Science Literature

This question has led to some fascinating discussions within the linguistics community and we are indebted to Emma Marris for her recent report which flags up some areas of fundamental disagreement. Representing the mainstream profession are the "historical linguists".

"Historical linguists have been reconstructing languages since the 1780s. Their tool is called the comparative method and it relies on extensive knowledge of the language group at hand, along with a broad grasp of, and intuitive feel for, the ways in which languages change. A linguist might notice that the way a vowel is spoken has shifted in two languages when compared with an ancient one, and infer that the shift happened before the two languages split. This will help to place the split relative to other splits but gives no information about when it happened. Hence the comparative method produces trees, but no dates."

The newcomers are evolutionary biologists working on language histories, using the tools and techniques of molecular phylogenetics. Their approach is to draw an analogy between language evolution and biological evolution: "Like biological species, languages slowly change and sometimes split over time."

"The advent of molecular genetics provided a new depth to the analogy. Just as the four nucleotides of DNA can produce a staggering variety of creatures, the alphabets of the world's languages can generate an infinite number of sentences. These alphabets, the words they make, and the sounds and grammar rules that frame them are passed down from parent to child in a process that, at least superficially, resembles the inheritance of DNA.
Even some complications are the same. Just as species can shade off into a maddening continuum of subspecies, populations and hybrids, languages dissolve into an untidy collection of dialects and intermediate forms. And the rampant borrowing of words between languages resembles, graphically at least, the promiscuous horizontal gene transfer that microbes engage in."

The report portrays the tensions in terms of physics envy, with the old school struggling with the statistics and the new boys bringing quantification to the discipline for the first time.

"It is putting it mildly to say that many historical linguists find the evolutionary biologists working on language histories to be bungling interlopers who have no idea how to handle linguistic data. It is also an understatement to say that some of these interlopers feel that their critics are hidebound traditionalists working on a hopelessly unverifiable system of hunches, received wisdom and personal taste. And that's just the mood between the historical linguists and the newcomers."

The problem for the historical linguists is that the evolutionary modelers appear to have no real feel for the languages they are analyzing. They know that all languages have a deep structure: words, grammar and syntax. Languages are used for communication between intelligent agents about all sorts of things: past, present and future events, concepts and abstract ideas.

"Ultimately, many linguists felt that this type of analysis oversimplified their cherished subject more than they could bear. Linguists love the little details that give a language personality: to them, the identifying sounds or peculiar borrowed words are nuances that tell the tale of a tongue. The new breed brushes over these details in pursuit of generalities, trends and statistical rules."

The problem is that languages are fully teleological, whereas the tools of molecular phylogeny do not acknowledge teleology in genomes. Those tools really grate on those who are experienced in linguistics.

"Why get excited about it when it is still so preliminary?" says Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. "We are not impressed by a computational or mathematical paper per se. We have to see that it blends well with what is known by historical linguistics and really adds to our knowledge. Then we will be excited."

There are many parallels here between this controversy in linguistics and the situation in biology. Not all biologists go along with molecular phylogenetics, as is evident here. These biologists are a diverse group, but they include ID scientists. They point out that if genomes are designed, then it is not a good idea to study them with tools that start with the presumption that there is no design or teleology in nature.

The language barrier
Emma Marris
Nature 453, (21 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/453446a

Extract: A new approach
In the past five to ten years, more and more non-linguists such as Pagel have used the computational tools with which they model evolution to take a crack at languages. And one can see why. Like biological species, languages slowly change and sometimes split over time. Darwin's Galapagos finches evolved either large beaks or small; Latin amor became French amour and Italian amore. Darwin himself noted the 'curious parallel' between the evolution of languages and species in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

A Review Of Bobby Henderson's The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster
Robert Deyes

Books designed to make a mockery out of key principles that could change the way we view life often make claims not based on evidence but on the author's own personal biases. Sadly Bobby Henderson's The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster is no different. For those who have not had the displeasure of reading Henderson's parody, he begins by introducing the reader to his god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), and its revering pirates, the so-called Pastafarians, who await a heaven that is filled with beer volcanoes and stripper clubs.

Down on Henderson's imaginary earth, there is plenty of evidence for the FSM- everything from the noodly appearance of DNA to the spaghetti-like structure of the Great Wall Of China stands as testimony to the existence of the pasta god. Reading on one quickly realizes that Henderson is out to make a point (he says so himself)- if there is a place for teaching Intelligent Design (ID) theory in the science classroom of today's public school then there is also a place for teaching about his 'FSMism'. Indeed Henderson argues that since ID theorists claim that evolution is just a theory, so too are other parts of established science such as Newtonian gravity.

To make his point he sets up a farcical scenario in which gravity is simply the manifestation of the FSM pushing on the heads of his human creatures. Over time humans have got taller simply because the FSM, with his limited number of noodly appendages, is unable to keep his pressure on all the heads of the ever-growing human population. None of this is of course meant to be taken seriously. After all, Henderson is just ridiculing ID.

Nevertheless a quick glance through Henderson's book reveals some clear gaps in his understanding of what ID theory does and does not say. For example, Henderson claims that the primary objective of ID theory is to slip the supernatural into science so as to create a 'super-science' the likes of which have not been seen since the middle ages. Accepting the claims of ID in science, Henderson states, is akin to accepting medieval medical practices such as bloodletting into our hospitals.

And yet it is well known that the foundations of the ID movement are built upon scientific evidence that would not have been available to scientists in centuries past (irreducible complexity of molecular systems, the exacting requirements of embryonic development and genetic regulation and the information-rich content of DNA). ID theory has never attempted to slip a supernatural god into the 'gaps' of science but has always used a sound 'cause-and-effect' type approach using what we know about design to infer design in biology.

Henderson hits hard by suggesting that ID proponents have a problem in accepting not only the link between natural selection and antibiotic resistance in bacteria but also the powers of artificial selection in dog breeding (Of course ID can sit quite comfortably with these more limited forms of Darwinian theory). He likewise shows a complete disregard for the issues concerning vestigial organs. While often touted as evidence of a blundering evolutionary process that has not yet fully eliminated organs that have fallen into disuse, what is becoming clear is that many such organs do fulfill important physiological functions. Similarly, recent discoveries in molecular biology have shown that long stretches of so-called 'junk' DNA do indeed play critical roles in the regulation of gene expression.

Later on in the book, Henderson conflates supernatural creation with ID, bringing in the violence of religion, particularly Christianity, as one more reason to do away with any cogent arguments that ID theory might bring to the science 'table'. Henderson not only vilifies the religiously faithful by mocking the power of prayer but also shows that he has never bothered to investigate the scientific underpinnings of the ID movement. After incorrectly associating ID with Young Earth Creationism, he then proceeds to ridicule a God who would deliberately confuse people by creating a universe that is only a few thousand years old and later throwing in evidence that supports a much older creation.

Henderson continues by making a farce out of the Genesis account and the biblical moral teachings. He selects the wrong targets to support his case against what he sees as the dogmatic approach of the church to science (eg: the execution of Giordano Bruno whose burning at the stake was because of his religious beliefs, not his views on science). He clearly ignores the established fact that it was Christianity that provided the foundation upon which our universe could be understood scientifically. Of course ID theorists have categorically steered clear of equating their designer with the biblical God, using only principles commonly used in other fields of study to infer design in biology.

In The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Henderson shows his complete lack of appreciation for modern-day challenges to science. To claim as he does that the peer-review process is a water-tight tower of objectivity is to ignore high-profile cases of scientists who have dared challenge established orthodoxy (Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium is a case in point). Henderson dismisses the 'irrefutable proof' offered by Michael Behe in support of ID by asserting that Behe's examples of irreducible complexity are as incomprehensible to those outside of mainstream science as Kurt Godel's proof for the existence of God.

Perhaps unbeknown to Henderson is the recognition of Behe's Darwin's Black Box as one of the most accessible reads of contemporary, popular science. Of course one soon gets tired of hearing about the pasta deity and his pirate disciples not to mention Henderson's apparent obsession with noodles. He ends his book with a collection of bogus, fun-poking papers written by scientists who clearly have an ax to grind against ID. Most of these papers are just more fairy-tale imaginings of pirates, noodles and beer volcanoes all of which do little to strengthen Henderson's case. Likewise for Henderson's humor which at times exposes his lack of originality (I was surprised not to see Henderson claiming that 'carbonara' was the essential element of life, that angel hair was a vestige of the FSM's celestial army or that DNA stood for Deity's Noodly Appendages).

While ID clearly has a place in the science classroom, the spaghetti bowl of FSMism should remain in the school canteen. As for Henderson's occasional vulgar language, one can only conclude that he is short of real props to support his case.