A Way of Looking at Things -- 25: The Loss of a Hero

A Way of Looking at Things – No. 25: The Loss of a Hero

We all die. That, as the common man says, is as predictable as taxes. But when a hero dies, it leaves a painful emptiness of which one is not prepared.

Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould died this past week. He has been important in my life ever since I first read him some thirty years ago in Nature magazine. He was a scientist who could write like an angel. I fell in love with his prose style, his sense of humor, his provocative views, and his relish for controversy.

Gould was an advocate of Darwinism when those of lesser courage condoned if they did not condemn creationists, who would interpret the Bible literally, and have man springing to life on this planet miraculously less than 10,000 years ago.

I have framed in my study his essay, which appeared in Time magazine (August 23, 1999), “Dorothy, It’s Really Oz,” which deals with the pro-creationist decision in Kansas to remove evolution from the state’s science curriculum. Gould quotes Dorothy from this story exclaiming, “They still call it Kansas, but I don’t think we’re in the real world anymore.” Gould writes in this essay:

As a paleontologist by training, and with abiding respect for religious traditions, I would raise three points to alleviate these worries (of science replacing religious training and faith):

First, no other Western nation that endured any similar movement, with any political clout, against evolution – a subject taught as fundamental, and without dispute, in all other countries that share our major sociocultural traditions.

Second, evolution is as well documented as any phenomena in science, as strongly as the earth’s revolution around the sun rather than visa versa. In this sense, we can call evolution a “fact.” (Science does not deal in certainty, so “fact” can only mean a proposition affirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse to without one’s provisional assent.)
The major argument advanced by the school board – that large-scale evolution must be dubious because the process has not been directly observed – smacks of absurdity and only reveals ignorance about the nature of science. Good science integrates observation with inference. No process that unfolds over such long stretches of time (mostly, in this case, before humans appeared), or at an infinitude (subatomic particles, for example), can be seen directly. If justification required eyewitness testimony, we would have no sciences of deep time – geology, no ancient human history either. (Should I believe Julius Caesar ever existed? The hard bony evidence for human evolution, described in the preceding pages (issue was devoted to evolution), surely exceeds our reliable documentation of Caesar’s life.)

Third, no factual discovery of science (statements about how nature “is”) can, in principle, lead us to ethical conclusions (how we “ought” to behave) or to convictions about intrinsic meaning (the “purpose” of our lives). These last two questions – and what more important inquiries could we make? – lie firmly in the domains of religion, philosophy and humanistic study. Science and religion should be equal, mutually respecting partners, each the master of its own domain, and with each domain vital to human life in a different way.

Why get sad over this latest episode in the long, sad history of American anti-intellectualism? Let me suggest that, as patriotic Americans, we should cringe in embarrassment that, at the dawn of a new, technological millennium, a jurisdiction in our heartland has opted to suppress one of the greatest triumphs of human discovery. Evolution is not a peripheral subject but the central organizing principle of biological science. No one who has not read the Bible or the Bard (Shakespeare) can be considered educated in Western traditions; so no one ignorant of evolution can understand science.

Dorothy followed her yellow brick road as it spiraled outward toward redemption and homecoming (to the true Kansas of our dreams and possibilities). The road of the newly adopted Kansas curriculum can only spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance. (Time, August 23, 1999, page 59)