Last week Brigham Young University (BYU) sports fans (including myself) were disappointed with the news that Brandon Davies was suspended from the school’s basketball team. The young man had violated the school’s honor code that does not allow premarital sex.
Davies was a starting forward for the team that was reaching the end of its regular season schedule with a remarkable record of 27 wins and only 2 losses. Just prior to Davies’s suspension the team was ranked 3rd nationally and anticipated getting a number 1 bid to the post-season NCAA tournament. The game following his suspension, BYU suffered an embarrassing loss that seemed to presage the end of the team’s success.
Commentators across the country have been mixed in their responses. Many have commended the school for holding to its standards (even though many don’t agree with them). Others have complained that such moral requirements are unrealistic in the modern world where premarital sex is the norm. Nobody, however, seems to be paying much attention to what it means to have honor codes in the first place – especially honor codes that affect athletic programs. But the issue is a significant one. It involves the question of who we are as human beings. Are we animals only, or are we something more?
From an evolutionary perspective sports are usually understood to be a sort of catharsis for the human tendency of aggression and war. Men in particular are adapted to defend themselves and their families and have an innate drive to be aggressive – or to compete. Human societies, especially those that include cities where people live in close proximity to each other, need to have a way of diffusing this latent aggressive urge. Athletic games are a way of doing this.
One of the obvious ways that this works is because there are rules. If humans were only capable of following animal instincts, athletic games would not be possible. This doesn’t mean that animals don’t play or engage in mock battles – they do. We are all familiar with the tumbling antics of wrestling puppies. But athletic games are different. They involve rules that are learned, not just instincts.
But they also involve more than just rules - or at least they used to. Tradition has it that the ancient Olympic Games were initiated because of a religious desire to honor the gods and restore peace. Modern athletic games have also developed from a code of honor. I refer to the medieval code of chivalry.
It is well understood that medieval knights served a military purpose. It is also accepted that they were defenders of Christianity, and of women and children. When they engaged in tournaments they were competing in games of war but with strict rules of engagement. They also acknowledged that they were defending a higher ideal. This was evident in their respect for the cross and in their recognition of women. We recall in Sir Walter Scott’s chivalric novel Ivanhoe how the disinherited knight (winner of a regal tournament) honors the Lady Rowena as the Queen of Love and Beauty.
This was not just an imaginative literary invention of Scott. A real code of honor existed that knights were supposed to live by. It dated at least from the time of Charlemagne and is memorialized in the Song of Roland where 17 knightly virtues are mentioned such as: to fear God and maintain His church, to protect the weak and defenseless, to give succor to widows and orphans, to despise pecuniary reward, to keep faith, to respect the honor of women, never to turn the back upon a foe, etc.
In this time of knightly honor, manliness was acknowledged as an extension of spiritual strength. In fact it was through spiritual power that the knight rightly drew for strength. As David O. McKay was famous for saying (half a century ago), “spirituality … is the consciousness of victory over self and of communion with the infinite.”
Unfortunately, we hardly remember anymore the chivalric beginning of modern sports. It doesn’t serve our purposes anyway. Chivalry was all about men and their need to defend faith, women and children – hardly worthy motives to the modern world.
It is much easier to accept the evolutionary explanation of sports as martial catharsis and leave it at that. Or, more realistically, we ignore the history and science altogether and just play games for the fun of it.
But this only gets us into trouble. It leaves us morally and culturally ungrounded. When we ignore who we really are – that we have both animal and divine natures – sporting events become nothing more than the glorified human version of a spat of fighting monkeys. Winning is the only thing that matters and working oneself into a froth of aggression is accepted and even applauded. Democratic man, it seems, is ever willing to behave like the beasts.
Yet it goes without saying that there is no honor for a victorious beast. Maybe he wins a mate (the so-called highest goal of evolutionary fitness) or scares off a rival. But he remains a beast.
And so it is with us. Our world has forgotten where it came from. It no longer wishes to acknowledge its historic faith and the dignity that comes from honoring the divine part of human nature. Yet this forgetfulness comes with a price, a diminishment of who we are. Games without codes of honor are no more able to dignify man than are the carnal hysterias of mobs.
So whether or not BYU wins any more games this year, it has already won the more important test. It has insisted that honoring noble rules – shall we say chivalric rules – is more important than mere mortal victories. Honor means more than the madness of crowds. And the victory of self is a far greater achievement than just winning a game.
References
Girouard, Mark. 1982. The Return to Camelot, Chivalry and then English Gentleman. Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
McKay, David O. Conference Report 1969; in, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church, David O. McKay. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Scott, Sir Walter. Ivanhoe. The Easton Press (1977 edition).
Sipes, Richard E. 1973. War, Sports and Aggression: An Empirical Test of Two Rival Theories. American Anthropologist 75(1): 64-86.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sustainability and the GMO Myth
Almost everybody agrees that we should be wiser with our resources. Most of us also agree that a worthy measure of this goal is sustainability. To this end, people with very different personal and political commitments are working together in local communities to recycle trash, conserve water and save energy, etc.
Studies regularly show that consumers prefer buying certified lumber and pesticide-free food if the price is right. And with the price of gas continuously rising, fuel efficient vehicles are clear favorites on the market.
It’s no wonder that agricultural companies have an interest in promoting a corporate image of sustainability as well. It pays, after all. And such an image is desperately needed in an industry that struggles to keep intact an aura of environmental integrity.
I joined the agriculture industry in 1991 working for a small environmentally conscious company named AgriDyne Technologies. We developed a natural insecticide from the seeds of the Asian neem tree. Our competitors were a handful of like-minded enthusiasts focused on making money by a safer use of natural resources - of being sustainable. These efforts, all combined, have made only a limited impact in the Ag industry. And it wasn’t until the major Ag businesses took up the torch of sustainability that the message became more visible.
One of the first real corporate statements of this kind came in 1997 in a Harvard Business Review interview with Robert Shapiro (then CEO of Monsanto). Entitled Growth Through Global Sustainability, Shapiro outlined the need for agribusiness to develop in a sustainable way if it hoped to avoid disaster and at the same time feed an ever growing world population. Since Shapiro’s interview other major agricultural companies began promoting their own brands of sustainability too.
Monsanto had a lot to gain from this message. With a history replete with environmental negligence (including the disaster of Agent Orange in Vietnam, corruption during the dioxin “catastrophe” at Seveso, and the misuse of data in the Bovine Growth Hormone Affair, etc.) it had recently discovered a promising new direction: genetically modified organisms (or GMO’s).
What made these GMO’s so nice was the appearance of sustainability that they created. They promised to reduce the rate of toxic chemicals in the environment (by containing them within the crop itself). They also promised to reduce soil erosion (by allowing no-till farming with their premier herbicide Roundup).
Of course there are many other components needed in a truly sustainable environment: renewable energy, biodiversity, water conservation, etc. But the two pieces Monsanto promoted were a good place to start, and the company has been successful in promoting them, or at least in part.
Now over a decade later, enough time has passed to see how truly sustainable the GMO revolution has been. Sad to say, it hasn’t been. I don’t mean it hasn’t made Monsanto a lot of money - it has. I do mean that the industry is no closer to creating sustainable growth than it was in the 90’s.
The most obvious cause of GMO failure has been insect and weed resistance. The cotton bollworm, for example, can no longer be controlled consistently with GMO cotton, especially in the Southeastern US. Resistance has also been detected in India.
More importantly, there are now a number of weeds (such as pigweed, horseweed, and giant ragweed) that can’t be controlled with Roundup - Monsanto’s blockbuster herbicide and driver of many GMO varieties (that were made so that Roundup could be sprayed over the top of them without harm). Because of resistance, an increasing amount of chemical inputs are required. There is no evidence that the GMO promise has reduced chemical use in the least. In fact, chemical use has actually increased.
In the meantime, millions of acres of GMO corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. are planted worldwide with claims that their use will revolutionize the landscape of global food production and overcome hunger. Sadly, these claims have been seriously misleading - not only because of resistant weeds and increasing chemical use but also because of the loss of crop diversity that the GMO revolution is causing – a loss that strikes at the heart of sustainability.
A classic example of how this happens is in Mexico where GMO corn has disrupted the centuries-old agricultural practices in the heartland of corn diversity.
In the Oaxaca region over 150 local varieties of corn are grown. These have been developed through traditional methods of crop selection and cross-fertilization. Individual families have generations of knowledge invested in these crops and they can be counted on to breed true – or at least true enough to sustain the communities growing the corn and to perpetuate the local varieties.
Unfortunately an increasing number of these varieties are being contaminated by the genes of GMO corn that have been transferred by wind-blown pollen from far away. This threatens the traditional agriculture in a couple of ways. The most immediate is that the genetic contaminants are patented and recognized internationally as somebody’s property - somebody’s, that is, except the local farmers.
But perhaps more serious is the unpredictability of the GMO’s themselves, which are made in a very random process. The manipulated genes that provide “advantages” to a plant can, and do, show up in all sorts of places in the host DNA. Some arrangements seem to show no significant changes to a plant’s appearance. Other arrangements, however, produce truly monstrous phenotypes. What sort of effect might this contamination have on these local communities? Nobody knows.
Of course, this sort of thing might never get out of hand. Perhaps local plant breeders could eliminate the harmful genes over generations. In the meantime, however, it is not wise to pursue a poorly understood technology when so much is at stake. This is just one example of the conflicting sustainability claims of GMO’s.
This may all seem like a science fiction fantasy with its cutting edge technology and impending global disaster. In fact literary entrepreneurs have not been blind to this opportunity. James Rollins’s recent thriller The Doomsday Key is an excellent example. The story centers on a cryptic guild of early Europeans and a fictional corporate giant called Viatus that are tied up in the use of GMO’s to reduce the world’s human population. US secret service agents end up discovering the threat that was taken from an ancient secret surrounding the medieval Doomsday Book. Of course many parts of this story are clearly unrealistic. Some however are not far fetched. The reality is that we don’t know how much of such a scenario is fantastic and how much might actually occur.
One thing we do know, however – or at least we should know – involves the biggest error in all of the GMO sustainability claims: the justification that a larger population needs more food.
At first blush this might seem obvious. The human population is growing at an alarming rate. Certainly the ever-increasing number of people will need to have something to eat. Claiming otherwise seems like an outright admission of misanthropy.
Robert Shapiro went so far as to suggest that a failure to embrace this vision of sustainability would relegate the world to starvation - or to use his own sarcasm: “letting the Malthusian process work its magic on the population”.
The mistake that Shapiro makes here is a big one. Sadly it is a mistake that far too many people make - even people that should know better. Population growth rises to the level of available resources. It is not an independent factor. Malthus was clear on this.
The truth of the matter is that agricultural technology is the primary cause of population growth, not an ancillary science struggling to keep up with it. Shapiro’s claim that Monsanto’s vision is required to feed a hungry world is exactly backwards. It is causing population growth.
Now I am not arguing that we should go back to the dark ages - giving up all our technology - in order to starve the world into a level of fewer people. I am arguing that a blind acceptance of industrial solutions is misguided. Making more and more food is not the answer. Helping more and more people make their own food, is.
Several years ago Barry Commoner pointed out the counter-intuitive relationship between population growth on the one hand and education and health care on the other. Places with higher education and better health care have lower levels of population growth. It has also been shown that open markets contribute to this same trend and improve living conditions for the greater good. But there is a big danger when we presume to take global responsibility. It’s all too easy to move from the ethics of democratic capitalism (sensu Michael Novak) to a presumed virtue of global industry (sensu Monsanto et al.). And it is in this failed transition that we make serious mistakes that make us less sustainable, not more so.
The current state of affairs will only bring more and more technology to developing countries that enrich the major global industries, making poorer peoples more and more dependent, and driving them away from the land and their best hope for true sustainability. More people will migrate to urban areas creating even larger cities with larger slums and greater hunger. It doesn’t take an Old Testament prophet to see all this happening.
If, however, we stop dragging local farmers into our version of the global economy, they will adopt those technologies that make sense to them. Local businesses will succeed, local people will live more dignified lives. Food may be relatively more expensive, but this is not the major problem that it seems. Simple clean housing in developing countries has never been the 30-year burden that it is to us in the developed world. Through the entire history of the planet people have lived fulfilled lives by farming - by spending more resources than we do on food. What may be surprising is that these “higher” priced foods tend to be less processed, and arguably healthier than the cheap diets foisted upon us by industrial society. The fact is that rising food prices becomes a serious problem primarily for those that don’t raise their own food. Those who do somehow manage to get by.
We can create a better world - a more sustainable world. But it won’t happen with an industrial mindset or with industrial tools. It will happen when we stop imposing ourselves on to our poorer neighbors and start focusing our efforts at home. If industry wants to be a true contributor to the problems facing us, let it help local communities become sustainable (without strings attached to global markets). Let it help motivate more people to take up farming, even to the point of empowering small farmers. We need to build soil, save energy, conserve water, and care for our own biotas locally. But claiming that we can save the world using self-serving technologies and economies that we don’t even understand is a recipe for disaster.
References
Commoner, Barry. 1988 Ecology and Social Action; In, The Conservators of Hope. University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho.
Magretta, Joan. 1997. Growth Through Global Sustainability: An Interview with Monsanto’s CEO, Robert B. Shapiro. Harvard Business Review, January-February.
Novak, Michael. 1982. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Touchstone, New York.
Robin, M.-M. 2008. The World According to Monsanto. The New Press, New York.
Rollins, James. 2009. The Doomsday Key. Harper, New York, New York.
Studies regularly show that consumers prefer buying certified lumber and pesticide-free food if the price is right. And with the price of gas continuously rising, fuel efficient vehicles are clear favorites on the market.
It’s no wonder that agricultural companies have an interest in promoting a corporate image of sustainability as well. It pays, after all. And such an image is desperately needed in an industry that struggles to keep intact an aura of environmental integrity.
I joined the agriculture industry in 1991 working for a small environmentally conscious company named AgriDyne Technologies. We developed a natural insecticide from the seeds of the Asian neem tree. Our competitors were a handful of like-minded enthusiasts focused on making money by a safer use of natural resources - of being sustainable. These efforts, all combined, have made only a limited impact in the Ag industry. And it wasn’t until the major Ag businesses took up the torch of sustainability that the message became more visible.
One of the first real corporate statements of this kind came in 1997 in a Harvard Business Review interview with Robert Shapiro (then CEO of Monsanto). Entitled Growth Through Global Sustainability, Shapiro outlined the need for agribusiness to develop in a sustainable way if it hoped to avoid disaster and at the same time feed an ever growing world population. Since Shapiro’s interview other major agricultural companies began promoting their own brands of sustainability too.
Monsanto had a lot to gain from this message. With a history replete with environmental negligence (including the disaster of Agent Orange in Vietnam, corruption during the dioxin “catastrophe” at Seveso, and the misuse of data in the Bovine Growth Hormone Affair, etc.) it had recently discovered a promising new direction: genetically modified organisms (or GMO’s).
What made these GMO’s so nice was the appearance of sustainability that they created. They promised to reduce the rate of toxic chemicals in the environment (by containing them within the crop itself). They also promised to reduce soil erosion (by allowing no-till farming with their premier herbicide Roundup).
Of course there are many other components needed in a truly sustainable environment: renewable energy, biodiversity, water conservation, etc. But the two pieces Monsanto promoted were a good place to start, and the company has been successful in promoting them, or at least in part.
Now over a decade later, enough time has passed to see how truly sustainable the GMO revolution has been. Sad to say, it hasn’t been. I don’t mean it hasn’t made Monsanto a lot of money - it has. I do mean that the industry is no closer to creating sustainable growth than it was in the 90’s.
The most obvious cause of GMO failure has been insect and weed resistance. The cotton bollworm, for example, can no longer be controlled consistently with GMO cotton, especially in the Southeastern US. Resistance has also been detected in India.
More importantly, there are now a number of weeds (such as pigweed, horseweed, and giant ragweed) that can’t be controlled with Roundup - Monsanto’s blockbuster herbicide and driver of many GMO varieties (that were made so that Roundup could be sprayed over the top of them without harm). Because of resistance, an increasing amount of chemical inputs are required. There is no evidence that the GMO promise has reduced chemical use in the least. In fact, chemical use has actually increased.
In the meantime, millions of acres of GMO corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. are planted worldwide with claims that their use will revolutionize the landscape of global food production and overcome hunger. Sadly, these claims have been seriously misleading - not only because of resistant weeds and increasing chemical use but also because of the loss of crop diversity that the GMO revolution is causing – a loss that strikes at the heart of sustainability.
A classic example of how this happens is in Mexico where GMO corn has disrupted the centuries-old agricultural practices in the heartland of corn diversity.
In the Oaxaca region over 150 local varieties of corn are grown. These have been developed through traditional methods of crop selection and cross-fertilization. Individual families have generations of knowledge invested in these crops and they can be counted on to breed true – or at least true enough to sustain the communities growing the corn and to perpetuate the local varieties.
Unfortunately an increasing number of these varieties are being contaminated by the genes of GMO corn that have been transferred by wind-blown pollen from far away. This threatens the traditional agriculture in a couple of ways. The most immediate is that the genetic contaminants are patented and recognized internationally as somebody’s property - somebody’s, that is, except the local farmers.
But perhaps more serious is the unpredictability of the GMO’s themselves, which are made in a very random process. The manipulated genes that provide “advantages” to a plant can, and do, show up in all sorts of places in the host DNA. Some arrangements seem to show no significant changes to a plant’s appearance. Other arrangements, however, produce truly monstrous phenotypes. What sort of effect might this contamination have on these local communities? Nobody knows.
Of course, this sort of thing might never get out of hand. Perhaps local plant breeders could eliminate the harmful genes over generations. In the meantime, however, it is not wise to pursue a poorly understood technology when so much is at stake. This is just one example of the conflicting sustainability claims of GMO’s.
This may all seem like a science fiction fantasy with its cutting edge technology and impending global disaster. In fact literary entrepreneurs have not been blind to this opportunity. James Rollins’s recent thriller The Doomsday Key is an excellent example. The story centers on a cryptic guild of early Europeans and a fictional corporate giant called Viatus that are tied up in the use of GMO’s to reduce the world’s human population. US secret service agents end up discovering the threat that was taken from an ancient secret surrounding the medieval Doomsday Book. Of course many parts of this story are clearly unrealistic. Some however are not far fetched. The reality is that we don’t know how much of such a scenario is fantastic and how much might actually occur.
One thing we do know, however – or at least we should know – involves the biggest error in all of the GMO sustainability claims: the justification that a larger population needs more food.
At first blush this might seem obvious. The human population is growing at an alarming rate. Certainly the ever-increasing number of people will need to have something to eat. Claiming otherwise seems like an outright admission of misanthropy.
Robert Shapiro went so far as to suggest that a failure to embrace this vision of sustainability would relegate the world to starvation - or to use his own sarcasm: “letting the Malthusian process work its magic on the population”.
The mistake that Shapiro makes here is a big one. Sadly it is a mistake that far too many people make - even people that should know better. Population growth rises to the level of available resources. It is not an independent factor. Malthus was clear on this.
The truth of the matter is that agricultural technology is the primary cause of population growth, not an ancillary science struggling to keep up with it. Shapiro’s claim that Monsanto’s vision is required to feed a hungry world is exactly backwards. It is causing population growth.
Now I am not arguing that we should go back to the dark ages - giving up all our technology - in order to starve the world into a level of fewer people. I am arguing that a blind acceptance of industrial solutions is misguided. Making more and more food is not the answer. Helping more and more people make their own food, is.
Several years ago Barry Commoner pointed out the counter-intuitive relationship between population growth on the one hand and education and health care on the other. Places with higher education and better health care have lower levels of population growth. It has also been shown that open markets contribute to this same trend and improve living conditions for the greater good. But there is a big danger when we presume to take global responsibility. It’s all too easy to move from the ethics of democratic capitalism (sensu Michael Novak) to a presumed virtue of global industry (sensu Monsanto et al.). And it is in this failed transition that we make serious mistakes that make us less sustainable, not more so.
The current state of affairs will only bring more and more technology to developing countries that enrich the major global industries, making poorer peoples more and more dependent, and driving them away from the land and their best hope for true sustainability. More people will migrate to urban areas creating even larger cities with larger slums and greater hunger. It doesn’t take an Old Testament prophet to see all this happening.
If, however, we stop dragging local farmers into our version of the global economy, they will adopt those technologies that make sense to them. Local businesses will succeed, local people will live more dignified lives. Food may be relatively more expensive, but this is not the major problem that it seems. Simple clean housing in developing countries has never been the 30-year burden that it is to us in the developed world. Through the entire history of the planet people have lived fulfilled lives by farming - by spending more resources than we do on food. What may be surprising is that these “higher” priced foods tend to be less processed, and arguably healthier than the cheap diets foisted upon us by industrial society. The fact is that rising food prices becomes a serious problem primarily for those that don’t raise their own food. Those who do somehow manage to get by.
We can create a better world - a more sustainable world. But it won’t happen with an industrial mindset or with industrial tools. It will happen when we stop imposing ourselves on to our poorer neighbors and start focusing our efforts at home. If industry wants to be a true contributor to the problems facing us, let it help local communities become sustainable (without strings attached to global markets). Let it help motivate more people to take up farming, even to the point of empowering small farmers. We need to build soil, save energy, conserve water, and care for our own biotas locally. But claiming that we can save the world using self-serving technologies and economies that we don’t even understand is a recipe for disaster.
References
Commoner, Barry. 1988 Ecology and Social Action; In, The Conservators of Hope. University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho.
Magretta, Joan. 1997. Growth Through Global Sustainability: An Interview with Monsanto’s CEO, Robert B. Shapiro. Harvard Business Review, January-February.
Novak, Michael. 1982. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Touchstone, New York.
Robin, M.-M. 2008. The World According to Monsanto. The New Press, New York.
Rollins, James. 2009. The Doomsday Key. Harper, New York, New York.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
A Wintry Book Foray
The day after I arrived in Dallas an arctic atmosphere the size of a continent repositioned itself over the United States in the shape of an inverted parabola, its southern limit extending to the middle of Texas.
Temperatures dropped over 30 degrees within a couple of hours and all of the Dallas / Fort Worth area was glazed over with snow and ice. Several of my colleagues (who had arrived for the same scientific meetings that I was attending) were unable to sleep because of the constant clapping of sleet against the large parietal windows of their rooms.
Periodically throughout the next day power went out in the hotel as the city's faltering electricity was portioned out in cycles to its many stranded citizens. For, in fact, very few people were willing to brave the storm and drive to work. As a result the hotel was only half staffed and services were limited.
One is justified in wondering why a middle-aged Californian would wish to trek out in this weather. Certainly not after food, there was plenty of that in the hotel. Not even entertainment, the need of exercise or the promise of interesting insects (all hunkering down beneath the ice) would suffice.
The only possible reason left was books. And that was precisely the pull. Two years ago I had discovered a nice used bookstore (called Half-Price Books) on the other side of town and I was determined to visit it again.
I knew the trip would be tricky as soon as I stepped out of the hotel. The parking lot looked like shattered glass with patches of crusty snow throughout. After slowly making my way to the other side I came to the lawn. The snow had all but covered it up leaving only little tips of grass visible on top. Glad as I was to be free of the parking lot, I stepped with confidence onto the congealed turf only to realize (too late as it turned out) that it was harder than I thought.
Instead of gaining purchase, my unsuspecting foot glanced out from under me and slid to the bottom of the hill pulling me along with it. Fortunately it wasn't too steep or too far to the bottom. The worst thing that happened was the loss of my travelling snack - a Snickers bar - that I had slipped into my coat pocket. In the excitement of the fall I didn't even detect that it was gone until it was too late to go back and get it.
Now, however, I was aware of what I was up against. No more thoughtless or over-confident steps would do. I would have to make the four mile trek with tiny steps. Ahead of me the metropolitan floor extended in a patchwork of blacktop, concrete and little sections of frozen plants. The prospects weren't promising for any of these and so I tried the grass again. This time I gently eased my full weight into a square inch of my shoe. Thankfully it was enough (well maybe it was obviously enough) to break the crusty surface and I stood triumphantly secure.
Thus I plodded over lawns and pansy (poor things) past sidewalk and business until I discovered the remarkable value of poor masonry - concrete curbs, to be precise, which projected unprofessionally above the level of the walk. For some reason they were left un-iced and when there was a lull in the traffic (which was most of the time since nobody in their right mind was on the street) I ventured to balance my way along more easily.
Occasionally I would come upon a parking lot with patches of lovely black footholds. These I would navigate much like an old man playing hopscotch. And in fact it really was fun. I also became quite adept at noticing just slightly uneven surfaces. Failure in this regard could have been a serious problem where walks and driveways sloped ever-so-subtly into the four-lane street.
Unfortunately there were places that became quite difficult, like the entire block I had to manage between a row of crepe myrtles and a metal fence; or the extended driveway that was seemingly as smooth as glass. Very often I was left looking for any irregularity in the ice that I could find - like small pebbles or the frozen reliquiae of animals.
It was while I was inching my way along that I realized half of the stores around me were closed. What if the bookstore was closed too? I wondered. It couldn't be. Besides I was now over an hour along and couldn't bear the thought of turning back empty-handed.
I had been motivating myself through this wintry adventure by the thought of fine books. Now I seemed on the verge of distraction. But what was I to do? I was over half-way there. I couldn't stop now.
And so I mustered my tiring determination once again and kept walking. But in my worries I had failed to pay close enough attention to my footwork. Instead of tiny steps I had lapsed into my more comfortable lope and suddenly I slipped. My right foot raced to the side and my right hip instinctively pirouetted an instantaneous 90 degrees. My left foot shifted into a new position while my left knee flexed and tightened. My back arched forward like an amateur tight-rope-walker hovering over the abyss. Miraculously I remained standing.
And then I started to laugh out loud. How foolish I must have looked, flailing my body around in jocular abandon. But it didn't matter. The black plastic hood of my jacket was cinched tight around my head. I was certain that nobody could recognize me.
So I continued to laugh and walk and sniffle with joy, imagining how happy I would be to find a friendly book.
And so it was I found my favorite Texas store - humble though it is. And it was open, while most of the neighboring windows were dark. In the Natural History section I found an expensive cricket book for a song. I found Ernst Mayr's last book for a couple of dollars. In the regional section I found the essays I'd been looking for (for years) at a reasonable price. And then the cashier announced that because of bad weather, the store would be closing soon. I couldn't help believe that they had remained open just for me.
But now I had a problem I hadn't previously considered. I had a bag of books; no gloves and a long way still to go. Now if I fell, I would have to decide what to do with my hands. I could use them to break my fall (thus dropping the bag) or I could hold on to my package and deal with the bruises. In the end I couldn't make up my mind - and, in fact, it made no difference. I still had to start walking.
At the first crosswalk from the store I noticed an old beat-up truck spinning its tires. A middle-aged woman was pushing it from the back and her young friend was driving and cursing in the front seat. They had been out rummaging for discarded metal to recycle and got a flat tire. I helped them push their vehicle on to flat ground where the jack could be maneuvered without sliding. It wasn't easy pushing it on ice. Not until I found a foot grip on the curb did we make any progress. After managing as best we could I bid them a hearty "good luck" while silently hoping they weren't out on darker errands - along streets of abandoned shops.
The cloudy day was now turning into a cloudy dusk. Only a couple of cars were left in the vast acreage of a mall's parking lot. I moved along in controlled slides and then found a covered parking area with no ice. There was a cold breeze funneling through but the dry ground was a dream-come-true. I felt like walking around in circles to get the full benefit of secure footing but finally convinced myself that this was a waste of energy. And so I worked my way back to the snow and the tiny careful steps. There were still thousands to take - one after another - soon becoming a habit. Finally I was back before the hotel where I had fallen. On the ground was my candy bar - now frozen but untouched and intact. My cheeks were as ruddy as ever and my hands and arms were locked into a book-embracing rigor. But all was well. I pulled the hood off my head, breathed in the freezing air and walked anticlimactically into the lobby: a silent successful adventurer.
Some of my colleagues were standing around in idle chitchat. I nodded their way and smiled, feeling somehow above such sybaritic comforts. But then again, in a matter of minutes I would be in a warm bed reading.
Temperatures dropped over 30 degrees within a couple of hours and all of the Dallas / Fort Worth area was glazed over with snow and ice. Several of my colleagues (who had arrived for the same scientific meetings that I was attending) were unable to sleep because of the constant clapping of sleet against the large parietal windows of their rooms.
Periodically throughout the next day power went out in the hotel as the city's faltering electricity was portioned out in cycles to its many stranded citizens. For, in fact, very few people were willing to brave the storm and drive to work. As a result the hotel was only half staffed and services were limited.
One is justified in wondering why a middle-aged Californian would wish to trek out in this weather. Certainly not after food, there was plenty of that in the hotel. Not even entertainment, the need of exercise or the promise of interesting insects (all hunkering down beneath the ice) would suffice.
The only possible reason left was books. And that was precisely the pull. Two years ago I had discovered a nice used bookstore (called Half-Price Books) on the other side of town and I was determined to visit it again.
I knew the trip would be tricky as soon as I stepped out of the hotel. The parking lot looked like shattered glass with patches of crusty snow throughout. After slowly making my way to the other side I came to the lawn. The snow had all but covered it up leaving only little tips of grass visible on top. Glad as I was to be free of the parking lot, I stepped with confidence onto the congealed turf only to realize (too late as it turned out) that it was harder than I thought.
Instead of gaining purchase, my unsuspecting foot glanced out from under me and slid to the bottom of the hill pulling me along with it. Fortunately it wasn't too steep or too far to the bottom. The worst thing that happened was the loss of my travelling snack - a Snickers bar - that I had slipped into my coat pocket. In the excitement of the fall I didn't even detect that it was gone until it was too late to go back and get it.
Now, however, I was aware of what I was up against. No more thoughtless or over-confident steps would do. I would have to make the four mile trek with tiny steps. Ahead of me the metropolitan floor extended in a patchwork of blacktop, concrete and little sections of frozen plants. The prospects weren't promising for any of these and so I tried the grass again. This time I gently eased my full weight into a square inch of my shoe. Thankfully it was enough (well maybe it was obviously enough) to break the crusty surface and I stood triumphantly secure.
Thus I plodded over lawns and pansy (poor things) past sidewalk and business until I discovered the remarkable value of poor masonry - concrete curbs, to be precise, which projected unprofessionally above the level of the walk. For some reason they were left un-iced and when there was a lull in the traffic (which was most of the time since nobody in their right mind was on the street) I ventured to balance my way along more easily.
Occasionally I would come upon a parking lot with patches of lovely black footholds. These I would navigate much like an old man playing hopscotch. And in fact it really was fun. I also became quite adept at noticing just slightly uneven surfaces. Failure in this regard could have been a serious problem where walks and driveways sloped ever-so-subtly into the four-lane street.
Unfortunately there were places that became quite difficult, like the entire block I had to manage between a row of crepe myrtles and a metal fence; or the extended driveway that was seemingly as smooth as glass. Very often I was left looking for any irregularity in the ice that I could find - like small pebbles or the frozen reliquiae of animals.
It was while I was inching my way along that I realized half of the stores around me were closed. What if the bookstore was closed too? I wondered. It couldn't be. Besides I was now over an hour along and couldn't bear the thought of turning back empty-handed.
I had been motivating myself through this wintry adventure by the thought of fine books. Now I seemed on the verge of distraction. But what was I to do? I was over half-way there. I couldn't stop now.
And so I mustered my tiring determination once again and kept walking. But in my worries I had failed to pay close enough attention to my footwork. Instead of tiny steps I had lapsed into my more comfortable lope and suddenly I slipped. My right foot raced to the side and my right hip instinctively pirouetted an instantaneous 90 degrees. My left foot shifted into a new position while my left knee flexed and tightened. My back arched forward like an amateur tight-rope-walker hovering over the abyss. Miraculously I remained standing.
And then I started to laugh out loud. How foolish I must have looked, flailing my body around in jocular abandon. But it didn't matter. The black plastic hood of my jacket was cinched tight around my head. I was certain that nobody could recognize me.
So I continued to laugh and walk and sniffle with joy, imagining how happy I would be to find a friendly book.
And so it was I found my favorite Texas store - humble though it is. And it was open, while most of the neighboring windows were dark. In the Natural History section I found an expensive cricket book for a song. I found Ernst Mayr's last book for a couple of dollars. In the regional section I found the essays I'd been looking for (for years) at a reasonable price. And then the cashier announced that because of bad weather, the store would be closing soon. I couldn't help believe that they had remained open just for me.
But now I had a problem I hadn't previously considered. I had a bag of books; no gloves and a long way still to go. Now if I fell, I would have to decide what to do with my hands. I could use them to break my fall (thus dropping the bag) or I could hold on to my package and deal with the bruises. In the end I couldn't make up my mind - and, in fact, it made no difference. I still had to start walking.
At the first crosswalk from the store I noticed an old beat-up truck spinning its tires. A middle-aged woman was pushing it from the back and her young friend was driving and cursing in the front seat. They had been out rummaging for discarded metal to recycle and got a flat tire. I helped them push their vehicle on to flat ground where the jack could be maneuvered without sliding. It wasn't easy pushing it on ice. Not until I found a foot grip on the curb did we make any progress. After managing as best we could I bid them a hearty "good luck" while silently hoping they weren't out on darker errands - along streets of abandoned shops.
The cloudy day was now turning into a cloudy dusk. Only a couple of cars were left in the vast acreage of a mall's parking lot. I moved along in controlled slides and then found a covered parking area with no ice. There was a cold breeze funneling through but the dry ground was a dream-come-true. I felt like walking around in circles to get the full benefit of secure footing but finally convinced myself that this was a waste of energy. And so I worked my way back to the snow and the tiny careful steps. There were still thousands to take - one after another - soon becoming a habit. Finally I was back before the hotel where I had fallen. On the ground was my candy bar - now frozen but untouched and intact. My cheeks were as ruddy as ever and my hands and arms were locked into a book-embracing rigor. But all was well. I pulled the hood off my head, breathed in the freezing air and walked anticlimactically into the lobby: a silent successful adventurer.
Some of my colleagues were standing around in idle chitchat. I nodded their way and smiled, feeling somehow above such sybaritic comforts. But then again, in a matter of minutes I would be in a warm bed reading.
Monday, January 24, 2011
The Meaning of Kitzmiller v. Dover
Six years ago last December in the celebrated case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Judge John E. Jones III decided that a school board in south central Pennsylvania (in the town of Dover) could not make Intelligent Design (ID) literature available to its students. In fact the decision was initially praised as a landmark handling of the difficult science and religion controversy. A well-written account of the case, including valuable background information, has been written by Gordy Slack in, The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything. Slack is a popular writer on evolutionary themes and clearly places himself in the evolution camp but his book is usually fair. (At least the biases are obvious.)
Nearly a year later we learned that Judge Jones wasn’t nearly as informed on the science presented in the case as he should have been. As it turns out, he copied the bulk of the scientific argument in his written decision from documents provided to him by the ACLU before the trial even started. This is quite significant considering the fact that the ACLU was also providing legal help to the plaintiffs. What makes the copying so pathetic is that it suggests that the judge was not well enough informed to detect differences in the creationist arguments of his ACLU report and the arguments of ID that were presented in court.
I’m guessing that Slack was unaware of this finding when his book went to press, although this is giving him the benefit of the doubt. The Center for Science and Culture broke the story in December, 2006. Slack’s book was published in May, 2007 giving him time to have learned of the judge’s misbehavior. But since one never knows how long publishers hold on to manuscripts, it is possible that Slack was in the dark. The latest reference I could find in his Notes was to a website posting for January, 2007.
The case is an important one in America’s ongoing culture war. And the negative ruling against ID has had significant impact. The full effect of Judge Jones foul play may not be known for years but in the meantime a few things need to be reconsidered.
A good place to start is to rethink what the meaning of Kitzmiller should be. My take from Slack’s account is that the real issue in Dover was the religious motives of the school board. On this point I think the ruling was fair although ultimately unconstitutional. This may be a difficult position to hold, but let me explain.
Slack’s account makes it clear that the school board had little understanding of the science behind ID. Several of the early statements indicated strong fundamentalist positions against anything differing from its own brand of Christianity. This is clearly not the kind of environment where open enquiry can thrive. And as Slack shows, these professed Christians were caught in deceptive acts of dishonesty as the trial progressed, leaving one to only guess at the potential for manipulation from the erstwhile school board itself.
However, the case that was officially presented was about the right to have literature available for students to read. Textbooks containing a discussion of ID were to be placed in the library and a statement was to be read in class informing the students that they were available.
There was no pressure in this process from teachers or from anybody else. There is certainly nothing here that comes close to an establishment of religion one way or another. To suggest that putting a scientific book in a high school library violates the 1st Amendment is like saying that celebrating Martin Luther King Day does too - since the civil rights leader was a Christian preacher. This just stretches things too far.
Now perhaps you might take offense at my referring to ID as a science, so let me explain. During the trial, Kenneth Miller was asked by the Plaintiffs to define science. He did so by saying that it is an attempt to “provide natural explanations for natural phenomena”. I think this is a fully acceptable definition for experimental science but it hardly can be considered a complete definition for all science. It is similar to some of the definitions we find in various educational standards around the country. But it lacks a key element that has always been a part of science: namely observation. An earlier definition of science from the Kansas Science Standard that Miller has commented on reads: “Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us”. This is a much better definition but Miller decided against using it in Dover.
My advanced degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) are both in a branch of evolutionary biology known as systematic zoology – which has been called the “science of diversity”. A large part of my research is descriptive. For example, I describe the morphology and biology of animals. Now this sort of research is not experimental per se. Even so, it has been considered a science from as long as we have been calling anything science. As a matter of fact, descriptive biology is the oldest science we have. To consider otherwise would require kicking Linnaeus out of our biology classes.
What makes descriptive biology so important is that it serves as a base from which other sciences work. For example, knowing how to tell the difference between a malaria-vectoring mosquito and a benign mosquito can be tricky but without this kind of knowledge advances in medicine and public health are limited. This argument also holds true for ecology, agriculture and many other sciences.
From my perspective, the current research centered on irreducible complexity (and ID) is similarly descriptive. It may not be providing “natural explanations” for how this complexity came about, but the identification of this complexity by itself is a net gain in our understanding of life. It is a base of information that can be accessed by many other disciplines in the future, even by those who wish to argue against ID.
This importance of observation is recognized by the National Academy of Science. In fact the very first paragraph in the introduction of its influential publication Science and Creationism makes this clear: “Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are limited to those based on observation and experiments that can be substituted by other scientists...”
I am a bit surprised that Miller decided against using this definition – coming as it does from our most eminent scientific body. It is particularly surprising because it was written for the primary reason of bolstering the claims of science against the rising influence of “creation science”.
But the problem for Miller and the other Plaintiffs in Dover is that this definition isn’t sufficient to keep ID out of the halls of science. So instead of being embarrassed by this ambiguity, Miller chose a different definition, or so it seems.
Of course I may be wrong but a lot depends on definitions – especially in court. The larger issue, however, is that arguing over what is and what is not science has a long history of getting us nowhere. Philosopher Larry Laudan has traced this history in some detail.
Over two thousand years ago Aristotle argued that logical demonstration was the key element in scientific findings. In the pre-modern era it was determined that a more robust understanding of science would involve a particular method. Accordingly the scientific method was used as the defining ingredient.
When this definition proved imperfect, philosophers decided that science needed to be verifiable. Later still this perspective was altered so that scientific data and conclusions would be generally falsifiable instead. And there have been other definitions that could be added to this brief list.
Laudan comes to the conclusion that science should be determined by the credibility of the data and not the “scientific” status of the claims. He originally made these observations in 1983 and they are just as important now (if not more so) in the wake of the Kitzmiller case. This bickering over he meaning of science may have kept creation science out of the classroom. It will not work indefinitely for ID.
So what should be the meaning of Dover? My answer is that three things stand out.
The first one is that Judge Jones was right in identifying an underlying religious antagonism against evolution among members of the Dover Area School Board. It certainly appears that the level of scientific misinformation was becoming a problem and I think the judge made the right decision in this local area at the time of the trial.
However my other points suggest that Judge Jones will go down in history as an activist judge who was not capable of handling his most visible case. I say this because ID cannot be truthfully taught and be seriously considered a breach of the 1st Amendment (my 2nd point); and, because ID also makes observations of reality that can indeed be verifiable – and that fall under the umbrella of science (my 3rd point).
But I would like to make one final point that has significance well beyond the Kitzmiller case. It is that we are at a critical point in this conflict that requires a reasoned tolerance between both parties.
In this highly charged debate, a lack of understanding can become disastrous. Zealous biases that remain uninformed lead to dogmatism. And dogmatism, as Huston Smith has explained, is a character disorder. Even worse, it can destroy public order. This may sound like I’m being critical of conservative Christians. And in fact I am, in part. But the argument goes both ways. There is far too much dogmatism coming from the materialist camp as well. And its refusal to understand the basic Christian concerns in this issue can only make things worse.
Let’s face it. Both sides have legitimate concerns. The Plaintiffs in Kitzmiller, like thousands of other Americans that value the scientific method, were (and are) deeply concerned about the anti-intellectual tendencies that misinformed fundamentalists threaten to impose upon our children. It doesn’t matter that ID is good science (and I am arguing that it is). There are many vocal bigots that are downright scary to people trying to maintain a balanced position in this debate.
On the other hand, the defendants in the case have very legitimate concerns of their own. Materialism in its atheistic forms has been used to justify some of the worst civil rights violations of the last century. And one doesn’t have to go very far to see the connection between the moral decline of Western Society and the marginalization of religion.
Of course there has been a lot of ink spilt over this argument by both parties, and not everybody will agree with me. But strict materialists, with even a modicum of understanding, should be able to see the legitimacy of their religious opponents’ arguments.
There are a lot of strong opinions in this debate. And, as often happens when the stakes are this high, people take up sides – and sometimes a sword. No doubt this is inevitable. There are a lot of people who see the issues in absolute terms. And I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing.
As Huston Smith has written, one can think absolutely about an issue (with strong feelings) and still be tolerant of other people who think differently. In fact this is what tolerance used to mean: people with strong beliefs peacefully putting up with each other.
There has been foul play on both sides. It’s time to let it go and strive for understanding. This is more than just an academic argument, or even a political argument. This can divide us as a people in very harmful ways. Let’s all try to be a little bit smarter, and maybe our children will grow up to be wiser than we have been.
References:
DeWolf, David et al. 2006. Traipsing Into Evolution, Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision. Discovery Institute Press.
Laudan, Larry. 1996. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem; in Michael Ruse ed. But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy. Prometheus Books, New York.
Miller, Kenneth R. 2008. Only a Theory, Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. Viking. The Kansas definition of science is on page 186.
The National Academies. 1999. Science and Creationism, A View from the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press, Washington D.C. Second Edition.
Slack, Gordy. 2007. The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Smith, Huston. 2001. Why Religion Matters. Harpers, San Francisco.
West, John G and David K. DeWolf. 2006 A Comparison of Judge Jones’ Opinion in Kitzmiller v. Dover with Plaintiffs Proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law”. www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1186
Nearly a year later we learned that Judge Jones wasn’t nearly as informed on the science presented in the case as he should have been. As it turns out, he copied the bulk of the scientific argument in his written decision from documents provided to him by the ACLU before the trial even started. This is quite significant considering the fact that the ACLU was also providing legal help to the plaintiffs. What makes the copying so pathetic is that it suggests that the judge was not well enough informed to detect differences in the creationist arguments of his ACLU report and the arguments of ID that were presented in court.
I’m guessing that Slack was unaware of this finding when his book went to press, although this is giving him the benefit of the doubt. The Center for Science and Culture broke the story in December, 2006. Slack’s book was published in May, 2007 giving him time to have learned of the judge’s misbehavior. But since one never knows how long publishers hold on to manuscripts, it is possible that Slack was in the dark. The latest reference I could find in his Notes was to a website posting for January, 2007.
The case is an important one in America’s ongoing culture war. And the negative ruling against ID has had significant impact. The full effect of Judge Jones foul play may not be known for years but in the meantime a few things need to be reconsidered.
A good place to start is to rethink what the meaning of Kitzmiller should be. My take from Slack’s account is that the real issue in Dover was the religious motives of the school board. On this point I think the ruling was fair although ultimately unconstitutional. This may be a difficult position to hold, but let me explain.
Slack’s account makes it clear that the school board had little understanding of the science behind ID. Several of the early statements indicated strong fundamentalist positions against anything differing from its own brand of Christianity. This is clearly not the kind of environment where open enquiry can thrive. And as Slack shows, these professed Christians were caught in deceptive acts of dishonesty as the trial progressed, leaving one to only guess at the potential for manipulation from the erstwhile school board itself.
However, the case that was officially presented was about the right to have literature available for students to read. Textbooks containing a discussion of ID were to be placed in the library and a statement was to be read in class informing the students that they were available.
There was no pressure in this process from teachers or from anybody else. There is certainly nothing here that comes close to an establishment of religion one way or another. To suggest that putting a scientific book in a high school library violates the 1st Amendment is like saying that celebrating Martin Luther King Day does too - since the civil rights leader was a Christian preacher. This just stretches things too far.
Now perhaps you might take offense at my referring to ID as a science, so let me explain. During the trial, Kenneth Miller was asked by the Plaintiffs to define science. He did so by saying that it is an attempt to “provide natural explanations for natural phenomena”. I think this is a fully acceptable definition for experimental science but it hardly can be considered a complete definition for all science. It is similar to some of the definitions we find in various educational standards around the country. But it lacks a key element that has always been a part of science: namely observation. An earlier definition of science from the Kansas Science Standard that Miller has commented on reads: “Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us”. This is a much better definition but Miller decided against using it in Dover.
My advanced degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) are both in a branch of evolutionary biology known as systematic zoology – which has been called the “science of diversity”. A large part of my research is descriptive. For example, I describe the morphology and biology of animals. Now this sort of research is not experimental per se. Even so, it has been considered a science from as long as we have been calling anything science. As a matter of fact, descriptive biology is the oldest science we have. To consider otherwise would require kicking Linnaeus out of our biology classes.
What makes descriptive biology so important is that it serves as a base from which other sciences work. For example, knowing how to tell the difference between a malaria-vectoring mosquito and a benign mosquito can be tricky but without this kind of knowledge advances in medicine and public health are limited. This argument also holds true for ecology, agriculture and many other sciences.
From my perspective, the current research centered on irreducible complexity (and ID) is similarly descriptive. It may not be providing “natural explanations” for how this complexity came about, but the identification of this complexity by itself is a net gain in our understanding of life. It is a base of information that can be accessed by many other disciplines in the future, even by those who wish to argue against ID.
This importance of observation is recognized by the National Academy of Science. In fact the very first paragraph in the introduction of its influential publication Science and Creationism makes this clear: “Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are limited to those based on observation and experiments that can be substituted by other scientists...”
I am a bit surprised that Miller decided against using this definition – coming as it does from our most eminent scientific body. It is particularly surprising because it was written for the primary reason of bolstering the claims of science against the rising influence of “creation science”.
But the problem for Miller and the other Plaintiffs in Dover is that this definition isn’t sufficient to keep ID out of the halls of science. So instead of being embarrassed by this ambiguity, Miller chose a different definition, or so it seems.
Of course I may be wrong but a lot depends on definitions – especially in court. The larger issue, however, is that arguing over what is and what is not science has a long history of getting us nowhere. Philosopher Larry Laudan has traced this history in some detail.
Over two thousand years ago Aristotle argued that logical demonstration was the key element in scientific findings. In the pre-modern era it was determined that a more robust understanding of science would involve a particular method. Accordingly the scientific method was used as the defining ingredient.
When this definition proved imperfect, philosophers decided that science needed to be verifiable. Later still this perspective was altered so that scientific data and conclusions would be generally falsifiable instead. And there have been other definitions that could be added to this brief list.
Laudan comes to the conclusion that science should be determined by the credibility of the data and not the “scientific” status of the claims. He originally made these observations in 1983 and they are just as important now (if not more so) in the wake of the Kitzmiller case. This bickering over he meaning of science may have kept creation science out of the classroom. It will not work indefinitely for ID.
So what should be the meaning of Dover? My answer is that three things stand out.
The first one is that Judge Jones was right in identifying an underlying religious antagonism against evolution among members of the Dover Area School Board. It certainly appears that the level of scientific misinformation was becoming a problem and I think the judge made the right decision in this local area at the time of the trial.
However my other points suggest that Judge Jones will go down in history as an activist judge who was not capable of handling his most visible case. I say this because ID cannot be truthfully taught and be seriously considered a breach of the 1st Amendment (my 2nd point); and, because ID also makes observations of reality that can indeed be verifiable – and that fall under the umbrella of science (my 3rd point).
But I would like to make one final point that has significance well beyond the Kitzmiller case. It is that we are at a critical point in this conflict that requires a reasoned tolerance between both parties.
In this highly charged debate, a lack of understanding can become disastrous. Zealous biases that remain uninformed lead to dogmatism. And dogmatism, as Huston Smith has explained, is a character disorder. Even worse, it can destroy public order. This may sound like I’m being critical of conservative Christians. And in fact I am, in part. But the argument goes both ways. There is far too much dogmatism coming from the materialist camp as well. And its refusal to understand the basic Christian concerns in this issue can only make things worse.
Let’s face it. Both sides have legitimate concerns. The Plaintiffs in Kitzmiller, like thousands of other Americans that value the scientific method, were (and are) deeply concerned about the anti-intellectual tendencies that misinformed fundamentalists threaten to impose upon our children. It doesn’t matter that ID is good science (and I am arguing that it is). There are many vocal bigots that are downright scary to people trying to maintain a balanced position in this debate.
On the other hand, the defendants in the case have very legitimate concerns of their own. Materialism in its atheistic forms has been used to justify some of the worst civil rights violations of the last century. And one doesn’t have to go very far to see the connection between the moral decline of Western Society and the marginalization of religion.
Of course there has been a lot of ink spilt over this argument by both parties, and not everybody will agree with me. But strict materialists, with even a modicum of understanding, should be able to see the legitimacy of their religious opponents’ arguments.
There are a lot of strong opinions in this debate. And, as often happens when the stakes are this high, people take up sides – and sometimes a sword. No doubt this is inevitable. There are a lot of people who see the issues in absolute terms. And I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing.
As Huston Smith has written, one can think absolutely about an issue (with strong feelings) and still be tolerant of other people who think differently. In fact this is what tolerance used to mean: people with strong beliefs peacefully putting up with each other.
There has been foul play on both sides. It’s time to let it go and strive for understanding. This is more than just an academic argument, or even a political argument. This can divide us as a people in very harmful ways. Let’s all try to be a little bit smarter, and maybe our children will grow up to be wiser than we have been.
References:
DeWolf, David et al. 2006. Traipsing Into Evolution, Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision. Discovery Institute Press.
Laudan, Larry. 1996. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem; in Michael Ruse ed. But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy. Prometheus Books, New York.
Miller, Kenneth R. 2008. Only a Theory, Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. Viking. The Kansas definition of science is on page 186.
The National Academies. 1999. Science and Creationism, A View from the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press, Washington D.C. Second Edition.
Slack, Gordy. 2007. The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Smith, Huston. 2001. Why Religion Matters. Harpers, San Francisco.
West, John G and David K. DeWolf. 2006 A Comparison of Judge Jones’ Opinion in Kitzmiller v. Dover with Plaintiffs Proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law”. www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1186
Monday, January 10, 2011
Building Soil in the Desert
Soils in arid lands are usually not very productive. Because they are dry for long periods, many living things that normally work together to form rich soil are lacking. Very often the soils are sandy or of hard clay and only a few kinds of plants adapted to these harsh conditions can survive in them. As a result, agriculture has not been sustainable in these areas like it has in many parts of the world.
Today, however, there are apparent exceptions to this claim. Many desert regions are very productive. The Central Valley of California, for example, is one of the richest agricultural places on earth. Yet surprisingly it gets less than 12 inches of rain a year. In this dry land farmers have been producing abundant harvests for over a century. Even so, I stand by my claim: it just isn’t sustainable – at least at a local level.
In the desert, we have only been able to grow crops by bringing in billions of dollars worth of artificial inputs such as: fertilizers, pesticides, adjuvants, pheromones. I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing. The reality is that we would not be able to feed the world in its current condition without using the desert so proficiently. It is true that industrial agriculture is responsible for the loss of vast amounts of productive agricultural lands - especially through erosion and the sterilization of croplands. But this isn’t really an issue so much in desert regions where the rich soil wasn’t present to begin with.
In those deserts that have had the luxury of warm sandy soils, with enough water nearby, modern agriculture has made out quite nicely. In other deserts it’s been more difficult. These areas, though rich in biological diversity, have never been very agronomically productive.
My grandparents (on my father’s side) learned this the hard way. They were both raised in the cold desert of central Utah where sage brush is supreme and where the 5,000 foot elevation makes it cold enough that only one crop a year is possible. They got married at the turn of the 19th Century; and, after living for several years in Emery County, they loaded up their things and moved south to Hanksville, in Wayne County looking for a better life. This is the country east of Capitol Reef National Park and just north of Lake Powell. It is strikingly beautiful in its spare colorful formations but the soil is the soil of arid lands. It is not very productive.
My grandmother had to work very hard just to raise a small vegetable garden. Grandpa Wells would divert water from the local canal (that he helped dig from the Fremont River) to moisten the hard clay soil enough for Grandma to work with a shovel. This was a long hard process but without it, the ground couldn’t be broken and there was not nearly enough rain to grow a crop without it. Grandma and Grandpa had six children (and I don’t know how many grandchildren). Almost all of them had to live somewhere other than Hanksville. To this day the area remains mostly unfarmed.
The question that nobody seems to be asking is whether or not it is even worthwhile to develop a locally sustainable agriculture in places like Hanksville. And by locally sustainable I mean an agriculture that is continuous, year after year, without artificial inputs.
I guess that nobody has asked the question because on the surface it makes no sense whatsoever. How can anybody imagine growing a crop in hard clay or sand without adding fertilizer or other inputs from the world of agribusiness?
My answer is that pursuing agriculture as a business is not a very good idea in many of these desert lands. On the other hand, pursuing agriculture as part of a locally sustainable lifestyle is a real possibility.
The key to making it work all depends upon the soil. Historically, our American agriculture (even in the desert) has been based on using the soil. If a desert region lacked a suitable substrate for growing crops we never bothered with it. Maybe a few cows were left to find a meager sustenance on such land but that was about it. In fact that’s about where things stand today.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to build soil, in the desert. Take the silty clay loam of Hanksville as an example. There are abundant minerals in this soil that would greatly enrich a crop, but they just aren’t available. But if a dedicated individual were to put forth the effort of creating compost - and lots of it - over time the hard clay would crumble and become part of a more frangible soil.
You would need to start with a big compost pile using the fallen leaves from local shrubs and trees. Mix these with animal manure and keep it moist, while turning it over occasionally. When this turns to soil, spread it on the garden. Seeds planted in this soft earth will grow. You may not have a lot to start with but keep at it. A drip line for watering would serve well if you have a lot of plants or a frequent hand-watering with a bucket or hose will do. Once the seedlings are on their way, add more leaves (even straw will work) and then place rocks over the leaves around the seedlings to retain moisture. If you keep things moist enough you will soon see signs of earthworms. After a few seasons the worms will work the ground from hard dirt to a rich soil that can be easily cut with a spade. Before too long you will have discovered one of the best kept secrets of these under-utilized lands: deserts can be extremely productive.
Of course local conditions will vary. You may need to bring in earthworms yourself if they don’t occur in your area. You may also have to be creative about finding enough plant material for composting. Then once your garden is thriving you may need to figure out how to keep rabbits or rodents out. But be persistent. Desert agriculture isn’t a well-established science in any form. And locally sustainable desert agriculture is a discipline that hardly even exists. It shouldn’t be this way. With the right care and determination the desert has a lot to offer.
Today, however, there are apparent exceptions to this claim. Many desert regions are very productive. The Central Valley of California, for example, is one of the richest agricultural places on earth. Yet surprisingly it gets less than 12 inches of rain a year. In this dry land farmers have been producing abundant harvests for over a century. Even so, I stand by my claim: it just isn’t sustainable – at least at a local level.
In the desert, we have only been able to grow crops by bringing in billions of dollars worth of artificial inputs such as: fertilizers, pesticides, adjuvants, pheromones. I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing. The reality is that we would not be able to feed the world in its current condition without using the desert so proficiently. It is true that industrial agriculture is responsible for the loss of vast amounts of productive agricultural lands - especially through erosion and the sterilization of croplands. But this isn’t really an issue so much in desert regions where the rich soil wasn’t present to begin with.
In those deserts that have had the luxury of warm sandy soils, with enough water nearby, modern agriculture has made out quite nicely. In other deserts it’s been more difficult. These areas, though rich in biological diversity, have never been very agronomically productive.
My grandparents (on my father’s side) learned this the hard way. They were both raised in the cold desert of central Utah where sage brush is supreme and where the 5,000 foot elevation makes it cold enough that only one crop a year is possible. They got married at the turn of the 19th Century; and, after living for several years in Emery County, they loaded up their things and moved south to Hanksville, in Wayne County looking for a better life. This is the country east of Capitol Reef National Park and just north of Lake Powell. It is strikingly beautiful in its spare colorful formations but the soil is the soil of arid lands. It is not very productive.
My grandmother had to work very hard just to raise a small vegetable garden. Grandpa Wells would divert water from the local canal (that he helped dig from the Fremont River) to moisten the hard clay soil enough for Grandma to work with a shovel. This was a long hard process but without it, the ground couldn’t be broken and there was not nearly enough rain to grow a crop without it. Grandma and Grandpa had six children (and I don’t know how many grandchildren). Almost all of them had to live somewhere other than Hanksville. To this day the area remains mostly unfarmed.
The question that nobody seems to be asking is whether or not it is even worthwhile to develop a locally sustainable agriculture in places like Hanksville. And by locally sustainable I mean an agriculture that is continuous, year after year, without artificial inputs.
I guess that nobody has asked the question because on the surface it makes no sense whatsoever. How can anybody imagine growing a crop in hard clay or sand without adding fertilizer or other inputs from the world of agribusiness?
My answer is that pursuing agriculture as a business is not a very good idea in many of these desert lands. On the other hand, pursuing agriculture as part of a locally sustainable lifestyle is a real possibility.
The key to making it work all depends upon the soil. Historically, our American agriculture (even in the desert) has been based on using the soil. If a desert region lacked a suitable substrate for growing crops we never bothered with it. Maybe a few cows were left to find a meager sustenance on such land but that was about it. In fact that’s about where things stand today.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to build soil, in the desert. Take the silty clay loam of Hanksville as an example. There are abundant minerals in this soil that would greatly enrich a crop, but they just aren’t available. But if a dedicated individual were to put forth the effort of creating compost - and lots of it - over time the hard clay would crumble and become part of a more frangible soil.
You would need to start with a big compost pile using the fallen leaves from local shrubs and trees. Mix these with animal manure and keep it moist, while turning it over occasionally. When this turns to soil, spread it on the garden. Seeds planted in this soft earth will grow. You may not have a lot to start with but keep at it. A drip line for watering would serve well if you have a lot of plants or a frequent hand-watering with a bucket or hose will do. Once the seedlings are on their way, add more leaves (even straw will work) and then place rocks over the leaves around the seedlings to retain moisture. If you keep things moist enough you will soon see signs of earthworms. After a few seasons the worms will work the ground from hard dirt to a rich soil that can be easily cut with a spade. Before too long you will have discovered one of the best kept secrets of these under-utilized lands: deserts can be extremely productive.
Of course local conditions will vary. You may need to bring in earthworms yourself if they don’t occur in your area. You may also have to be creative about finding enough plant material for composting. Then once your garden is thriving you may need to figure out how to keep rabbits or rodents out. But be persistent. Desert agriculture isn’t a well-established science in any form. And locally sustainable desert agriculture is a discipline that hardly even exists. It shouldn’t be this way. With the right care and determination the desert has a lot to offer.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Gift of Leaves
Autumn leaves are wonderful things. Their bright and often deep earthy colors evoke a longing for calm and a slower time of year. Even the yellows and oranges have a profundity about them that demands a solemn and joyous attention. They are beautiful and soothing symbols of change.
But they are more than this. They are also gifts of the fertile earth and part of nature's way of nourishment.
A fresh green leaf on a vernal maple tree draws nutrients from a vast storehouse of compounds and minerals that are kept in the trunk and the roots of the tree. Some of these nutrients were taken directly from last year's atmosphere. Others were absorbed by the surface roots that received the decaying products of last year’s fallen leaves. Still other nutrients have come from deeper in the soil where minerals have been slowly prized from the older rocks, gravel and sand.
Through the summer this leaf will gather the energy that comes from the sun and use it to rework the air and the soil into a packaged piece of latent life. In the autumn as it falls to the earth, it carries with it these ingredients of future growth and health.
Sadly, not many of us see these free gifts of the earth for what they are worth. Perhaps we stop at Thanksgiving time and enjoy the beauty of the changing leaves but how often are we thankful for the fallen leaves? Or, more likely, are we bothered by the extra work of raking or blowing them off the lawn?
In our eastern cities where trees grow more plentifully, homeowners often have access to a service of landscape waste removal. All that is required is to have the leaves piled in the street where the city takes care of removing them. In the drier areas of the country, leaves can be piled into dumpsters and removed with the weekly garbage. Either way, the gift of leaves is lost and the natural cycles of regeneration are lost with it. We are left with only the artificial alternatives and superficial gardens that mass marketing enables. In the end we may have green lawns and pretty flowers but never with the sustainable fertility that comes from the gift of leaves. A few plants may thrive but the natural diversity of a vital soil is lost.
Fallen leaves are only gifts if they are worked back in to the soil. Maybe there are too many of them on your lawn and they really have to go. If so, consider yourself lucky. You have an excess of the gift of leaves. Chances are your neighbors do to and just don't know it. You have a great opportunity to gather these gifts and pile them up in your backyard. If you're worried that the wind might blow them around again, sprinkle water on top and cover them with something substantial. Before you do, however, you really should let the kids roll around in them with the dog and smell their autumn richness. It will be an aromatic memory that will stay with them all their life.
Make your pile as big as you can. Gather leaves from those who don't want them. Find leaves that come from different kinds of soil. They will add variety to your pile. In a few weeks you will notice that your pile is smaller. It is already starting to decay. At this point you might want to find some barnyard manure to mix in. If you have a hard time finding some, try looking in the garden section of a hardware store. You can often buy steer manure in a bag for cheap. This manure is a magic ingredient. If you mix it in well with the leaves, or even pile it in layers, and keep it moist, the earthworms will take over with a vengeance. You may not be aware that you have earthworms. You may have even been responsible for killing a lot of them with your commercial monthly landscape routine. But this manured pile of leaves will attract worms if there are any of them around at all.
Then after a few weeks, indulge your curiosity and look under your pile. You will be amazed at the number of small creatures running around. They are all busy changing the gift of leaves into the perfect food for plants. Every few weeks you should turn your pile over. In a few months you will have created a rich humic soil that will be better for your garden than the most expensive fertilizer you can buy. This process may take a little longer if it get's cold over the winter, but don't worry, the leaves will come through. Just be patient.
And while you wait, be thankful. The fallen leaves in your yard are not meant to torment you. They are a gift. And they can make you happy.
But they are more than this. They are also gifts of the fertile earth and part of nature's way of nourishment.
A fresh green leaf on a vernal maple tree draws nutrients from a vast storehouse of compounds and minerals that are kept in the trunk and the roots of the tree. Some of these nutrients were taken directly from last year's atmosphere. Others were absorbed by the surface roots that received the decaying products of last year’s fallen leaves. Still other nutrients have come from deeper in the soil where minerals have been slowly prized from the older rocks, gravel and sand.
Through the summer this leaf will gather the energy that comes from the sun and use it to rework the air and the soil into a packaged piece of latent life. In the autumn as it falls to the earth, it carries with it these ingredients of future growth and health.
Sadly, not many of us see these free gifts of the earth for what they are worth. Perhaps we stop at Thanksgiving time and enjoy the beauty of the changing leaves but how often are we thankful for the fallen leaves? Or, more likely, are we bothered by the extra work of raking or blowing them off the lawn?
In our eastern cities where trees grow more plentifully, homeowners often have access to a service of landscape waste removal. All that is required is to have the leaves piled in the street where the city takes care of removing them. In the drier areas of the country, leaves can be piled into dumpsters and removed with the weekly garbage. Either way, the gift of leaves is lost and the natural cycles of regeneration are lost with it. We are left with only the artificial alternatives and superficial gardens that mass marketing enables. In the end we may have green lawns and pretty flowers but never with the sustainable fertility that comes from the gift of leaves. A few plants may thrive but the natural diversity of a vital soil is lost.
Fallen leaves are only gifts if they are worked back in to the soil. Maybe there are too many of them on your lawn and they really have to go. If so, consider yourself lucky. You have an excess of the gift of leaves. Chances are your neighbors do to and just don't know it. You have a great opportunity to gather these gifts and pile them up in your backyard. If you're worried that the wind might blow them around again, sprinkle water on top and cover them with something substantial. Before you do, however, you really should let the kids roll around in them with the dog and smell their autumn richness. It will be an aromatic memory that will stay with them all their life.
Make your pile as big as you can. Gather leaves from those who don't want them. Find leaves that come from different kinds of soil. They will add variety to your pile. In a few weeks you will notice that your pile is smaller. It is already starting to decay. At this point you might want to find some barnyard manure to mix in. If you have a hard time finding some, try looking in the garden section of a hardware store. You can often buy steer manure in a bag for cheap. This manure is a magic ingredient. If you mix it in well with the leaves, or even pile it in layers, and keep it moist, the earthworms will take over with a vengeance. You may not be aware that you have earthworms. You may have even been responsible for killing a lot of them with your commercial monthly landscape routine. But this manured pile of leaves will attract worms if there are any of them around at all.
Then after a few weeks, indulge your curiosity and look under your pile. You will be amazed at the number of small creatures running around. They are all busy changing the gift of leaves into the perfect food for plants. Every few weeks you should turn your pile over. In a few months you will have created a rich humic soil that will be better for your garden than the most expensive fertilizer you can buy. This process may take a little longer if it get's cold over the winter, but don't worry, the leaves will come through. Just be patient.
And while you wait, be thankful. The fallen leaves in your yard are not meant to torment you. They are a gift. And they can make you happy.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Filling the Measure of Creation
I Just learned about a black flightless beetle that lives in a canyon west of Fresno. This canyon is the only place it lives. There are no other isolated remnants or small populations anywhere else in the world. This beetle’s existence is spent rummaging through wild grasses and fallen oak leaves looking for small insects to eat, in a small corner of the world occupying only a few square miles.
As an entomologist, this sort of discovery interests me a great deal. I get excited about finding small creatures in unexpected places. In fact I have spent over three decades doing just that. And one of the things that I have come to appreciate about life on this planet is that it is local. I don’t mean that animals and plants can’t occupy large areas. Of course they can - and they do. But when we find them in their preferred habitat it is in a specific place.
Take mountain lions, for example. They occur throughout Western North America (as well as Florida) and in parts of Central and South America. They have the widest distribution of any wild cat species in the world. Even so, how many wild mountain lions have you seen in your life? Even if you get into the mountains a lot, it is more than likely that you have never seen one. In the many years and countless ventures that I have made into cougar country I have only seen one. It was at tree line in the John Muir Wilderness and the experience was awe-inspiring. I will never forget it.
A fact I wish to consider is a simple one: the species of the Creation have geographical and ecological limits. Scientists may outline detailed distribution maps and theoretical species ranges but if you ever hope to see a specific one, you need to find the right habitat.
Years ago I traveled through most of the Western United States collecting small click beetles that live on the ground between small plants and cobbles near streams and rivers. I got to the point that I could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, which places would harbor these insects and which would not. It all depended on recognizing the type of habitat and understanding the requirements of the insects. Others thought I had a sixth sense about these things but mostly it came from a lot of experience.
The Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants indicate that living things were meant to fill the measure of their creation. What does this mean exactly? Perhaps it means that living things are meant to propagate their own kind. I think it also means that living things are meant to fill a particular niche. This may seem a bit awkward - combining Genesis with ecology. But the truth is that the created order was made with intricate and sophisticated care. And so I think that filling the measure of creation means, in part, that living things enjoy the places they were created to enjoy.
But there is more - something quite significant that we usually fail to consider: we ourselves are products of particular places. This may sound like an evolutionary argument. It is not. It is an argument much older than Darwin that considers humanity and other species to be intricately woven into the very nature of the cosmos. Just as a diamond forms when certain conditions of carbon, heat, pressure and time prevail - so we are inevitable when the proper conditions prevail. The cosmos was created (or has always existed) for us.
This was the thinking of Aristotle and of the Medieval schoolmen who saw nature as a great scale of being, where form and function were all important evidence of this cosmic design. Since Darwin this understanding has been enlarged by D’arcy Wentworth Thompson (in his On Growth and Form first published in 1942) and more recently by Michael Denton (in Nature’s Destiny).
Thompson’s volume runs to over a thousand pages filled with example after example of how growth and form conform to an inevitable nature of life. “Still, all the while, like warp and woof, mechanism and teleology are interwoven together, and we must not cleave to the one nor despise the other; for their union is rooted in the very nature of totality.”
Denton’s insights stem from his research on the formation of red blood cells which he sees as epigenetic products. What he means by this is that the sum total of the genes involved are no where near sufficient, by themselves, to create red blood cells. They do create the required proteins but these proteins are essentially left on their own to continue the cascade of interconnected parts and processes that ultimately lead to a red blood cell. Denton argues that a similar situation exists for most (if not all) of the body’s processes.
“I am now quite convinced,” writes Denton, “that the discovery that protein folds are natural forms is only the beginning of what may turn out to be a major Platonic revision of biology, and an eventual relocation of biological order away from genes and mechanism and back into nature – where it resided before the Darwinian revolution.”
This perspective understands life as a physically necessary outcome of the created order. But if this is so, how do we explain the great diversity among individuals of a given species. Why, for example, do we all look so different?
Here the answer seems to be that we have built in to our genetic make-up an ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. It is a necessary part of inter-generational survival. This is how the Eskimo have become so different from the Kalahari bushmen - even though both are very human.
This is the Darwinian process of natural selection but I believe that it is much more restricted than Darwin (or his modern acolytes have) imagined. This ability to adapt is a process of joining us to a particular place. It is not a process of generating new species.
What I wish to make clear is that we are a part of the eternal order. And we are also part of the places our forefathers lived. We are both eternally intended and locally derived.
This should all be obvious but it seems that the decades of toiling against a materialistic (Darwinian) counter culture has inured many of us to the realities of place. The religious among us have been defining our natures in heavenly terms even as we discount the fallen physical world we now inhabit. This is a mistake. Who we are has much to do with where we live - both now and in the future.
Yet there is more, I think a lot more, to filling the measure of creation. In our fallen world, for example, most living things are kept from growing in to their full potential. We see this when we notice a beautiful maple tree or dogwood in full bloom in our neighbor’s yard. With proper care these impressive trees become fuller, healthier, and much more attractive than the same kinds of trees growing wild in the forest. It is really remarkable what a capable gardener can do. Yet the sad implication is that there is potential in living things that never gets realized because there is no master gardener to bring it out.
How can anything fill the measure of its creation that fails to realize its own potential? I don’t think it can. The sad reality is that in our fallen world, very few opportunities exist for any individual of any species (humans included) to live to its potential. Consider the tangled bank of a stream (to use Darwin’s famous example) containing hundreds of plants all competing with each other for space, for limited nutrients and for light. Most of the individuals in this habitat will be small and undernourished as they get pushed aside by a few dominant individuals.
Our competitive world is much the same. And just as no exceptions are made in a tangled bank for pretty flowers, tasty herbs, or healthy crops - hardly any exceptions are made for us either. Competition and a harsh world are the main things that count - and it’s the weeds that do the best.
Occasionally a seed will land in an opportune spot and develop fully. But this is an exception. For the rest of us there is really only one way to reach our potential: get planted in a garden.
Before there was “nature red in tooth and claw” there was a garden. Before our ancestors had to deal with weeds there was a garden. Before we had to deal with all the burdens of a fallen world there was a garden.
According to sacred literature plants and animals (even humans) once lived in a place of achievable potential. Not only did they live there, but this garden was prior to the world we experience here. Prior, that is, because it represents the true state of things. The Creation, after all, was made to reach the measure of its creation.
And yet here we are - living lives that find us less than we should be - living with other species living less than they can be. And the inevitable question becomes quite simply: how can we learn to garden?
A very big clue from the natural world is that a garden respects the reality of place. The stones, streams, trees, or any number of other native elements are all used. The goal is to keep things real - and remember, a garden is real. In fact our garden is more real than its fallen counterpart. It represents our true potential.
Another important part of a garden is the gardener. But not any hired hand will do. A gardener that knows the potential of his garden is rare indeed. In fact such a person does not exist in a fallen world of limited perspective - at least we can’t see Him. A hired hand may learn useful things. He may learn how to prune roses, or that blueberries prefer pine mulches, or that impatiens want just the right amount of sun. But how does he plan for the unexpected disease, for fires, or for the vagrant rabbit let in through the open gate?
Clearly, no hired hand will do. But all is not lost. We may not live in our garden yet but we can work on it even so. We can learn to love a place and learn the needs of its living things – even discovering that some places are meant for us as a land of our inheritance. This created order was meant to be diverse and sustainable. It is also a place where it is possible for us to thrive if we can learn to live as we were meant to live. And when we get proficient at this we can start to understand ourselves a little better and the true nature of our potential. Of course we may need a little help from somebody who knows more about this than we do. But the inklings are there. And who’s to say that we can’t learn to garden with His help?
References:
Denton, Michael J. 2004. An Anti-Darwinian Intellectual Journey; in, William A. Dembski ed. Uncommon Dissent, Intellectuals who find Darwinism Unconvincing. ISI Books, Wilmington, DE. Denton’s quote is on page 174.
Denton, Michael J. 1998. Nature’s Destiny, How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. The Free Press.
Thompson, D’Arcy W. 1992. On Growth and Form. Dover Publications Inc., New York. Quotation is from page 7.
As an entomologist, this sort of discovery interests me a great deal. I get excited about finding small creatures in unexpected places. In fact I have spent over three decades doing just that. And one of the things that I have come to appreciate about life on this planet is that it is local. I don’t mean that animals and plants can’t occupy large areas. Of course they can - and they do. But when we find them in their preferred habitat it is in a specific place.
Take mountain lions, for example. They occur throughout Western North America (as well as Florida) and in parts of Central and South America. They have the widest distribution of any wild cat species in the world. Even so, how many wild mountain lions have you seen in your life? Even if you get into the mountains a lot, it is more than likely that you have never seen one. In the many years and countless ventures that I have made into cougar country I have only seen one. It was at tree line in the John Muir Wilderness and the experience was awe-inspiring. I will never forget it.
A fact I wish to consider is a simple one: the species of the Creation have geographical and ecological limits. Scientists may outline detailed distribution maps and theoretical species ranges but if you ever hope to see a specific one, you need to find the right habitat.
Years ago I traveled through most of the Western United States collecting small click beetles that live on the ground between small plants and cobbles near streams and rivers. I got to the point that I could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, which places would harbor these insects and which would not. It all depended on recognizing the type of habitat and understanding the requirements of the insects. Others thought I had a sixth sense about these things but mostly it came from a lot of experience.
The Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants indicate that living things were meant to fill the measure of their creation. What does this mean exactly? Perhaps it means that living things are meant to propagate their own kind. I think it also means that living things are meant to fill a particular niche. This may seem a bit awkward - combining Genesis with ecology. But the truth is that the created order was made with intricate and sophisticated care. And so I think that filling the measure of creation means, in part, that living things enjoy the places they were created to enjoy.
But there is more - something quite significant that we usually fail to consider: we ourselves are products of particular places. This may sound like an evolutionary argument. It is not. It is an argument much older than Darwin that considers humanity and other species to be intricately woven into the very nature of the cosmos. Just as a diamond forms when certain conditions of carbon, heat, pressure and time prevail - so we are inevitable when the proper conditions prevail. The cosmos was created (or has always existed) for us.
This was the thinking of Aristotle and of the Medieval schoolmen who saw nature as a great scale of being, where form and function were all important evidence of this cosmic design. Since Darwin this understanding has been enlarged by D’arcy Wentworth Thompson (in his On Growth and Form first published in 1942) and more recently by Michael Denton (in Nature’s Destiny).
Thompson’s volume runs to over a thousand pages filled with example after example of how growth and form conform to an inevitable nature of life. “Still, all the while, like warp and woof, mechanism and teleology are interwoven together, and we must not cleave to the one nor despise the other; for their union is rooted in the very nature of totality.”
Denton’s insights stem from his research on the formation of red blood cells which he sees as epigenetic products. What he means by this is that the sum total of the genes involved are no where near sufficient, by themselves, to create red blood cells. They do create the required proteins but these proteins are essentially left on their own to continue the cascade of interconnected parts and processes that ultimately lead to a red blood cell. Denton argues that a similar situation exists for most (if not all) of the body’s processes.
“I am now quite convinced,” writes Denton, “that the discovery that protein folds are natural forms is only the beginning of what may turn out to be a major Platonic revision of biology, and an eventual relocation of biological order away from genes and mechanism and back into nature – where it resided before the Darwinian revolution.”
This perspective understands life as a physically necessary outcome of the created order. But if this is so, how do we explain the great diversity among individuals of a given species. Why, for example, do we all look so different?
Here the answer seems to be that we have built in to our genetic make-up an ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. It is a necessary part of inter-generational survival. This is how the Eskimo have become so different from the Kalahari bushmen - even though both are very human.
This is the Darwinian process of natural selection but I believe that it is much more restricted than Darwin (or his modern acolytes have) imagined. This ability to adapt is a process of joining us to a particular place. It is not a process of generating new species.
What I wish to make clear is that we are a part of the eternal order. And we are also part of the places our forefathers lived. We are both eternally intended and locally derived.
This should all be obvious but it seems that the decades of toiling against a materialistic (Darwinian) counter culture has inured many of us to the realities of place. The religious among us have been defining our natures in heavenly terms even as we discount the fallen physical world we now inhabit. This is a mistake. Who we are has much to do with where we live - both now and in the future.
Yet there is more, I think a lot more, to filling the measure of creation. In our fallen world, for example, most living things are kept from growing in to their full potential. We see this when we notice a beautiful maple tree or dogwood in full bloom in our neighbor’s yard. With proper care these impressive trees become fuller, healthier, and much more attractive than the same kinds of trees growing wild in the forest. It is really remarkable what a capable gardener can do. Yet the sad implication is that there is potential in living things that never gets realized because there is no master gardener to bring it out.
How can anything fill the measure of its creation that fails to realize its own potential? I don’t think it can. The sad reality is that in our fallen world, very few opportunities exist for any individual of any species (humans included) to live to its potential. Consider the tangled bank of a stream (to use Darwin’s famous example) containing hundreds of plants all competing with each other for space, for limited nutrients and for light. Most of the individuals in this habitat will be small and undernourished as they get pushed aside by a few dominant individuals.
Our competitive world is much the same. And just as no exceptions are made in a tangled bank for pretty flowers, tasty herbs, or healthy crops - hardly any exceptions are made for us either. Competition and a harsh world are the main things that count - and it’s the weeds that do the best.
Occasionally a seed will land in an opportune spot and develop fully. But this is an exception. For the rest of us there is really only one way to reach our potential: get planted in a garden.
Before there was “nature red in tooth and claw” there was a garden. Before our ancestors had to deal with weeds there was a garden. Before we had to deal with all the burdens of a fallen world there was a garden.
According to sacred literature plants and animals (even humans) once lived in a place of achievable potential. Not only did they live there, but this garden was prior to the world we experience here. Prior, that is, because it represents the true state of things. The Creation, after all, was made to reach the measure of its creation.
And yet here we are - living lives that find us less than we should be - living with other species living less than they can be. And the inevitable question becomes quite simply: how can we learn to garden?
A very big clue from the natural world is that a garden respects the reality of place. The stones, streams, trees, or any number of other native elements are all used. The goal is to keep things real - and remember, a garden is real. In fact our garden is more real than its fallen counterpart. It represents our true potential.
Another important part of a garden is the gardener. But not any hired hand will do. A gardener that knows the potential of his garden is rare indeed. In fact such a person does not exist in a fallen world of limited perspective - at least we can’t see Him. A hired hand may learn useful things. He may learn how to prune roses, or that blueberries prefer pine mulches, or that impatiens want just the right amount of sun. But how does he plan for the unexpected disease, for fires, or for the vagrant rabbit let in through the open gate?
Clearly, no hired hand will do. But all is not lost. We may not live in our garden yet but we can work on it even so. We can learn to love a place and learn the needs of its living things – even discovering that some places are meant for us as a land of our inheritance. This created order was meant to be diverse and sustainable. It is also a place where it is possible for us to thrive if we can learn to live as we were meant to live. And when we get proficient at this we can start to understand ourselves a little better and the true nature of our potential. Of course we may need a little help from somebody who knows more about this than we do. But the inklings are there. And who’s to say that we can’t learn to garden with His help?
References:
Denton, Michael J. 2004. An Anti-Darwinian Intellectual Journey; in, William A. Dembski ed. Uncommon Dissent, Intellectuals who find Darwinism Unconvincing. ISI Books, Wilmington, DE. Denton’s quote is on page 174.
Denton, Michael J. 1998. Nature’s Destiny, How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. The Free Press.
Thompson, D’Arcy W. 1992. On Growth and Form. Dover Publications Inc., New York. Quotation is from page 7.
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