All-too-common-dissent finds another crazy creationist engineer. This one opens a molecular biology and genetics text, discovers that it doesn’t talk about “Darwinism” (not surprising), and concludes that biology doesn’t need evolution.
My hypothesis is that the field of molecular biology is simply not understood by the majority of biologists and thus pretty secure from rational debate by laymen. By claiming that this discipline (which they probably don’t understand either) proves Darwinism and that Darwinism is vital to understanding molecular biology, the Creationists can be silenced, humiliated and put in their place by simply invoking superior knowledge.
This is a rather extravagant claim coming from someone who knows no biology and who’s impression of the field is derived from one specialist text that I suspect he didn’t understand. I’d argue the other way: that there’s a trend towards emphasizing molecular biology at the expense of other aspects of biology in undergraduate education. However, even so, it’s extremely silly to claim that molecular biology isn’t being driven in substantial part by evolutionary ideas, or that molecular biology isn’t providing huge amounts of new information in support of evolution.
I don’t need to say more—Doppelganger piles on.
Off topic, but debate currently residing on the bbc website on atheism v. religion. 100 points for anyone who can find a remotely original idea. I especially like the person who has ripped off Pascal’s wager and presented it vainly as their own.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6199716.stm
I really, really hate when they do that. What is it that possesses other engineers to start discussing topics outside their field as if they know something about them? Is it just plain theistic hubris or is this a conscious tactic, as if to say, “This guy is an engineer, if he can’t understand it then nobody can!” or because they can’t find any actual biologists to push their crap? Or, the possibility that bothers me, is there something endemic to engineering that inspires or encourages this kind of lunacy?
I’d think if anybody would be capable of seeing the lie in intelligent design creationism, it’s someone whose stock and trade is design. Because, bloody Hell, biological systems don’t look like the products of a top-down design. At all. The more you look into it, the more you see the bottom-up growth of complexity predicted by evolutionary theory.
I’m nervous, I start Intro to Engineering next semester, and I have nightmare visions of waking up one morning, seeing that a tornado failed to materialize and assemble various office supplies into completed homework by “random chance” and suffer irrepairable cognitive damage.
Is that how it works? Wait, I forgot, Salem’s Hypothesis hasn’t graduated to Law status yet, has it? There’s still hope!
I wish all these moronic engineers would stop making my profession look foolish. I assure you that most engineers stick to tackling their problems and designing stuff, and hardly think at all about ID or theism. But there is something about engineers that make them act like experts in everything, so occasionally we go off and make fools of ourselves. The thing that baffles me is that most engineers also have the feeling that, given the time and money, we can solve any problem, so ID is a strangely defeatist position for any self-respecting engineer to assume.
Yup, typical creationist: “I din’t unnerstand it, therefore nobody else does either.” Oh fundies, when will you learn?
It’s true that biological research can get very specialized and it’s easy to immerse yourself in one narrow field of study, being barely familiar with others. But in my experience, that’s been a tiny minority of scientists. Who hasn’t studied and grasped at least the very basics of molecular biology? Is there any subfield where at least a passing knowledge won’t enhance your understanding of your subject? Has this guy ever even met a biologist?
I remember when Darwin’s Black Box first came out, and some ID supporter was trying to flog it in my college’s bio department. My advisor (a biophysicist) and her husband (a freshwater ecologist) were able to rattle off, offhand, some of the research into immunology and the blood clotting cascade that Behe conveniently “overlooked.”
Your Royal Aardvarkness,
Perhaps we need to start up a foundation, like “Engineers Against Creationism” or something or the sort, to counteract all this wacky insanity.
For what it’s worth, I think there’s a generation gap at play. I strongly suspect that most of these know-it-all creationgineers are towards the senile end of the age spectrum. Certainly, none of my peers in college espoused creationist views, though I’ll admit it also wasn’t particularly a common subject for discussion, either.
Paul wrote:
“it’s extremely silly to claim that molecular biology isn’t being driven in substantial part by evolutionary ideas, or that molecular biology isn’t providing huge amounts of new information in support of evolution.”
Last of the true believers
Have you grown weary all alone?
You could go home again…home again…home
Last of the true believers
You pack your things and go back home
You could go home again…home again…home
-Nanci Griffith
Starting a foundation would be a good idea. Especially if it accepts donations and I skim a little off the top. I could seriously use some more money…
When I was at school, I didn’t hear of any creationist engineers, but there were quite a few theists (I couldn’t say if they were more common in engineering or in biology), and a few denied global warming, especially some of the older ones, profs, etc. I don’t know what that was about.
As an engineer, allow me to continue to pile on to this idiot. We engineers often do have the problem of assuming expertise outside our experience, which I endeavor to avoid, because nothing pisses me off like a loudmouth with nothing useful to say.
One reason for the frequency of engineering idiots, I think, is that many engineers are very, very conservative – they want to work for large companies, they’re very straight-laced.
Josh: One of my floormates freshman year (2004-05) was a creationist engineer, and we had frequent arguments that usually ended with me saying, ‘As someone who wants to use scientific knowledge to profit, you certainly have no understanding of the scientific method.’ He even talked about all the scientists who had gone on record denying evolution. After I mentioned Project Steve, it made absolutely no difference.
Don’t worry, though, Fox1. Engineering school won’t make you into a moron. There are just a few to many closed-minded morons in engineering school.
I’ll confess to having worked in the past for a British magazine that publishes much woo under the banner of ‘independent thinking’; I had to deal with the mailbag, and two trends soon became obvious. First off, there are a more women out there than you’d expect who think they had some kind of psychic link to Freddie Mercury; and secondly, there is a veritable army of completely insane engineers out there, each with their own particular take on The Ultimate Secret Of The Universe.
If you’re a British citizen or resident in the UK you can sign a new e-petition against attempts by creationist groups such as the ill-named “Truth in Science” to infiltrate the science class.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/NoCreSciEd/
I see your ‘wacky engineers’ and raise you a layman who doesn’t like them, scientists, or architects. From yesterday’s copy of my local paper…
I read with great interest Jim Fisher’s editorial, “Ask nation’s science arbiter to settle fish debate” [Nov. 26]. I only see one small problem, maybe two. First of all, scientists, architects and engineers can be like whores and prostitutes. They would use the last bag of cement and the last piece of rebar to build a bridge to the moon even if no one wanted it, and they would try to charge a toll to use it.
Jim forgets or ignores one of the great lessons of mankind. Nazi Germany had the world’s greatest team of scientists and engineers, and look what they did. Do I need to go further? Would he let them solve the fish problem or any other problem?
May I suggest to you, in my opinion, the scientists who want to breach the dams to save the fish and stop progress in the name of the environment, ozone holes, and such are the losers. They didn’t do their homework in college. They drank too much beer, chased too many young lasses, and are now trying to sell some phony theory because they aren’t smart enough to make a living the honest way.
They are going to make it by spreading fear. They need to go back to college and this time learn something.
Jim, allow me to make a suggestion: Let a bunch of farmers solve the fish problem.
Where would I start? I just can’t decide how a response to this, this thing, can be written. Can I say ‘demented fuckwit’ in a newspaper?
Do we get T-Shirts? Secret handshake? I at least want a little pin that has an integration symbol stabbed through the heart of ID.
The engineering department of the company I work for is extremely racially diverse, so there tends to be a clash of religions here, stretching from Atheist to Christian / Jehovah’s Witness / Islamic / Hindu / Wiccan and who knows what else. (No Scientologists that I can tell.) Attitudes stretch from liberal to conservative. Out of 200 engineers, there are at least 20-30 who are non-believers.
We did have two really whacked electrical engineers – one who was sure that he could disprove the Conservation of Energy, and he was going to build a device to do so just as soon as he saved up the money. (He kept getting fired from various jobs – so he never had enough money. I hear he’s designing safety systems for helicopters now.)
The second wacky engineer we got never made it past the probationary period – it wasn’t just that he was a true believer in UFOs, Bigfoot, Conspiracy theories and all that other ‘black helicopter’ stuff – the real problem is that he kept cornering people in their cubes and arguing why they were wrong to NOT believe in such woo! He did this instead of actually working, so we fired him for non-preformance.
I think that Engineering wackiness comes from the instilled belief that problems have solutions, which is applied generally to the rest of the world as, “ALL problems can be solved.”
“Goddidit” makes ROI calculations so very simple.
This is purely anecdotal, but: for the past two years I’ve been working with some 30 physicists and engineers (after a decade+ in biochemistry and molecular biology) and I have a strong impression they tend to be more (often) religious than biologists. I speculate that crass reductionism and determinism such as they are used to are more conducive to religious absolutism, or at least more tolerant of it…
Posted at All-Too-Common Dissent, maybe worth repeating here:
“Engineers are paid to do Intelligent Design,” the guy sez. Actually, several hard-nosed engineering types of my acquaintance employed by the Department of Defense are paid to do genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming. They apply the insight of natural selection to designing the machines and making the logistical arrangements which keep your homeland safe. So don’t knock natural selection.
(As an aside, remember that on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was destroyed by theistic creationists who hate evolution. Every time you advocate “intelligent design”, the terrorists win.
(You think I’m joking?)
Oh, and a word to the wise: anyone who uses the word “Darwinism” to stand for the entirety of modern evolutionary biology reveals that they have been indoctrinated by creationist propaganda. Yes, we like Darwin. We know he figured out more about the world than most people before or since. He had a bright idea which advanced our civilization closer to truth than almost any other discovery made by the human mind. Nevertheless, biology did not stop when he died.
Modern biologists use the word “Darwinism” in a restricted, historical sense. It describes the state of knowledge we had in Darwin’s time, and sometimes, we use it to describe people who in the modern debates over this or that detail of biology take an old-fashioned stance. Never does it ever mean the whole of biology.
Creationists, including those of the Intelligent Design variety, love to use the word “Darwinism” because it relegates the well-founded ideas of modern biology informed by decades of careful observation to a belief, something one holds on faith. It’s a put-down, calculated to appeal to the masses. Perhaps they cannot conceive of any other way of life, and honestly fail to grasp the difference between a thing one believes and an idea one understands. Or perhaps it is merely a propaganda trick.
Whatever your beliefs, you’ll get more respect if you stop talking like a caricature of the adversary.
I bet most biologists are molecular biologists these days.
It would have had, had it not thrown the Jews out. One word: Einstein.
I bet most biologists are molecular biologists these days.
It would have had, had it not thrown the Jews out. One word: Einstein.
That’s because engineers recognise “E-Meters” for what they really are. ;)
Quickly! To Cafepress!
Yup, typical creationist: “I din’t unnerstand it, therefore nobody else does either.” Oh fundies, when will you learn?
Posted by: minimalist
Didn’t you know that creationists are smarter than god? If they don’t understand it there isn’t a chance that he would you see.
Sign me up…
One note of caution required here, though: this is about the ramblings of a random self-identified engineer on the Internets that we know only as “Looney”. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m going to refrain from calling it a “data point”.
>> Perhaps we need to start up a foundation, like “Engineers Against Creationism” or something or the sort, to counteract all this wacky insanity. >>
You’d have to come up with another title. The acronym “EAC” is already taken.
— CV
Modern biologists use the word “Darwinism” in a restricted, historical sense. It describes the state of knowledge we had in Darwin’s time, and sometimes, we use it to describe people who in the modern debates over this or that detail of biology take an old-fashioned stance.
I (who am neither a modern biologist nor even close) have at times in the past referred to Darwinian evolution as a way of distinguishing the “random mutation plus natural selection” theory from others like Lamarckian or theistically directed evolution.
Is there a better distinguishing phrase that I might use in the future? I’m guess this isn’t a problem that biologists have to deal with, any more than mathematicians need a phrase for “number theory that isn’t numerology”. Still, it would be useful to have such a verbal shorthand when talking to people whose understanding of biology is even less refined than mine.
Millimeter Wave: I understand your reservation, but it’s a real phenomenon. There are a significant number of engineers counted among the ranks of evolution deniers. Whether engineers are demographically more likely to be creationists is an open question, and one we have no data for, however creationist engineers tend to abuse the “I’m an engineer, I know science” argument from (false) authority heavily enough that it makes sense to form a counter-movement.
Sign me up for Engineers Against Creationism, or whatever name gets decided on to get a good Acronym.
Painting with a very broad brush, I think the difference between scientists and engineers, is that scientists are fundamentally trying to figure out the reasons behind why things happen, while engineers are concerned with the application. My best anecdote for this (yeah, yeah, I know, anecdote <> evidence) comes from my senior year studying Aerospace Engineering. A group of us students were having an after class discussion with a professor. The professor asked us what created lift. Every other student besides me parrotted that old misconception about the top surface of a wing being longer than the bottom surface. Seniors! And this is one of the most fundamental phenomena that allows a plane to fly. But they didn’t really need to know the why, since they can just go look up the NACA tables listing lift and drag coefficients. Basically, engineering doesn’t foster the same mindset to question everything that science does.
As to engineers thinking that they’re experts outside of their field – well, earning an engineering degree is pretty hard. Couple this with the fact that when you take the required courses outside of engineering, the 100/200 level courses that you take tend to be a whole lot easier than the 100/200 level courses that were required for your major, and you get the idea that other fields must be pretty easy. And I don’t think engineers are alone in this. I think doctors and lawyers also have a bad habit of assuming competence outside their actual areas of expertise, even when they know very little about that field.
Like roystgnr, I’ve also used the term “Darwinian” to differentiate from ideas like “Lamarckian.” I do the same thing with “Newtonian” physics. I think it’s just human nature to use people’s names to designate concepts, even if there’s an understanding that the concept has changed somewhat from what the person originally proposed.
There seems to be a certain arrogance among those schooled in the physical sciences, such as engineers, that makes them think thier more knowledgable then other folks.
Thanks a lot, Calladus: Now I’m too scared to ever ride in a helicopter.
Sign me up. I don’t have a name, but I might have a slogan. “What sort of intelligent designer would put a toxic waste disposal chute through a recreational area?” (To take the punchline from a joke I heard some years ago.)
Anyway, I have another good one about Engineers. I’m an atheist engineer, who also enjoyed science quite a bit in school. So, I still keep track of things in the field, as much as my limited understanding will allow.
Anyway, some of you may remember, a few years ago, a 7 year old girl, and her father, were attempting to fly across the country. In an effort to make her the youngest to ever do so. I can’t remember the airport it happened, but on take-off, during bad weather, she crashed the plane and both were killed.
We were discussing it at work, one day soonafter, and one of the engineers (and I use the term loosely for other reasons), said “Well, they shouldn’t have taken off with ice on the wings.”
Since it happened in a Summer month (or at least during a warmer month, I can’t recall the exact date), I was confused. “I didn’t hear about any ice. I only heard about a bad storm.”
He proceeded, much to my surprise, to base his assumption on the hail that was falling. Well, we got in a brief argument, because I had and have since, seen hail falling in August. I explained how updrafts lifting the water droplets into the cold air causes the ice to form, until it gets to heavy and then it falls. It keeps doing this, until it gets to heavy for the updraft, etc…
By this point, several people had gathered around to hear our tangential argument, the initial reason being long forgotten. Finally, he asked where I had learned about how hail formed. My response? “Elementary school!”
This is the same guy who asked how to spell wheelbarrow, and when I told him, he said I didn’t know what I was talking about because everyone pronounces it “Wheelbarrel”. A consulation of a dictionary later, he was very quiet for the rest of the afternoon.
-Berlzebub
I don’t have any data which shows whether engineers are more or less likely than scientists to be religious loons either, and I’m also reasonably sure that nobody else has any data either way (anybody have anything?).
It does strike me as a little strange, though, that this notion seems to have taken hold despite the technical leading lights of the IDiot movement being a mathematician and a microbiologist. What gives? I don’t think anybody would conclude that mathematicians and microbiologists have a tendency to be IDiots.
I don’t disagree about the need for a counter movement though, whether the need is a real one or merely a perception problem. Like I said, sign me up…
Aww, crap, people are actually liking my idea? I might actually have to do something about it! When I get home from work, maybe…
I do have an idea for a project, but I don’t want to discuss it just in case I utterly fail to follow through. ;) Anybody who’s interested is welcome to e-mail me at ‘furtim@gmail.com’, and I’ll let them know when I come up with something.
Funny, you just named the other two primary contingents among the ID supporters… Although MW is right that the primary ID pushers are a mathematician and a microbiologist. Maybe those fields don’t get painted with the ID brush because they’re demonstrably bad at math and biology, respectively.
what scares me most is that the moron keeps replying in the comments. they amount to little more than putting ones fingers in their ears and going “la la la, i’m smarter than you. la la la!”
seriously, you should see his comments. they burn so bad!
MW: go here for an old (1982) example of an engineer complaining about other engineers leading the scientific creationist movement. While not prevalent among the top IDiots, engineers were at the forefront of these earlier creationists, eg Henry Morris and his son John (both civil engineers, I’m ashamed to admit). As far as the actual number of engineers involved then as opposed to now, I couldn’t guess.
My impression was that everytime I amplified plasmid by innoculating DH5alphas in LB/Amp I was observing (un)natural selection. I’m glad this so-called “engineer” enlightened me as to how I was wrong.
Praise Jeebus.
I knew Charlie Wagner would show up in this thread. The opening paras at Doppleganger’s sounded just like him.
Y’know, I’m an engineer. My wife is a biologist. I can crack open one of her journals and understand what she does quite well, and I know it has nothing to do with “engineering” in the traditional sense. The looney PZ brought us is just intellectually lazy.
King Aardvark,
yes, I know there is a perception that engineers are somehow particularly susceptible to religious stupidity syndrome (although, interestingly, I never heard of it before I moved to the US), I just don’t know if that has ever been shown to be real. It’s certainly contrary to my own experience, but I’ve never seen any data that would indicate one way or the other.
I too am embarrassed by my fellow engineers when stuff like this happens. I think that it’s a combination of the fact that engineering is hard, widely applicable, generally respected by society, and can pay quite well. What you end up with is people who feel like intellectual rock stars because that’s how a lot of people and businesses treat them. I suppose the same can be said for doctors and lawyers, who often end up a close second behind engineers in the field of pontificating outside their fields.
I try very hard to avoid falling into the trap, but I’m sure I fail. I was lucky enough to spend most of my college days doing internships with a major government research lab, so I was constantly surrounded by people who were a lot more experienced and quite a bit smarter than I am. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like being put in your place by the person who wrote the textbooks you used in school. It’s good to be reminded that you’re not always the smartest guy in the room, and even if you are, you’re almost never the one with the most knowledge in any random field.
by the way, I’m trying to figure out what this “Looney” guy actually does…
In his comments he says that he designs genetic algorithms, and also says that he designs engineering design tools (ie some kind of CAD). He also says that genetic algorithms don’t work very well (I could add a snarky comment here, but I think it might be redundant).
They certainly seem to have failed in his case. ;)
“Aww, crap, people are actually liking my idea? I might actually have to do something about it! When I get home from work, maybe…”
Done and Done.
There is a pre-existing group of Scientists and Engineers for America. You can find them at http://www.sefora.org
Their demands? Policy should be made based on science and not ideology; the government should check credentials before hiring people as administrators of science advisory boards or science/engineering government departments, that science education should be based on science, etc.
Check it out.
This is a recurring theme, so I tend to believe there may be an observation here. But I’m not sure it is the Salem hypothesis. What one can possibly see, before and after the advent of the web, is that engineers may be a larger part of kookdoom than the norm. As I have worked as an engineer too, at the very least I have an interest not to fall into that trap. :-)
My thinking so far is that there are at least two reasons for this.
Engineers or ‘engineers’ of old tried to sell new techniques, not always working or even seriously meant (earthing free radicals, anyone?), into old or new markets. That may be a recipe to become known for making ludicrous claims more than most.
But a larger reason seems to me to be the educational and working situation engineers face. They are pushed into situations where they may need to fast learn and master new problems. If they are lucky no one has solved a similar problem before. If they are even more lucky their group need to develop new methods or, FSM forbid, new technology. An engineer may need a healthy portion of hubris.
Which is fine. Except when that experience is translated into fields where they don’t get feedback from tests. That is what makes such methods as an informed shotgun approach workable.
A further problem may be that ad hoc explanations works fine in shotgun, and they even don’t need to be correct. Often failures tells you that the ad hoc is in fact incorrect, but not always. So theory building of engineers may differ from theory building of others.
An example I can think of right now is mathematicians. Mathematicians may polish their axiom sets and basic examples for a long time to unleash a robust and powerful theory onto an unsuspecting world, or so I’ve heard on math blogs. Engineers often don’t work quite that way, for good reasons.
Possibly, I wouldn’t know. I have worked 5 years in biotech, where biochemistry is most often done by chemists. My impression on this limited dataset was that in turn they were more often religious than engineers.
This is a recurring theme, so I tend to believe there may be an observation here. But I’m not sure it is the Salem hypothesis. What one can possibly see, before and after the advent of the web, is that engineers may be a larger part of kookdoom than the norm. As I have worked as an engineer too, at the very least I have an interest not to fall into that trap. :-)
My thinking so far is that there are at least two reasons for this.
Engineers or ‘engineers’ of old tried to sell new techniques, not always working or even seriously meant (earthing free radicals, anyone?), into old or new markets. That may be a recipe to become known for making ludicrous claims more than most.
But a larger reason seems to me to be the educational and working situation engineers face. They are pushed into situations where they may need to fast learn and master new problems. If they are lucky no one has solved a similar problem before. If they are even more lucky their group need to develop new methods or, FSM forbid, new technology. An engineer may need a healthy portion of hubris.
Which is fine. Except when that experience is translated into fields where they don’t get feedback from tests. That is what makes such methods as an informed shotgun approach workable.
A further problem may be that ad hoc explanations works fine in shotgun, and they even don’t need to be correct. Often failures tells you that the ad hoc is in fact incorrect, but not always. So theory building of engineers may differ from theory building of others.
An example I can think of right now is mathematicians. Mathematicians may polish their axiom sets and basic examples for a long time to unleash a robust and powerful theory onto an unsuspecting world, or so I’ve heard on math blogs. Engineers often don’t work quite that way, for good reasons.
Possibly, I wouldn’t know. I have worked 5 years in biotech, where biochemistry is most often done by chemists. My impression on this limited dataset was that in turn they were more often religious than engineers.
Mike,
I’m not sure that Scientists and Engineers for America necessarily fits the bill. Not that it isn’t valuable or anything, but I don’t think it was exactly what was being discussed…
I actually completely forgot about SEfA. Although that’s not entirely my fault, is it? ;) They kinda slipped back under the radar after the initial announcements.
MW is right, though, in that it’s a bit different from what I’m discussing. SEfA is a political action group, which is a great and necessary thing, but it’s not the same.
Well, if by “Scientist” one means someone who has a Ph.D. and does scientific research for a living, then it is obvious why there are more kooky engineers than scientists: there are, in total, a lot more engineers than scientists.
Also, as someone who has taught calculus to a lot of civil engineering students at a big state university, I have to say that I am very surprised that tunnels and bridges don’t collapse a lot more often than they do.
I work in an engineering office, and I suspect that quite a fair proportion of people who pursue a career in engineering do so because they want to be a part of science/engineering, but don’t want to have to learn about evolution, as it might endanger their faith in their religious beliefs. Engineering is a good career path to those who are afraid to engage the natural sciences.
FWIW, I’m guessing that the “crazy creationist engineer” was led to Schleif’s book by this comment. If so, I would ask him/her (if you’re reading this) to help DaveScot out with the matter he choked on – namely, the Helmstetter-Cooper model for bacterial DNA replication.
I work in an engineering office, and I suspect that quite a fair proportion of people who pursue a career in engineering do so because they want to be a part of science/engineering, but don’t want to have to learn about evolution, as it might endanger their faith in their religious beliefs. Engineering is a good career path to those who are afraid to engage the natural sciences.
This is also known as “engineer’s disease”, which is the pathologic belief that based upon a limited set of information you can learn absolutely everything about a system (and then possess absolute certitude about your ingenious new theory).
In this case, one biology textbook, and all molecular biologists now aren’t using evolution in their work.
This came as a big surprise to me, a molecular biologist, until I remembered “ooooh, he’s an engineer.” Then everything became ok again.
In this case, one crazy engineer, and all engineers now are crazy creationist kooks.
What was that about a pathologic belief that based upon a limited set of information you can learn absolutely everything about a system?
I’m favoring the hypothesis that Creationists who happen to be engineers are more outspoken about their engineerness. Why deal with presenting arguments when you can pretend that irrelevant things like credentials determine reality.
My 2 cents:
* The term “Darwinism” is sometimes accurately used to refer to Darwin’s evolutionary theory sans genetics (and indeed Darwin knew no genetics, having only an acute appreciation of inheritance). In the 1930’s, the “modern synthesis” in evolution was formed by Fisher, Haldane, and Wright (and Stebbins! Can’t forget plant evolution…), which incorporated particulate genetics explicitly (and even quantitatively). This was prior to DNA’s discovery about 1950, but the relationship of genes to DNA is still poorly understood although it’s a focus of modern “evo-devo” (evolutionary developmental biology).
For the evolutionary history of life (as contrasted to evolutionary dynamics) DNA/RNA sequencing created an entirely independent mass of data with which to compare organisms – and these data have overwhelmingly confirmed prior patterns based on appearances, with a few fascinating exceptions and also with much greater detail (think mtDNA lineage studies and even genealogical work).
…and:
Engineers are not scientists. Though there’s some superficial overlap of technical literacy, the thought processes differ fundamentally. Engineers apply known principles to intelligently design artifacts (lately including “unintelligent” evolution as one such principle for evolutionary algorithms). Scientists discover principles in natural systems, including the teleonomic systems of biology (such goal-oriented systems are now known not to require consciously intelligent design: evolution suffices). The process of discovery is not expected of engineers. Discovery is arguably among our most human of abilities – certainly among the most challenging.
I appreciate “American Scientist”‘s long-standing editorial emphasis on including engineering topics in its coverage, and it’s a worthy goal for this semi-popular publication – but the distinction is real. The resulting sociology is also.
JP:
Perhaps the collapse avoidance is a matter of faith? :-)
Of course one should never judge unexperienced people about future work. But I must confess that students are a special case. Wise from many course assistance hours, we had a saying: “Consumer goods can be made safe for children. With more effort it is possible to make equipment foolproof. But there is no way to construct it so a student will not break it.”
(The corollary was: “Fortunately foolproof is enough to stop scientists.” :-)
Nitpick: I agree with the overall idea, but this is wrong as stated. Experiments do allow one to learn mechanisms from limited data. So this is arguing for turtles all the way down. What you want to argue is probably that nature is limitless in possible behavior. That follows from Murphy’s law.
That Murphy was an engineer only supports your argument since it seems to be a reflection of his arrogance. ;-) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law )
JP:
Perhaps the collapse avoidance is a matter of faith? :-)
Of course one should never judge unexperienced people about future work. But I must confess that students are a special case. Wise from many course assistance hours, we had a saying: “Consumer goods can be made safe for children. With more effort it is possible to make equipment foolproof. But there is no way to construct it so a student will not break it.”
(The corollary was: “Fortunately foolproof is enough to stop scientists.” :-)
Nitpick: I agree with the overall idea, but this is wrong as stated. Experiments do allow one to learn mechanisms from limited data. So this is arguing for turtles all the way down. What you want to argue is probably that nature is limitless in possible behavior. That follows from Murphy’s law.
That Murphy was an engineer only supports your argument since it seems to be a reflection of his arrogance. ;-) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law )
thwaite:
I don’t agree. Perhaps you are thinking of designers, who may prefer to work with known technology and methods.
As I said above, in challenging situations there are less and less “known principles”. Engineers have made discoveries too, accidental or not. (Einstein worked as an engineer when he released his first published paper. :-) What they seldom do is work out all the consequences. They have other priorities.
thwaite:
I don’t agree. Perhaps you are thinking of designers, who may prefer to work with known technology and methods.
As I said above, in challenging situations there are less and less “known principles”. Engineers have made discoveries too, accidental or not. (Einstein worked as an engineer when he released his first published paper. :-) What they seldom do is work out all the consequences. They have other priorities.
-Joshua
Hell, I’m not even an engineer yet and I can already see it. While my main focus will probably be on vehicle emission measurement and control, since that’s what the company I have an amazingly good job with, and which is helping pay for my education based on a gentleperson’s agreement that I continue to work for them, does, I’m also very interested in biomimetics. This is, essentially, studying the anatomical and physiological (also sometimes behavioral) adaptations of organisms in an attempt to derive principles or observations that are useful in designing new and better artificial devices or systems. While this probably seems like it would produce a mindframe that would make one particularly vulnerable to ID woo, one of the things that’s always struck me in reading about biological adaptations is the suboptimal-ness of many of them, which to me strongly implies that they developed under the constraints of evolution rather than being designed top-down (one of the particularly stunning examples is the insect compound eye–I recall reading that if humans had compound eyes instead of our camera-type eyes, they would, in order to provide the same resolution, have to be roughly the size of soccer balls).
Millimetre Wave:
The point that I took away from it was not “he’s an engineer, and therefore a kook”, but “he’s not a molecular biologist, and therefore doesn’t understand the field he’s extrapolating on”.
I might be wrong, though.
Hi Torbjörn,
I’m wondering if our difference is that Europe commonly educates engineers more as we (the US) limit to scientists? There are distinct national cultures here. The US has no distinct credentialing for ‘designers’ and the term is used even more loosely than ‘scientist’ or ‘engineer’. As for Einstein, well, wasn’t he a frustrated scientist early on with no academic openings – doesn’t that sound familiar? – he took the patent-office engineering job as an expedient, if my vague recall is right.
Speaking of design, if evolutionary algorithms can be used for engineering tasks such as antennae design, and for aesthetic designs, I have to rethink my earlier statement that ‘discovery’ is the most human of abilities. Of course there are speculations (e.g. Cziko’s Chapter 9 here) that the psychology of discovery involves evolutionary combinatorics at some level, perhaps subconsciously, and that humans may have specialized in such protean creativity via sexual selection (what else…).
cheers,
Ron
I don’t quite agree with that. I made a comment above about engineers and scientists being different in general, but I don’t think it’s two distinct camps with only a superficial overlap. I think it’s more of a continuum, with engineers more towards one end, and scientists more towards the other, and a good deal of overlap in the middle. Yeah, there are those design engineers who don’t need to know any science – just look it up in Roarke, and there’s bound to be the equation that you need. But then there are also research engineers at universities and places like NASA, who really do care about the underlying mechanisms.
So, I do think there’s the potential for a greater proportion of engineers than scientists to be creationists, because of the different mindsets, but it sure would be nice to see some data on it.
BTW, in my above comment where I wrote “anecdote > evidence,” that should have been “anecdote <> evidence,” but it got messed up when the comment got posted.
This feeds into two of my pet peeves.
1) Far too many engineers are incredibly arrogant. Just because you can design a pump doesn’t mean that you know more about the heart than a cardiovascular specialist.
2) I think there’s too many taking the title of engineer. Just because you design software doesn’t make you an engineer. When you take the PE exam and pass it, then you’re an engineer but not until then. I find it thoroughly irritating that someone just plops the same title after their name that it cost me years of study, effort, and tens of thousands of dollars to earn.
Thinking of a name for the group, what about Anti-Creationist Engineers? That’d be ACE!
thwaite:
Yes, there could be cultural differences. No, I’m not an expert on educational cultures.
I did however work 2 years at a microelectronic plant in Texas (project for a european company, but an american plant) so I know that there are differences in what people do. A swedish engineer may do what scientists does in US, sure. The partitions are different and not so rigorous. There are pros and cons with this of course.
And there are indeed credentials for “industrial designer” and so on.
Yes. I couldn’t come up another good example right then.
But he had not come very far with his doctoral studies at the time of his first publication. “In 1900, Einstein was granted a teaching diploma by the Federal Polytechnic Institute. Einstein then submitted his first paper to be published … He obtained his doctorate under Alfred Kleiner at the University of Zürich after submitting his thesis “A new determination of molecular dimensions” (“Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen”) in 1905.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein )
BTW, interesting observation that genetic algorithms explorations may be called discoveries. I think you are correct. And if creativity is to come up with solutions, perhaps a fair bit from the original state, evolution is creative.
Humans could have better lateral width, though. Like taking a head of a woman and place it on a squid body. I think PZ would like that.
thwaite:
Yes, there could be cultural differences. No, I’m not an expert on educational cultures.
I did however work 2 years at a microelectronic plant in Texas (project for a european company, but an american plant) so I know that there are differences in what people do. A swedish engineer may do what scientists does in US, sure. The partitions are different and not so rigorous. There are pros and cons with this of course.
And there are indeed credentials for “industrial designer” and so on.
Yes. I couldn’t come up another good example right then.
But he had not come very far with his doctoral studies at the time of his first publication. “In 1900, Einstein was granted a teaching diploma by the Federal Polytechnic Institute. Einstein then submitted his first paper to be published … He obtained his doctorate under Alfred Kleiner at the University of Zürich after submitting his thesis “A new determination of molecular dimensions” (“Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen”) in 1905.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein )
BTW, interesting observation that genetic algorithms explorations may be called discoveries. I think you are correct. And if creativity is to come up with solutions, perhaps a fair bit from the original state, evolution is creative.
Humans could have better lateral width, though. Like taking a head of a woman and place it on a squid body. I think PZ would like that.
I spent some miserable years around people who mostly thought of themselves as “engineers”, some software, some hardware. I met so many people who embraced so many different brands of crankery that I can hardly begin to describe it. There were a zillion brands of Xian fundies, John Birchers, creationists, conspiracy nuts, white supremacists, global warming deniers, etc… I eventually decided that nothing these people said could be trusted if the topic wasn’t directly in their specialty.
What explains this? Especially since some of these people with a bit more education might have become scientists. I suspect a lot of it is simply science-envy. By attacking the scientific consensus on something you assert that you alone (along with your fellow kooks) are smarter than all those people with higher degrees. It’s a bizarre kind of ego-defense. The “Establishment” doesn’t crack down on it because most of it either doesn’t threaten the status quo or actively supports it.
Ha. I’m a professional software developer. I have always insisted, to friends. colleagues, employers, and all sundry that I am a software developer. Not a ‘software engineer’, and not an ‘engineer’. What good does it do? None. Friends. colleagues, employers, and all sundry refer to me as a ‘software engineer’ or an ‘engineer’, despite my best efforts. I’ll keep fighting that good fight, but the unnecessary and counterproductive conflation of our distinct professions will remain a fact of life.
Nope, that ones taken … by the creationists. (See Accelerated Christian Education.)
So, rebrand it! Hey if it worked for gays and pink triangles, why not?
Anyway, based on what I’ve seen of the creationist version, it may be Christian, but it’s neither accelerated or education.
commissarjs: That’s why in some places the title is restricted (like in Canada). I don’t know how exactly Microsoft gets away with the MCSE thing here though. Maybe they are just forbidden to expand the acronym.