Deposition of Dr. Stephen Jay Gould - Page 3
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say that processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe were used in creation?
A. This life now being created from nothing?
Q. I didn't say that's what was happening, the processes.
A. It seems that creation-science — the operative line in that quotation is not that one. It's the next one. "We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator." That's why that quote is there. It seems to me an admission that studying creation isn't science, plain as could be.
Q. That's what one person said about creation-science. Now you would agree—
A. Leading light of the movement.
Q. That's a subjective judgment as to who is the leading light of any movement, isn't it?
A. As you would include Darwin necessarily as a leading light of evolution, I don't see how you can have creationism without Mr. Gish.
Q. But you would agree that there are
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theories which have been espoused and supposedly based on evolution which — for example, the superiority of certain races which are not necessarily supported by it, merely because one offers up a theory in the name of evolution doesn't make it a proper evolutionary theory, does it?
A. Indeed, but the strictures of this act are such that most conceivable creationist theories are not included.
Q. From reading Act 590, what could you tell me about the creator?
A. That he suspends natural law to make things out of nothing.
Q. Anything beyond that?
A. Oh, that's enough to make it not science.
Q. I want to know just generally what — if someone said read Act 590 and tell me everything that you can — that Act 590 says about the Creator —
A. You would learn a lot more. You would learn that he made the earth fairly recently, therefore you learn something about his time scale.
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Q. I am concerned as to exactly what he or she or it did, but what you would know about this creator.
A. All you have to know is that this creator made things from nothing to make it not science.
Q. I understand that, but I want to know what else you could know about the creator.
A. What more do I need to know?
Q. For example, I mean, I think there is — trying to look at the creator there would be a clear implication that the creator had some intelligence, would you agree with that?
A. Oh, I don't know. The creator certainly had some power.
Q. Power and intelligence?
A. I didn't grant you intelligence.
Q. Can we tell anything about the creator as to whether the creator has compassion?
A. That's a question of ethics and morality, which is not — we can't say one way or the other.
Q. What about love?
A. All we know is that he suspends natural
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law to make things out of nothing.
Q. Do we know that — we don't know whether it's a he or she or it?
A. No. I just used the old sexist vernacular.
Q. Do we know whether the creator is still in existence?
A. I don't get the thread of the question.
Q. Where I am going is really not for you to determine. I am just asking from looking at it can you tell —
A. I have to infer before I can answer.
Q. — can you tell that creation-science requires that the creator is still in existence?
A. If he ain't around any more, it was a very recent event, because he sure was doing a lot just a couple of thousand years ago. I suppose he could have died in 1500.
Q. To answer my question, does creation-science require that the creator still be in existence as is defined in Act 590?
A. If he is not around his constraints still operate. That is, he created things according to fixed kinds and is not allowing
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natural law to transcend those kinds. Again I repeat the one thing he did that isn't science is to suspend natural law by making things out of nothing and that's how life got here.
Q. In your article you state that, "All historical sciences rest upon inference, and evolution is no different from geology, cosmology, or human history in this respect. In principle, we cannot observe processes that operated in the past." And you state above that that —
A. Where is that?
Q. I am referring now to page 36 in the second full paragraph. Which begins "The second and third arguments for evolution."
A. Got you.
Q. You state that those second and third arguments "do not involve direct observation of evolution in action. They rest upon inferences." So in terms of observability of evolution, there are some severe restraints and in interpretability?
A. Observability is not a criteria of science. You can't observe the fall of Rome either, but it fell. The ability to make an escapable inference is.
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Q. Pardon me?
A. The ability to make inferences, most of the major entities of science are unseen. You never saw gravity, but objects fall. You never saw an atom.
Q. How much do you think we have been able to observe about evolution?
A. As much as can really be expected in the time scale of 100 years, which is nothing, since the publication of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
Q. But even well in recorded history — let me rephrase that. One of the examples I think that you used was the peppered moths in England.
A. Yes.
Q. How is that an example of evolution?
A. Evolution is defined as change of gene frequencies within natural populations. In the case of the peppered moth, the black allele, which was present at very low frequency before trees got blackened with industrial soot, rose rapidly to very high frequency after those trees were so blackened, and that is evolutionary change.
Q. I read that but I did not really get that change from reading what you wrote here. Do
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the tests and the data that we have confirm that that black allele changed or is it not possible that simply the black moths simply because they were more concealed, they were camouflaged, if you will, and they bred and produced more black moths and the black moths lived?
A. That's evolution. Evolution is change of gene frequencies.
Q. You're not saying then that the moths really in a sense —
A. Evolutions change within a population.
Q. Is that inconsistent, as you understand it, with the creation-science?
A. It's not inconsistent with point 3, changes within fixed limits. But please understand that within 100 years one would not expect to observe large scale changes under any version of evolutionary theory that I know.
Q. When were species first defined and divided?
A. The word? The word goes back to Aristotle.
Q. No, the modern definition of species?
A. Linnaeus in the 18th Century.
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Q. In the recorded history, how many new species have been observed?
A. Oh, a fair number, but I don't know. You produce them in the laboratory often.
Q. And by new species, what do you mean?
A. Species are populations that are reproductively isolated from others.
Q. For example, if you had two sets of flies which were distinguishable by some characteristic, but they bred or were sexually reproductive between each other, and then if you were able to make them somehow sexually isolated, it that would be a new species, would it not?
A. Yes.
Q. How many times has that been done, to your knowledge?
A. I don't really know, it's not my field. But ask Francisco Ayala.
Q. He said he's been trying to do it for eight years.
A. You see, you wouldn't be able to do it in eight years. The case of the peppered moth as a single gene change, it makes the population very different in its adaptive value. But to be able
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to reproduce you have to — you generally must accumulate many more genetic changes. To be unable to reproduce. But in asexual forms, for example, the evolution of disease resistance and bacteria, you can produce very new creatures right away.
Q. The peppered moths, is that an example of natural selection?
A. Yes.
Q. Or is that an example of some sort of genetic change?
A. That's natural change is genetic change.
Q. Are those two necessarily synonymous?
A. Not all genetic change is by natural selection, but all natural selection involves genetic change.
Q. One thing I wanted to ask you about in this article where you talk about "the etymology of September, October, November and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth from the Latin)," what does that have reference to? I just totally don't understand it.
A. If you read the first essay in THE PANDA'S THUMB about how the best proof of
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evolution are imperfections of auditors that record constraints of past history, we know by looking at those words that they had a different function in the past and that there is rather historical continuity. Likewise, we know by looking at the impure and odd paths of organisms that they were present in different historical contexts that have evolved.
Q. You have a statement in your article that perfection could be imposed by a wise creator or evolved by natural selection. What do you mean by that?
A. That when you see an organ that is perfectly designed, that doesn't teach you a whole lot about how it arose. When you see a structure that is very imperfect, as almost all organic structures are, and when you can trace that Imperfection to an historical constraint based on a previous evolutionary stage, then you have evidence for evolution.
Q. You mention in here this idea about why do rats run and bats fly with the same order of structure, would it not also be possible that the creator who — in the same —
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A. That's exactly the problem. It's always possible for the creator and therefore notions about the creator such as that are untestable, since there is no conceivable falsifying claim.
Q. Do you consider Australopithecus to have been a human?
A. Australopithecus is an intermediate form, whether it's human not is a definitional question. I believe it to be a creator on the human side of the split between apes and humans, that is after the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. Australopithecus is on the human side following that split, and is there either an ancestor or a close cousin of modern man.
Q. I mean, and the fact that he would differ from human in some respects concerning the 1,000 cubic centimeter difference, his cranial capacity, that could be explained by a sort of evolution in kind that would not violate the creationist?
MR. ENNIS: Object to the form of the question in that you're using the word "kind."
MR. WILLIAMS: I am not trying to get
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him to adopt the term I am talking about within the context that it's used or mentioned.
Q. You don't think so?
A. That's exactly the problem with point number 3. I suppose any creationist could weasel out of any evolutionary claim by saying those are in kind. I think it violates any reasonable vernacular notion of kind to say that a creature with a cranial capacity no larger than that of an ape is within the human kind merely because it walked upright. But I find that notion of kind to be so ambiguous that it's undefinable.
Q. You also state that transitional forms are generally looking at the species level but are abundant between larger groups.
A. Australopithecus is a lovely intermediate form.
Q. Are you aware that there are other experts which do view Australopithecus as essentially a human?
A. I am aware that there are other human beings who say that. Let me backtrack, because the word human is ambiguous. Some people used the word human to simply mean anything after the split
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between chimps and humans, so in part it's a definitional question. Those that say Australopithecus is human in the sense of having human intelligence at the level of modern human beings is not — I know of no expert who says that.
Q. Are there experts, to your knowledge, people who you consider to be experts, who say that Australopithecus is not a transitional form?
A. There are those who say, perhaps including myself, that Australopithecus is not the ones we know and is not a direct ancestor. Remember I said its either a directs ancestor or a cousin, we are not clear about that.
But, see, the notion of transitional form doesn't mean that you have to have every single stage in a final-graduated sequence. Evolution doesn't work that way anyway. It means that you have twigs that are lower down on the bush of human evolution than modern man and that's where Australopithecus is.
Q. How many years have you spent studying evolution? Since you were 11, I think you said.
A. No, since I was five. Well, I saw my first dinosaur when I was five, but I don't think
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I heard about evolution until I was ten or 11.
Q. You think that you have invested a substantial amount of time in the study of evolution?
A. I think I see where this one is going. Yes, I have.
Q. The transparencies of the arguments hopefully don't diminish —
A. No, you're right, they are different. Just like the context of discovery and notion are different.
Q. And until recently have you studied creation-science?
A. There is no creation-science. I have been aware ever since I was a little fellow that there is a fundamentalist movement in this country and I have on occasion read their literature all through that time.
Q. If evolution were determined by the scientific community to be perhaps not a fact, what kind of an effect do you think that would have upon you personally?
A. That's the kind of statement — we have to take it as a hypothetical, you understand, that
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I regard that as unlikely as the scientific community finding that the sun really does go around the earth. How would I take that? Well, I would be sad. But I was sad when the Yankees lost of the World Series.
Q. Do you think it would have any effect upon, for example, your own stature within the scientific community?
A. Only insofar as it had that effect upon all my colleagues who believe in evolution. I think it would depend very much on our reaction to it.
Q. Would it be fair to say that since you have something of a vested interest in seeing that evolution —
A. Only in the sense that everybody has a personal stake in what they believe, no more, no less. Every human being does. That doesn't constitute bias. Bias or prejudice is unreasonable personal investment in a theory.
Q. From just that one article in DISCOVER I take it your opinions on creation-science are very strong?
A. I just have strong opinions. I don't
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dislike the creationists any more than I dislike the Los Angeles Dodgers, but I live with them.
Q. Is this a case of trying to oppose creation-science, is it a cause with you?
A. A cause? What's a cause?
Q. Well, what do you consider a cause to be?
A. Something I believe in and work for. I don't know whether cause is the right word. I believe that creation-science is not science. And that's its claims are, insofar as testable, tested and incorrect. And in general that at its core not testable, and therefore not science and that therefore as a scientist when the issue comes up I oppose it. But I didn't bring up the issue. My stance is reactive.
Q. When you look down the road as much as we can, do you think 20 years from now our science knowledge will be the same as it is today?
A. Of course not. It wouldn't be science.
Q. When we look back at time in the history of science, were there ideas and theories offered which were at one time considered a science which today would be considered
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essentially laughable?
A. They shouldn't be laughable, because when held by scientists there were reasons in the context of those times. There really were reasons in the context of the 14th Century to hold to the earth centered universe. So if one understands the context of the times, one would not laugh. But of course, I see the thread of your question. The fact that science is always tentative does not mean that there is entirely subjective knowledge in the world. I think science does obtain answers. They can never be absolutely certain. But again I would be very surprised if the earth did turn out to be flat after all.
Q. Can you sit here today and say that there will never be any scientific evidence for creation?
A. In a way I can because it's not science, you see. It's really almost a definitional matter having less meaning than the question seems to hold. And if creation is about the suspension of natural law, then it's not part of science. If you ask me might we radically revise our ideas
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about evolution, sure.
Q. But as we learn more about science, can you say without qualification that some of the various parts of the definition of creation-science such as a relatively recent inception of the earth, even the occurrence of a worldwide flood, those sorts of things —
A. Those things are effectively falsified by what we know now. One is never say absolutely certain because one never can say that in science. To the best of our knowledge today they are effectively falsified to the extent that they cannot reasonably be held.
Q. What about changes only within fixed limits of originally created kinds of plants and animals?
A. Insofar as that directly contradicts the facts of evolution, I regard that as equally falsified.
Q. What you are saying when you say it's effectively falsified, there is an assumption there that the scientific data can be presented on those sorts of questions?
A. It's not scientific that one can make
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claims. Creationists sometimes make testable claims that is the core of the theory. The fiat creation out of nothing is unfalsifiable. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally in their support make testable claims that have been tested and found false.
Q. When you look back over the history of science, do you see that notions of science and scientific theories has been affected by kind of a society of the times?
A. Of course.
Q. Do you think that's any less true today than it was then?
A. No, but that just points to the difference between the sociology of knowledge or the psychology of knowledge, why do we believe what we believe, and the justification of knowledge, which is a different point. That is, ideas may arise within the social context. But their truth or falsity is a different matter.
Q. You stated in the prologue to EVER SINCE DARWIN, at page 15 that "Scientists as overt human beings unconsciously reflect that their theories are the social and political
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constraints of their times."
A. Right.
Q. What do you mean that they unconsciously reflect it?
A. That the things we believe have complex sources and often we don't recognize our own culturally based preferences, but again I repeat that the source of our ideas is a different matter than their truth or falsity.
Q. Do you think that evolution has been affected by this unconscious reflection of the social constraints of the times?
A. All science is. Always has been, always will be.
Q. Can you give me some examples of where you see this presently?
A. In any science or in evolution?
Q. In evolution.
A. The reason I am an historian is that it's very hard to identify present bias, but in my own career I have tried to show that much evolutionary thinking is biased by the presumptions that most people have in Western culture, that change tends to be slow and gradual.
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Q. How do you think that is a reflection of the social and political constraints?
A. It's an old tradition of Western thought tied to ideas of progress in the chain of being as an old maxim that nature does not make leaps, for example. And I think that is a reflection of social thought in part.
Q. Do you think that it would be correct to add to your statement there that scientists unconsciously reflect that their theories are social, political and religious constraints of their times?
MR. ENNIS: May I see that?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yes.
A. Religious belief is part of that, it's implicit. But again, do make that separation between the source of our ideas and the testing of them. I mean, it may well be, as I said an idea might come to you in a dream, it might come to you in a mystic vision, it might come to you while you are driving your car to work one day, it may come to you because you were reading a textbook in economics and said hey, there is an interesting analogy. The testing of it, its true value is a
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totally different matter.
Q. And if a theory of evolution came from that individual who used it as — let me rephrase that. Withdrawn. If a theory of evolution had its genesis in some individual's belief in atheism that he was going to try to really go out and prove, make sure there is not a creator, that wouldn't create any problems for science, would it, as long as the data fit the theory?
A. You know, there are people who have developed evolutionary ideas in order to affirm their religion. Truth value is a different subject and all I can do is keep saying that evolution preaches no moral doctrine. It cannot, no science can.
Q. Are you familiar with a book entitled
THE IMPLICATIONS OF EVOLUTION by Kerkut?
A. I thumbed through it about a decade ago. Not very familiar, no. I own it but I have not read it.
Q. Do you consider him to be a creation scientist?
A. I don't know even know who he is.
Q. I think he's from the University of
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Southampton.
A. Yes.
Q. Do you have an opinion about that book?
A. How can I if I haven't read it?
Q. Do you recall what his general approach was in that book?
A. No, I haven't read it.
Q. You haven't read it?
A. No. I have a lot of books I haven't read. Don't you?
Q. In your book EVER SINCE DARWIN, when you were writing about Velikovsky and collision in that essay, while — you make some I think you will recall, some criticisms of Velikovsky. You state at the end "I will continue for heresy preach by the nonprofessional." What do you mean by that?
A. The most exciting thing in science is when widely held ideas are wrong. See, you have a root for Loch Ness monsters and ESP, insofar as they are potentially scientific. That doesn't mean you have a root for nonscience.
Q. Do you think we should study these ideas which are viewed by science, as heresy?
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A. Scientific scientists should study scientific heresies. Whether scientists want to study things that aren't science that has to do with their interest as human beings. I do a lot of things that aren't science. We all have leisure time when we study those things outside science that interest us. But as scientists we are not compelled to look at heretical notions that have nothing to do with science.
Q. If we look at some of the facts say, for example, on the age of the earth, and some of those facts support a relatively recent age of the earth, and we devise a theory to explain those facts —
A. That's an Interesting "if" so far.
MR. ENNIS: I was going to object to the form of the question since it assumes that there are facts that support a young age of the earth. If you ask that as a hypothetical, I am happy to let the witness answer.
THE WITNESS: Same thing I was going to say myself.
Q. I am saying "if." So if they do exist. I am not asking you to tell me if they do,
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A. I want to make it clear in my judgment I think that they do not exist.
Q. If there are facts which support a relatively recent age of the earth, and a theory is devised to try to explain those facts, would that be a scientific theory?
A. I don't know. It depends on how it's formulated. If the theory formulated to explain those facts called upon fiat creation of things, as a result thereof, then it's not a scientific theory. If it was a theory that explained according to natural law how the earth might be that young, then it would be.
But again I repeat, there are no such facts, to my knowledge. There are claims. That's different.
Q. Do you think that the old Darwinian theory of evolution is axiomatic?
A. It can be axiomatized. Axiomatic at least in the vernacular means almost necessarily true. When people say things can be axiomatized that means that you can set up a formal structure, but I am not a philosopher and I don't fully understand what that means.
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Q. Are you familiar with a book MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGES TO THE NEO-DARWINIAN INTERPRETATION OF EVOLUTION?
A. Vaguely. I own it. I have read parts of it, I have not read it all.
Q. What is your opinion of that work?
A. It's got some interesting parts, got some wonderfully mistaken parts.
Q. If the earth was not approximately four and a half to five billion years old, what impact would that have on the theory of evolution?
A. Depends on how old you're going to let me make it.
Q. How old do you think the earth would have to be in order for —
A. I can't give you a figure, but it has to be more than 4,000. I can tell you that, and more than 10,000.
Q. Would one million he enough?
A. To the nether realm, I decline.
Q. Have you thought about that before?
A. You can't put a number on it. You just can't. Let me just say not what any creationist science I know claims.
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Q. Are you familiar with Paul Ehrlich?
A. Nice fellow.
Q. Are you familiar that he has stated that evolution is not falsifiable?
MR. ENNIS: What is the source of that?
MR. WILLIAMS: The source is an article in NATURE. Which I don't think you would consider to be a creationist publication.
THE WITNESS: Give me the source, where. NATURE is a big magazine. What year, what page?
MR. WILLIAMS: I think 1967.
THE WITNESS: Do you have a page number? Let's see what he says.
Q. He said in the article there "our theory of evolution has become one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus `outside of empirical science' but not necessarily false."
A. He may have been — I don't know the context of that quote. He may have been complaining about some particularly strict version of evolutionary theory. Which is different from the facts of evolution.
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Q. Are you not personally familiar with what his position is?
A. On that, no. That was a long time ago. I will find out. I will give him a call.
Q. Are you familiar with L. Harris Matthews?
A. Yes.
Q. Who is he?
A. L. Harris Matthews is a man who must be in his 80's now who was a major zoo keeper somewhere in Britain, has some interesting ideas on the Piltdown fraud. He once did a very interesting study on the pseudo penis of hyenas, in female hyenas.
Q. Would you consider him to be an expert in the field of evolution?
A. Not really.
Q. What would be his area of expertise?
A. I just said it.
Q. I am sorry, I didn't hear you.
A. I don't know him very well. What did he say?
Q. What would you consider to be his area of expertise?
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A. The biology of hyenas.
Q. Are you familiar with H.S. Lipson?
A. No.
Q. Do you recall an article you wrote in 1980 in PALEOBIOLOGY?
A. Which one? I hope so. It wasn't too long ago. Is it a new and more general theory of evolution emerging, that one?
Q. Do you have a copy of that article here?
A. Don't know.
MR. ENNIS: Can I see it? What was the title of it?
MR. WILLIAMS: I don't have a title. That's what I am looking for.
MR. ENNIS: Is it among the documents that we produced today?
MR. WILLIAMS: I don't see —
THE WITNESS: I don't think we gave you that one.
Q. Do you recall writing an article, since I don't have a copy of it, where you said that Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory of evolution, if accurate, then as a general proposition it is effectively dead despite its
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persistence as textbook orthodoxy?
A. Remember, the phrase "as a general proposition." That doesn't say that the so-called synthetic theory of evolution is false, it merely says it doesn't account for all the theory of evolution.
Q. You say it doesn't account for all the evolution. That seems to be quite a qualification from saying it's effectively dead.
A. Effectively dead as a general theory. That's what the quote says. Still very applicable to the understanding of small scale changes within populations.
Q. If species or kinds, to the extent that word is used —
A. They are not the same thing.
Q. I understand that — were created, would you not expect to see their sudden appearance in the fossil record?
A. See, again I haven't studied any logic for a long time, and I don't know the name of that fallacy. But the fact that species usually occur suddenly because it's consistent with a theory in their creation doesn't mean that in any sense it
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favors that theory, because there are many other evolutionary explanations.
For example, Velikovsky argued that the high surface temperature of Venus indicated that it was a comet and issued forth from Jupiter, and the surface temperature was high. That doesn't mean his explanation was correct. It wasn't. There is a name for that fallacy. But I don't remember.
Q. You have, if I might use the term, revived to one degree or another some of the theories or concepts offered by Richard Goldschmidt; is that correct?
A. Only in a very minor way and I hope that you understand the theory of punctuated equilibrium has little to do with Goldschmidt.
Q. You stated in an article in NATURAL HISTORY in 1977 that you predicted that during the next decade Goldschmidt will be largely vindicated while in the past he had been rebuked and derided.
A. Yes. What I meant by that in the article is quite clear. Is that Goldschmidt's hierarchical perspective on evolutionary theory would be the path in which I believe there will be
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major revisions of evolutionary theory, but I did not support some of the more spectacular of Goldschmldt's ideas, particularly the so-called idea of systemic mutation, which in fact I reject in that article.
Q. What new data or fresh data gives life to some of Goldschmidt's previously abandoned notions?
A. Particularly the concept of hierarchy, which is what I am discussing there. Primarily, the notion that there are properties of species that cannot be reduced to natural selection operating upon individuals. For example, propensity to speciate, that is to make more species. The characteristics of species that make them more likely to produce daughter species are in general not properties of individual members of that species, but of the species as a whole.
For example, population structure, how many there are and what kind of aggregates, and insofar as that's so, and insofar as major evolutionary trends may be powered by different speciation, then to that extent trends will have to be understood as a kind of higher order
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selection upon speciation events themselves and not by conventional natural selection operating among individual organisms.
To that extent, we need an expanded evolutionary theory that recognizes units higher than individual bodies as agents of selection.
Q. Is there an answer in there to my question as to what new data there is?
A. You want a specific example?
Q. Yes.
A. Okay, there's a group of snails called the volutes. If you go back into the Tertiary, some 60 million years ago, about half the species have floating larvae, planktonic, and the other half brood their larvae as the young develop right in the mother or within the mother's body. Today, all volutes brood their young. So there is a substantial evolutionary trend.
Looks as though that trend, and we have numbers to back this up, it looks as though that trend occurred because the species that brood their young speciate more frequently and the reason for that presumably is that they are better able to become isolated and thereby evolve genetic
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independence, of reproductive isolation. The ones that have floating larvae, they float all over the world. When a small population gets isolated that isolation is diluted by larvae coming in from the parental population. And if the trend is produced by different speciation, and if that propensity to speciate is not a property of individual volutes, then the trend must be understood as a higher order selection upon species.
Q. When did this information become available on this particular piece?
A. This particular study was published in science by a man named Hansen in the late 1970's. The theoretical basis has been established by people like Niles Eldredge and myself, and by Steve Stanley.
Q. Are you familiar with Thomas Kuhn's book THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC EVOLUTION?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you see the debate that is going on now as to whether the modern synthesis theory or punctuated equilibria is the more correct, if that's the right word, as fitting into some of
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Kuhn's paradigm?
A. I don't like the Kuhn model that well. I think the book was an important one in getting us away from previous notion that the scientific progress was just a steady march to truth. But I I don't really accept in detail his theory of paradigms. I think punctuated equilibrium is a new idea that explains some things we didn't know before and proposes some new phenomenon.
Q. Doesn't Kuhn's say that the paradigm or the model is no longer — when the evidence no longer fits the model of the paradigm, this is a tendency to change or tinker with the model so it will fit?
MR. ENNIS: If the witness knows. Otherwise I prefer that you read a quote.
THE WITNESS: The witness knows what Mr. Kuhn has to say. Sorry, I lost the question. Could you ask it again?
Q. Does Kuhn say that when the evidence no longer fits the model, that the model or the paradigm as he calls it, is modified?
A. Remember that I don't subscribe to all aspects. What Kuhn says is that when anomalies
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begin to accumulate that the initial attempt is usually to try and invent some ad hoc hypotheses. I do not, because I see where you are going of course, see punctuated equilibrium as ad hoc tinkering at all.
Because what it does is try to add new theory atop the old. It is not an attempt to revise the synthetic theory in terms of what it says about change in populations. It's rather an attempt to argue that you need different kinds of explanations when explaining change at higher levels. So it's really not within the context of Kuhn's model.
Q. I am not sure if I even understand the essentials, but as I understand it the modern synthesis theory is essentially one of slow gradual changes; is that correct?
A. I would say that the modern synthesis contains a preference for gradual change, but it does not require that all changes be gradual.
MR. ENNIS: Again, you can ask the question any way you want, but for purposes of clarity it might be of use if you will find out what is meant when the witness uses the word gradual in
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this context. Are we talking about ten days or years?
A. As a paleontologist, the theory of punctuated equilibrium refers to events of geological scale, and in fact the punctuations of which we speak in that theory usually take on the order of tens of thousands of years, which is very slow by the scale of our lives, but a second in geological perspective.
Q. When you talk about gradual, not you but when you discuss gradual in terms of the modern synthesis theory, does that refer to just time or the degree of change in the species or both?
A. The main idea to be identified as gradual is not a notion that rates are constant, but for the idea that evolution precedes by the wholesale transformation of a lineage, so if you had species A the whole thing changes steadily until you want to call it something else. Under punctuated equilibrium, while this change does not occur that way, but it occurs during events of branching or speciation.
Q. To use an oversimplified example and
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one could be said as the hand, does the modern synthesis theory say that the hand evolved gradually? By "gradually," I mean was there an earlier form of the hand where it would look quite different than now and it slowly grew into the form that we know have?
A. It's not a good example because we really don't have a lot of direct evidence for the hand.
Q. The question I am asking is, though, if you are going to look at other parts of anatomy —
A. The general idea, though no one would claim that it holds in all cases, would be under the modern synthesis that most structures arise through a series, not necessarily every, but through a series of intermediary stages.
Q. Would the punctuated equilibrium differ on that point?
A. Not necessarily in that punctuated equilibrium is about species, and the punctuational origin of species. Species are small units, so you might under punctuated equilibrium get a hand through 27 sequential events of speciation, step by step. But each step
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would be rapid.
MR. ENNIS: Rapid in the sense you're talking about —
THE WITNESS: Rapid meaning tens of thousands of years.
Q. What did the column BORN AGAIN CREATION, where did this appear?
A. In a magazine called SCIENCE FOR THE PEOPLE.
Q. What is SCIENCE FOR THE PEOPLE?
A. It's a magazine of scientists who tend to have political opinions to the left of center.
Q. Is that published by some organization?
A. It's published by Science for the People, which is an organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I think it's called Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political—I don't remember.
Q. Are you a member of the group?
A. Yes. Insofar — I am a member insofar as I pay my dues to get the magazine. That's my only contact with it.
Q. Do they have a statement of purpose reduced to writing?
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A. They may. I don't have it. As I say, the extent of my activities is to subscribe to the journal.
Q. Why do you state in here that the Australopithecines has passed an "equal time law"?
A. Maybe I made a mistake. Does it say balanced treatment here? I could have made a mistake. It wouldn't be the first time. Probably made a mistake. I don't really know what balanced treatment means. What does it mean?
Q. That's one of the issues in the lawsuit. If you were going to balance treatment of two opposing theories, do you have an idea how you would do it?
A. Depends on the theories. I don't know what balance treatment means, but seeing as in my view creation isn't a science, so it isn't an issue of whether you give 20 percent or 50 percent of the lectures on creation-science. Either 20 percent or 50 percent of a nonscience in a science course is inadmissible.
Q. Tell me how would you balance a treatment of two opposing theories.
MR. ENNIS: Two opposing scientific
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theories?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yes.
A. By presenting the evidence for both.
Q. What if on one side there was more evidence than the other — than on the other side?
A. I would have to give a little more time, but it wouldn't be real fair. Just to mention while the kids were packing their books at the end of the class hour that there was another view. I don't think I can define that. It's like basic kind. It's ambiguous.
Q. But suppose one aspect of the theory there was no evidence for one theory and all of it was for the other.
A. I am really not a legal scholar. I disclaimed on the origin of life, which I know a little bit more about than — I don't know what you mean. You have to tell me what you think that phrase "balanced treatment" means. When I discuss — I don't know.
When I don't know the answer to something and I think there are two competing theories, I tend to give roughly equal time to both. I am not saying that would be so in all
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cases.
Q. Do you think if you were teaching two opposing theories of science, and you were asked to give balanced treatment and that was left to your professional discretion, do you think you could do it?
A. If they were two scientific theories?
MR. ENNIS: Your question does presuppose that it was left to his professional discretion to determine what he thinks balance means?
THE WITNESS: That's an interesting point. If the legislature tells me to do it, then I don't know what it means.
MR. ENNIS: I want to make sure that's part of your question.
THE WITNESS: That's a good point.
Q. It obviously is —
MR. ENNIS: So you're not attempting to frame that question in the context of this act?
MR. WILLIAMS: As to what it means, we will have to leave for the court's ultimate decision.
MR. ENNIS: If that's so, then I object
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to the form of the question because I think it assumes that the act leaves that to the discretion of the teacher. So I would object to the form of the question and direct the witness not to answer it and ask that it be stricken from the record. If you wish to ask the question as a hypothetical, then I will let the witness answer the question.
MR. WILLIAMS: I think he has already answered the question. So your objection is noted for the record.
(Recess taken.)
MR. WILLIAMS: I am going to have made as exhibit number 2 to the deposition an article entitled BORN AGAIN CREATIONISM, by Steve Gould from SCIENCE FOR THE PEOPLE. It's dated September, October, November 1981.
(Whereupon, document above referred to was marked as Defendants' Exhibit 2 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Dr. Gould, directing your attention to Exhibit 2, I think we have already established what while you use the term "equal time law" in reference to Act 590, that that term in itself, at least, is not found in the act, correct?
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A. Yes. And we also established that balanced treatment is to be at least in part determined by legislative decision.
Q. And you state that "The creationist leaders may be dishonest in argument and even malevolent. Do you consider them to be that?
A. I think some of the misquotations are so egregious that it verges on dishonesty. One can only make inferences.
Q. In this article you quote Duane Gish where I think you had the same essential quote earlier where he says "We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator." There is no reference for that.
A. Page 42 of EVOLUTION, THE FOSSILS SAY NO.
Q. Can I see that, please?
A. You sure could. It is the end line of the longer quotation.
That is in fact not the version I got the quote from. It's basically the same statement.
Q. That quote that you used from Dr. Gish, is it not simply consistent with the earlier
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discussion that you and I had about the fact that we can only tell from creation-science that the creator has some power?
A. I read the quote as an admission that so-called creation-science isn't science. After all, if you cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative process is an admission that in principle it cannot explain the most important claim that it makes.
Q. But when you look at that statement, can you not distinguish — would it not be possible to distinguish between the determining by scientific investigation the exact creative processes used and the fact that creation did occur?
A. That's not enough. Listen to what it says. "We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes. You can't admit in principle that in principle you can't discover anything about the major phenomenon.
MR. WILLIAMS: Off the record.
(Discussion off the record.)
Q. You quote in this article from — if
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not quote or reference some of the information published by the Seagraves and also some things by Gish. You do kind of tend to lump creation scientists together, don't you?
A. They share a set of beliefs.
Q. The same way some evolutionists share some beliefs?
A. To that extent I would lump as evolutionists all people who believe in evolution.
Q. Including those who have said in the past that an average black adult male has the mental capacity of a 11 year old Caucasian or something?
A. So far as they said that, they were not behaving at scientists. But they were not evolutionists. Good guys and bad guys everywhere.
Q. Do you feel like you understand the second law of the thermodynamics?
A. Not in its details, but a hell of a lot better than Mr. Gish does.
Q. Do you think — do you agree that it essentially states that order must decrease through time?
A. No. It specifically doesn't say that.
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It specifically states the circumstances in which order will decrease, as I understand it. I am not a physicist, and I will not go very far. It states that in so-called closed systems, that the systems in which there is neither input nor outflow of energy, that order will decrease, which is another way of saying entropy will increase.
Q. How do you define what is a closed system?
A. Again, I don't want to go too far because I am not even positive that this is technically the correct definition. I understand it's a system which is closed, that is there is no energy entering or leaving by boundaries of the system.
Q. You state that "Creationism is part of the program of the Evangelical right in America, and this movement, considered peripheral a decade ago, has became central in Reaganland."
A. That's America.
Q. Could you explain to me on what you base your conclusion on that creationism is part of the program of the Evangelical right?
A. Well, that term insofar as that term
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has been applied to people like Mr. Falwell who has a larger political program, insofar as creationism is one aspect of his political program, then the definition holds.
Q. Do you know whether Jerry Falwell is responsible for the passage of Act 590?
A. I have no idea.
Q. Is the fact that it's part of the Evangelical right one of the reasons that you oppose it that you view it as being —
MR. ENNIS: Oppose what, the teaching in the public schools or the document itself? Do you understand the question?
A. I mean empirically in my own life the answer would have to be no because I opposed it just as much ten years ago when there wasn't an identifiable Evangelical right.
Q. What is Reaganland?
A. It's a metaphorical description of the U.S. of A. And its current political climate.
Q. How do you feel about that personally, not as a scientist?
THE WITNESS: Is that relevant?
MR. ENNIS: At the trial I would object
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on the ground that it's irrelevant, but we have waived questions as to relevancy until the time of the trial, so if David wants to spend a lot of time asking those kinds of questions, do so.
A. I did not vote for Ronald Reagan. I don't think — I am not very happy with his presidency.
Q. Would you say that's a fair and accurate depiction — description of your feelings about the political climate of the country right now, that you are not very happy with his presidency?
A. Yes.
Q. So you're somewhat happy?
A. Okay. All right. I will be a little more forthcoming. I am not opposed to everything he's done, but in the panoply of presidents I have witnessed, I would rank — since my memory which extends back as a little child to the death of Franklin Roosevelt, one of the first things I do remember, I would rank Reagan second to Nixon in the terms of the ones I didn't like.
Q. You state in your article that "The creationist laws lost a series of court battles
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between 1975 and 1978, when several statutes for "equal time" were tossed out because they had violated the principle of the separation of church and state." What court battles do you have in mind there?
A. Particularly — I hope my years are right— the overturning of the Tennessee creation bill, which I think was in 1977. I may be wrong.
Q. That's one.
A. Were there not others?
Q. I am asking you.
A. I think there were. I wrote this article several months ago, and I think I had some documents before me. In fact, what I was basing that on, I remember, was a news report from SCIENCE, THE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, that listed the others and I do not know recall what they were.
Q. Are you aware as to whether there were any differences in that Tennessee law and this law?
A. Oh, I say there are. I think there are differences of rhetoric, rather than of substance.
Q. I understand that's the way you feel. But do you agree that there are differences?
A. In statement but not in substance.
