Table Of ContentT D D
HE ENIABLE ARWIN
&
O E
THER SSAYS
T
HE
D
ENIABLE
D
ARWIN
&
O E
THER SSAYS
D B
AVID ERLINSKI
EDITED BY DAVID KLINGHOFFER
Description
This book collects essays published in journals including Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and
elsewhere. It centers on three profound mysteries: the existence of the human mind; the existence and
diversity of living creatures; and the existence of matter. How they did they come into being?
The author, Dr. David Berlinski, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and formerly a fellow at the
Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France. His other books include The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism
and Its Scientific Pretensions, Newton’s Gift, and A Tour of the Calculus.
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2009 by Discovery Institute. All Rights Reserved.
As indicated at the end of the appropriate articles, nine essays in this book are copyright by Commentary
and reprinted by permission.
“Godel’s Question” is copyright 1998 by Christian Leadership Ministries and used by permission of
InterVarsity Press.
Publisher’s Note
This book is part of a series published by the Center for Science & Culture at Discovery Institute in Seattle.
Previous books include Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest, by John G. West and Traipsing into
Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision, by David K. DeWolf et al.
Library Cataloging Data
Deniable Darwin & Other Essays by David Berlinski (1942– )
Edited by David Klinghoffer.
557 pages, 6 x 9 x 1.25 inches & 1.8 lb, 229 x 152 x 3.2 cm. & 0.81 kg
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009935347
BISAC Subject: SCI027000 SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Evolution
BISAC Subject: SCI080000 SCIENCE / Essays
BISAC Subject: SCI034000 SCIENCE / History
ISBN-13: 978-0-9790141-2-3 ISBN-10: 0-9790141-2-3 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9790141-3-0 ISBN-10: 0-9790141-3-1 (hardback)
Publisher Information
Discovery Institute Press, 208 Columbia Street, Seattle, WA 98101
Internet: http://www.discovery.org/
Published in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
First Edition, October 2009.
For Arthur Cody
with gratitude and admiration.
C
ONTENTS
About the Author
Introduction
Bibliographical Note
1996
The Soul of Man Under Physics
The Deniable Darwin
Denying Darwin: David Berlinski & Critics
Keeping an Eye on Evolution
The End of Materialist Science
Full House Follies
1998
Gödel’s Question
Was There a Big Bang?
2001
What Brings a World into Being?
Where Physics and Politics Meet
2002
God, Man and Physics
Einstein And Gödel: Friendship Between Equals
Lucky Jim
Stephen Jay Gould, 1942–2002: In Memoriam
Has Darwin Met His Match?
2003
Darwinism versus Intelligent Design: David Berlinski & Critics
Borges on Intelligent Design
A Scientific Scandal
A Scientific Scandal? David Berlinski & Critics
The Vampire’s Heart
2004
On the Origins of the Mind
2005
All Those Darwinian Doubts
Academic Extinction
The Strength of Natural Selection in the Wild
An Open Letter to the Amazing Randi
Our Silent Partners
Copernicus Stages a Comeback
2006
On the Origins of Life
2007
Inside the Mathematical Mind
2008
Connecting Hitler and Darwin
The Scientific Embrace of Atheism
2009
The State of the Matter
A A
BOUT THE UTHOR
D
B a senior fellow in the Discovery Institute’s Center for
AVID ERLINSKI IS
Science and Culture. He is the author of numerous books, including A Tour of
the Calculus (1996), The Advent of the Algorithm (2000), Newton’s Gift (2000),
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky (2003), A Short History of Mathematics (2004),
and The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (2008). Two of
his essays, “On the Origins of the Mind” (November 2004) and “What Brings a
World into Being” (March 2001), have been anthologized in The Best American
Science Writing 2005 and The Best American Science Writing 2002 respectively.
Berlinski received his PhD in philosophy from Princeton and was later a
postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia. He has
authored works on systems analysis, differential topology, theoretical biology,
analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as three novels.
He has also taught philosophy, mathematics and English at Stanford, Rutgers,
the City University of New York and the Université de Paris. He has held
research fellowships at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques. He lives in Paris.
I
NTRODUCTION
W
thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III realized that the Catholic
HEN IN THE
faith had become too complicated an intellectual structure easily to be grasped,
he created the Dominican order and charged it with the double responsibilities of
combating error and inculcating belief. A difficult task was performed with great
industry by men such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. The regnant
position of the Catholic faith came to an end in the early seventeenth century.
After viewing the heavens through a telescope, Cardinal Bellarmine
acknowledged that in choosing between Copernicus and Ptolemy, the Church
might be forced by the facts to choose Copernicus. The facts engendered the
choice. The great scientific revolution of the West was set in motion.
It is hardly surprising that from their inception in the seventeenth century
to the present day, the physical sciences, like the Catholic Church, have required
a cadre of dedicated Dominicans, men prepared to spread the faith while
dispelling doubt. Voltaire played this role with respect to the Principia
Mathematica, making Newton’s noble work known throughout learned circles in
Europe. In the United States and England, scientists today appear before the
public as mandarins to the manner born. Their books fill every bookstore shelf,
and their views have by a process of Internet multiplication and amplification
been conveyed to an audience that might otherwise have been deprived of the
sound of their voices.
The advent of Newtonian mechanics, many scientists believe, marks a
radical departure in intellectual history. Before Newton, there are all the old
failed systems of thought, and afterwards, there is Science. This is the popular
view and so the myth. Like many myths, it contains a portion of the truth.
Nothing like Newton’s Principia appeared before the seventeenth century.
Nothing like it occurred afterwards either, circumstances that suggest a singular
moment in intellectual history.
T great physical theories: Newton’s mechanics, of course,
HERE ARE NOW FOUR
Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field, Einstein’s theories of
special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Each is fundamental. The
laws of nature that they express are so compressed and therefore so vatic that
they may be written down in no more than half a page. They are extraordinary in
their quantitative precision, theory and experiment agreeing in both general
relativity and quantum mechanics to something like 13 decimal places. And they
are unique. Where the Newtonian revolution has been extended, it has been
extended in essentially Newton’s terms: A scientific theory must be
mathematical; and it must appeal to theoretical structures very far from
experience. To the extent that there are sciences that go beyond the great
physical theories, they have without exception been parasitic. What we
understand of biology we understand in terms of its chemistry; what we do not
understand in these terms, we do not understand.
It is odd to imagine that intellectual structures so singular could carry a
general burden of belief, one often expressed in religious terms. Nonetheless, as
others were once prepared to say that they believed in God, a great many men
and women are prepared to affirm that they believe in science. It is widely
considered inappropriate not to. When the great logician Kurt Gödel remarked to
a luncheon companion at the Institute for Advanced Study that he did not believe
in the physical sciences, his comment, like his paranoia, was considered
shocking enough to have become a part of his legend.
Just what follows from a belief in science? It is not at all easy to say.
“After the devastating attacks by Wittgenstein and Quine,” the philosopher Paul
Horwich has argued, “it is now widely believed that the sciences exhaust what
can be known.”
Do they indeed?
If the sciences are identified with the four physical theories, then it is plain
that most of what we know, from contract law to the history of the Roman
empire, has nothing to do with science at all. The claim that “the sciences
exhaust what can be known,” to take the obvious example, is neither an
assumption nor a conclusion of any physical theory. If it is known, it is not
science, and if it is not known, it has no interest.
If, on the other hand, the sciences are open-ended, then the thesis that the
sciences exhaust what can be known comes to nothing more than the observation
that what we know we tend to call scientific. This is true enough, but it is not
interesting.
What remains of belief in the sciences when belief has precious little
content is an attitude. The great virtue of a scientific education, Ernest Nagel
once remarked, lies just in its capacity to provoke a liberation from illusion.
Nagel did not specify which illusions he had in mind, but plainly he believed in
