Don’t Dismiss Scientific Findings

I see that my letter to the editor of Dec. 30 was not well received by some readers (letters, Jan. 6). Among other complaints, Rabbi Eidensohn and reader Josh Greenberger both protest that I did not explicitly describe any of the errors I had noted in the rabbi’s original letter of December 7. That is largely true, since those details were incidental to my main point about the malignant attitude toward science in areas of the yeshiva world. However, I can certainly attempt to provide a somewhat fuller account, although I doubt it will change any minds. As John Locke wrote, “It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of truth.”

Since the space available here is scarcely adequate even to show a man his error, I will have to forgo addressing the rabbi’s various confusions about modern cosmologies, anthropic principles, and Stephen Jay Gould.

It seems, however, that the rabbi’s most cherished argument is that evolutionary processes violate the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy within an adiabatic closed system cannot decrease. The rabbi’s first major error is in equating thermodynamic “order” with biological complexity, but a broader problem is that the second law does not even apply to the cases in which the rabbi believes it decisive.

An adiabatic closed system is one in which no heat transfer or mass transfer occurs across the system boundaries, and it is impossible to find a natural habitat in which these conditions are met. Indeed, energy, water, air, and all manner of other biomatter typically cross the system boundaries in both directions. The second law has nothing to say about such a system, and its entropy can increase, decrease, or remain the same.

Another of the rabbi’s claims relates to the case of industrial melanism in the peppered moth. It should be duly noted that H.B.D. Kettlewell’s classic experiments on these moths have attracted serious scientific criticism on methodological grounds. In any case, the rabbi gives us the following entertaining account: “It seems white moths became black due to the smoke of the Industrial Revolution in England. Chemicals from the soot, injected into white moths, made them black. But the evolutionists had another interpretation: The moths somehow knew that since they were white and the walls were becoming black from soot, birds would be able to see them and eat them. Therefore, the white moths just turned black.”

The rabbi has thus seemingly misunderstood everything about the case of the peppered moth. The dark (melanic) moths and light (typical) moths are naturally occurringgenetic variants of the same species. The dark moth is not a light moth that happened to inhale too much soot, any more than a red-haired child is a black-haired child who happened to inhale too many carrots.

Moreover, the rabbi’s exegesis of the “evolutionist” position is so breathtakingly at odds with any Darwinian theory that it makes one wonder whether he really ever understood Darwin’s idea. It was never anyone’s claim that individual moths change their color to avoid predation. Rather, polluted conditions make the light moth an easier target for birds, and hence the melanic gene in the dark moth is preferentially selected.

While there are valid questions about Kettlewell’s account, it seems clear to me that the rabbi has not bothered to understand the basic theory, the basic experiments, or even their basic deficiencies.

The point of my original letter was not to harass Rabbi Eidensohn for having misconceptions about science, nor was it to accuse the rabbi of insulting scientists. Rather, my point was that those who fling about half-baked and barely coherent indictments of scientific theories are insulting themselves and any standards of scholarship to which they might subscribe.

My initial reaction to the rabbi’s letter was thus not one of disdain but of dismay. It dismays me that many of my fellow Jews who are so passionate and proud of their own learning are so dismissive of the scholarship of others. The assumption that scientists are incompetent or corrupt is just crude escapism, and it discourages me to see it so conspicuously practiced by people whom I otherwise respect, and who certainly have the capacity to do better.