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July 5, 2005
How Quantum Physics Can Teach Biologists About
Evolution
By CORNELIA DEAN
In the fall of 1900, a young German physicist, Max
Planck, began making calculations about the glow
emitted by objects heated to high temperature. In
retrospect, it seems like a small-bore problem, just
the task to give a young scientist at the beginning of
his career.
But if the question sounds minor, Planck's answer was
not. His work led him to discover a new world, the
bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, where matter is
both a particle and a wave and where the predictable
stability of Newton gives way to probabilistic
uncertainty.
As Dennis Overbye of The New York Times once put it in
these pages, Planck had grasped "a loose thread that
when tugged would eventually unravel the entire fabric
of what had passed for reality."
Physicists reeled. But physics survived. And once they
got over their shock, scientists began testing
Planck's ideas with observation and experiment, work
that eventually produced computer chips, lasers, CAT
scans and a host of other useful technologies - all
made possible through our new understanding of the way
the world works.
Biologists might do well to keep Planck in mind as
they confront creationism and "intelligent design" and
battle to preserve the teaching of evolution in public
schools.
Usually, when confronting the opponents of evolution,
biologists make the case that evolution should be
taught because it is true.
They cite radiocarbon dating to show that Earth is
billions of years old, not a few thousand years old,
as some creationists would have it. Biologists cite
research on microbes, or the eye, or the biology of
the cell to shoot down arguments that life is so
"irreducibly complex" that only a supernatural force
or agent could have called it into being, as
intelligent designers would have it.
And when scientists named Steve (hundreds of them by
now) decided to advance the cause of evolution in the
classroom and honor the evolutionary theorist Stephen
Jay Gould by forming "Project Steve," the T-shirts
they printed said in part, "Evolution is a vital,
well-supported, unifying principle of the biological
sciences, and the scientific evidence is
overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living
things share a common ancestry."
The battling biologists are right. But someone
uneducated in the scientific method who listens to the
arguments over evolution could be forgiven for
thinking that they boil down to "my theory is better
than your theory," with both sides preaching with
theological fervor.
Scientists don't talk often enough or loud enough
about the real strength of evolution - not that it is
correct, but that it meets the definition of science.
It's not that they ignore the idea - the National
Center for Science Education, sponsor of Project
Steve, makes the point on its Web site, and
organizations like the American Association for the
Advancement of Science do, too. But biologists do not
emphasize it as they might.
Science looks to explain nature through nature (the
works of God rather than the words of God, as Darwin
himself is said to have put it), and its predictions
can be tested by observation and experimentation.
Scientists form hypotheses, devise ways to test them,
analyze the data that they collect and then decide
whether the results support or undermine their
hypotheses.
This process has produced centuries of useful
knowledge and fascinating discovery.
But it is messy, a mixed-up dance of two steps
forward, one step back; dud ideas; blind alleys; and
things that turn out to be not exactly what they
seemed.
So it is hardly surprising that in the decades since
Darwin developed the ideas he outlined in "The Origin
of Species," other biologists have suggested
modifications or new ideas about this or that aspect
of his great idea. Still other researchers, making
their own observations or conducting other
experiments, have refuted them or tried to.
For example, biologists argue about the degree to
which evolution moves smoothly or progresses in fits
and starts, a Gould-ian theory called punctuated
equilibrium. This intellectual turmoil is not evidence
of the weakness of the evolutionary thinking, as some
critics have said. It is proof of the robustness of
the scientific method.
And if this messy process were to produce an
alternative to evolution that better explains nature
and better meets the tests of experiment and
observation, biologists would have to revise their
ideas or even scrap them.
That would be a stunning shock, comparable to the
shock that swept physics in the post-Planck decades of
the 20th century. But biology would deal with it. And
whoever initiated this shock would be at least as big
a figure in biology as Planck is in physics.
"The supposed 'data contradicting evolution' do not
exist," a Steve, Dr. Steve Rissing, a biologist at
Ohio State University, said in an e-mail message.
But if they did, Dr. Rissing added, "I sure would want
to be the scientist publishing them. Think of it - the
covers of Nature and Science, and Newsweek and Time,
too!"
It is evolution's acceptance of nature as the only
true scientific authority and its capacity to fall in
the face of a more effective explanation that make
evolution science, far more than its mere correctness.
That is the difficulty faced by advocates of
creationism and intelligent design. It is possible to
believe in evolution and believe in God. Plenty of
biologists do. But their deity is not a creator or
intelligent agent at work in the material world in
ways that transcend nature and its laws. That would be
a matter of faith, not science.
The New York Times
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