the life-span of a living organism? Anyone who took high school biology in the latter half of the 20th century is familiar with the photos of moths that "prove" the adaptive changes at work in this species, favoring the survival of black moths in industrially polluted England and the increased predation suffered by their lighter-hued cousins. The research, the experiments, and the resultant glory were centered around a tiny group of scientists at Oxford; the theoretical geneticist at the heart of the endeavor was E.B Ford, the field experimenter was Bernard Kettlewell. Until quite recently their evidence, and their theories, have gone unchallenged, but lately there has been a significant shift in the paradigm of adaptive evolution that they held sacred. Moreover, many of their experimetnal techniques, data, and conclusions have come under serious question by a new generation of scientists.
In her engrossing book, OF MOTHS AND MEN, Judith Hooper revisits the story of the theory of evolution, from Darwin's masterful insight to later refinements and controversies around the basic assumptions. This in itself is no small accomplishment, and her narrative is both lucid and compelling, but this is really just the necessary background to her real tale. Next she paints a compelling portrait of the handful of scientists at Oxford who set out to illustrate adaptive mechanisms once and for all from nature; not coincidentally, she gives us an incisive view of intellectual life at the pinnacle of the biological sciences establishment in mid-century England. And finally, she shows us how the experimental model that was so widely accepted (and so ubiquitously illustrated by all those photos of moths in textbooks) began to unravel. By the time she's done, we understand the stakes involved in keeping intact the "proof" underlying one of the principal tenets of the modern view of the world, and the tenacity, ambition, and intrigue of the major players.
Along the way Hooper manages to keep clear to the reader, miraculously enough, all the science and personalities and facts and sequences. Make no mistake, the story is complex, but Hooper keeps it from being confusing. You don't read this five pages at a time before dropping off to sleep, but once you understand the fundamental issues involved, it's very hard to put down.
This book works on many different levels: a real pot-boiler, full of venality and small-mindedness on all sides; a clear and thoughtful exposition of the central principles behind the oh-so-short field of evolutionary biology; a look at the sometimes whacky world of "moth people" (mostly men, as it happens); and a textbook example of how, when you're dealing with human beings, even on the frontiers of science, black-and-white usually refine themselves into shades of grey as complex motives and loopy behavior keep things chaotic. And, in between the lines, it's a strange and occasionally hilarious history of the recent past and of how many pieces of social quirkiness have (mercifully) fallen out of the puzzle. (For instance, we are given the almost surreal image of the departmental secretary at Oxford having to work in a shed in the garden, and having to go to the warmer moth shed just to answer the phone... )
Hooper has a wonderful gift for mordant understatement combined with serious questions that lets the reader discover the importance of the matters at hand without her ever having to talk down. Quite an accomplishment when you're juggling so many weighty facts, competing theories, and weird personalities. And of course I have my own favorites among her gems: "...(W)as 'Darwin's missing evidence' just an empty demonstration, a red-faced wino in a Santa suit?"; "It might be said that the birds in Tinbergen's famous film were like conventioneers gorging on roast beef and shrimp and leaving the aspic and stewed cabbages for later." My wife had to shut me up for out-loud laughing more than once.
Hooper avoids facile conclusions about intentions, preferring to suggest motives and practical constraints rather than see villains and heroes. Virtually none of her real-life characters come across as anything other than human, which is to say flawed, in various degrees, and therefore fascinating. I hope this will be a great cross-over book, a look at why science and a search for the truth matter, and why human foibles will always skew results. It should be a textbook, too: History of Science; Philosophy of Science; Ethics; and plain old Biology -- why not? Highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: It's the paradigm...Who needs evidence?
Comment: This is a very well done account of the peppered moth story, with a useful history of the emergence of the Synthesis in the background. Darwin's theory was always beset with the question of evidence, and this fact has distorted the thinking of all scientists in the field who act as if this situation is normal. The case of the peppered moth is especially telling. The one case of something like evidence turns out to be completely flawed, even as the entire science community seems almost paralyzed and incapable of dealing with the issue. The final unraveling of this claim for some sort of evidence should have led a major examination of the status of Darwinism, but no such luck. The whole system simply proceeds without it.
The author makes a revealing remark toward the end, that she was accused of giving aid to the enemy, creationists. But is that the point? In any case, we see that this regime of silence is in effect, even if one author is motivated to expose what's going on, up to a point. This dialectic of monotheism is getting pretty tiresome for the rest of the world, who don't buy into this duel of extremes. We need to know, and from reliable sources, the status of Darwin's theory, from _real_ scientists. We need to know, and can expect the truth, and not beating around the bush, as herein portrayed. Clearly such science does not exist in the field of evolution. Isn't this ridiculous. This is a reasonably simple case. If biologists can't get this straight, what of their ambitious claims (without a shred of evidence) to rewrite all the social sciences.
Frauds, not scientists.
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Title: The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery by Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay Wesley Richards ISBN: 0895260654 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: March, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Spinning Man by George Harrar ISBN: 0425193748 Publisher: Blue Hen Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design by William A. Dembski, Charles W. Colson ISBN: 0830823751 Publisher: Inter Varsity Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Darwinism, Design, and Public Education by John Angus Campbell, Stephen C. Meyer ISBN: 0870136755 Publisher: Michigan State University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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Title: No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence by William A. Dembski ISBN: 0742512975 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $36.95 |
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