Who were they?

Yes, indeed!  I am certainly proud of them.  After all, they produced these paintings at the Chauvet Cave, in France, which are more than 30,000 years old.  Absolutely mind boggling to contemplate…

Our ancestor was here…

My man, Dan

The latest pseudo-intellectual sally to save the “God hypothesis” published on the NYTimes OpEd page brought forth some good responses from letter writers.  Among them, was this pithy observation:

…While personal revelation is an excellent way to know whom we love, it is an abysmal way to seek knowledge about the universe. It becomes an excuse to believe what one wishes to believe.

Paul L. LaClair   Kearny, N.J., Aug. 23, 2009

My hat’s off to Dan Dennett for his great response, quoted in full here (my emphasis):

To the Editor:

Robert Wright notes that the speculations he outlines on how a moral sense could evolve are “compatible with the standard scientific theory of human creation.” Indeed, these speculations — actually rigorous abstract arguments — have been developed by evolutionary theorists who, like Mr. Wright, see our moral intuitions as real phenomena in need of an explanation.

But the point of these arguments is to demonstrate that there can be a traversable path, an evolutionary process, from, say, bacteria, to us (with our moral intuitions) that doesn’t at any point require that the evolutionary process itself have a purpose. In other words, their implication is that our moral sense would evolve even if there weren’t a creative intelligence in the background.

So the compatibility that Mr. Wright finds is trivial.

Go ahead and believe in God, if you like, but don’t imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.

Daniel Dennett     Medford, Mass., Aug. 23, 2009

Dennett is the author of Consciousness Explained, one of the best books I have ever read on the mind-body problem.  I am tickled to see that the Wiki article cites T. Nagel’s criticisms of the book in its summary – one of my favorite parts of Dan’s book is his dissection of Nagel’s famous article, “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”

Darwin – Happy Birthday!

Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein…how do you rank great scientific thinkers and their works?  Is it possible?  Certainly, Darwin is one of the most important scientists in history, and his ideas have probably had more popular and widespread impact than any other scientist.  Sure, everyone gabs about relativity, how many people really are bothered by it?

Here is a listing of other posts on this blog with Darwin as a major subject.

For Darwin, the man, read Janet Browne.  Her two-volume biography of Charles deserves every bit of praise that has been heaped upon it.  I have never read a biography that so strongly impressed on me the feeling that if I were to go back in time and actually meet the subject, I would know how to sit and talk with him or her!

Moths & Men

The Peppered Moths of the area near Manchester, England hold a special place in the history of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He doubted that evolution by natural selection would ever be observed in the wild – it would be just too difficult to find it and it would happen too slowly. These moths seemed to prove him wrong and to give a huge boost to his theory when it needed one most, at the end of the 19th century.

In the 1890s and early 20th century, Darwin’s theory was under attack by people who had discovered Mendel’s ideas on genetics – totally unknown to Darwin because they were published and then forgotten for a generation or so – and by other evolutionists who favored Lamarckian ideas or more mystical fare. The idea of evolution itself wasn’t in danger of abandonment, but the mechanism, was disputed, and there were implications from that. Darwin, himself, without benefit of Mendel, was somewhat fuzzy and uncommitted in his notions of precisely how selected traits were passed on, even though he was confident in the outlines of his theory. Only in the 1920s to the 1940s was synthesis worked out that joined modern genetics to Darwin’s theory, wrapping it all up in a rigorous bundle.

Along the way, there were those moths. They seemed to clinch Darwin’s case because as the air around England, especially Manchester, grew black with smoke, the trees too were blackened under a pall of soot. Of course, the mutant black variety of the moth would be less visible to predators and would tend to squeeze out the white moth in the local populations. That’s exactly what was observed – the populations did change. It fit nicely with Darwin’s theory, but it turns out that the science behind the field observations was not so reliable. In fact, it may have been downright wrong.

Judith Hooper has narrated this story in her book, Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale. I happen to think she’s a rather good writer and that she does a very good job at explaining the details of how Darwinian Theory was given a firm quantitative and experimental basis with genetics. Yes, she’s a journalist, and she wants to tell a good story, so she emphasizes personalities a lot, but that stuff is part of the day to day mess of scientific advancement. Scientists are people like anyone else: it’s just that they all subscribe to a culture that provides some ruthlessly objective methods for winnowing fact from fiction. It can take a while, however.

I find it very interesting that this book is cited by creationists as “evidence” for the stupidity of Darwinian Theory. Does the fact that one piece of evidence may be wrong mean the entire Darwinian theoretical structure is wrong? Does it matter that this example was highly publicized and included uncritically in inumerable textbooks? Is this an evidence for a conspiracy? I think it just shows two things: science is hard; most people don’t bother too much about scientific details – especially textbook publishers. (This fact was discussed a year or so ago in the context of scientific “cliches” about basic physics.) After all, the principals in the controversy were all scientists, all evolutionists, mostly Darwinians, and none was a creationist or proponent of “Intelligent Design,” yet these know-nothings will trumpet this controversy as proof that Darwin is a fraud. (See Icons of Evolution.) The simple fact is, as one blogger put it, these people use their religion to “correct” science.

A Memory of William F. Buckley

When I think of William F. Buckley Jr., I think of a piece he wrote for the New York Times Op-Ed page a few years ago on Darwin and “Intelligent Design.” (I cannot find the piece in the Times archive online, and I’d be grateful for a link. I know my memory of it is correct, because Buckley refers to the piece himself elsewhere.) In that piece, he reprised an argument that he had used before, and that has been popular with religious anti-evolution critics since Darwin first published his theory.

Simply stated, the argument is that organisms are too complex and perfectly suited to their environments to have evolved by random mutation. To bring this home, Buckley and others employ, with various degrees of derision and sarcasm, the reductio ad absurdum of the room with ten monkeys and ten typewriters on which they bang away happily, and randomly. Could we expect this monkey business to produce Shakepeare’s Hamlet? Well…since the play has a finite number of words, and since the number of possible combinations of the letters in the text of the play is finite, albeit unfathomably large, it is possible if there were enough time provided for the (immortal) simians to do their work. Now, Darwin shivered at the colossal lengths of time his evolutionary scheme required, but that was as nothing compared to the duration we are contemplating here! Intelligent Design triumphs?

Of course, the entire argument is based on a complete misunderstanding, a profound ignorance of what Darwin’s theory entails. Evolution is not a random process. Genetic mutations occur randomly, but their selection and propagation is based on their survival value for the organism. As Ernst Mayr says, it’s a two-step process: mutation, then selection. Sort of as if those tapping monkeys had an editor in the room looking at their output, saving the good scraps of random prose, and somehow feeding that back into the process. Except, of course, the “editor” in evolution is not intelligent or active, but only the blind, crushing, indifferent force of the environment that leads to the disappearance by death or disuse of most mutations.

This fundamental ignorance is how I recall Buckley. He was clever and genial, and ever willing to evade a hard question. When verbal puffery wouldn’t do, he would employ snide humor, innuendo, or sarcasm. He was serenely confident of his opinions, bigotted and otherwise, and acted as though it was bizarre that anyone would question them. When an interviewer asked him if he had felt isolated from “real life” as a young man – he was home schooled – he replied that no, of course not. After all, you don’t need to experience things to understand them. He read a lot. Yes, true, reading is wonderful. But only a blockhead or someone uninterested in testing their ideas would be so confident that there is nothing more to know.

Nitpickers

A favorite poem, by Arthur Rimbaud. I thought this was a thing of the past in our advanced, industrial democracy. I found out, when I had young children, that the critters were making a comeback. Have they evolved stronger, more resistant strains?

I love the phrase, “et leurs doigts électriques et doux,” their fingers, electric and sweet…

Les Chercheuses de poux

Quand le front de l’enfant, plein de rouges tourmentes,
Implore l’essaim blanc des rêves indistincts,
Il vient près de son lit deux grandes sœurs charmantes
Avec de frêles doigts aux ongles argentins.

Elles assoient l’enfant devant une croisée
Grande ouverte où l’air bleu baigne un fouillis de fleurs,
Et dans ses lourds cheveux où tombe la rosée
Promènent leurs doigts fins, terribles et charmeurs.

Il écoute chanter leurs haleines craintives
Qui fleurent de longs miels végétaux et rosés,
Et qu’interrompt parfois un sifflement, salives
Reprises sur la lèvre ou désirs de baisers.

Il entend leurs cils noirs battant sous les silences
Parfumés ; et leurs doigts électriques et doux
Font crépiter parmi ses grises indolences
Sous leurs ongles royaux la mort des petits poux.

Voilà que monte en lui le vin de la Paresse,
Soupir d’harmonica qui pourrait délirer ;
L’enfant se sent, selon la lenteur des caresses,
Sourdre et mourir sans cesse un désir de pleurer.

THE LICE-SEEKERS

When, full of red torment, the child’s troubled head
entreats the white swarm of shadowy dreams,
two gentle grown-up sisters come up to his bed
with fragile fingers like silver-tipped machines.

Before a casement window they sit the child down,
a window open wide to where the azure air
bathes a tangle of flowers, and upon his tousled crown
their terrible, fine fingers move with magical care.

He listens to the sighing of their apprehensive breath
which smells of the long honeys of the fecund earth,
interrupted now and then by a subtle hiss:
saliva caught on the lip – or desire for a kiss.

He hears their dark eyelashes flicker overhead
in the sweet-smelling silence, and their sovereign fingers, sweet,
electric in his languidness meet
in a crackle: little lice are dead.

And their rises in him the wine of listlessness,
delirium-inducing accordion-sigh.
He feels with the slowness of each careful caress
endlessly surging and ebbing the desire to cry.

Save the Planet!! & (Dawkins note)

With all this talk about the planet, that’s earth, being in danger, from global warming that is, I thought it’s time to turn our attention to a genuine threat. Not that a meteorite impact will destroy the planet – the chunk of rock isn’t likely to disintegrate into small asteroids, no – but it could make life here well nigh impossible as we know it for some time. Think about those dinosaurs, or the great Permian-Triassic event of the past.

Well, this crater out in Arizona was formed about 50,000 years ago by a meteorite that found its way to ground. I bet the dust kicked up by this baby cooled the planet a bit for some time. And this one was rather small!

Then there is this mysterious event from 1908 in Siberia, the Tunguska Event. This was a near-miss of a comet on a collision course with the earth. The “air burst” caused by its contact with the outer atmosphere as it just skimmed our eco-region was equivalent to about 20 megatons of TNT, pretty big blast.

So, in the last 50,000 years we have two known events of significant magnitude: that gives odds of an event each year of 1 in 25,000, right? Pretty long odds, and the odds for a direct hit are longer since the Siberian knock out was only a close call. But on the other hand, if we are not betting on global extinction, just global havoc and continental disaster, the sort of thing a good meteorite hit on any continent other than Antarctica or central Australia might cause, the odds get better. Let’s say they are 1:15,000 for any year. Well, the EPA gets upset about public health risks in the range of 1:1,000,000, i.e., toxic effects that could be fatal for one in one million people. We’re talking about events that might happen in a year here, like the 100 year storm, but still, seems pretty scary to me.

Shouldn’t we be setting up international agencies to scan the skies, develop alert networks, and do some advance planning for the demolition rocketry necessary should we be called on to try and nudge a projectile to a different path…like those movies, right? I’m more worried about that than a potenital sea level rise of two feet over the next one or two hundred years.

And on a Different Note:

Today, in the NYTimes, there was an article about how Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, is “raising hackles” in strange places, i.e., among people who basically agree with him. This excerpt is illustrative:

“The most disappointing feature of ‘The God Delusion,’ ” Mr. Orr wrote, “is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology” and “no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions.”

I agree with much in this article – I think Dawkins can seem a bit shrill and sort of a crank, though I don’t think he is, but I cannot see why he bothered to write the book. On the other hand, fundamentally the fact is that if you are committed to a rational and scientific view of the world, there is no reason to believe in God. It’s just totally unecessary and lacking in any explanatory value. And it’s not required if you want to be ethical, humane, sensitive, loving, and all those other good things that have little to do with the scientific method. Any critic of Dawkins’ book should keep this in mind.

Reason Triumphs!

Another pseudopod heard from!

Judge Jones, a conservative, a republican, appointed by George Bush, Sr., has issued a sweeping ruling that places the claims of the Intelligent Design science-bashers into the dustbin where they belong. From his ruling, as reported in the NY Times, emphasis added:

It is notable that defense experts’ own mission, which mirrors that of the IDM itself, is to change the ground rules of science to allow supernatural causation of the natural world, which the Supreme Court in Edwards and the court in McLean correctly recognized as an inherently religious concept… First, defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to “change the ground rules” of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology. Moreover, defense expert Professor Minnich acknowledged that for ID to be considered science, the ground rules of science have to be broadened to allow consideration of supernatural forces.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of anactivist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which
has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Evolution or …Nothing

Darwin, the most in-depth exhibition ever mounted on this highly original thinker, botanist, geologist, and naturalist and his theory of evolution will open at the Museum on November 19, 2005, and remain on view through May 29, 2006. This exhibition continues a series of exhibitions the Museum has developed on great thinkers, explorers, and scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Ernest Shackleton, Albert Einstein, and now Charles Darwin.

Design De-Signed

The intellectual confusion that is at the core of the so-called Intelligent Design Theory was on display once again in this mornings’ NYTimes in the opinion piece, “Design for Living” by Michael J. Behe. Let’s do him the favor of assuming he’s honest, and not some stooge for the religious right, and examine his ‘arguments’ such as they are.Okay, so according to him, the proponents of ID do not doubt that evolution and natural selection occur, simply that they are not sufficient to explain the organisms we see. Lets say right off that that ends the argument. If they can show that current theories are inadequate, and they can propose a new one that can be proved to fill in the gaps, good for them! But what does that have to do with ID? Asserting that complexity theory or the permutations of cellular automata may be a crucial element in explaining evolution does not contradict Darwin’s theory (if the assertions are ever proved) any more than Mendellian genetics did. And it certainly does not support the notion of ID.

At the core of his position is a deep prejudice which he makes clear with his statement, “…we often recognize the effects of design in nature.” NO! That was precisely what Darwin showed to be false. Are we back in the 18th century when we must listen to pontificating natural theologians rambling on…”Notice, we have two feet, perfect for shoes, and noses, perfect to hold our glasses…” I suggest that an alien visiting earth from another galaxy (where are those guys when you need them?) might have difficulty recognizing Mt. Rushmore as ‘designed’, especially if their life forms were radically different from ours. Anthropologists often have trouble distinguishing ancient tools from randomly chipped shards found in their digs – is design really so obvious? I think not, unless you have already decided it is prevalent.

Mr. Behe never explains what design is, because he doesn’t know or care. It just explains everything he can’t easily explain now. Sounds like a religious idea to me. If you stop assuming design is present everywhere, you stop seeing it…if you have another explanation, which we do have.

I truly enjoyed his comment that scientists are probably gritting their teeth and muttering, “It wasn’t designed, not really,” despite their ‘common sense’ knowledge that it ‘obviously’ is designed. Yes, reminds me of a Polish astronomer I once knew who looked at the heavens and said, “It’s not really spinning around the earth, not really. It goes around the Sun.” He said that even though his eyes suggested that the solar system did revolve around the earth. Hadn’t people noticed it for centuries? We have to believe our eyes, but we also have to know that sometimes we just don’t know what we’re looking at. Alas, the world may look like the toy ground on the lathe of the Great Toymaker in the sky, but it ain’t.

Some of Behe’s arguments are simply rehashes of anti-Darwin screeds from the 19th century, such as his claim that “no research studies indcate that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.” Seems to me that the entire thrust of biological research over the last hundred years, including micro-biology and physiology, all of which employ Darwin as a foundation element, are just that. There is nothing so far that CANNOT be explained with Darwinian mechanisms. We are back, once again, to the Bishop Wilberforce pseudo-arguments about the eye being too complex for it to be the product of ‘random’ evolution. (Of course, we know that evolution is not random.)

The circular arguments of this pathetic exposition are capped by his fourth argument in which Behe asserts that the “strong appearance of design” is a simple and strong argument in favor of ID. That which we desire to prove is the proof of what we desire to prove. Great logic! And I have to disagree that Darwin was “laboring to explain” the profound appearance of design in biological life. He was working to explain how species came about, and the resolution of the false appearance of design is simply an after affect. And how do species come about, Mr. Behe?

Finally he appeals to a vox populi argument: most people don’t accept Darwin’s theory, therefore it’s justified to discard it. We won’t settle the issue by arguing over definitions – especially when he won’t define any of his terms. And science should “keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there.” Yup, go to it, Mr. Behe. Do your theorizing, publish your experimental results, and good luck to you. If you can disprove Darwin, you will be hailed as a great man, but the fact that you are on your quixotic quest for ID does not prove that it is valid.

Mr. Behe says it doesn’t seem useful to search for non-design explanations of Mt. Rushmore. He takes the humanly created and the natural world to be all of a piece, no distinctions. Ah, yes, those Alps, so beautifully designed, surely there must be a supreme artist…The marvelous thing about culture is that it is created by us, the thinking ones. Do we have evidence that the raw material of the world was similarly created, other than an intellectual weakness to assume that what’s good for the goose is always good for the gander?

But, you know, I’m tired of this. I give up. Let’s grant Mr. Behe his argument. Intelligent Design rules! Yahooo! Now, please explain to me: who or what is the intelligent designer; if it’s not a superhuman god, then how is it different from unintelligent design? If you don’t know, what on earth does your theory add to our knowledge of the world?

Much of the confusion and delusion of this piece stems from one basic idea. ID advocates think that because Darwinians have not explained every element of every complex organism of interest, they cannot explain anything. But when they do attempt to explain organisms’ evolution, they succeed. But to explain the details of complex organisms that have evolved over tremendous reaches of time…that’s a work in progress. But there is only one path to the end as of now, and each small step it takes is solid. This explains the confusion, but it doesn’t excuse it. Fact is, Newton’s laws of gravitational attraction are pretty simple and straighforward, but last I heard, it still isn’t possible to accurately solve for the motion of three bodies that are mutually attracting one another simultaneously. It’s too difficult for us now. Does that mean Newton was wrong?

Ape Men

Darwin is long gone, and now, Ernst Mayr is dead at 100. He was the most prominent evolutionary biologist, perhaps the most prominent biologist, of the 20th century. Author of hundreds of papers, scores of books, a ground breaking researcher, brilliant and devoted ornithologist, and the guiding intellect of the great synthesis of modern genetics and Darwinian theory, he was a towering figure. (Recall, Darwin knew nothing of genetics, even after Mendel’s work, because it was not published!) One of his latest books, What is Evolution? is a wonderfully lucid exposition for laymen that even a creationist could read, should read, but perhaps, alas, cannot understand.I never met Mayr, nor heard him speak, so I don’t know what this brilliant and scholarly gentleman thought of popular culture, let alone rock n’ roll, nor have I any idea of what his sense of humour was, but I like to think he might have chuckled at this, one of my favorite songs by The Kinks:

Ape Man

I think I’m sophisticated
’cos I’m living my life like a good homosapien
But all around me everybody’s multiplying
Till they’re walking round like flies man
So I’m no better than the animals sitting in their cages
In the zoo man
’cos compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees
I am an ape man

I think I’m so educated and I’m so civilized
’cos I’m a strict vegetarian
But with the over-population and inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians
I don’t feel safe in this world no more
I don’t want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an ape man

I’m an ape man, I’m an ape ape man
I’m an ape man I’m a king kong man I’m ape ape man
I’m an ape man
’cos compared to the sun that sits in the sky
Compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man

In man’s evolution he has created the cities and
The motor traffic rumble, but give me half a chance
And I’d be taking off my clothes and living in the jungle
’cos the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in a coconut tree
Oh what a life of luxury to be like an ape man
I’m an ape, I’m an ape ape man, I’m an ape man
I’m a king kong man, I’m a voo-doo man
I’m an ape man
I look out my window, but I can’t see the sky
’cos the air pollution is fogging up my eyes
I want to get out of this city alive
And make like an ape man

Come and love me, be my ape man girl
And we will be so happy in my ape man world
I’m an ape man, I’m an ape ape man, I’m an ape man
I’m a king kong man, I’m a voo-doo man
I’m an ape man
I’ll be your tarzan, you’ll be my jane
I’ll keep you warm and you’ll keep me sane
And we’ll sit in the trees and eat bananas all day
Just like an ape man

I’m an ape man, I’m an ape ape man, I’m an ape man
I’m a king kong man, I’m a voo-doo man
I’m an ape man.
I don’t feel safe in this world no more
I don’t want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And make like an ape man.

One for Our Side!

Yesterday, a judge in Cobb County Georgia struck down a law that mandated stickers on high school biology textbooks with the following message:

“Warning this text contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact. Students should approach this material with an open mind, and examine it critically.”

He ordered that the school board remove the stickers immediately, and said that they constituted a violation of the establishment clause, i.e., the separation of Church and State. Bravo, judge!

The learned jurist quite sensibly ruled that since the stickers referred only to evolution, not to the Krebs Cycle, the structure of DNA, the nature of the cell, or other established facts of biology, that this was a focused and unconstitutional attempt by one group to impose its religious views onto the public school students. I don’t know what arguments the lawyers made, but I hope they pointed out that evolution IS a fact! If it is not a fact, none of the rest of the material in the textbook is fact, which is implicit in the judge’s ruling. The poor understanding of science that runs rampant in our society makes it possible for people to trade on semantic slipperiness about the words ‘theory’ and ‘fact.’

In ordinary language, people use the word theory to mean a guess, a hunch, a supposition, or a reasonable hypothesis, but in science, that’s how theories start. Then they are reviewed and tested relentlessly by people who would often like nothing so much as to gain glory by disproving their colleague’s theory with a factual counter-example. (Contrast this with the religious-dogmatic point of view that arrives at a conclusion and then simply searches for reasons to support and justify it.) Theories that make the grade are finally accepted as facts, e.g. the Copernican Theory of the solar system, the Newtonian Theory of Universal Gravitation, the Lavoisier Theory of oxygen, and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by natural selection.

When a theory is a big, earth-shaking concept, our tendency to call it a theory lingers long after it has been proven again and again. We still talk about the Theory of Relativity because it is such an important concept with so many ramifications. For theories that aren’t so awe inspiring, we drop the theory moniker – nobody talks about Lavoisier’s theory of oxygen anymore because we all know that oxygen exists. We speak about the dead theory he destroyed, the Phlogiston Theory, and in this case, the word theory carries a negative connotation of an idea that was floated, and sank. Scientists are a hard headed bunch – they are not much interested in semantic controversy. That’s the purview of philosophers and dogmatic cranks, so they don’t have any difficulty with the false paradox that a theory, one that is accepted as proved, still is in some small way open to doubt because sometime in the future something that undermines it might turn up. How open minded of them! But know-nothings exploit this semantic difficulty, and the rigorous skepticism of the scientific community to try and further their absurd claims that evolution is just a theory, not a fact.

I bet that most of the people who want this sticker don’t have any problem with the fact of gravity, but actually, there’s probably more scientific controversy over this theory than evolution. Issac Newton never explained the nature of gravity, and he posited it as a force that acts over a distance without intervening material. The theory of the aether was junked at the turn of the 20th century with the Michelson-Morley experiment – space is just that, empty space. Pure and unadulterated. But nowadays, from what I hear about theoretical physics, everything, even gravity, has its source in particles. I won’t weigh in on this as it’s above my head by miles, but you catch my drift. Lets put warning stickers on physics texts, eh?