…and this is a 
When I was in New York a while back, I got to meet Ben Fry, a clever fellow who has been doing some amazing things with data visualization. One of the things we played with was a a new toy he'd worked out, or rather, a new application of some old tools. One of the things biologists are interested in is change over time, and we compare genomes to see where changes have occurred between two or more species; one of the reasons we're interested in the chimpanzee genome, for instance, is that it is close to ours, and what scientists are doing is comparing the two, looking for the key differences.
There are other things that change over time that lend themselves to these sorts of analyses. Darwin's On the Origin of Species went through six editions during his lifetime, and it wasn't a static document at all — he revised, sometimes extensively, and he added new material, sometimes in response to new data, sometimes in reaction to public and private concerns.
What Fry has done is taken the text of all six editions, compared them, and color-coded the words by when they were added. Then he rendered them in teeny-tiny print and splashed them up on the screen so you can see when and where changes occurred in Darwin's text. It takes a while to load, since it is loading the full text of six editions of the Origin, plus annotations, but then you can just move your cursor around over the blocks to read and see what he was thinking. For instance, one thing that jumps out at you is the huge block of red in the middle of the document, a whole large section that was added in the sixth edition. Mouse over it, and you'll see how it starts:
I WILL devote this chapter to the consideration of various miscellaneous objections which have been advanced against my views, as some of the previous discussions may thus be made clearer;
That makes sense; this is a piece of the story that Darwin added late, after the book had drawn a lot of criticism, to address specific problems.
It's a fun gadget. Go explore the evolving mind of Darwin!
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Posted by: Stanton | September 5, 2009 9:39 AM
And yet, there are people who think that Charles Darwin was some sort of unchanging, magical anti-messiah...
Posted by: Zeno | September 5, 2009 9:45 AM
In particular, there are many who think that Darwin was some sort of authoritarian voice imbued with infallibility by his dedicated disciples. This project illustrates how Darwin himself did not regard his views as definitive or unassailable. He subjected them to reflection and revision. He was a scientist, not a prophet. People who prefer prophets just don't get it.
Posted by: David Utidjian | September 5, 2009 9:49 AM
I get:
"Start: applet not initialized"
:(
-DU-
Posted by: Inti | September 5, 2009 10:10 AM
What's funny is that those same people who think Darwin is like an unchanging magical anti-messiah for atheists, will denounce the changes in his book as proof that the theory is unstable and fragile.
The wonders of doublethink...
Posted by: Katie | September 5, 2009 10:10 AM
Anyone else thinking of the matrix when it loads? :)
Posted by: Jim Wynne | September 5, 2009 10:10 AM
There you have it--DARWIN WAS WRONG!!!
Posted by: Katie | September 5, 2009 10:12 AM
Anyone else thinking of the matrix when it loads? :)
Posted by: bobxxxx | September 5, 2009 10:21 AM
Darwin = the most important person in human history, in my opinion. The father of modern biology and the man who killed god. Nobody else comes close to what Darwin accomplished.
Posted by: Amtiskaw
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September 5, 2009 10:29 AM
I've been led to believe that the first edition of the Origin is the best, and that subsequently he took too much notice of criticisms that would later (in our era) turn out to be mistaken, as well as drifting towards Lamarkism. Or so I'm told...
Posted by: Chris Caprette | September 5, 2009 10:31 AM
bobxxxx @8:
Can't kill what wasn't alive, didn't exist in the first place. [Yeah, I know it was just a metaphor but for some reason I can't resist simplistic pedantry this morning.:)]Posted by: cmflyer
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September 5, 2009 10:33 AM
I don't understand how there can be single words from the fifth edition scattered within the section added in the sixth. Also, is this the complete text of the sixth edition with words color coded as to when they appeared?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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September 5, 2009 10:37 AM
I tried loading it twice and both times got a CTD (crash to desktop). The heck with this noise, I'm going sailing.
Posted by: Armand K. | September 5, 2009 10:50 AM
@cmflyer #11:
The scattered words are probably the effect of rewriting/extending some paragraphs.
Posted by: Stanton | September 5, 2009 10:58 AM
You fail to realize that there were atheists long before Darwin's ancestors knew how to speak New English, as well as the fact that the vast majority of atheists became atheists for reasons OTHER THAN DARWIN.That, and only utter fools think that the validity of "descent with modification" rests entirely with proving or disproving the existence of God.
Posted by: strange gods bless 'merica | September 5, 2009 11:11 AM
Charles Darwin was completely dispensable. The world would not be much different if he had never been born. His ideas would have been discovered by someone else. The science was inevitable.
Paul, Constantine, Muhammad, Ashoka, Genghis, each had a much greater impact on historical contingency.
Posted by: mikespeir | September 5, 2009 11:15 AM
Great. Our very own red-letter edition Bible.
Posted by: SC, OM | September 5, 2009 11:18 AM
I'm just getting to that section in A People's History of Science!
Don't spoil it! :)
Posted by: Marcus B. | September 5, 2009 11:21 AM
Just like Inti @#4 I've noticed that there is a type of people with whom you just can't win. If you say anything about evolution being "true" you are accused of having it as a religion - as unchanging, scientific dogma. But if you point out that the theory develops over time and that details are constantly questioned, the very same people will say that this just proves that the theory is wrong.
@bobxxxx
Darwin was far from the only one who saw these things. He was important to be sure, but I think that it borders on actually making him a religious idol if you call him the most important human in history.
The beauty of the real, natural world is that things can be observed, regardless of who you are. If the authors of the Bible hadn't written what they wrote, it would never have appeared, but if Darwin had died before his voyage on the Beagle someone else would have written about evolution.
Darwin was surely a very smart man, but evolution is there to be observed and would have been observed sooner or later even if he, Wallace et al. wouldn't have been there, someone else would have come along.
Posted by: SteveM | September 5, 2009 11:30 AM
It seems that is what you end up with, but along the way you also see sections of previous editions being deleted as the new editions are being added.
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 5, 2009 11:35 AM
Charles Darwin was completely dispensable. The world would not be much different if he had never been born. - strange gods before me
I have to agree. While the general scientific acceptance of common descent might have been delayed a decade or two (Wallace had neither the scientific prestige nor the social connections of Darwin), it's notable that natural selection did not become the scientific consensus until the 1920s and the work of Fisher, Haldane, Wright and others, combining it with rediscovered Mendelian genetics.
Many others could be added to your list of those with greater impact. To suggest a few: Alexander, Ogdei Khan (simply by dying in 1241), Lincoln, Bismarck, Marx (if only 19th century socialism had taken a different, more libertarian - in the original sense of that word - direction) Lenin, Hitler, Kennedy and Khruschev, possibly Stanislav Petrov.
Posted by: aineolach | September 5, 2009 11:37 AM
Now somebody just needs to do the same with other science texts and then religious texts so people how visualize how stagnant religion is and how progressive science is.
Posted by: AJ Milne | September 5, 2009 11:49 AM
I was thinking something similar. But the funny thing is, of course, without a sense of scale/time elapsed, you'd find certain religious texts that make The Origin of Species look pretty tame in terms of how complicated and involved was its origin, descent, so on... Bearing in mind, of course, that the old testament was cobbled together over millenia by a largeish rogues' gallery of cons, while Darwin did his work over what--a decade and change?
And it truly would be fascinating to have visual points of comparison like these for some of those, all on their own, even. Get The Book of Mormon in, say... are there extant texts around of the original even more hilariously quasi-literate edition? And then there's the early editions of the Qur'an that turned up, with some interesting departures from the current version... For the new testament, of course, there are multiple descendance trees argued by different folk.
And yeah, like you said, again, the relative stasis in all of 'em against scientific texts would certainly be an eye opener. Pick a decent into bio or biochem text that's done a few editions over the last decade, and compare the rate--that'd be a properly vivid illustration, certainly.
Posted by: Michelle R
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September 5, 2009 12:05 PM
Wow. Look at that ap go! It's AWESOME.
Posted by: alias Ernest Major | September 5, 2009 12:21 PM
I don't understand how there can be single words from the fifth edition scattered within the section added in the sixth.
The algorithms which identify differences between texts are imperfect. In particular, if a string occurs in two places in one version and one place in another, they may identify the wrong pair as equivalents. I would assume that this is what has happened. (I predict that you will find compensating scattered words in texts from earlier editions marked as being added in the 6th edition.)
Posted by: itwasntme | September 5, 2009 12:47 PM
Wow! What an amazing sight. It reminds me how any original work is accomplished - the basic structure is the hardest part to get down, but after that immense work is done, more can be built on it. The structure is the hardest, but if it's a good one, it will be taken up and used to advance thought. This works for everything - art, fiction writing, science. Getting a new concept down is the heroic work: then it's given to the world to chew on.
Posted by: bio613 | September 5, 2009 12:52 PM
Agreed - VERY cool.
Can this be captured/copied/downloaded as an image? A picture is worth a thousand words kind of thing.
I'm confident that it'll go a long way to help teach that Darwin (Science/Theory) didn't have one idea and that was the end of it. Instead Darwin (Science/Theory) is modified so that it is better. Discussions in class (9th/10th grade Biology) about the 'tenuous' nature of Scientific Theory often/usually(?) gets heard by the students as 'scientists keep changing their collective minds; can't really depend on them; no reason to believe them'.
So, any way to get this as an image??
Posted by: Stephanurus | September 5, 2009 12:54 PM
Isn't there a variorum edition of "The Origin" in print?
Stephanurus
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | September 5, 2009 12:54 PM
so he's basically stuck the revisions into a version control system and is running a "diff"/"blame" over the entire history? yeah, kinda neat. us comp sci geeks have been doing that sort of thing for ages. can't imagine why other disciplines haven't picked up on that sort of tool yet, but i guess late is better than never.
(kidding, kidding, folks... i know perfectly well most version control systems have atrocious user interfaces only fit for the inveterately eggheaded. but they're still really neat tools.)
and yes, the "scattered words" thing is because the algorithms are trying to identify the smallest possible changes, basically. since they don't have any way of comprehending the material, this sometimes means they grab smaller bites than makes sense in context. but having them go for any larger bites would have other, usually worse, side-effects.
Posted by: amphiox | September 5, 2009 1:12 PM
"Paul, Constantine, Muhammad, Ashoka, Genghis, each had a much greater impact on historical contingency."
and
"Many others could be added to your list of those with greater impact. To suggest a few: Alexander, Ogdei Khan (simply by dying in 1241), Lincoln, Bismarck, Marx (if only 19th century socialism had taken a different, more libertarian - in the original sense of that word - direction) Lenin, Hitler, Kennedy and Khruschev, possibly Stanislav Petrov"
Is it all that surprising that nearly everyone on these lists are politicians and/or warlords? And depressing that the majority of them probably changed the world for the worst?
Posted by: Tony P | September 5, 2009 1:28 PM
Nice evolutionary view of the text.
Yes, even thought evolves.
Posted by: bobxxxx | September 5, 2009 1:33 PM
Wasn't Darwin the first to present massive evidence for natural selection? And didn't he do this at a time when even educated people believed in magical creation?
The fact is Darwin, far more than anyone else, was responsible for the beginning of modern biology. And the fact is it was Darwin, and not anyone else, who was most responsible for killing the god idea. Darwin was the most important person in history, and calling him that does not make him a religious idol, which is as stupid as saying non-religious people are religious.
Posted by: AlanWCan | September 5, 2009 1:44 PM
I think it's more accurate to say there are people who think there are people who think that Charles Darwin was some sort of unchanging, magical anti-messiah...and they're wrong, but they think it helps for them to attack that straw man.
Posted by: KM | September 5, 2009 2:03 PM
AlanWCan:
Really? So, there aren't people who think that Darwin is atheism's messiah? (Absenting the adjectives that I *hope* are the source of your problem with Stanton's oringinal claim but are not really essential to making his point -- they are, after all, implicit in the concept of a messiah.)
http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080610095006AADWaJw
Posted by: Brian | September 5, 2009 2:05 PM
Oh, I think that has more to do with the fact that it's just easier to think of the names of warlords and politicians when you're listing people who changed the world. There's no doubt in my mind that poets and scientists have had an equal impact -- it's just harder to pick out the ones who really were pivotal in changing history versus the ones who just bounced upwards in the ensuing wakes.
Posted by: KM | September 5, 2009 2:12 PM
PS: Other examples of religious people who toe that line are available in numerous threads on Pharyngula -- you can do your own homework on that one.
Accusing atheists of worshipping Darwin as Christians worship Jesus/God and/or of treating the Origin of Species as a holy book is a standard strategy for "challenging" atheism... As I'm sure you are aware. So, no, the view concerns Stanton is not, as you suggest, a straw man but t is the real deal.
Posted by: MikeG | September 5, 2009 2:13 PM
Brian,
How about Oppenheimer, Szilard, et al.?
Maxwell, Curie, you know, the big guns.
Posted by: Stanton | September 5, 2009 2:19 PM
So, what did you think Alfred Wallace was doing at the same time in the Amazon and in Indonesia? Twiddling his thumbs while waiting to contract malaria? Yes, except that there were still a lot of educated people formulating hypotheses and theories to explain all of the evidence for an old Earth that had been gathered for over a century before Darwin. Even more important than Carol Von Linne?Yet, Darwin never discussed disproving God in any of his books, and the majority of Christians have no qualms about accepting the existence of God and accepting the fact of evolution. Or, can you please show us where Darwin stated he "killed God"? Except that Charles Darwin wasn't the most important person in history: there have been plenty of scientists, some of them contemporaries, some of them not, who made equally important and equally influential, contributions, if not more so. Like, for instance, Alfred Wallace, Gideon Mantell, Baron Georges Cuvier, Louis Pasteur, Sir Isaac Newton, Anton Von Leeuwenhoek, to name a few...Posted by: Stanton | September 5, 2009 2:22 PM
There was this one twit of a smug creationist jerk, over at Panda's Thumb, who boldly stated that Darwinists and atheists worshiped Evolution as a god, that Charles Darwin was our "Bible," and that science classrooms were actually a kind of church.
Posted by: elty | September 5, 2009 2:35 PM
That was amazing! And the finished product would actually make for interesting wall art.
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 5, 2009 3:08 PM
Is it all that surprising that nearly everyone on these lists are politicians and/or warlords? And depressing that the majority of them probably changed the world for the worst?
Interesting, anyway. As far as individual influence on history goes, although people in the arts give us enjoyable, inspiring and illuminating experiences, it seems doubtful any individual - even a Bach, Michaelangelo or Shakespeare - changes the way people think or feel (and so behave) very much. That leaves people in "rational enquiry" (mathematics, science, technology parts of history and philosophy) and maybe business on the one hand; and those in politics (including political philosophy and the more political aspects of social science) and religion. In rational enquiry or business, any step not taken by one individual you imagine eliminating would in general soon be taken by another - because these fields have an internal logic and strong cumulative aspects. So I guess it's inevitable that individuals will have more effect in politics and religion. Then, of course, those with most effect are likely to be those who care most about power; and who are therefore likely to trample others to get it.
Posted by: Ferrous Patella | September 5, 2009 3:09 PM
It looks like he just removes text when it is removed from an edition. It would be better to leave it in with a strike colored to match which edition is was removed from.
Posted by: Darren Garrison | September 5, 2009 3:10 PM
Ebert:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/09/the_longest_thread_evolves.html
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 5, 2009 3:14 PM
Stanton,
Wallace independently realised the importance of natural selection, but had nothing like the mass of evidence and implications Darwin had worked on for decades. As scientists, I think of those you have named only Newton is of the same level of significance - and he was not indispensable either, as the contemporary discoveries of Leibniz and Hooke indicate.
Posted by: anonymouroboros | September 5, 2009 4:00 PM
To a large degree, this argument about the great scientists and people of history is silly. Sure, you need an Alexander to conquer the "world" in the Hellenistic period and a Khan to rule the Khanate, but science is predicated upon individual scientists being expendable in an historical sense. You don't need a Newton to discover gravity, nor a Darwin to discover evolution. That is part of what makes science great: anyone with an inquiring mind and the necessary education can find the facts out for him or herself and not have to accept what these people said by faith. You don't need to be a towering intellect, a creative genius, or a great leader to learn science, you just need to listen to the evidence.
Posted by: aineolach | September 5, 2009 4:02 PM
#41 Totally agree with you Ferrous Patella
Posted by: Spiro Keat | September 5, 2009 4:03 PM
@ 21
I disagree about the religious text being static.
Over the centuries, god seems to have changed his mind on many things. Every time his word was translated or the political climate changed, some new truths were added, or some no longer acceptable truths were omitted.
This only applies to the old/new testament, AFAIK.
Posted by: SteveM | September 5, 2009 4:47 PM
re 41:
It appears they are working on that:
Posted by: uncle frogy | September 5, 2009 4:59 PM
I do not see why an individual is any more or less important to"changing history" should be a political leader and not some one else say in science. I do not see why an Alexander is any more indispensable than than say Louis Pasteur or Nicola Tesla. With out Alexander there would not have been someone else form a "Great Empire" more or less when or where He formed his?
Posted by: Yubal
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September 5, 2009 6:44 PM
What?! Darwin the mildly agnostic English gentleman killed god? That's bull and wishful thinking on your side!!
God is killed again and again by anyone who leaves him. Intellectually this step was performed/prepared by other people who deserve the credits for that e.g. Ludwig Feuerbach, Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Darwin was working on geology and biology and combined the results of his own research and others in his famous book on the origin of species.
The concept of Evolution was so apparent in the 19th century from all the recent published discoveries made, that it is was only a question of time someone would step forward and put it on paper. This particular person happened to be Darwin and frankly I think he did a real good job given the results he had on hand.
Posted by: strange gods bless 'merica | September 5, 2009 6:59 PM
Maybe. Assuming so, it still might have been a Persian conquering Greece instead of a Greek conquering Persia. And in that case it's not as obvious that Greek proto-science and math would have later ended up in the hands of Arabs and Persians who could preserve them through Europe's dark ages.
Paul, on the other hand, is undoubtedly indispensable. Christianity would have been a completely different religion without his influence (or meddling, depending on your preference). Without both him and Constantine, it might not even be known today except as a historical quirk like Gnosticism. It's anyone's guess what religion would have dominated Europe otherwise.
Posted by: Mux Formica | September 5, 2009 7:04 PM
Darwin collected a lot of data & did a great deal of work.
But he had the leisure to do it. Others grappling with these ideas at that time, like Hooker, Huxley & Wallace, had to scuffle to survive & make a living while thinking
about the deep scientific questions in their spare time.
Not bad-mouthing Darwin; just pointing out that his personal wealth is one of the historical contingencies needed in order for a fully formed TOE to appear when it did.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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September 5, 2009 7:14 PM
I'm back from a pleasant sail. Did you miss me? I didn't think so.
I agree. Wilhelm Röntgen, the man who discovered X-rays (or Röntgen rays, if you prefer), was a competent but undistinguished physics professor. He discovered X-rays by luck and investigated his discovery. He did no other notable work during his lifetime. Any other competent physicist could have done what Röntgen did.
Posted by: Ferrous Patella | September 5, 2009 7:14 PM
Where did Wallace get all his money for leisure time?
Posted by: Ferrous Patella | September 5, 2009 7:21 PM
@#47
So there is evolution in the program that shows the evolution of a book about evolution? I thought is was *turtles* all the way down.
Posted by: Yubal
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September 5, 2009 7:32 PM
#52
Röntgen: "Please do not call the radiation I discovered after me, call them X-Rays instead, like I did."
Germans: "We should name this radiation after the great scientist who found it, hereinafter it shall be called Röntgen rays !"
LoL
Posted by: kamaka | September 5, 2009 8:12 PM
Indispensable historic figures? How about Jonas Salk?
Posted by: uncle frogy | September 5, 2009 10:31 PM
>>Maybe. Assuming so, it still might have been a Persian conquering Greece instead of a Greek conquering Persia. And in that case it's not as obvious that Greek proto-science and math would have later ended up in the hands of Arabs and Persians who could preserve them through Europe's dark ages.
Paul, on the other hand, is undoubtedly indispensable. Christianity would have been a completely different religion without his influence (or meddling, depending on your preference). Without both him and Constantine, it might not even be known today except as a historical quirk like Gnosticism. It's anyone's guess what religion would have dominated Europe otherwise.
still I think that it could be said that about anyone of the many important figures in history. Things would be different had it not happened to be them at that time in that way. Some of effects-events that to me seem most the important are often uncredited. Who discovered Corn, wheat, rice and domesticated them? Who developed the Bow and arrow? Who discovered Zero?
those things origins are lost in the past but we all owe a debt to those who were first.
As for Paul it would be different is probably true but would it have been any better in the long run? Or would it have been only superficially different? Remembering that religion is BS in the first place and from my point of view has been followed in name only anyway. In practice the behavior of the "governments" and the societies were the same as they had ever been before they just called themselves christians.
Posted by: Yubal
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September 6, 2009 12:00 AM
#56
Good choice! How about Edward Jenner and Max Planck?
Posted by: DS | September 6, 2009 12:06 AM
It's kind of funny to see all these teleological arguments about history being made by people who would (presumably) utterly reject teleology in, say, biology. How, exactly, does one define whether someone is 'indispensible' for history? I guess we should just build a time machine and go back and knock him off, and then pop back to the present to see what's different.
This kind of history went out in, like, the 1950s.
Posted by: Alexander Newell | September 6, 2009 12:17 AM
Hey, I have a request for you that would be a huge favor: I am going to an AiG conference in northern Oregon later this month (I know, fun right? =)) and I would really, really appreciate it if you could e-mail some questions for me to ask them. I'm only a third-year college student, and I figure that you would be able to come up with much better questions than I would. If not, don't fret, I just thought it would be better to ask and hope than not ask at all. :)
Posted by: Reinis I. | September 6, 2009 3:30 AM
Java? No thanks.
Posted by: Knight of L-sama | September 6, 2009 4:50 AM
Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler. They were the ones who removed man from his self-appointed place at the centre of the universe.
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 6, 2009 5:34 AM
This kind of history went out in, like, the 1950s. - DS
That's funny, because I have three recent books (1997, 1999, 2001) on my shelves, all edited by professional historians, of "alternative history" essays. Of course, this sort of thing is speculative, and no substitute for the detailed study of how individual and societal influences, long-term trends and contingent events interact - but part of the point of it is to challenge the idea that history follows an inevitable course leading up to the present - i.e., to challenge teleological thinking.
Posted by: XD | September 6, 2009 5:46 AM
That was really cool (unlike my laptop's CPU (damn you, Java!))
I realise I'm putting my ignorance on display here, but I'd never actually heard of him. After reading the entry for him in Wikipedia, I feel chilled to the bone. I try to imagine what it would have been like if there had been a global thermonuclear war when I was 12, and if I had survived it, what the last 26 years would have been like.
Stanislav Petrov: a powerful example of the value of scepticism and critical thinking.
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 6, 2009 5:51 AM
Without Alexander there would not have been someone else form a "Great Empire" more or less when or where He formed his? - Uncle Frogy
Possibly, but very likely not. There already was a "Great Empire" covering most of the area Alexander conquered - the Persian Empire. The great difference Alexander's conquests made was to spread Greek culture over the entire area it occupied. Would some other Greek-speaker have done the same? Possibly, since Greek mercenaries were already among the best troops of the Persian Empire, but very likely not. Philip VI of Macedon, Alexander's father (and himself a highly skilled general and politician), planned an attack to "liberate" the Greek cities of Ionia from Persian rule, but would probably not have aimed at taking over the whole Empire; he was assassinated shortly before he could set out, and Alexander took over the project. The primacy of Macedon in Greece was Philip's personal achievement, and none of the other Greek states would have been likely to attempt even the attack Philip planned, as they were too busy fighting each other.
Posted by: Knockgoats | September 6, 2009 6:00 AM
Stanislav Petrov: a powerful example of the value of scepticism and critical thinking. - XD@64
Indeed, and it's good to see Petrov has received some acknowledgement. I said he was "possibly" crucial, because as you'll have seen, it has been questioned whether the Soviet leadership would have proceeded with an attack even if he had not decided the warning system was malfunctioning, but I remember the threatening atmosphere of the time, cranked up by that irresponsible idiot Reagan, and the corresponding senile decay of the Soviet leaders; I think it quite likely.
There was another near-miss later in 1983: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83.
Posted by: strange gods bless 'merica | September 6, 2009 6:40 AM
It's not teleological. There's nothing at all in the discussion about the future driving the past. We're talking about what's indispensable to histories that we would recognize as our own. This ought to have been so obvious that it didn't need to be spelled out.
Knockgoats summarized it pretty well: "In rational enquiry or business, any step not taken by one individual you imagine eliminating would in general soon be taken by another - because these fields have an internal logic and strong cumulative aspects."
Empires don't have the same inevitability. Invade or don't? Invade east or west? These questions can come down to the whims of leaders.
Posted by: strange gods bless 'merica | September 6, 2009 7:26 AM
I don't think we do. If those people had died in infancy, others would have done the same things. (In the case of domesticating plants, this was already done by multiple generations of people, and there's no one person to credit.)
We could not tell the difference today between this history and others where those people had died young.
Speaking of very recent history, I'm more willing to say that Salk was an important individual. A polio vaccine might have come five years later without him, and people we know personally might not be alive today, or their lives would have been radically different. But in another five hundred years he will be interchangeable in a way that Lenin is not.
Paul is responsible for the proscriptions against homosexual intercourse in the text that became the New Testament. Paul, or Paul's followers, changed a religion that was relatively egalitarian toward women into a religion that did not allow women to speak in church. Paul took a current of antisemitism that did not represent the whole church and raised it to a holy place in scripture, though in this case the author of John helped too.
Antisemites, homophobes, and misogynists today, and in the centuries between, point to Paul's writings to justify themselves to the more ambivalent public. It's hard to believe that the world would not be any different today if they did had not had this luxury.
Christianity suffers from being written down and canonized. The religion that Constantine replaced did not have the same problem.
Plato explains this though his Socrates character: "The painter's products stand before us as though they were alive, but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever. And once a thing is put in writing, the composition, whatever it may be, drifts all over the place, getting into the hands not only of those who understand it, but equally of those who have no business with it; it doesn't know how to address the right people, and not address the wrong."
A living, oral tradition is less deadly to humanity than reverence to the silent majesty of written scripture. There's no literalism or fundamentalism when the myths are never written down, little chance of it when the myths are written down a hundred different ways and shared freely as memory aids rather than sacred texts.
Christianity has only been able to adapt to humanist needs recently, through modern textual criticism that has called into question the sacredness and inerrancy of the texts. What if Europe's great religion had never had sacred texts in the first place, and could have adapted constantly throughout the last two thousand years?
Posted by: Arv Edgeworth | September 6, 2009 5:33 PM
There was a lot written here, and I might have missed it, but I don't remember anyone even mentioning that Jesus may have been an important person in history. A few of His followers were mentioned, but not He, Himself. Interesting.
Science and scientism are not the same thing. Science has limits. I doubt if anyone responding so far would be able to recognize when real science ends, and scientific naturalism (or scientism) begins. Real science has no say over whether there is a God or not. That is not the purpose of science, nor its function. It was interesting to me to find on an atheist website a definition of scientism as being equated with worshipping science. By the way, Edwin Blythe wrote about natural selection 24 years before Darwin wrote his book.
Posted by: Mark | September 6, 2009 5:35 PM
I'd like to see him do this for the changing text of the New Testament. "The Evolution of the Bible" would be a great title - very true, but rich with irony.
Posted by: strange gods bless 'merica | September 6, 2009 5:58 PM
I am not convinced that Jesus was a person in history. Paul was, though.
I doubt that you have a definition which is not arbitrary and made up to be self-serving.
Philosophy does, though, and philosophy can draw on science when talking about the uselessness of the God-idea.
Not exactly. But they were friends and correspondents, and Blyth was a supporter of Darwin's work.
Posted by: Last Hussar | September 6, 2009 8:29 PM
'Greatest Show on Earth' Hardback halfprice (£10) at Waterstones. Just thought you'd like to know.
Posted by: Arv Edgeworth | September 6, 2009 11:13 PM
Interesting you should bring up philosophy, because most people that believe in evolution do so for philosophical reasons, not scientific ones.
The online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary says that "scientism" is: "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)." See also MSN Encarta and Wikipedia. Scientism is a philosophical worldview, and also a belief system.
If you do not believe in a God, it is not because of science. If you do believe in the theory of evolution, it is not because of science either. It is because in most public schools students are not being taught "How to think," just "What to think."
Darwin did not disprove the existence of God. Darwin did hate Christianity, as I surmise most of the writers to this blog do. But you should just be honest about your philosophical worldview and stop trying to hide behind science. Science has limits. Science is also neutral concerning religion. Most of the founders of the different fields of science believed in God, such as Sir Francis Bacon who gave us the scientific method.
Some of you appear to have at least limited knowledge of the Bible. Most of which I am sure you were taught. It makes a difference when reading a book if you know the author personally.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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September 6, 2009 11:23 PM
Sorry, totally wrong. I don't believe in evolution. Evolution is science, and is a very well supported scientific theory. Belief implies no evidence. There is overwhelming evidence for evolution. So trying to relate believing in evolution to believing in a religion, where there is no evidence for a deity or the babble being anything other than fiction is wrong.Posted by: Steve_C | September 6, 2009 11:31 PM
Arv. How old do you think the earth is? Adam and Eve, mythology or real?
Posted by: amphiox | September 6, 2009 11:49 PM
"Real science has no say over whether there is a God or not."
Completely wrong. Science can tell us the likelihood of existence of any particular kind of god claimed by any particular source. And it can tell us with absolute certainty what specific kinds of gods do NOT exist.
For example, science has told us that the kind of god that stands on top of mountains and throws lightning bolts does not exist. And science has told us that the kind of god that drowns the entire world in a global flood does not exist.
So while science cannot definitively say that nothing remotely resembling something that could possibly be described as a "god" can ever exist, it certainly can tell us a great deal about what kinds of gods can and cannot exist.
(Note: nearly every single specific description of "god" ever conceived of by humans, and every one that has ever been written about or described in any known checkable textual account, has already been demonstrated by science to NOT exist.)
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 6, 2009 11:52 PM
Asserted without evidence.
I don't see anyone in this thread doing that. Point out who and when, with quotes, to back up your claims.
How can it be a philosophical worldview and a belief system when you just said it was just an exaggerated trust? Make up your mind. See, this kind of lazy incoherence is what I meant when I guessed your definition would be self-serving and arbitrary.
Asserted without evidence, by a person who is obviously deeply concerned with "what to think" and gives no evidence of knowing "how to think."
That is a lie. Liars go to hell, Arv.
My philosophical worldview is that things which have no evidence are things not worth wasting my time believing in. Do you have evidence for your God?
You are apparently not a very smart person, but just in case I'm wrong about that, I'll give you this link to think about: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/yes_millions_of_years.php
So, among the hundreds of other authors, redactors and editors, you met Paul personally? Where, on the road to Damascus?
Posted by: aratina cage
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September 6, 2009 11:59 PM
Hrm? I know, you're saying that a god authored the Bible and you know that god personally, but that is a sorely mistaken belief given the evidence for it having been developed like any other human authored story.The way you describe scientism makes it sounds like gullibility, brainwashing, and lack of skepticism combined. That's a fairly good description of religion!
Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 7, 2009 12:00 AM
Dear Brother Arv Edgeworth,
Thank you for coming to this blog to put the atheists in their places. The many heretics here who attended various churches for years and have read the bible cover-to-cover on numerous occasions will feel profoundly affirmed by your snide dismissals. Like you, I find an unwarranted sense of superiority a huge comfort when explaining to sinners why my version of the world's many tens-of-thousands of religious manifestations over time is the one, the only one and nothing but the one.
I particularly admired your crack about "knowing" the author personally. It put me in mind of that heretic Frenchie Roland Barthes who conceived of the mad idea that whenever we read a book we bring to that reading all our own experiences of culture and language, not to mention our fears, prejudices and paranoia. I'm not for a moment suggesting that when you 'read' the Bible you extract from it only things that support your worldview—but isn't it amazing just how malleable the Bible has been over the ages, particularly when it comes to people reading into it whatever most suits their need to dominate and denigrate others.
Imagine if you did 'author' your own version of the Scriptures as you read. Why, that would mean that you "know yourself personally", which in a Biblical sense is a very worrying thing.
It must hardly be a worry for you though, I'd imagine, given that when you look into the murky waters of this blog all you seem to see is your own reflection. I mentioned your posts to Jesus, and he just laughed and said "Oh yes, good old Narcissus Edgeworth "knowing" himself yet again. What a mess Mrs E. is going to have to clean up when he's finished! In Heaven we nicknamed him Onan!"
So God Bless you Brother E. and more power to your condescending elbow.
Smoggy
Posted by: John Marley | September 7, 2009 12:22 AM
@Arv:
True. I don't believe in your SkyGenie because the concept is clearly nonsense. Plus, since you seem to be claiming that you are psychic, The JREF has a million dollars for you.Bullshit. I don't "believe in the theory of evolution." I am convinced by the evidence, from science. Again, JREF, a million dollars
Well, you are right about public schools, anyway. But the blame doesn't lie entirely with the schools. Parents must take at least an equal share of the responsibilty of teaching their children, as you say, how to think.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | September 7, 2009 12:54 AM
Arv, I can change one word in your sentence to illustrate just how foolish it is:
Interesting you should bring up philosophy, because most people that believe in
evolutiongravity do so for philosophical reasons, not scientific ones.Not really all that 'interesting', is it?
Even if people 'believe in evolution' because of 'philosophy', it - unlike any religious claims - can be backed up with mountains of evidence from numerous scientific fields.
Where did anyone claim it did? What Darwin did do, however, is produce an explanation that made the Christian god unneccessary by providing an alternative theory - supported by evidence and explanation - for the diversity of life on this planet.
Posted by: MarkW | September 7, 2009 8:40 AM
Why is it that theists like Arv seem to think that their tired "arguments" have any validity, or even originality? We've heard it all before, and found it wanting.