[Centraal] WFL in de media

TT aangepsat en centraal gemaakt.

leuk bericht

Heeey leuk topicidee.

Tis en blijft een geweldig mooie discussie Evolutie vs Creationisme. Ik bewonder dan ook de manier waarop deze curatoren en dergelijke dit soort vragen op een goede manier aanpakken. Geen gelijk willen halen, maar rustig uitleggen waarom het toch echt evolutiebewijs is. En dat sommige mensen dat niet willen aanhoren, ach.. verspilde moeite moeten ze maar denken!

TOPINITIATIEF zowel dit topic, als de "evolutieleer-colleges"

"54 procent van de Amerikanen gelooft niet dat de mens afstamt van een andere diersoort."

Ik vind dat eigenlijk best zorgelijk. Maar als je het vergelijkt met sommige andere enquêtes die in Amerika zijn gehouden, valt het nog best mee.

Maar toch, het worden er dus blijkbaar steeds meer...

Tja, toen het Romeinse rijk over haar hoogtepunt heen was kwamen dit soort terugvallen in kunst, cultuur en wetenschap ook steeds meer voor.

How the penguin's life story inspired the US religious right

Antarctic family values: Is the emperor penguin an enemy of Darwin? America's surprise film hit was meant to be a nature documentary. Now it's a pawn in the war on evolutionary theory

David Smith
Sunday September 18, 2005
The Observer


It is an odyssey to rival Scott's in the Antarctic, albeit with a happier ending. Fierce snowstorms rage, icy blasts flick across the screen. March of the Penguins, an epic nature documentary with a cast of thousands, was the surprise usurper of summer blockbusters at the American box office and is tipped to be the hit family film in Britain this Christmas.
To many, it will be no more nor less than a life-affirming portrayal of Mother Nature, reminiscent of Sunday-evening television with Sir David Attenborough whispering from the undergrowth. To some, however, the mesmerising images of birds waddling, mating and nurturing their young have become cinema's most politically charged parable since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/1.

Conservatives in America claim to have seen God in the emperor penguin. They have rejoiced in the way the film shows penguins as monogamous upholders of traditional family values. They presumably welcomed the screenwriters' decision not to pursue arguments about climate change. They have even pointed to the heroically resourceful penguins - blinded by blizzards, buffeted by gales, yet winning against the odds - as proof of 'intelligent design', the religious belief system that aims to challenge Darwin's theory of evolution.

Audiences and critics of the £4.4 million French-made film have found themselves uplifted by the sight of emperor penguins trudging 70 miles, in single file, to their breeding ground during the harsh Antarctic winter in temperatures of -40C. The creatures' comical gait and tuxedo-like plumage have amused children, while their fortitude and tenderness in raising their offspring have had parents sighing in recognition. One reviewer gushed: 'It's impossible to watch the thousands of penguins huddled together against the icy Antarctic blasts ... without feeling a tug of anthropomorphic kinship.'

Now America's religious right has weighed in. Film critic Michael Medved was quoted by the New York Times calling it 'the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child-rearing'. Speaking of audiences in America's heartland who often feel snubbed by liberal Hollywood, he added: 'This is the first movie they've enjoyed since The Passion of the Christ. This is The Passion of the Penguins.'

As happened with Mel Gibson's Christian blockbuster, churches have block-booked cinemas and organised visits for their members. The 153 House Churches Network in Sidney, Ohio, runs a March of the Penguins Leadership Workshop after screenings of the film. Its website, www.lionsofgod.com, provides a form that can be downloaded and taken to the cinema. It advises: 'Please use the notebook, flashlight and pen provided to write down what God speaks to you.'

Ben Hunt, a minister at the network, said of the penguins' struggle for survival: 'Some of the circumstances they experienced seemed to parallel those of Christians. The penguin is falling behind, like some Christians are falling behind. The path changes every year, yet they find their way, like the Holy Spirit.'

A contributor to the Christian Science Monitor wrote: 'The penguins' way of life has illustrated to me some aspects of how God is parenting us.' On WorldNetDaily.com, a conservative website, an opponent of abortion wrote that the film 'verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it'. Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, told a conference of young Republicans: 'Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. The dedication of these birds is amazing.'

The 80-minute film - which grossed £37m in the US, the second-highest total by a documentary - movingly shows female penguins laying a single egg, then trekking back to the ocean to feed, while the males keep the eggs cradled on their feet, huddling together for warmth during a two-month vigil without food. The female must return in time to feed her hatchling for it to survive, at which point it is the starving male's turn to make the 70-mile trek to the sea.

Andrew Coffin, writing in the Christian publication World Magazine, said such miracles of nature were evidence that life is too complex to have arisen through Darwinian random selection: 'That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design. It's sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals. But it's also a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film.'

The only contradiction of the Bible in March of the Penguins is near the beginning, when the narrator says: 'For millions of years, they have made their home on the darkest, driest, windiest and coldest continent on earth. And they've done so pretty much alone.'

But the film's makers say they are strong believers in evolution, and its American distributors, Warner Independent Pictures and National Geographic Feature Films, insist that it is simply a tale about penguins. Laura Kim, a vice-president of Warner Independent, said: 'You know what? They're just birds.'

Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films, said: 'These penguins are model parents. What they go through to look after their children is phenomenal, and no parent who sees it will ever complain again about the school run. There are parallels with human nature and it is moving to see.'

Leipzig pointed out that this species of penguin, the emperor, is usually monogamous for a year, but not for life: the following year, it takes a different partner. He added: 'People read it into what they want. There are universal truths about parenting and bonding with offspring, but it's not a film with a political and social agenda. When we put the English-language version together, we never once had a discussion about social, religious or cultural points of view. We wanted to get the audience involved to follow the penguins' lives.'

The film's director, Luc Jaquet, a French biologist who shot 140 hours of footage on land and 30 hours underwater, added: 'It's obvious that global warming has an impact on the reproduction of the penguins. But much of public opinion appears insensitive to the dangers of global warming. We have to find other ways to communicate to people about it.'

Scientists in Britain, where the film will premiere at next month's London Film Festival, with general release in December, dismissed the intelligent design lobby's expropriation of the film. Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London and an atheist, said: 'I find it sad that people with intrinsically foolish viewpoints don't recognise this as a naturally beautiful film, but have to attach their absurd social agendas to it.

'The problem with intelligent design is that there is no conceivable observation in nature that can disprove the idea. It's not part of science, which is why scientists are not interested in it. A group of penguins standing upright looks like co-operation, but in fact the ones on the outside are struggling to get in and those on the inside are trying to stand their ground: it's a classic Darwinian struggle. The idea that the life of a penguin is any more beautiful than that of a malaria virus is absurd.

'Supporters of intelligent design think that if they see something they don't understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment.'

Penguins: the facts (and a joke)

There are 17 penguin species, of which the emperor is largest. Penguins have adapted to more habitats than any other animal, including the frozen wastes of Antarctica and the sandy beaches of Africa.

Penguins cannot fly but, shaped like a torpedo, they can swim about 15 miles per hour. They spend as much as 75 per cent of their time underwater, searching for food.

Navy pilots in the Falklands conflict reported that penguins craned their necks so far back to watch passing aircraft that they toppled over. The claim was later disproved by scientists.

Children's love of penguins owes much to the antics of the TV character Pingu.

There are several websites devoted to penguin jokes. Among them is http://monyscurry.tripod.com/pengfun.htm which provides the following:

A man driving a van spots a crashed truck, with penguins hopping on it, looking lost. He takes pity and loads them into his van.

The police see the van and pull it over. 'What's with the penguins?'

The man replies: 'I saw them on the road and I picked them up.' The policeman said: 'Take them to the zoo.' Later the policeman sees him driving past again with all the penguins in bathing suits.

'I thought I told you to take them to the zoo,' he says.

'I did,' said the driver. 'We had so much fun, that I'm taking them to the beach.'

http://observer.guardian.(...)6903,1572642,00.html

--------------------------------------

Opvallend hierin is de vanzelfsprekendheid waarmee ID-aanhangers de levensstijl van de pinguin gebruiken als argument voor hetgeen zij in geloven...het maakt hun zaak imo niet sterker. Aanames als bijvoorbeeld deze:

Andrew Coffin, writing in the Christian publication World Magazine, said such miracles of nature were evidence that life is too complex to have arisen through Darwinian random selection

Overigens lijkt het me een enorm mooie film

Published online: 21 September 2005; | doi:10.1038/news050921-6
Ants make 'devil's garden' of Eden
Ants use natural poison to kill all but their host plant.

Andreas von Bubnoff


Peruvian ants kill off unwanted plants with a lethal injection.
© Nature
Researchers have found an earthly cause for a phenomenon that Peruvian locals call 'devil's gardens' in the Amazonian rainforest. These gardens consist of just one type of tree (Duroia hirsuta). This is such an eerie and unusual sight in the otherwise diverse Amazon that locals presumed there to be a supernatural cause. But US researchers say it's ants, not the devil, that make this tree bloom.

The ants (Myrmelachista schumanni) live inside the trees' hollow stems, safe from predators and the environment. They kill all plants other than their host plant by injecting formic acid into the leaves. In this way, they help their host plant, and their own colony, to spread. Such gardens can hold more than 300 trees and millions of ants, and can be hundreds of years old.

"It's amazing that the ants exert so much control over their environment," says Deborah Gordon of Stanford University, California. "They create a single species stand of plants in one of the most diverse places on the planet."

They create a single species stand of plants in one of the most diverse places on the planet.

Deborah Gordon
Stanford University, California

Killer injections

Some previous studies have suggested that ants or the trees themselves were killing the surrounding plants, but no one could explain how. Now Megan Frederickson of Stanford University and her colleagues, including Gordon, report in Nature1 that the ants do it through injecting a natural poison.

The researchers planted saplings of a common Amazonian cedar tree (Cedrela odorata) inside an ant-infested forest. When they kept the ants away, the cedar trees thrived. But when ants had access to the young trees, the cedars all shed leaves after about five days.

It seems that the ants bite a hole in the leaves and deliver a droplet of formic acid from their abdomens. The plant's vascular system then spreads this acid throughout the entire plant. Within hours of the attack, brownish areas appear along the veins of its leaves.

"In hindsight it's obvious," says Susanne Renner of the University of Munich, Germany. She studied devil's gardens in Ecuador seven years ago, but was unable to explain how the ants killed the plants.

So happy together

Formic acid is very common among ants: about one-quarter of the 15,000 ant species produce it, says Jack Longino, an ant researcher at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Many ants use it to defend themselves against animal or insect attack. But this is the first time that ants have been seen using it as a herbicide, he adds.

The devil's garden relationship joins a growing list of partnerships between plants and ants. Some plants have evolved to grow food for resident ants, which protect their host in return. Other ants physically cut away at neighbouring vegetation to help their host plants spread.

But how can an ant tell whether a plant is the same species as its host or different? That's the next mystery Frederickson wants to solve. She also wants to see whether the ants can kill mature trees as well as saplings, and find out how widespread devil's gardens are in the Amazon.

--
De duivel verliest ook steeds meer terrein.

Overigens is http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/ ook een zeer leuke en leerzame rubriek

Over God en evolutie
«De hamvraag is: wat is de ultieme bron?»

Minister van Onderwijs Maria van der Hoeven wil hernieuwing van het debat over de evolutieleer. Haar inspirator is de fysicus Cees Dekker. Wat beweegt deze wetenschapper en gelovige?

DOOR MINA AMHIL EN JOERI BOOM

Het begint onschuldig. Cees Dekker wint in 2003 de Spinozaprijs, een prestigieuze onderscheiding voor wetenschappers, die hem wordt uitgereikt door de minister van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen Maria van der Hoeven. Het eerste contact wordt gelegd. Daarna wordt Dekker gevraagd zitting te nemen in een commissie die vergast wordt op een speech van de minister, waarin zij aanstipt geïnteresseerd te zijn in de relatie tussen religie en wetenschap. Dekker stuurt haar een e-mail met een uitnodiging om verder over dit onderwerp te spreken. Van der Hoeven gaat op zijn uitnodiging in en laat zich inspireren.
Er is veel over geschreven en gezegd. «Laat ik de mythe maar doorbreken. Ik heb één keer drie kwartier met minister Van der Hoeven gepraat. Dat is alles», zegt Dekker. «Tijdens het gesprek hadden we het over verschillende zaken. Hoe interpreteren verschillende geloofsgroepen in dit land hun godsdienst? Hoe vinden jonge moslims hun weg in de wetenschap? Hoe is de relatie tussen geloof en wetenschap? En we hadden het over het begrip toeval. Nee, het ging niet alléén over Intelligent Design.»
Zo werd een sneeuwbal aan het rollen gebracht. Want de minister van Onderwijs prees Cees Dekker publiekelijk voor zijn verfrissende visie en pleitte voor een hernieuwing van het debat over de evolutieleer binnen de wetenschap en het onderwijs, aan de hand van het uit Amerika stammende idee van Intelligent Design, waarmee gelovige wetenschappers de gaten in Darwins evolutietheorie trachten op te vullen. De evolutie zou niet berusten op een proces van natuurlijke selectie en «toevallige» mutatie, maar op een plan, afkomstig van een element binnen de natuur; een intelligente ontwerper.
De sneeuwbal bracht een lawine op gang die over wetenschappers en politici heen raasde. Over de evolutietheorie discussiëren? Niet in dit land. Er volgden emotionele redevoeringen in het parlement en in de media. De argumenten van de vele criticasters liggen voor de hand. In de wetenschap is geen plaats voor religieuze rompslomp. De creationistische discussie ligt ver achter ons en is zeker niet voor herhaling vatbaar. Geloof in het boven natuurlijke, prima, maar wél in je eigen tijd. Bioloog en columnist Ronald Plasterk in de Volkskrant: «Straks dient zich een stel Indiase fakirs aan die zeggen dat de zwaartekracht niet bestaat. Moeten we dan de Nederlandse fysici naar het ministerie halen om daarover te praten?» Dat zette de toon.
Wetenschappers die zich begeven op het terrein van de evolutietheorie weigeren vrijwel zonder uitzondering het debat aan te gaan. Daarover is Dekker verbolgen: «De discussie wordt niet serieus gevoerd. Het regent stereotypen. Intelligent De sign wordt moeiteloos verbonden met creationisme, Bush en rechtse christenen in Amerika. En daarmee is het automatisch een fout idee. Maar wat maakt het uit wie het propageert? Ik probeer het idee op zijn waarde te schatten, al was Khomeini ermee gekomen.»
Hoe zou u Intelligent Design uitleggen?
«De agnostisch filosoof Lesley maakte een aardige vergelijking. Je bent ter dood veroordeeld en wordt voor een vuurpeloton ge leid. Honderd soldaten richten een geweer op je en schieten, maar je wordt niet geraakt. Dan kun je concluderen dat ze toevallig allemaal misgeschoten hebben, óf dat er opzet in het spel is. Die laatste conclusie is rationeler. Was dit toeval of zit er een plan achter? Dat is een vraag die ten grondslag ligt aan hoe je de ontwikkeling van de natuur kunt bekijken.»
Dekker doet een greep in de doos met suikerklontjes en gooit een handvol op tafel. «In de manier waarop deze suikerklontjes op tafel vallen zit een wanordelijk element. Maar er is ook sprake van natuurwetten. Zwaartekracht, bijvoorbeeld.» Hij schuift de suikerklontjes over de tafel. «Ik breek geen enkele natuurwet als ik met de suikerklontjes mijn naam spel. Ik werk met mijn intelligentie een bepaald patroon uit, laten we zeggen dat het een patroon is dat voorkomt in de natuur. Dat patroon is er omdat er wordt ingegrepen door een bepaalde kracht. Of dat een kosmologisch ordenend principe is of een intelligente actie van een god is volkomen arbitrair. Het enige wat je wetenschappelijk kunt afleiden is dat zich een patroon ontwikkeld heeft. Daarom ben ik niet blij dat de Intelligent Design-gedachte gekoppeld wordt aan het creationisme dat uitgaat van de bijbel. Intelligent Design is zeker compatibel met een religieus wereldbeeld. Ik ben christen en ik meen dat die ontwerper de God van de bijbel is. Maar dat is een persoonlijke geloofsuitspraak die totaal los staat van het idee dat er een plan zou kunnen schuilen achter de evolutie.
Er zijn ook andere ontwerpers binnen de natuur die in aanmerking komen. Francis Crick, de ontdekker van DNA, toch een zeer gerespecteerde wetenschapper, heeft in zijn boek Life Itself het idee geformuleerd dat aliens ooit in het verleden de eerste cel op aarde hebben gezet en dat dat de basis is geweest van het ontstaan van het leven. Je kunt het een idioot idee vinden – en dat vind ik ook – maar het past ook in het idee van een intelligent ontwerp.»
U wordt gekenschetst als een «believer», een fervent aanhanger van de Intelligent Design-gedachte.
«Ik ben niet een supporter of een aanhanger, zoals in de kranten staat. Ik vind het een interessant idee dat een kans zou moeten krijgen om kritisch te worden getest. Kun je op empirische gronden een ontwerp ontwaren in bepaalde structuren in de natuur? Er is in de afgelopen dertig jaar in de kosmologie een brede discussie gevoerd over het ontwerp in de natuur. Aan de hand van het antropisch principe, bijvoorbeeld. Dat is het idee dat allerlei parameters in de kosmos volledig zijn afgestemd op het mogelijk maken van leven op aarde. Dat is een interessante discussie omdat die gedachte in zekere zin leidt tot een anticopernicaanse revolutie. Copernicus liet zien dat de aarde niet in het midden van het heelal stond. Maar misschien is de aarde wel uniek in het heelal. Misschien nemen wij toch een bijzondere plaats in.»

In de media vuren wetenschappers met zwaar geschut op Intelligent Design. Het is geen serieuze wetenschappelijke theorie maar slechts een vaag idee, zo stellen zij. En inderdaad, verder dan vragen stellen komt Dekker niet, zoals hij zelf ook erkent: «Er is nog geen echt onderzoeksprogramma van de grond gekomen. Er is nog geen stapel onderzoeken die het allemaal bewijst. Maar de vragen die gesteld worden zijn uitermate relevant.»
Volgens Dekker zouden wetenschappers op allerlei gebieden kunnen gaan speuren naar een eventueel ontwerp. In de celbiologie bijvoorbeeld. «Biochemicus Michael J. Behe beschreef in zijn boek Darwins Black Box onder meer een bacterie die zich voortbeweegt in het water via een rotatiemotortje dat bestaat uit allerlei verschillende componenten. Zulke motortjes zijn onherleidbaar complex. Zodra je een van de componenten eruit haalt, werkt de motor niet meer. Hoe zijn die componenten bij elkaar gekomen? Is dat toeval? Die toevalsfactor kun je uitrekenen. Nobelprijswinnaar Martinus Veltman zei vorig jaar in zijn Paradisolezing: ‹Darwins evolutietheorie heeft veel waardevols. Maar ik heb er een groot probleem mee: ze is fantastisch onwaarschijnlijk.› Als je de waarschijnlijkheid van die toevallige variaties uitrekent, krijg je kansen als tien tot de macht min duizend. Belachelijk kleine getallen die wijzen op een grote onwaarschijnlijkheid.»
Biologen nemen u niet serieus; u bent van huis uit fysicus. In ‹NRC Handelsblad› van dit weekeinde wordt u zelfs verweten niet goed op de hoogte te zijn van de huidige stand van het evolutieonderzoek.
«Ik geef direct toe dat ik niet alles weet over evolutiebiologie. Maar ik heb er een heel behoorlijke kennis over, en het gaat over heel fundamentele principes, en op dat niveau praat ik mee. Dat ik natuurkundige ben, is waar. Maar ik ben al tien jaar aan het nadenken en lezen over dit soort zaken. Ik werk nu zeven jaar in de biologie en heb daar veel geleerd. Mijn onderzoeken draaien mee op internationaal niveau. Mij zomaar als een natuurkundige neerzetten is te makkelijk. Blijkbaar mag je niet anders denken dan binnen de regels die er nu liggen. Zo is wetenschap toch niet? Een wetenschapper staat in de werkelijkheid en probeert betekenis te geven aan wat hij ziet, zodat je nieuwe verbanden ziet en dingen beter kunt verklaren.»
Staat u alleen in deze strijd?
«Er is een aantal mensen die deze kant op willen denken. Ronald Meester, hoogleraar wiskunde in Amsterdam, René van Woudenberg, hoogleraar filosofie in Amsterdam, Jan van Bemmel, oud-rector van Erasmus Rotterdam en hoogleraar medische informatica, Arie van de Beukel, emeritus hoogleraar natuurkunde, enzovoort. Er zijn verschillende hoogleraren die sympathie hebben voor deze gedachte.»
Sommige criticasters beweren dat de scheiding van kerk en staat in het geding komt met de introductie van Intelligent Design in de wetenschap.
«Dat is onzin. De wetenschap zal namelijk niet verder kunnen komen dan een academische discussie over de vraag of een ontwerp wel of niet aanwezig is. Dat staat los van religie. Hetzelfde geldt voor het darwinisme. Ook dat is in principe religieus neutraal. Maar sommigen gebruiken wetenschap en darwinisme als bouwstenen voor een atheïstische levensvisie. Daarom ervaren sommige mensen de discussie zo heftig.
Vorige week dinsdag liepen de gemoederen hoog op in de Tweede Kamer, heb ik begrepen. Kamerlid Bert Bakker werd na afloop gevraagd: waarom reageerde u zo emotioneel? Hij antwoordde: dit gaat over heel diepe gevoelens. En zo is het. Uiteindelijk raken oorsprongsvragen aan onze levensovertuiging, of je nu christen, atheïst of moslim bent. Een wetenschappelijk debat is niet volkomen waardevrij. En dit debat zéker niet. In die zin is er een relatie met levensbeschouwing. Ik ben niet naïef. Ik weet dat die relatie bestaat. Dat weet de minister ook. Haar insteek is positief. Al was het prematuur om de discussie te koppelen aan onderwijs. Maar zij is óók minister van Wetenschappen, en dát is het terrein waar deze discussie hoort plaats te vinden. Bovendien heeft ze nadrukkelijk gezegd geen veranderingen te willen in het onderwijs.»

Vindt u dat het debat helder gevoerd wordt, zoals van wetenschappers verwacht mag worden?
Cees Dekker: «Zeker niet. Allerlei zaken lopen door elkaar heen. Het debat speelt zich af op ten minste drie gebieden. Er is het academische debat, een interne discussie tussen mij en evolutiebiologen. Daar is het de vraag of Intelligent Design als wetenschappelijk idee moet afvallen of dat het een impuls geeft voor nieuwe inzichten. Er is het debat over de relatie tussen geloof en wetenschap. Daarover valt veel te zeggen. Het is niet zo dat evolutie en God tegenover elkaar staan. Er zijn een heleboel gelovigen die evolutionist zijn. Een derde discussie gaat over de rol van religie in de maatschappij. Hoe gaan we om met een multiculturele samenleving met daarin verschillende levensovertuigingen? De minister wil daarin een voorzet geven.»
Hoe ziet u de verhouding tussen geloof en wetenschap?
«Wetenschap is gebaseerd op vooronderstellingen. Voor mij is de wetenschap geen levensovertuiging, maar een werktuig. Wetenschap beschrijft heel krachtig een deel van onze materiële werkelijkheid. Het is een methode om meer inzicht te krijgen in de werkelijkheid. Uit mijn wetenschappelijke bevindingen weet ik dat het heelal uit de Big Bang ontstaan is. Maar behalve in een materiële werkelijkheid geloof ik ook in een geestelijke. Daar ligt de waterscheiding tussen een atheïst en een christen, zoals ik.
De hamvraag is: wat is de ultieme bron van de realiteit? Is dat een geestelijk principe zoals God, of geldt: in den beginne waren er deeltjes en meer niet. De atheïst zal zeggen: uiteindelijk is er alleen materie. Dat vind ik geen bevredigende beschrijving van de werkelijkheid die ik ervaar. Je hebt een kader nodig om de wereld te beschouwen. Een atheïstisch wereldbeeld vind ik te beperkt. Ik kan mij niet voorstellen dat materie automatisch de menselijke geest heeft opgeleverd die de werken van Shakespeare schreef en de Beethovens muziekstukken componeerde. Het spijt me, daar geloof ik gewoon niet in.»

© MINA AMHIL EN JOERI BOOM / De Groene Amsterdammer

quote:

Op donderdag 22 september 2005 18:46 schreef Reya het volgende:
................................... Ik kan mij niet voorstellen dat materie automatisch de menselijke geest heeft opgeleverd die de werken van Shakespeare schreef en de Beethovens muziekstukken componeerde. Het spijt me, daar geloof ik gewoon niet in.»

© MINA AMHIL EN JOERI BOOM / De Groene Amsterdammer

Een peroonlijk onvermogen zich iets voor te stellen, haar imperfectie dus, geen argument en eigenlijk een intellectuele nederlaag; te moeilijk om te bevatten.
Het grandiose is nu juist dat het mogelijk is dat allerlei verklaarbare en natuurlijke processen uiteindelijk Hamlet als resultaat hebben.

Ik heb dit artikel al meerdere malen gepost, maar ik vind het briljant in zijn eenvoud:

quote:

Views That Facts Can't Shake

By Ellen Goodman
Post
Saturday, June 18, 2005; A19

BOSTON -- The medical examiners delivered their autopsy report in the most matter-of-fact tone. Terri Schiavo's brain had atrophied to half the normal size for a woman her age. Her eyes, the focus of that famous videotape, saw nothing. She was blind.

The examiners couldn't say why Terri collapsed 15 years ago. But they could say she wasn't abused by her husband. They could say that "no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed" her condition. There was no doubt about it.

Case closed? As the news conference replayed, the television screen spelled out a question for cable viewers: "Does This Change Opinions?" Did the facts of a case that had so divided the country, so politicized the fate of one woman, actually make a difference?

For Schiavo's parents, the answer was no. The Schindlers still insist their daughter related to them and tried to speak. Their lawyer said it only proved that "she was not terminal." The president said only that he "was deeply saddened by this case." His brother, the governor of Florida, said he would still have tried to keep Schiavo alive.

And if the autopsy changed the opinions of politicians such as Doctor/Senator Bill Frist, who disgraced his first profession by diagnosing a videotape, they were not in the mood for apologies.

This case was never solely about medicine. But the question on the TV screen illustrated the times we live in -- times when facts can exist in a separate universe from opinions. And a country in which science is seen not as a matter of black and white but increasingly as a matter of red and blue.

The Schiavo case is not the only example. The climate is equally apparent in the struggle over what the Bush administration calls "climate change" -- and everyone else calls global warming. The only way to justify doing nothing about global warming now is to deliberately muddle the science. It's not an accident that Philip Cooney, the White House official caught editing reports on greenhouse gases, left for Exxon Mobil, which has indeed funded doubts.

So, too, the struggle over evolution is no longer overtly between scientists and religious fundamentalists. It's between the science establishment and the handful of front men with PhDs who support "intelligent design." Their credentials make it seem as if evolution were also a matter of genuine scientific debate.

Meanwhile, reports of a link between breast cancer and abortion reappear on Web sites with the tenacity of urban legends. Stories continually report, most recently in Ohio, fantasies presented as facts in abstinence-only education programs being funded by the government. They link birth control pills with infertility, and HIV with French-kissing. But when they are debunked, "Does This Change Opinions?"

James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth describes the trend this way: "If science doesn't fit the ideology, you shop and find your own science." Just last week the Heritage Foundation, an overtly conservative think tank, was given a government platform to attempt to debunk, indeed to attack, an earlier study on virginity pledges.

The original, peer-reviewed study by researchers at Columbia and Yale universities found that young people who make virginity pledges may delay intercourse, but ultimately end up with rates of sexually transmitted diseases similar to their peers. The Heritage team makes a counterclaim, in a paper that was presented at a forum sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, that pledgers have lower STDs and fewer risky behaviors.

With its flawed methodology, the Heritage study may never be published, but as Wagoner said, "They don't have to win the scientific debate, they only have to muddy the water." In a day when unvetted research becomes public as quickly as rumors on the Internet, it enters the data bank as "scientific proof" that virginity pledges "work."

As Peter Bearman, co-author of the original study, says ruefully, "Science has often been deployed for political reasons. The deployment of science is different than the distortion of science. That's what is happening now."

It doesn't help that 15.5 percent of the scientists in a recent survey said they changed something in a study to satisfy a sponsor. It's bad enough when the sponsor is a drug company, worse when it's an ideological purveyor.

Maybe it's a good sign that even ideologues still need scientists to make their case legitimate. But what happens when science is seen and even skewed as partisan? Is one scientist's fact given no more weight than another's opinion?

At the height of the Schiavo furor, I saw a protester carrying a sign that asked: "How do you kill someone while she's smiling at you?" Now we know beyond any doubt that Terri Schiavo couldn't smile. Does this fact change even one opinion?

ellengoodman@globe.com
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Interview met Stephen Hawking:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1579180,00.html


Return of the time lord

Stephen Hawking can only communicate by a twitch in his right cheek, yet his attempt to explain the universe to ordinary people has made him the world's most famous living scientist. His 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, clung to the bestseller lists for 237 weeks. It sold one copy for every 750 people on earth - even if they didn't all read it - and earned him cameos in cult shows such as the Simpsons and Star Trek. Here we publish an exclusive extract from his new, more accessible version while in a rare interview he talks to Emma Brockes about disability, why women can't read maps and thinking in 11 dimensions. And for those of a less scientific bent, we offer our briefest of brief histories

Tuesday September 27, 2005
The Guardian

Stephen Hawking and I get off to a bad start when the questions I send him ahead of the interview are returned the next day with a note: "I want shorter, better focused, numbered questions, not a stream of consciousness." A man for whom it takes 20 minutes to express a single thought, who, since the age of 21, has been told he is living on borrowed time is, of course, allowed to be curt. But if his success tells us anything, it is the folly of reading him solely through his condition. His tone might as easily be a sign of geekiness or superiority or intolerance of non-scientists. I re-send the questions, stripped of extraneous detail, and repair to Cambridge to meet him.

At 63, Hawking has already exceeded his life expectancy by some 40 years. His fame is as much a function of his illness as his science and he plays up to it good-naturedly, providing the voiceover for his cameo in the Simpsons, illustrating his books with cultish, Where's Wally-type photos of himself flying through space in his wheelchair and suffering the condescensions of the press with relative equanimity. With so little to go on, a personality has been created for him, based largely on assumptions of childish good humour. Hawking's smile is always "mischievous"; his propensity to mow people down in his wheelchair is japery rather than ill temper or a sign that - who knows? - were he able-bodied he might be a football hooligan. And although his ex-wife has called him a tyrant and his second wife been accused of maltreating him (the complaint was dropped), the romance of Hawking's image as a butterfly mind trapped in a diving-bell body overrides all others. After meeting him, I suspect that he is cannier at managing it than he is given credit for.

The first thing you notice when you enter his room in the £60m Centre for Mathematical Sciences, is white steam puffing out of a dehumidifier concealed in an ornament on his desk. The hard drive hums and something beeps. Hawking sits in the middle of the room attended by a nurse, one of the 10 who look after him. A PhD student pops his head around the door and says hi - Hawking supervises a small number in his capacity as the Lucasian professor of mathematics, a position once held by Isaac Newton - and the cosmologist either smiles or gears up to communicate. It is hard to tell. His mobility is so limited now that he can only use his finger to operate his computer when he is feeling particularly strong. Otherwise he relies on his right cheek, targeted by an infrared beam, which he twitches to move a cursor through his dictionary, completing a whole statement before sending it to his voice synthesizer. It is the same, agonisingly slow process whether he is speaking or writing and might explain why his latest book, A Briefer History of Time, is a rehash of the earlier blockbuster. It seeks to redress the criticism that lots of people bought the first book but very few got through it.

I ask him if there is enough new material in this second, easier version for people who bought the first one to buy it again. Hawking looks at me, then looks down at his screen and grimaces. There is a beep as he sends his pre-prepared answer to the voice synthesizer.

"My first popular book," he says, "A Brief History of Time, aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand. I decided to write a new version that would be easier to follow. I took the opportunity to add material about new developments and I left out some things of a more technical nature."

There is a long pause, two more beeps and a lot of strenuous cheek movement as he sends the next block of text. "The result is a book that is slightly briefer but it's made plain, more accessible. I would hope that people who have difficulty with A Brief History will try a Briefer History and be pleasantly surprised."

A Briefer History of Time is not exactly String Theory for Dummies. Like a lot of specialists, Hawking has trouble imagining what it might be like not to understand what he does, or rather, where the non-scientist's understanding will be weak and where strong. The book's range is therefore a little eccentric, lurching between explaining what a scientific theory is ("a model of the universe") and going into quantum mechanics in the kind of vertiginous detail that makes you open your eyes very wide as you read. It is fascinating, up to a point.

I ask whether Hawking is worried that it will look like blatant cashing in. "I put a lot of effort into writing A Briefer History at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion."

There are new sections: string theory - the unproven idea that the universe is made up of lots of tiny, vibrating strings - has apparently moved on since the first book was written, although it is still controversial. This suits Hawking's purpose: he understands that no one, scientist or otherwise, can resist an unanswerable question. When he refers to God it is, as he puts it, in the "impersonal sense", rather as Einstein referred to the laws of nature. It is a euphemism and also a smart bit of marketing, anchoring the unsexy, techie bones of his subject - he once said the best hope for a theory of everything was n=8 supergravity - with the philosophical questions everyone likes to have a stab at.

What one forgets is that the area of cosmology he works in has been partly influenced by his motor neurone disease. He was diagnosed in his first year as a PhD student at Cambridge and as his condition worsened, it became harder and, eventually impossible, to write down equations and so work in pure maths. He must, by necessity, work with problems that can be translated into geometry, which he can then picture in his head, such as the 11 dimensions of string theory.

I ask him what he visualises when he talks about string theory - I am ashamed to admit I see cheese strings. Hawking's cheek twitches and he hits the wrong button - "maybe" he blurts, and then twitches again to scroll back. "Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren't equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it's just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four."

I gather this is not a question he is very interested in, possibly because he has been asked it before and also because it addresses the inadequacies of people to whom the "purely mathematical point of view" is not one they are ever likely to take. Hawking, barely concealing his irritation, has come up with images to describe the construction of the universe, such as the corridor of a "Howard Johnson hotel" with endless rooms running off it. But one senses he doesn't quite get why they are necessary when a quick equation will give you everything you need, like a capsule of astronaut food.

And yet he is working on a children's book about relativity with his daughter Lucy, because children are the best audience: "Naturally interested in space and not afraid to ask why."

I ask him how, if string theory was proved to be correct, it might impact on people's daily lives? "When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won't have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore."

Both Hawking's parents were at Oxford University - he did his undergraduate degree there and soon after married his first wife, Jane, whom he left 15 years ago for his nurse, Elaine. In the past he was asked how he managed to father three children and replied: "The disease only affects voluntary muscle." In the memoir Jane wrote after the break-up of their marriage, she accused him of having a God complex. He has certainly never wanted for confidence. When he was still young, he interrupted a lecture at the Royal Society by the renowned astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle, to correct what he was saying. I ask if he was nervous before speaking. "I may have been a bit nervous but I was sure of my ground. Hoyle's theory predicted the masses of particles would be infinite. I had seen a copy of the paper and had calculated it."

Hawking lost his speech in 1985 after he fell ill with pneumonia and had to have a tracheotomy. His life became one long exercise in patience. His assistant tells me that when it comes to an interview, he can always outlast his questioner and I will find this to be true when we get to the live part of the interview. I will also discover that, when there is a half-hour lag between question and answer, the scope for clarification is extremely limited.

But for now, we are still reading from the script. I ask if he gives two hoots that there aren't many top women scientists, and if he has an idea as to why. "In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics." Twitch, bleep. "It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics. It is not politically correct to say such things and the president of Harvard got in terrible trouble for doing so. But it cannot be denied that there are differences between men and women. Of course, these are differences between the averages only. There are wide variations about the mean."

The problem with Hawking's voice synthesizer is that there is not much tonal variation; I assume the map-reading, spatial-awareness thing is a joke. The women being less good at science thing is clearly not; it is a widely held but rarely admitted-to assumption that, if not itself chauvinistic, is always made so by its corollary - that science and maths are "harder", more rigorous and ultimately more relevant disciplines than flaky "women's" subjects. Hawking's ex-wife accused him of going the whole hog on this, but we will come to that.

What I want to know is how Hawking deals with the frustrations a man in his position must feel. I ask what he does to wind down when he gets stuck on a problem. "It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years."

Does he ever get surges of rage against his immobility? "It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining."

Where non-mathematicians find his 11 dimensions hard to conceptualise, so Hawking seems to struggle with the concept of talking about himself in any register outside the factual. His shortest answers are the ones to those questions about feeling. I ask if he thinks it very dumb and sentimental of people to bang on about how his "genius" is related, or even enabled, by his disability, and what he thinks, with reference to The Simpsons, of the part it plays in his cult status. He replies: "The Simpsons appearances were great fun. But I don't take them too seriously. I think The Simpsons have treated my disability responsibly."

There is one last question from the script. Does it depress him to think that human life is so short, none of us will ever know how the story ends? Two beeps. "If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered."

Behind his shoulder, his assistant nods. There will now be some time for live questions. Stupidly, given that I have read all about it, I fail to realise just how arduous and time-consuming the process of live communication is. If I did, I wouldn't squander the time on asking a joke, warm-up question. I tell him I have heard he has six different voices on his synthesizer and that one is a woman's. Hawking lowers his eyes and starts responding. After five minutes of silence the nurse sitting beside me closes her eyes and appears to go to sleep. I look around. On the windowsill are framed photos stretching back through Hawking's life. There are photos of one of his daughters with her baby. I notice Hawking's hands are thin and tapering. He is wearing black suede Kickers.

Another five minutes pass. There are pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, one of which has been digitally manipulated to feature Hawking in the foreground. I see a card printed with the slogan: "Yes, I am the centre of the universe." I write it down and turn the page in my notebook. It makes a tearing sound and the nurse's eyes snap open. She goes over to Hawking and, putting her hand on his head, says, "Now then, Stephen," and gently wipes saliva from the side of his mouth. Another five minutes pass. Then another.

Hawking's assistant, who sits behind him to see what is going on on his screen, nods slightly. Here it comes: "That was true of one speech synthesizer I had. But the one I use normally has only one voice. It is 20 years old, but I stick to it because I haven't found better and because I'm known by it worldwide." That's it? The fruit of 20 minutes' effort? This man is a Hercules.

I had planned to ask about his wife Elaine's alleged treatment of him, but in the face of these logistics I lose my nerve. Instead, I ask: it's been said, primarily by your ex-wife, that you have nothing but contempt for the arts, in particular medieval Spanish poetry [her PhD subject]. Is that true? Hawking stares at me and gets on with it. Is it polite to remain silent while he labours? Or should one talk? One of his assistants told me he got the job partly because Hawking was impressed by how natural he was during the silences. He also told me the worst thing you can do is to try to second-guess Hawking - he grinds his teeth to show disapproval - and also that he knows the whole of the London A-Z by heart; when they drive in the capital, Hawking tells him which route to take.

After another 20 minutes, Hawking says: "Not entirely. An awful lot of the arts world is mediocre or sham. But there are a few great works that have a direct effect on people." These two questions have taken almost three-quarters of an hour to answer. I ask: "If you could go back in time, who would you rather meet, Marilyn Monroe or Isaac Newton?" and after 10 minutes he says in that voice that makes the blandest statement sound profound: "Marilyn. Newton seems to have been an unpleasant character."

I am defeated. I get up to go. Hawking stares at me and smiles, with something steelier than mischief.

How far did you get?

Kathy Sykes, TV presenter and professor of public understanding of science at Bristol University

I enjoyed A Brief History of Time. I did feel that having a PhD and a degree in physics helped enormously. Stephen made incredibly tough subjects more palatable than many have managed to do. Nevertheless, I still felt that there was a step or two - or even five - for most members of the public to get their head around it.

Vivienne Parry, science journalist and ex-presenter of Tomorrow's World

I looked at the first page and thought: this isn't for me. I think the human body is infinitely more interesting than space and all that. From the little I read, I felt that my view that [space] was too difficult to understand was reinforced by that book.

Julian Baggini, editor of Philosopher's Magazine

I loved it and remember saying to a friend at the time that I thought it should be a set text at school. I'm not sure I totally understood it, but I didn't get the feeling some people did that it was impenetrable. Some people got stuck at the bits they didn't really grasp, whereas if you could just get over them, I thought the bigger picture was pretty clear. He introduced me to the idea of four-dimensional spacetime and event cones and that's all still reasonably clear, even after almost 20 years.

Seth Shostak, chief astronomer at the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Institute, California

I read it from start to finish. But my conclusion at the end was, if you already know what Professor Hawking is talking about here, it's a pretty good book. And if you don't, it's about as opaque as tin foil.

Richard Dawkins

I knew more physics than when I started. But there are better books on the origin of everything, notably Peter Atkins's work of prose poetry, Creation Revisited.

Peter Bazalgette, chairman, Endemol UK

I did start it. Like everyone else, I thought the mysteries of the universe would be revealed to me. By page five I felt mildly confused, by page 10 I felt stupid, by page 15 frustrated, by page 20 giddy, and that was it. A Brief History of Time is the literary equivalent of Colman's mustard: Hawking made his money from the stuff we left on the side of the plate. Too strong to consume.

Geoff Watts, BBC Radio 4 science presenter

What did I enjoy about it? Not a lot. While not a bad book, it's simply not the best attempt made to explain time, the universe and everything. I think many people bought it because they felt there are great insights to be had in this territory - if only they could be helped across the threshold. I doubt it helped them much.

Stephen Minger, stem cell biologist at King's College London

Yes, I did finish it but with some difficulty. It has given me a better understanding of cosmology and the desire to learn more. I love the contrast between the science of what we see down the microscope (where we spend most of our time) and the science you can only see with the imagination. That is Hawking's great strength - he takes concepts that are unintelligible to most of us and creates, through words, an image that we can relate to.

· Interviews by Alok Jha

Rushdie should swap his crusading for novel writing

The vocation of the novelist is to pluralism, but now it seems that one of our greatest writers has become a true believer

Giles Fraser
Wednesday September 21, 2005
The Guardian


'In lending himself to the role of public figure, the novelist endangers his work; it risks being considered a mere appendage to his actions, to his declarations, to his statements of a position." So argued the Czech novelist Milan Kundera, picking up the Jerusalem Prize for Literature in 1985. It's a piece of advice that another great novelist, Salman Rushdie, ought to ponder when he shifts into the writing voice of the columnist.

Over the last weeks, Rushdie the columnist has accelerated a debate that diagnoses Islam as morally sick and asks what medicine is needed to heal its ills. In his first attempt he offered the Reformation as the answer to what he calls "mosque-based, faith-determined, radical Islam" (though I scratch my head as to why faith-determined is deemed a suitable criticism of a religion). In these pages I had a go at Rushdie's appeal to the Reformation as simplistic, arguing that reforming zeal often leads to the sort of bad religion of which he rightly complains. Taking the point, he has now changed tack: "Not so much a reformation, as several people said in response to my first piece, as an Enlightenment. Very well then: let there be light."
But this won't do either. Certainly Enlightenment thought offers a challenge to the moral poison that often oozes from superstition. Even so, secular rationality is no fail-safe prophylactic against murderous ideology. The 20th century offered up enough genocidal "isms" to make that point. Hatred has the capacity to nestle within the most enlightened breast. So far, so obvious. But what's apparently not so obvious to Rushdie is that the most effective answer to bad religion is under his very nose: the novel itself.

The genius of the novel, according to Kundera, is that it is able to accommodate multiple moral universes, each interacting with the other, without the need to subjugate any one of them to some all-encompassing conclusion. The novel is pluralism in action. As Kundera puts it: the novel is "the imaginary paradise ... where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin".

Admittedly, Kundera's advice was uttered pre-9/11. But these dangerous times require the moral imagination of the novel as much as ever. And this in two specific respects: first, in the capacity of the novel to be more humble than the pamphleteer with regard to ideology; and second, in its capacity to listen to and be affected by moral worlds very different from one's own.

Picking up an old Jewish proverb, "Man thinks, God laughs", Kundera proposes that the novel was born out of the laughter of God. What's God laughing at? At the hubris of human attempts to deliver a single knockdown answer to the problems of the world. The novel can never be a cheerleader for Islam or Christianity or Modernist or Enlightenment. Those who believe that the exclusive truth of any of these is obvious and self-evident can never have heard the laughter of God.

But more important still, the novel has the rare capacity to nudge us out of our ideological trenches into a more sympathetic engagement with the moral universe of those we consider the enemy. "When Tolstoy sketched the first draft of Anna Karenina, Anna was a most unsympathetic woman, and her tragic end was entirely deserved and justified. The final version of this novel is very different, but I do not believe that Tolstoy had revised his moral ideas in the meantime; I would say, rather, that in the course of writing he was listening to another voice than that of his personal moral conviction. He was listening to what I would call the wisdom of the novel."

Columnists are often too busy attacking their opponents to make the time to inhabit their space. Mea culpa. It's a failing in a priest, but even more so in a novelist. Back in 1990, in that famous lecture that had to be ventriloquised by Harold Pinter, Rushdie laid out the vocation of the novelist as resisting the "true believer ... who knows that he is simply right and you are wrong". The novel is a sacred space where all voices need to be heard. Which is why he proposed that even "the most secular of authors ought to be capable of presenting a sympathetic portrait of a devout believer". This is something Rushdie now seems increasingly incapable of achieving. He has become a true believer himself.

The tragedy is that Rushdie the novelist has increasingly been overtaken by his public crusading. The vocation of the novelist is to pluralism. That's why the novel is sacred. Unfortunately, it's a sanctity in which Rushdie now seems to have lost his faith.

· Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1574480,00.html

Gisteren op Canvas (Belgie 2): The Number One. Een documentaire over de geschiedenis van het getal 1, door Monty Python's Terry Jones. Was best interessant, zeker niet te moeilijk en bevatte toch dingen die ik nog niet wist.
Wel wat laat, zo'n tip achteraf, maar misschien dat iemand weet of geinteresseerden dit ook ergens online kunnen vinden. Of dat het ooit ergens anders wordt uitgezonden. Het is de moeite waard!

(Was er niet een ander topic voor tips van dingen op tv? Kon het niet vinden dus dump ik het hier maar...)