| Monday
May 16, 2005 Doubting Rationalist
http://www.washingtonpost.com
/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/14/
AR2005051401222_pf.html
'Intelligent Design' Proponent Phillip Johnson, and
How He Came to Be
By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday,
May 15, 2005; D01
BERKELEY, Calif. "The Washington Post is not one of my
biggest fans, you know that."
Hello?
The Washington Post reporter has just walked out of a
spray of Pacific-borne rain into the living room of a modest bungalow west
of downtown. There's a shag rug, an inspirational painting or two and
Phillip Johnson, dressed in tan slacks and a sweater and sitting on a couch.
He pulls a dog-eared copy of a Post editorial out of his shirt pocket and
reads aloud:
"With their slick Web sites, pseudo-academic
conferences and savvy public relations, the proponents of 'intelligent
design' -- a 'theory' that challenges the validity of Darwinian evolution --
are far more sophisticated than the creationists of yore. . . . They succeed
by casting doubt on evolution."
The 65-year-old Johnson swivels his formidable and
balding head -- with that even more formidable brain inside -- and gazes
over his reading glasses at the reporter (who doesn't labor for the people
who write the editorials).
"I suppose you think creation is all about unguided
material processes, don't you? Well, I don't have the slightest trouble
accepting microevolution as the cause behind the adaptation of the peppered
moth and the growth of finches' beaks. But I don't see that evolutionists
have any cause for jubilation there.
"It doesn't tell you how the moths and birds and trees
got there in the first place. The human body is packed with marvels, eyes
and lungs and cells, and evolutionary gradualism can't account for that."
He's not big on small talk, this professor emeritus at
the University of California at Berkeley's law school.
For centuries, scriptural literalists have insisted
that God created Heaven and Earth in seven days, that the world is about
6,000 years old and fossils are figments of the paleontological imagination.
Their grasp on popular opinion was strong, but they have suffered a
half-century's worth of defeats in the courts and lampooning by the
intelligentsia.
Now comes Johnson, a devout Presbyterian and
accomplished legal theorist, and he doesn't dance on the head of biblical
pins. He agrees the world is billions of years old and that dinosaurs walked
the earth. Evolution is the bridge he won't cross. This man, whose life has
touched every station of the rationalist cross from Harvard to the
University of Chicago to clerk at the Supreme Court, is the founding father
of the "intelligent design" movement.
Intelligent design holds that the machinery of life is
so complex as to require the hand -- perhaps subtle, perhaps not -- of an
intelligent creator.
"Evolution is the most plausible explanation for life
if you're using naturalistic terms, I'll agree with that." Johnson folds his
hands over his belly, a professorial Buddha, as his words fly rat-a-tat-tat.
"That's only," he continues, "because science puts
forward evolution and says any other logical explanation is outside of
reality."
Johnson and his followers, microbiologists and
geologists and philosophers, debate in the language of science rather than
Scripture. They point to the complexity of the human cell, with its natural
motors and miles of coding. They document the scant physical evidence for
the large-scale mutations needed to make the long journey from primitive
prokaryote to modern man. <snip>
...
Johnson works his way to his feet and walks slowly to
his living room window. The lemon trees are in bloom. Mist rises off the
sidewalk. "I think it's very possible that God left some fingerprints on the
evidence," Johnson says, his words rattling out now. "Once you open science
to that possibility, we're poised for a metaphysical reversal."
He smiles and catches himself. "I'm content just to
open science up to an intellectual world that's been closed to it for two
centuries."
The entire article is well worth
reading, whatever your views on these matters.
Mixed emotions:
"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's,
social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere." -- Robert A.
Heinlein through his character Lazarus Long
FAQ: How Real ID will affect you By Declan McCullagh
In 2008, a federally approved ID card may be required
to travel, open a bank account, even collect Social Security.
Photos: Electronic IDs are catching on
http://news.com.com/FAQ+How+Real+ID+
will+affect+you/2100-1028_3-5697111.html?tag=sas.email
Read all technology news from this week:
http://www.news.com/thisweeksheadlines/
David Klaus
=====================
Dr. Pournelle:
I didn't sit down and do any calculations--I'd
probably screw them up anyway--but I did visualize firing a stone out of a
sling.
When a sling is whirling, your arm is constantly
applying force to keep the sling centered against the centrifugal force from
the stone. It's work. When you let the stone go, the pressure on your arm is
instantly gone. There is no recoil.
The way I see it is recoil is generated when you
accelerate a projectile in one direction, and the accelerating device is
thrown backwards. A gun takes a bullet that is traveling at zero speed and
forces it to full speed. Recoil.
A sling in a stone, or a bullet on a flywheel is
accelerated in the process of spinning it up.
The "recoil" forces generated may to be analogous to
the force constantly applied to the sling or flywheel that is increasing its
speed. Or maybe the force of the sling or flywheel trying to fly off in a
radial direction, and which is resisted by the arm or shaft, and the
structure of the sling or flywheel.
So, when the stone is released, it is already
traveling at its full flight speed, and is simply being allowed to go in the
direction it wants to for a change, instead of being forced into a
continuous circular motion. No true acceleration. No recoil.
I probably have this wrong in terms of physics, but it
sounds right.
Tom Brosz
Imagine that you are in a sled on an ice pond. You
have a lot of stones. You throw them out of the sled. It doesn't matter how
you accelerate the stones, when the stone leaves the sled, you will
accelerate in the opposite direction, by a force indicated by the rocket
equation. You may throw the stone, use a sling, fire it out of a cannon, kick
it like a football -- the stone leaves the system, and you accelerate.
Only if you use a "recoilless" system in which the
stone's motion aft is balanced by the expulsion of gasses forward will you
remain at rest.
===========================
On NASA Today
I have to tell you about my short debate(s) with Dan
Goldin last Friday. He was anchor speaker at a symposium run by a group I
attend regularly at UCLA: CSEOL, or the Committee for the Study of Evolution
and the Origin of Life. It is run by a friend of mine, Prof. Bill Schopf,
discoverer of the oldest known fossils, 3.5 billion years old.
This years symposium theme was about "Life Among the
Stars" and featured some terrific speakers such as Steven W. Squires, PI of
the Mars Rover Mission, who really made us feel that we had visited Mars.
Goldin gave an inspiring speech wrapped around very high minded themes, etc.
He is an excellent speaker and clearly believes what he says.
But we had some questions from the audience, and I
jumped at the chance. I began by saying that I can recall when saying that
the crater in Arizona was meteoritic in origin was considered flaky, and
that much of our progress since is attributable to NASA. But I said: "There
is one area in which NASA has failed utterly, and that is in developing
safe, reliable and economical access to low Earth orbit". I said that per
lb. costs to orbit have hardly come down, adjusted from inflation since
Saturn V, and seem stuck at around $10,000/lb. Then I mentioned Elon Musk,
Burt Rutan and Robert Bigelow as examples of private entrepreneurs who will
solve that problem.
Well, Goldin clearly was taken aback by this and
responded vigorously, citing that although Rutan was "one of the greatest
engineers of his generation", his vehicle barely made Mach three after being
launched from a carrier at 50,000 ft. "Think how far that is from orbital
speed"!
Then he said something that I find extremely
illuminating ... that "it was not NASA's job to reduce launch costs" !!!
Afterwards we were all at a banquet and I seized the chance to talk with him
some more. I mentioned X-33/Venture Star, and that I had had a chance to
speak with the Test Director at Palmdale after it was cancelled. Goldin
broke in and dropped another bombshell, saying it had been grossly
underfunded!
I could not stand that and said: "It would have failed
at five times the budget"! He cited the composite tank as the failure cause,
and that they should have made it out of metal. I said the real reason for
failure was horizontal landing, at which point he refused to discuss it with
me further. This is going into my archives as yet another unique insight
into some history making events, and people.
Bill Haynes
X-33 grew directly out of the DC/X program, and I
suppose I had as much to do with its funding as anyone.
What we wanted -- we being the pro-SDI community as
well as at least my branch of the pro-space community -- was DC/Y or even a
full fledged SSX: a ship we could fly often and learn a lot about flying,
not something that would go directly to orbit first shot. Lockheed had a
different notion. And, after all, they were Lockheed; who were we with our
Citizen's Advisory Council? As you'll recall since you were part of it.
I thought we had persuaded Goldin that the
incremental approach == build a ship and fly it a lot and learn a lot about
SAVABLE reusable ships == was the right one, but the Lockheed people had
convinced themselves that all they needed was some money for aerospike,
after which they would just go to orbit in one whack. Naturally the very
existence of this huge program took the heart out of the private space
movement.
X-33 was the last program I had the political clout
to get funded -- or to kill. I could have killed it and given the way the
"competition" for it went, it was clear to me that it would never work and I
ought to kill it -- but if I had done so, it would have been me, us, the
Citizens Advisory Council, that killed the dream since, if it had never been
built, of course it would have worked perfectly; or so the legend would be.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way; I got out of the way.
In retrospect I am still not sure I was wrong. But
we don't get Mulligans in the space business.
Goldin believed he knew what he was doing, but he
had no political clout -- a Republican holdover technocrat in the Clinton
administration -- and Lockheed ate his lunch for him.
At one point we had Goldin convinced that a NASA
contract for 1,000 RL-10 engines at $300,000 each would change the world.
"What would we do with them?" he asked me.
"Throw them away. Give them to universities. Give
them to high schools. The important point is that if you do that, then the
civilian price of engine #1001 will be about $100,000 and a LOT of people
will be able to get into the space game."
Well, it didn't happen, but I thought I might be
able to get something like that done, and it really would have changed the
world.
It is not in NASA's mission statement to reduce the
cost of launching. It should be, of course, but NASA is not NACA, and in
fact the NACA parts of NASA are being dismantled even as I write this. Alas.
It's a real pity. NACA did reduce the cost of
aviation. It had test facilities, and the ability to work with private
competing companies; and if the NACA parts of NASA had been in charge it
would be a different world today.
I still believe we ought to try to save the NACA
parts of NASA and keep them going.
=================================
Subject: Letter from England
The man in the street here is now wondering if the
originally story was actually false, or if this is a case of damage control:
Koran desecration story <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4549933.stm>
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1484868,00.html>
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,11069-1614116,00.html>
Uzbek massacre story (500+ shot by troops) <http://news.bbc.co.uk/
1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4549873.stm> <http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/
05/15/uzbekistan.toll/index.html>
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1484718,00.html>
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1614062,00.html>
. Note the suggestion of Al-Qaeda links.
ID cards back <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Politics/queensspeech
2005/story/0,16013,1484810,00.html>
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/
0,,2-1614502,00.html>.
Right to life ruling. This involves a generational
conflict (young doctors and elderly pensioners) <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/
4544799.stm>.
Early puberty due to diet, environmental pollutants,
or what? <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4530743.stm>
Funding problems for physics and chemistry continue.
This time at Oxford. <http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?
story_id=2021820>
I've previously suggested that Sundaland (the flooded
landmass around current Indonesia) was an early center of human expansion.
See <http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050509/full/050509-10.html>.
There is very early evidence for ocean-travel in that area with H. sapiens
colonization of northern New Guinea and the Solomons about 30 KYr BP and
Australia and Flores about 60 KYr BP. The presence of H. erectus and H.
floresiensis east of the Wallace line suggests that boat and raft-building
may be very ancient in that part of the world.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD "Those who would give up essential
Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor
Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)
d
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CURRENT
VIEW Monday |
Dan
Goldin, NASA, and X-33
