Let change happen
You report that bird species are hopping on and off the critically endangered species list due to changes in habitat (16 May, p 6).
Does that make change good or bad? I thought that environmental change kick-starts evolution, so it must be good, right? Yet environmentalists behave as if the opposite were true: every time a change occurs that pushes a species nearer to extinction there is an outcry. It appears that past change was good 鈥� it created a world of wonders, including us 鈥� but that present change is definitely bad.
Can we have it both ways? Can we have a nice safe world where everything is preserved exactly as it is now, and have evolution too? Are we, perhaps, endangering future evolution with our self-critical and yet self-righteous conservationist ideology?
What is a theory?
Evolution is not a theory but an established law, according to a quote in your Viewfinder section (2 May, p 23). 杏吧原创s’ use of the term “theory”, it is suggested, inadvertently helps creationists’ argue their case.
Before we can even consider the merits of this line of reasoning, we need agreed definitions of “fact”, “law”, “theory”, “hypothesis” and “conjecture”. Is there a mechanism for achieving such agreement? Should there even be one? And should the everyday usage of the word “theory” influence the debate?
It is entirely possible that any agreed definitions would rule out use of the term “string theory”, and this might, as Lawrence Krauss has argued (3 December 2005, p 23), prevent further use of the phrase giving comfort to creationists.
Agreement on terms is only the start. In a lecture celebrating New 杏吧原创‘s 50th anniversary in 2006, E. O. Wilson suggested that the time has come to regard natural selection as one of the fundamental laws of biology. His implication was that the proposal is controversial. Let the controversy rage and let it one day be resolved 鈥� but not just for the sake of expediency in the battle with creationism.
Science is not a church, and has no bishops. We must take the rough of that with the smooth.
Despite themselves
The potential benefits of spite reported by John Whitfield would not have surprised an Athenian citizen from the 5th century BC (16 May, p 42).
In 458 BC, the playwright Aeschylus produced his Oresteia trilogy, in the final part of which the avenging Furies are confronted by the goddess Athena. She persuades them to withhold their wrath from Athens in return for an honoured position in the city.
The Furies were considered to be ancient spirits of vengeance who ensured that punishment was meted out to those who broke the natural laws of society. In the play the metaphor is clear: primitive tribal fury is calmed and harnessed to the law to become an engine of justice. The benefit to the city is stated repeatedly and explicitly 鈥� hope and kindness can now flourish because cheats and criminals know what is likely to happen to them.
The name Eumenides, with which the Athenians invoked the Furies, means “well disposed” or “kindly ones”. The Athenians clearly had an instinctive understanding of the potential for good contained in public anger, a lesson that certain British politicians appear to be relearning the hard way.
Detect a monopole
The magnetic monopole virtual particles that you report (9 May, p 28) are, of course, no more the real thing than holes in a semiconductor crystal are positrons. Admittedly, in the absence of the real thing, the virtual particle can give some idea of a monopole’s behaviour, but no more than this.
If real monopole particles were common in our part of the universe they would be easy to detect with an ordinary electromagnet and some metering in the coil leads. The stronger the electromagnet, the bigger would be its catchment area; and the longer the time it was energised, the more monopoles it would collect.
At the end of the collecting period, we would reverse the polarity of the electromagnet and monitor the meters as the two clouds of monopoles, one from each pole of the magnet, are suddenly repelled, fly the length of the magnet and come to an abrupt halt at the other end.
Unsatisfying answer
The idea of a multiverse is gaining respectability (2 May, p 35), but while it explains why physical constants have their observed values, it still provides us with no means to predict them from first principles. Since we can imagine other universes, each with completely different physics, the difficult questions have merely been put off to the “next level”.
It is very appealing to conceive of a multiverse where every logically possible universe exists. But I wonder whether postulating the existence of everything provides a truly satisfying explanation of anything, and whether it counts as science at all.
Supernatural explanations are available, but since these are the most implausible and unsatisfying of all, perhaps we have to be content with a physics founded on brute facts verified by observation.
We may yet get an answer that is more satisfying. Until that time, some evidence for the multiverse might help.
Waste of technology
Valerie Yule suggests that things should be made to last and be repaired (16 May, p 26).
It’s an admirable thought but not realistic. Take the humble PC. True you can take one apart and plug in new circuit boards easily enough. However, as technology moves rapidly forward, today’s high-speed technological wonder soon becomes yesterday’s slow, old computer. PCs and other products are repairable, it is just that the new versions are so much better than the old.
Intellectual states
I hope Chris Mooney is correct in his assessment that Barack Obama will help make intellectualism a permanent value in the US (9 May, p 22), but I doubt he is. I have taught evolution as part of my geology courses for over 40 years and have come to be very pessimistic about American values. The average American is very religious and militaristic 鈥� feelings driven by fear, superstition and ignorance.
I recently heard Obama, in a commencement address at our largest Catholic university, apologise for his pro-abortion stance and explain how he prays nightly for guidance.
We have a long way to go, and in the meantime the priests and generals continue to hold enormous power.
Read my accent
You report on a facial-recognition system that can identify from mouth movements alone the distinctive patterns characteristic of particular languages (25 April, p 17). Skilled English lip-readers are aware of such differences even within the one language we share.
I had a deaf English student who attended various lectures at college, including classes delivered by a chemistry lecturer from Belfast in Northern Ireland. When I asked whether she was reading her lecturers’ lips satisfactorily she replied that all were fine, but asked of her chemistry teacher: “Does she have some kind of accent?”
Antibiotic resistance
Feedback applied its arithmetic talents to the premise that continual use of Dettol antibacterial cleaner would select one resistant bacterium in 1000, and that this would lead to astounding numbers of resistant bugs (2 May). An earlier article on insecticide use asserted that fast-acting pesticides give “any insect that resists them an enormous competitive advantage”, and that this “drives the evolution of resistance” (11 April, p 4).
Both these positions appear logical and scientifically defensible, but they are strikingly different to the medical orthodoxy that one should take any prescribed antibiotic to its full term. The paradigm is that “you’ve got to kill all the bugs you can”.
Which argument is right? As we face the threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, I am worried that the medical profession may not understand its own science.
Hospital hell
Linda Geddes asks for evidence of how much a restful atmosphere contributes to healing, stating this is “something health chiefs are sure to demand before making changes in our hospitals” (9 May, p 45). I suspect that Geddes is under 40 years of age, as hospitals have already changed in ways that make them almost unrecognisable compared with those of my youth.
Around 1930, I lost an argument with a 10-pint iron saucepan filled with boiling stew and awoke several days later in the Middlesex Hospital in London. My memories of that place are predominantly green: paint, tiles, curtains and aprons. The hardwood floors were highly polished 鈥� clean, but lethal for the less sure-footed.
The wards were huge and high, with an acoustic that must have delighted the devil himself. Heating was provided by double-sided open coal fires, with an attendant clatter of coal buckets, fire irons and ash pans. Beds, trolleys and folding screens were all moved on noise-generators known euphemistically as wheels.
Truly, it was better to die at home than to be cured in a hospital. Today I rather enjoy an enforced sojourn therein.
Clear the auditorium
One of the methods that Paul Marks suggests airports might employ to stem the spread of pandemic diseases is a “cough detector” (23 May, p 18). This would be an excellent addition to concert halls and opera houses 鈥� finding the persistent coughers could activate a range of counter-measures benefiting the rest of the audience 鈥� a trapdoor beneath each seat, perhaps?
For the record
鈥� We did a little too much colouring-in on the map showing the spread of dengue (30 May, p 38). It hasn’t spread to New Zealand.
鈥� The DOI for the research on swine flu published in The Journal of the American Medical Association should have been (9 May, p 4).