Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 415

Humans knew how to master fire earlier than thought

From ScienceDaily:

Just when this momentous acquisition of knowledge occurred has been a hotly debated topic for archaeologists.

Now, a team of University of Connecticut researchers, working with colleagues from Armenia, the U.K., and Spain, has found compelling evidence that early humans such as Neanderthals not only controlled fire, but also mastered the ability to generate it.

“Fire was presumed to be the domain of Homo sapiens but now we know that other ancient humans like Neanderthals could create it,” says co-author Daniel Adler, associate professor in anthropology. “So perhaps we are not so special after all.”

Their work, published today in Scientific Reports, pairs archaeological, hydrocarbon and isotope evidence of human interactions with fire, with what the climate was like tens of thousands of years ago.

Using specific fire-related molecules deposited in the archaeological record and an analysis of climatological clues, the researchers examined Lusakert Cave 1 in the Armenian Highlands.

“Fire starting is a skill that has to be learned — I never saw anyone who managed to produce fire without first being taught. So the assumption that someone has the capability to set fire at will is a source of debate,” says Gideon Hartman, associate professor of anthropology, and study co-author. Paper. (open access) – Alex Brittingham , Michael T. Hren, Gideon Hartman, Keith N. Wilkinson, Carolina Mallol, Boris Gasparyan & Daniel S. Adler. Geochemical Evidence for the Control of Fire by Middle Palaeolithic Hominins. Scientific Reports, 2019 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-51433-0 More.

Why does Daniel Adler assume that the Neanderthals are not human? There is no reasonable basis for this claim anymore.

Note: “One question is, who taught the first humans?,” The ancient Greeks thought that Prometheus, a demi-god, did that – and was punished for it.

See also: In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.

But also, where, oh where, are those subhumans? The rally stupid tyles whom no amount of teaching could help?

See also: In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.

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Early woman botanist failed to embrace Darwinism, fell from favor

Darwin was always a jealous god:

Extract: This essay aims to reappraise Agnes Arber’s contribution to the history of science with reference to her work in the history of botany and biology. Both her first and her last books (Herbals, 1912; The Mind and the Eye, 1954) are classics: the former in the history of botany, the latter in that of biology. As such, they are still cited today, albeit with increasing criticism. Her very last book was rejected by Cambridge University Press because it did not meet the publisher’s academic standards – we shall return to it in due course. Despite Kathryn Packer’s two essays about Arber’s life in context, much remains to be done toward a just appreciation of her research. We need such a reappraisal in order to avoid anachronistic criticisms of her contributions to the historiography of botany, or, on the other hand, uncritical applause for her studies in plant morphology.…

Arber was excluded not just on account of her sex, but because her beliefs, as reflected in her publications, became increasingly out of fashion, and therefore out of touch, with current scientific practices. Arber’s anti-evolutionary stance continued to shape her work from her student days until her very last book. Her scientific premises did not evolve. While they were perfectly in tune with the times in the late 1890s and early 1900s, they had morphed into minority thinking by the 1940s and 1950s. (paywall)

Vittoria Feola, “Agnes Arber, historian of botany and Darwinian sceptic” at The British Journal for the History of Science, 2018, 52(3) (September 2019): 515-523.

We should find out when her birthday is and declare that Arber Day.

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A toad looks and sounds like a venomous snake

A first for frogs. The mimic frog is the Congolese giant toad (Sclerophrys channingi). The snake is the Gaboon viper (Bitis gabonica):

“This is the first example in the world – that we are aware of – of a frog attempting to mimic a venomous snake,” says Eli Greenbaum at the University of Texas at El Paso. “It’s rare for frogs to be involved in a mimicry complex in general.”
Michael Marshall, “Giant toad looks and acts like a venomous snake to scare off predators” at New Scientist

The toad also lets out a hiss when startled, like the viper’s threatening hiss.

A classic example of Darwinism at work, right?. It did a lot of good for the toad to happen to look one per cent like a venomous snake, so then it evolved to two percent and that did more good so it naturally selected to three percent and… Not really. Whatever happened isn’t a form of Darwinism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRcXR...

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Some researchers hope to grow crops on the moon

They’ve been experimenting with moon-like soils to grow vegetables for moon colonies:

The crops planted in the soils included garden cress, rocket (aka arugula), tomato, radish, rye, quinoa, spinach, chives, peas and leeks. Of those, the only vegetable that failed to grow well in the exo-soils was spinach. The radishes, cress and rye all grew to a point where seeds could be harvested. The team was also able to harvest tomatoes and peas from the lunar and Martian soils. The chives and leeks grew steadily, but slower than normal. While the quinoa produced flowers, it did not produce seeds. Still, the team reports that they suspect this is the first time any plants have been grown large enough to produce fruit in the soil simulants.

In a follow-up, the team were able to germinate the radish, cress and rye seeds produced on the Mars and lunar soils, suggesting that the production of self-sustaining crops might be possible in space.

Jason Daley, “Space Farmers Could Grow Crops in Lunar and Martian Soil, Study Suggests” at Smithsonian.com

Maybe this is the closest we’ll ever really get to extraterrestrial life. Go there and grow stuff.

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The Hyperreal Number System

The hyperreal number system is a way of treating infinities and infinitesimals in a rigorous way that is consistent with the way that we treat ordinary numbers.

I recently posted a short video introducing the concept in a simple way. I thought some of you might be interested.

I find the hyperreals interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, I think that infinities and infinitesimals are somewhat of the equivalent of Intelligent Design for mathematics. Infinitesimals were essentially banned from mathematics in the 1800s because it was said that they were inconsistent and non-rigorous (this is why calculus switched from infinitesimals to limits). This move was largely philosophically motivated, with Hilbert and others trying to naturalize mathematics.

However, in the 1960s, infinitesimals were proved to be equally mathematically rigorous as other standard mathematical entities.

In any case, from a practical side, infinitesimals make calculus, limits, and other sorts of mathematical ideas a LOT simpler to work with. In fact, using these types of numbers, Calculus becomes pretty much identical with Algebra.

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Is the multiverse “increasingly popular” among physicists?

Or is a legacy medium just promoting it uncritically because no one who thinks pays attention to it anymore?

“It’s absolutely possible that there are multiple worlds where you made different decisions. We’re just obeying the laws of physics,” says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the author of a new book on many worlds titled “Something Deeply Hidden.” Just how many versions of you might there be? “We don’t know whether the number of worlds is finite or infinite, but it’s certainly a very large number,” Carroll says. “There’s no way it’s, like, five.”

Carroll is aware that the many worlds interpretation sounds like something plucked from a science fiction movie. (It doesn’t help that he was an adviser on “Avengers: Endgame.”) And like a Hollywood blockbuster, the many worlds interpretation attracts both passionate fans and scathing critics.

Corey S. Powell, “The weirdest idea in quantum physics is catching on: There may be endless worlds with countless versions of you.” at NBC News

The multiverse makes physics so cool that it is indistinguishable from self-indulgence.

See also: The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide

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We could have come from two parents

Says a new paper at BIO-Complexity by Ola Hossjer and Ann Gauger.

It is definitely possible for us to have come from a starting point of two. Whether by a bottleneck or by a unique event the numbers say it is possible. 2 million years corresponds to the time of the first hominid to be called Homo, Homo erectus. His exact time and place of origin are unknown but are thought to be in Africa. The 500,000-year mark is near the time of the Neanderthals and Denisovans.

But these numbers are not fixed in stone. They are subject to change: a change in population structure, mortality, mutation rate, birth rate, migration, selection, all can influence the results. The amount of initial diversity, or its distribution, can as well. Changing the population size or time by half can be reversed by multiplying the mutation rate by two. In other words, we have a relationship than can be tweaked and studied, and its parameters can be worked out, but as one of its creators said, the model is “underdetermined.” That’s putting it mildly.

Once again, the precise age of the first couple is not the main point of this study. That there could be a first couple at all is the point.

Ann Gauger, “New BIO-Complexity Paper: We Could Have Come from Two” at Evolution News and Science Today

Paper.

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The science-based arguments against Copernicus and Galileo

Here’s a big one:

What were those problems? A big one was the size of stars in the Copernican universe. Copernicus proposed that certain oddities observed in the movements of planets through the constellations were due to the fact that Earth itself was moving. Stars show no such oddities, so Copernicus had to theorise that, rather than being just beyond the planets as astronomers had traditionally supposed, stars were so incredibly distant that Earth’s motion was insignificant by comparison. But seen from Earth, stars appear as dots of certain sizes or magnitudes. The only way stars could be so incredibly distant and have such sizes was if they were all incredibly huge, every last one dwarfing the Sun. Tycho Brahe, the most prominent astronomer of the era and a favourite of the Establishment, thought this was absurd, while Peter Crüger, a leading Polish mathematician, wondered how the Copernican system could ever survive in the face of the star-size problem.

Christopher Graney, “Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious” at Aeon

And more. We know so much more about the universe now that this doesn’t seem like a problem. But in those days, it had to be.

Pop science writing typically misleads us by portraying the conflict as if the rightness of the Copernican universe were self-evident. For sure not at the time.

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Researchers: Rocky dead planets common, therefore ET life common

According to “autopsies” of planets frizzled by white dwarfs:

In a study published on Thursday, researchers studied six white dwarfs whose strong gravitational pull had sucked in shredded remnants of planets and other rocky bodies that had been in orbit. This material, they found, was very much like that present in rocky planets such as Earth and Mars in our solar system.

Given that Earth harbors an abundance of life, the findings offer the latest tantalizing evidence that planets similarly capable of hosting life exist in large numbers beyond our solar system.

“The more we find commonalities between planets made in our solar system and those around other stars, the more the odds are enhanced that the Earth is not unusual,” said Edward Young, a geochemistry and cosmochemistry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who helped lead the study published in the journal Science.

Will Dunham, “Planetary ‘autopsies’ indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos” at Reuters

In case you thought this field was “settled science”, see also: “Evolution” says we are alone

and

Once again, for the thousandth time, we are “closing in” on alien life

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Stone Age glue: Neanderthals accused of “complex thinking”

Glue was found on well-preserved tools from 50 kya:

Traces of ancient “glue” on a stone tool from 50,000 years ago points to complex thinking by Neanderthals, experts say.

The glue was made from birch tar in a process that required forward planning and involved several different steps.

It adds to mounting evidence that we have underestimated the capabilities of our evolutionary cousins.

Paul Rincon, “Neanderthal ‘glue’ points to complex thinking” at BBC News

As noted earlier, they were assumed to be subhuman because, in any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman.

If they are accepted as human, of course, in a progressive scheme, they must be either vile perpetrators or hapless victims. Demonstrating that they achieved things risks putting them in the class of vile perpetrators. Maybe they stole the idea for glue from homo erectus?

See also: Once again, did Neanderthals speak?

and

Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents

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