Thomas Heams Philippe Huneman Guillaume Lecointre Marc Silberstein Editors Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences Tai Lieu Chat Luong Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences Thomas Heams • Philippe Huneman Guillaume Lecointre • Marc Silberstein Editors Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences Editors Thomas Heams INRA, UMR 1313, Génétique Animale et Biologie Intégrative Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France Département Sciences de la Vie et Santé AgroParisTech Paris cedex 05, France Philippe Huneman Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne/ENS Paris, France Marc Silberstein Editions Matériologiques Paris, France Guillaume Lecointre Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) Paris, France ISBN 978-94-017-9013-0 ISBN 978-94-017-9014-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London Library of Congress Control Number: 2014956020 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 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the Copyright Clearance Center Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword Whatever its importance, the book Darwin published under the title On the Origin of Species probably did not enjoy such astounding success as one often reads in the innumerable books and articles about him The legend has it that the first edition sold out on the day of publication, November 24, 1859, as Darwin hinted in his diary: “The 1st Edit was published on Novr 24th & all copies ie 1,250 sold first day.” (Darwin’s Journal [1809–1881], CUL-DAR158.37 verso, quoted in Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/) In fact, the publisher, John Murray, had shipped copies to booksellers throughout the country on November 22, but nothing is known about when they were actually bought in the shops.1 Whatever the case, the present work, for which I have the pleasure of writing the preface, appeared in French around the 150th anniversary of the Origin Its editors so intended it, to celebrate the anniversary of this work, which has been as much or more celebrated than the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth (February 12, 1809), which was itself abundantly celebrated throughout the world in 2009 They are right: it is less the man himself than his immensely fruitful theoretical contribution that merits celebration, and, even more, reflection, from the standpoint of today’s questions and knowledge As Pascal Tassy writes in this volume, “The Darwinian heritage is a formidable edifice of unextinguished controversies, continually coming back to life, being augmented, made more complex.” There is no better way of introducing this lively, argumentative book than to explain a few words about its inception Only afterward will I discuss its intellectual objectives In fact, however, it is only in the last part of the work that the context that motivated it is revealed, after a 1,000 pages of theoretical debates This context has three components First, the work results from the spectacular resurgence of tensions between evolutionary science and religion Although the chapter by d’Olivier Brosseau and Marc Silberstein on the various cloaked forms of creationism today is the only one on this subject in the book, it nevertheless expresses, beyond a doubt, an intellectual and political disquiet widely shared among the authors The second See R.B Freeman’s introduction to the 1859 edition of On the Origin of Species http://darwinonline.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_OntheOriginofSpecies.html v vi Foreword element, also very concrete, is teaching While evolutionary sciences are solidly supported in school curricula, teachers, as Corinne Fortin explains, are particularly ill at ease Indeed, aside from a feeling that they themselves have not fully mastered the necessary content, they are reluctant to engage with the questions of pupils on a subject that is not always socially neutral The final element of the book is immediately specified in the introduction: it concerns the controversial relations existing today between the natural, and particularly the biological, sciences and the human sciences These three fields of play provide more the scenery than the subject of the book Aside from the two final chapters that I have just mentioned, the book is not an inquiry into the relationship between evolution and science nor into the teaching of evolution nor even into the status of the human sciences, although this last theme is present as a sort of filigree throughout a significant part of the work Rather than placing these questions of culture, politics, and ideology front and center, the editors have preferred to show evolutionary science as it is today, with its immense fecundity, but also with the questions and the internal debates running through it With regard to the contexts we have just been discussing, the book leaves something of an aerial impression To those who want in the name of religion to rip open politics or war in the human sciences, it responds with a 1,000 pages of dense studies, where the reader is invited to discover reason at work The book is difficult, since it launches without concession into difficult theoretical problems, where often no consensus exists But it is just this that makes it light and plants it in the antipodes to what Gaston Bachelard called “heavy thinking” (les pensées lourdes) – thought which isn’t really thinking, but opinions founded on hearsay and prejudice You understand, then: religion, teaching, and the human sciences provide the scenery of the work, in the theatrical sense The scenery could have been different; the texts would have been the same This is the great quality of this book: far from Darwinian hagiography and self-justifying commemoration, it invites the reader to enter the contemporary forest of the theory of evolution, of its underpinnings, and of its effects on contemporary knowledge of evolution, its underpinnings, and its effects on knowledge in general I will here add some words on the place and on the persons, before coming to the subject of the piece This book was originally published in French, and by authors who were mostly Francophones This is also exhilarating Darwinian thinking is in France no longer so incongruous that it is necessary either to convene French researchers to question it or to resort to foreign authors to discuss it This is undoubtedly the result of an evolution whose beginnings lie in the postwar period Indeed, it was at that time that powerful scientific traditions began to develop in our country, first in population biology, then in theoretical paleontology, and today represented by an impressive cohort of young researchers I must observe here that three fifths at least of the authors who have participated in this volume fall into the category of “junior researchers,” and in fact often are very young scholars Now I come to the substance of the book Its objective is, as the expression in the introduction has it, to “cover Darwinism in all its forms.” It is nevertheless worth specifying that its objective is not historical: it is modern Darwinism as it inspires Foreword vii present-day scientific research that it treats, not Darwinism in its historical scientific or cultural guises I would like to mention the French original title of the book, Les Mondes darwiniens (“Darwinian worlds”) I agree that this title could hardly be kept for the English translation; Handbook of Evolutionary Theory in the Sciences is perfectly appropriate However, the idea of a number of “Darwinian worlds” had something appealing The Darwinian worlds alluded to by the editors are the realms of current research: they referred to a number of fundamental concepts, research programs, controversies, unresolved questions, and even possible future paths of investigation Although the authors have taken care to specify the sense in which they are referring to Darwin in the subjects they are examining, it is clear that it is the present and the future of the researches collectively called “Darwinian” that matter to each of them I will here sketch out a taxonomy of the types of theoretical Darwinism deployed in this Handbook of Evolutionary Theory in the Sciences Two distinctions will be enough The first draws on the two components of the theory Darwin proposed in the Origin: “descent with modification” and “natural selection.” The second concerns the uses of them made by those who, after Darwin, claimed to represent him as evolutionists I propose distinguishing two lines of development of the fundamental Darwinian principles: the first consists of revising or refounding those principles, the other of deploying them in practice I will call these two lines “expansion” and “extension,” respectively.2 They are by no means mutually exclusive, on the contrary In the light of this distinction, the theoretical intentions of this volume appear clearly In the first place, I observe that the work has taken care to accord equal importance to the two components of Darwin’s original theory, namely, the hypothesis of “descent with modification” (the idea of a genealogical nexus of all living beings, in all the immensity of time and space in which they are transformed) and the hypotheses of variation and natural selection (the processes that ultimately explain and largely control evolutionary change for Darwin) This equal attention to the two principles is unusual: too often, in Darwinian celebrations, we see a tendency to neglect the formidable theoretical difficulties raised by phylogenetic reconstructions and to take more interest in selection Certainly, the difficulties I here make use of the terms of the late S.J Gould, although for a different purpose In his scientific testament (The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002), he maintained that the contemporary theory of evolution could not be interpreted as either an “extension” of the Darwinian framework (Darwinian principles applied to a wider spectrum of phenomena) or as a new theoretical framework that would “replace” the earlier one, by virtue of a drastic paradigm shift (which would imply that the principles would be radically different) Gould preferred to speak of “expansion” of the theoretical Darwinian framework, in the sense that the same principles remained central, but had been “reformulated” in such a way as to give the entire edifice an entirely different appearance (For more details on this unusual distinction between “extension” and “expansion,” see J Gayon, “Mort ou persistance du darwinisme? Regard d’un épistémologue,” in C.R Palevol., (2009): 321–340) I am here picking up the distinction “extension/expansion” while emancipating it from Gould’s particular usage, and I contend that the two fundamental principles of Darwinism (descent with modification and selection) have been simultaneously extended in their usage and revised in their fundamentals viii Foreword raised by phylogenetic inference were fully understood only in the second half of the twentieth century But this is an essential dimension of contemporary Darwinism that well reflects the now-commonplace distinction between patterns (the fundamentals of phylogenetic reconstructions) and processes in evolution (for example, variation and selection) This distinction between patterns and processes permeates the entire volume It is explicit in the first part, which analyzes fundamental concepts, but it is also to be found in the two succeeding parts, where the engagement with Darwinism does not mean only, nor exclusively, the explanation of evolution by means of natural selection In the second place, the volume examines, exceptionally systematically, the various modes of expansion and extension of the two Darwinian principles As I observed above, I understand by “expansion” a deepening of the foundations, which may require important revisions This is a characteristic of great scientific theories that is too seldom underlined: they not last forever because they are periodically refounded By “extension,” I mean the growth of the domain of phenomena to which Darwinian principles have been applied Discussion in detail of these two lively regimes in contemporary evolution would be inappropriate here; I ask the reader to pardon me for leaving the schema as a suggestion The expansion (or revision) of the Darwinian framework has been particularly spectacular in the following cases: Numerous authors ask whether reproduction and heredity are essential ingredients for the concept of natural selection The breadth of disagreement on this point is impressive Whereas some researchers argued for an enlargement of the concept, which would make differential reproductive success a merely facultative form of differences in fitness, and thus of the process of natural selection, the majority of authors of this book argue for the orthodox classical version and distrust the loss of operationality represented by the elision of any reference to reproduction and heredity in the principle of natural selection This question is closely linked to that of units and levels of selection, which has preoccupied evolutionists for the last three or four decades It is clear that if the postulate of heritability of fitness is weakened (and thus the necessary conclusion that the principle of natural selection can only be applied to entities capable of reproduction), the spectrum of entities (natural, cultural, or artificial) to which natural selection can be applied is greatly enlarged We may recall here that this debate has in fact existed since the very beginnings of Darwinism It was one of the issues in play in the debate between Darwin and Spencer about whether the principle of natural selection was a priori or not Since the 1970s, the debate about the units of selection has laid great importance on the notion of “replication.” A replicator is an entity whose structure can be copied into another entity The gene is the paradigmatic example of a replicator An organism, in contrast, is not a replicator: it reproduces itself (that is, it can beget a being of the same sort as itself), but the being thus begotten is not a “copy.” This notion of replication has gotten the better of that of reproduction for numerous authors, biologists, and philosophers Yet, extensions of Darwinism beyond the biological domain, where using the concept of replication ceases to Foreword ix be self-evident, clearly challenge classical views of replicator and selection, since they often can’t make room for discrete replicators Finally, I would like to underline the importance that numerous authors (notably Christophe Malaterre and Francesca Merlin) confer to stochastic factors and more generally to the workings of chance This theme is of course not new Since the end of the nineteenth century, sampling effects and chance have been a theme of recurrent interest as a possible important factor in evolution What is new is the contemporary debate over dawning awareness of the enormous difficulty, even the theoretical impossibility, of differentiating in practice between stochastic and selective effects Numerous authors (notably Julien Delord and Arnaud Pocheville) question the growth in influence of stochastic models in evolutionary ecology It is nevertheless in the modern treatment of phylogenetic inference (returning to “descent with modification” in the Darwinian theory) that the most impressive revisions have been produced over the course of the last half century As the contributions of Guillaume Lecointre and Pascal Tassy convincingly show, phylogenetic inference is no longer today an “art” founded solely on individual expertise; it is rather a science furnished with reproducible operational principles In this case, it is certainly not proper to speak of a “revision” of the Darwinian principle of “descent with modification”; the subject instead represents an entire branch of science that has developed methods of which Darwin and his successors had no inkling The chapters devoted to this subject are particularly impressive (Véronique Barriel, Guillaume Lecointre, Pascal Tassy) The volume examines other paths of revision of the fundamental principles of Darwin that I cannot discuss here It is clear that current experimental biology, notably molecular biology, genomics, and developmental biology, is opening important perspectives on the question of constraints on the sources of variation and, thus, of the very power of natural selection As for extensions of the Darwinian theoretical framework to new objects, this Handbook of Evolutionary Theory in the Sciences provides an impressive harvest I would like here to distinguish two of them One consists in mutually applying Darwinian principles to novel biological objects; the other consists in transposing them to fields of phenomena not specifically biological, or at least not obviously biological In the first category, I may mention the application of the principle of descent to the paths of biochemical synthesis or degradation, which is referred to in Lecointre’s chapter on descent The volume elsewhere examines numerous examples of the extension of the principle of natural selection to levels of organization or to biological phenomena other than those considered by Darwin or the modern synthesis: behavior (Henri Cap), embryology and developmental systems (Alan Love, Antonine Nicoglou), the origin and maintenance of sex (Pierre-Henri Gouyon, Tatiana Giraud, Damien de Vienne), medicine (Pierre-Olivier Méthot), and ecology (Julien Delord, Arnaud Pocheville) The portions of the volume dealing with evolutionary psychology (Stephen M Downes, Pierre Poirier and Luc Faucher, Pierrick Bourrat), evolutionary ethics (Christine Clavien, Jérôme Ravat), the origin of language (Jean-Louis Dessalles), and teleosemantics (Franỗoise Longy) move also in this direction 894 O Brosseau and M Silberstein pushed Catholicism30 to soften its stance on the natural history of the world by recognizing a true historicity at the heart of the living world It is with this goal in mind that doctrines have been developed in order to supposedly make science and religion compatible31; it is an opportunistic desire to achieve the impossible These doctrines place their hope either in the incorporation of scientific findings into existing phenomena already described by theology – a paradox: the purpose of these theological commentaries is never to explain, since the very idea of theology is to affirm the absolute incompatibility between man’s ability to measure his world given the vastness of the divine –, or to use science to the advantage of religious dogma Not a single form of creationism challenges the notion that the world originates from an intentional supernatural decision All creationisms in the vein of ID aim to establish that the world is ultimately conceived (a gentler way of saying “created”)32 by a visionary intelligence beyond nature (supernatural) whose attributes cannot be explained or measured by anything science teaches us This echoes a classical theme in religious philosophy, Providentialism ID wants to establish Finalism (teleology) as true, in which case there is nothing shocking about a creator entity composing the world in a directional way to reach a goal at the end of what could be called an evolutionary process Viewed thus, it is easier to understand how ID proponents’ illusory denials of those who see ID as a new theology – and a new conquest of the scientific field – results from this charade Any theory of the world declaring (Revelations) or aiming to prove (ID, for example) that a supernatural and decisive force developed the 30 Time permitting, we could also discuss Islam and Judaism; for now, we will point out that the three religions of the Book rally together easily as history demands it when it comes to hunting down science or enlisting it in their desperate search for a theological justification of the magnificence of the world’s harmony, as well as for denying any ultimate relevance to processes that would, to put it bluntly, seem to be the result of chance (that is, according to Darwin’s concept, such an intermingling of causes and determinisms makes it illusory to describe evolutionary modalities in detail.) 31 To this end, the biologist Antoine Vekris (alias Oldcola in the blogosphere) has coined an interesting term to describe science-religion hybrids: scienligions (scien[ce|re]ligions) He explains: “From a marketing perspective, the hybrid approach is quite interesting; it appropriates elements of respectability from each of its neighbors, exploiting the public’s natural skepticism for the camp from which it originates: scientists who doubt that science could have all the answers, believers who consider divine intervention as knowable To group all of these minorities together and present this approach as innovative, meaning that it is also rational, is particularly powerful in a social context that is characterized by its fragmentation and by a certain respect for the irrational […] These positions’ dogmatism is carefully camouflaged by alternately invoking science and religion rather than religious fundamentalism or scientific materialism according to the subject and its representatives These are positions that are no less dogmatic than those of extremists, built upon assertions that no proof supports, and which demand unconditional acceptance as long as the opposition has not refuted them—which is impossible, since the assertions in question are chosen precisely because they are un-testable.” (http://oldcola.blogspot.com/2006/03/scienligion-lhybride-entre-science-et.html) 32 In English “designed” in this context implies an intentional creative force (the “intelligent” in intelligent design) However, “design” is also commonly used by Darwinian biologists in English in the sense that design is not granted by an exogenous visionary; it is a product of variation and natural selection (also See the very insightful note in Downes’, Chap 31, this volume) 41 Evolutionism(s) and Creationism(s) 895 world is a creationism Truly scientific theories are naturalist or materialist33: they remove– empirically – the theological, the teleological, and the spiritual in order to explain nature using nature, even though these explanations may come at the expense of revealing gaps or flaws in our current knowledge.34 Though it boldly asserts a pseudo “new paradigm” in different forms, ID is simply another spiritualistic intrusion into science And yet, in the United States, ID’s proponents continue to benefit from financial resources and considerable press, in inverse proportion to the weak ideas they defend… As for the truly discouraging durability of this “spiritualization” of the world,35 perhaps it would help to reveal the intense force behind this tendency of the mind, admirably described by Renan: One should not seek any logic in the solutions man imagines to attach some reason to the strange fate that befell him He is inescapably led to believe in justice, yet thrown into a world that is, and will always be, sheer injustice; he needs eternity for his claims and yet he is abruptly stopped by the ditch of death – How can he help it? He rises against the coffin, he gives back flesh to the scraggy bone, life to the rotten brain, light to the faded eye; he makes up sophisms he would mock coming from a child, so as to avoid admitting that nature has proved so ironic as to impose on him the burden of duty without compensation (Renan et al 1881: 34)36 References Aucante, V (2009) Création et évolution La pensée de Bent XVI La documentation catholique, 1er février 2009, no 2417 Baudouin, C., & Brosseau, O (2013) Enquête sur les créationnismes Réseaux, stratégies et objectifs politiques Paris: Berlin www.tazius.fr/les-creationnismes/ Benedict, XVI (2008) Creation and evolution: A conference with Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo Compiled by Stephan Otto Horn and Siegfried Wiedenhofer, foreword by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn San Francisco: Ignatius Press Bricmont, J (2001) Science et religion: l’irréductible antagonisme In J Dubessy & G Lecointre (dir.), Intrusions spiritualistes et impostures intellectuelles en sciences Paris: Syllepse Bunge, M (1977) Treatise on basic philosophy III: Ontology: The furniture of the world Dordrecht: Reidel 33 They have a philosophical foundation (it is not a fundamentalism), but this is not what essentially distinguishes them from neocreationist theses See the chapter “The Philosophical Assumptions of the Scientific Method” Pigliucci (2002) 34 For an examination of the relationship between science and materialism, See Silberstein (2008) 35 A permanence that the evolutionary biologist Dawkins (2006) explores in a remarkable book that uses scientific methods to consider the “God hypothesis” (a hypothesis that Laplace said was of no use except in celestial mechanics) and concludes that our scientific theories and data can only invalidate such an unrealistic hypothesis We also (MS) clearly subscribe to this line of thought (also argued by Daniel Dennett) 36 Translated by Elizabeth Vitanza, revised by Antoine Ermakoff 896 O Brosseau and M Silberstein Bunge, M (2008) Le matérialisme scientifique [1981], trad par P Deleporte, S Ayache, E Guinet, & J Rodriguez-Carvajal Paris: Syllepse Charbonnat, P (2006) Matérialismes et naissance de la paléontologie au 18e siècle Matière première Revue d’épistémologie et d’études matérialistes, no Paris: Syllepse Charbonnat, P (2007) Histoire des philosophies matérialistes Paris: Syllepse Coyne, G (2006) Science Does Not Need God Or Does It? A Catholic Scientist looks at evolution Catholic Online, 30 janvier www.catholic.org Dawkins, R (2006) The god delusion Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co Deleporte, P., & Pierre, J.-S (2004) Jacques Arnould et le recul élastique du dogme In J Dubessy, G Lecointre, & M Silberstein (dir.), Les matérialismes (et leurs détracteurs) Paris: Syllepse Dubessy, J (2004) Le principe de NOMA de Stephen Jay Gould In J Dubessy, G Lecointre, & M Silberstein (dir.), Les matérialismes (et leurs détracteurs) Paris: Syllepse Euvé, F (2009) Darwin et christianisme: vrais et faux débats Paris: Buchet-Chastel Gish, D T (1979) Evolution, the fossils say no ! San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers Gray, A (1888) Darwiniana Essays and reviews pertaining to Darwinism New York: D Appleton and Co Kant, I (1846) Kant’s critique of judgement (1790), translated with Introduction and Notes by J H Bernard (2nd ed revised) (London: Macmillan, 1914) Pigliucci, M (2002) Denying evolution: Creation, scientism, and the nature of science Sunderland: Sinauer Renan, E., Bert, P., & Moreau, M (1881) L’œuvre de Claude Bernard Paris: Baillière Schroeder, G (1991) Genesis and the Big Bang Theory: The discovery of harmony between modern science and the Bible New York: Bantam Books Silberstein, M (2001), Téléologie, théologie, harmonie: le silence des angelots In J Dubessy & G Lecointre (dir.), Intrusions spiritualistes et impostures intellectuelles en sciences Paris: Syllepse Silberstein, M (2008) Science(s) et matérialisme(s): examen des conditions d’une synonymie In G Chazal (dir.), Valeurs des sciences Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon (Contribution au séminaire d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences de G Chazal sur “les valeurs de la science”, février 2007, université de Dijon.) Tassy, P (2007) Teilhard de Chardin, l’arbre phylogénétique et l’orthogenèse In F Athané, É Guinet, & M Silberstein (dir.), Matière première Revue d’épistémologie et d’études matérialistes, no 2: Emergence et réductions, Paris: Syllepse Whitcomb, J C., & Morris, H M (1961) Genesis flood: The Biblical record and its scientific implication Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Olivier Brosseau, Ph.D in biology, has specialized in scientific culture diffusion, and works presently on environmental issues Since 2006 he has been investigating creationisms in France, Europe, and the rest of the world He authored several articles, gave conferences and teachings on this matter and wrote with Cyrille Baudouin Les créationnismes Une menace pour la sociộtộ franỗaise ?, Paris, Syllepse, 2008 and Enquờte sur les créationnismes Réseaux, stratégies et objectifs politiques, Paris, Belin, 2013 (more at www.tazius.fr/les-creationnismes/) He is member of the board of the Éditions Matériologiques: www.materiologiques.com Marc Silberstein He is co-editor, with P Huneman, G Lambert, of New Essays in the Philosophy of Medicine (Springer, 2014) Chapter 42 Evolutionary Theory in Secondary Schools: Some Teaching Issues Corinne Fortin Abstract This chapter brings out the curriculum changes in the teaching of Evolutionary Biology over 100 years in French High School First and foremost, we examine what scientific knowledge is required and then, we wonder whether current curriculum will properly answer the questions raised by students The first part focuses on an overall of the content to be taught and epistemological anchorages points of the curricula from 1950 to today The second part highlights the main students’ conceptions about the history of life on Earth and points out the lacks of the curriculum to meet students’ questions about the relevance of the Theory of Evolution The last part is a discussion on new prospects of Evolutionary Biology teaching, which is not only limited to the transmission of scientific knowledge but should also help students to change their misconceptions and to develop their own critical thinking with regard to creationist or intelligent design arguments In 1892, 33 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, the teaching of evolution was officially recognised at the Sorbonne when Alfred Giard (1846–1908) became the first Professor of the evolution of living beings University recognition had a rapid impact on secondary school teaching In 1902 the reform of secondary education established the principal teaching guidelines A distinction was to be made between the facts and the theories of evolution (Lamarckism and Darwinism) This teaching principle has been respected until the present day However, is this separation still valid when faced with creationist movements and proponents of Intelligent Design? Does it really help pupils to grasp the pertinence of the evolutionary theory? Numerous research papers on teaching practice, published since the 1980s, have dealt with the analysis of curricula, how pupils see the subject and teachers’ epistemological constructs about evolution Analysis of these different approaches shows the usefulness but also the limits of teaching practice, based on facts at the expense of theory This chapter intends to illustrate how purely fact-centred teaching about evolution can, in spite of everything, increase pupils’ scepticism about the validity of the theory of evolution C Fortin (*) STEF ENS Cachan/Institut franỗais d’éducation (IFE) ENS Lyon, Lyon, France e-mail: corinne.fortin@cachan.fr © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 T Heams et al (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_42 897 898 C Fortin From the 1902 Reform to Current Teaching Practice Concerning Evolution The 1902 reform was to give science the same importance as the humanities and to encourage experimentation in the teaching of science In her important work Sciences naturelle et formation de l’esprit Autour de la réforme de 1902 Nicole Hulin (2002) emphasised the importance of lectures given by university dons, education inspectors and teachers They proposed new teaching practices, aimed at moving from the teaching of natural history to that of natural science In 1904, Rector Louis Liard described this new approach, in secondary schools “First, facts precisely observed leading to a culture of observation faculty, then comparing facts leading to a culture of comparison faculty and finally, direct connections between the facts observed leading to a culture of generalisation faculty, a first appreciation of law” (teaching lecture, 1904) Observation, comparison and generalisation remain the three pillars of current science teaching, from primary school up to the baccalaureate (high school diploma) Among the principal points of the reform was the desire to move away from overly directive teaching Observation and experimentation were to be introduced into the classroom In 1905, Louis Mangin, Professor at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle described this new requirement: “Teachers should use these illustrious examples (Darwin and Pasteur) to inculcate in their pupils respect for other people’s opinions and lead them to understand that new ideas in conflict with our prejudices and beliefs should be put to the test by observation and experimentation rather than be simply rejected” (teaching lecture, 1905) In addition to observation, comparison and generalisation, experimenting was therefore a fourth instrument in the battle against unsupported assumptions Before the 1902 reform, the teaching of evolution was principally based on palaeontology, taught in secondary schools from 1898 The teaching of the evolution of living species was therefore based on the observation of fossils In 1905, Louis Mangin also advocated critical teaching of evolution: “It is not as a philosophical doctrine that the theory of evolution interests naturalists, it is because it is the only hypothesis capable of explaining the relationship between life forms in space and time…However it should not be forgotten that it is a hypothesis It is necessary therefore to be able to summarise the knowledge already acquired to confront pupils with the two fundamental hypotheses, that of creation, the oldest and the only authorised explanation until the observations of Lamarck and Darwin laid the basis of the second which has been violently attacked since its appearance The evidence shows that the first hypothesis has no scientific basis, while the second concurs with anatomical, embryological and paleontological evidence” (teaching lecture, 1905) In 1911, Emile Brucker, teacher of natural science at the Lycée Hoche in Versailles proposed, during a lecture on teaching practice, a positive teaching method “Positive, founded on the observation of facts, on the experience of reality, the method will lead pupils from consequence to consequence then by inference to laws of increasingly general application” (teaching lecture 1911) 42 Evolutionary Theory in Secondary Schools: Some Teaching Issues 899 At the time, teaching was heavily influenced by positivism (Kahn 2001) And it was in this epistemological framework that the teaching of evolution developed In curricula from 1912 until the present days, facts are declared independently of theory Three periods in the teaching of evolution in high school should, however, be noted: from 1912 until 1931 a Lamarckian vision dominated After the Second World War there was more emphasis on Darwinism and, from 1982 to 2000, evolution at the molecular level took on more importance From 1912 until 1931, the curricula concentrated particularly on geological time (stratigraphy, paleontological and anatomical facts etc.) The question of the evolution of living beings was evoked through consideration of Cuvier’s non-evolutionism and of acquired characteristics as expounded by Lamarck Between 1945 and 1966 the separation of facts and theory was maintained On the one side there was the comparative study of anatomical, embryological and paleontological facts of evolution (archaeopteryx, evolution of horses or elephants) and on the other, an historical presentation of non-evolutionism, Lamarckism and Darwinism The curt 1958 curriculum dealt with “the study of a paleontological fact of evolution” Genetics and molecular biology were introduced into 1982–2000 curricula to facilitate the study of the relationship between species From 1982, mention is made of the experimental validation of natural selection The term “humanisation” is used to describe paleontological data specific to the human species In 2000 phylogenetic classification was introduced for the first time It is worth noting that, until 1988, evolution was explicitly cited as a scientific theory whereas in the period 1994–2000 the word “theory” disappears To resume, knowledge in the fields of genetics, molecular biology and taxonomy have enriched and renewed curricula since the 1902 reform whilst educational epistemology has remained static In each case, observation facts or experimental results are presented to students as examples of evolution, whisle the theory and the conceptual framework of evolution are eventually evoked later (Fortin 1996) The Knowledge/Education Interface From 1902 teaching evolution was done from within a specific framework The positivist slant begun, then was confirmed in the 1950s by Charles Brunold Brunold, at that time Director of secondary education, introduced teaching by “discovery” His objective was to have pupils discover – or, more accurately, rediscover – the results of experiments which had played a crucial role in the construction of scientific knowledge (Gohau 1987) However, the teaching of evolution remained essentially descriptive despite the experimental work of Philippe L’Héritier and Georges Teissier in the 1930s in testing natural selection with experimental populations of Drosophila pseudoobscura, or Bernard Kettlewell’s experiments in the 1950s on the peppered moth It was only from 1982 onwards that an experimental dimension in the biology of evolution was presented to pupils 900 C Fortin In the 1970s a real change in teaching practice came about The development of hands-on experimental science led to the abandonment of the inductive method in favour of Claude Bernard’s experimental method But, in school, this experimental approach focussed on experience rather than on theory, and always obeyed the same schema: OPHERIC.1 The fact that Claude Bernard (1813–1878) had himself considered that the experimental approach was a learning journey within a defined framework was ignored “The experimental method will not provide new ideas to those who have none: it is useful only to direct the ideas of those who already have some and develop them so that they give the best possible results” (Bernard 1865) So when Claude Bernard measured the dose of sugar in the blood (of an animal which had not eaten) as it entered then left the liver, he did not dwell on the anatomical structure of this organ so as to consider its function His experiment was jointly guided by the biological problem of the “disappearance” of sugar within the liver and by a theoretical proposition concerning the concept of a “milieu intérieur” or homeostasis But teaching science has always needed to clarify and materialise its scientific knowledge in order to make it understandable for pupils The ambition of Paul Bert, Minister of Public Instruction in 1881, to teach pupils “to see exactly, to see only what there is and all of what there is” still guides teaching practice But what is “seeing” in a school context? Looking at cells with a microscope is practiced today in science classes from early secondary years onwards, up to and including university level But looking at animal or vegetable tissue at different levels of magnification does not give instant results The microscope is not sufficient on its own to be able to recognise cells To identify one (be it nervous, from the kidney or muscular) you have to know what it looks like Otherwise there is description without understanding This is why, when they first use a microscope, pupils quite often say that they “see nothing” Only lines, curves and colours are seen where the teacher can identify a cell (its nucleus, plasma membrane, cytoskeleton) whatever its form, shape or colour The difficulty pupils have when trying to “see” a cell reminds us that in order to recognise it there must be a framework of analysis: cellular theory, an explanation of the cell as a living biological entity Encouraging pupils to go beyond immediately perceptible data and towards scientific fact, underpinned by theory, is a teaching challenge For example, throwing an object then precisely describing the throwing and falling phases is raw information open to all But explaining the act of falling to the ground requires recourse to the theory of gravity This distinction between raw data and scientific fact underpinned by theory is essential in terms of epistemic knowledge In biology and in earth sciences, whether it is a question of cells, crossing-over, the movement of the earth’s lithosphere or the evolution of the species, these teaching subjects cannot be understood only visually because each one of them is underpinned by a theory: cellular theory, chromosome theory of heredity, the theory of Acronym introduced by A Giordan (1976) O: observation, P: problem, H: hypothesis, E: experiment, R: result, I: interpretation, C: conclusion 42 Evolutionary Theory in Secondary Schools: Some Teaching Issues 901 tectonic plates and the theory of evolution But how can we explain the progressive abandonment of the use of the word “theory” in the syllabus? Firstly, it is common to call an unsubstantiated assertion a theory, which is to say pure speculation Yet this is not true of scientific theories in general, or of the theory of evolution in particular Secondly, choosing to cite only observed facts about evolution to legitimise its scientific validity could explain the disappearance of the word “theory” Evolution is illustrated by observable facts and experiments Thirdly, references to theory disappear when the teaching of knowledge becomes dogmatic (Rumelhard 1979) Teaching then tends to consider scientific concepts as material things or objects Teaching also seeks to reduce conceptual abstraction into the visibly tangible For example, natural selection is illustrated, of course, by experimental data but often, the conclusion about the concept of natural selection is limited by a concrete object: the survival or death of organisms subject to environmental pressures Yet the concept of natural selection is not itself observable It is a conceptual explanation about the causes of adaptation and the variability of organisms by a biology mechanism Only its effects can be seen (survival or death) Another example of reification is the notion of the ideal plan of vertebrata Comparative anatomy of different species brings out the topological unity of the organisation of living organisms But moving from “structural homology” as identified by non-evolutionists such as Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen, towards “phylogenetic homology” which Étienne Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire and Charles Darwin proposed, requires an acceptance of a common origin For example, classifying man as a primate is one thing Establishing relationships within the primate group is quite another In the first case, there is classification and organisation in terms of common characteristics (opposable thumbs, nails, eyes etc.) without referring either to the immutability or the evolution of species Whereas the other approach meant passing from commonly observed attributes to an arborescence of kinship Phylogenetic diagrams are not only an illustration of evolution, they also have heuristic content For example, they make it possible to show the point at which the chimpanzee and man diverge and thus make it possible to consider the existence of a common ancestor for the two species Teaching using phylogenetic arborescence has clear theoretical underpinning The teaching challenge is to pass from horizontal classification to phylogenetic verticality, which is rooted in the common ancestor Simple observation is not sufficient to make this move Only the combination of observation and the explanation of the evolution of species by natural selection during geological time accounts for this homology This is why homology is central to the teaching of evolution and is not to be confused with resemblance or similarity as a pupil of final year of high school did whilst observing the amino acid sequences of a protein common to different species and claimed that “the more the amino acid sequences are alike, the more the genes are homologous” The pupil confused similarity with homology (Fortin 2000a, b) For him, there were degrees of homology as there were of similarity If we follow his logic, some genes would be more or less homologous because they more or less resemble one another The remark made clearly illustrates that the concept of homology is not acquired through direct observation in contrast with resemblance 902 C Fortin which is For the observed similarities to indicate a common source it is necessary to draw on the concept of the transformation of species Evolutionary theory is hidden within the phylogenetic arborescence and, further, any such diagram is an encrypted version of the theory This is why teaching by showing, which attempts to explain the facts of evolution outside of their theoretical context, has reached its limits It does not help pupils to go beyond the simple description of the fossils of living organisms If separating facts from theory is justified, on the one hand there is the permanence of facts and, on the other, the partial or provisional explanations furnished by science: this dichotomy between facts and theory should not let us forget that, by themselves, facts say nothing and that it is only the explanations of scientific theories which bring them meaning To put it another way, the theoretical explanation of evolution turns raw data into observable evolution It makes it possible to see retrospectively, in the unity of the organisation of a living being, a common origin or, in the change of colour of the peppered moth, the action of natural selection Seen from this point of view, theory is primarily a conceptual and explanatory operative framework By teaching the reversal in a way whereby the facts of evolution are stated and described as such, we take the risk of removing the inherent explanatory nature of the theory and of adopting a dogmatic teaching of evolution The removal of the word “theory” from the school curricula marks, no doubt, the desire to reject speculation which cannot be tested experimentally It is also a legacy of positivist teaching which emphasised only scientific results rather than the building of knowledge But if the explicit reference of theory of evolution is absent is the pupil not obliged to “see” blindly through the prism of empirical fact? And if so, is the pupil not left to “believe” or “not believe” in evolution, given the absence of the means to combine observed or experimental data with conceptual explanations? How Do Pupils Imagine Evolution? Research in biological teaching shows that pupils come to biology classes with preconceptions about the history of life The sources of these preconceptions are beliefs, socio-cultural origins and their imaginary (Dagher and Boujaoude 1997) What is in question here is not how the pupil thinks but how these thoughts are modelled so as to understand the discourse, thoughts and writings of the pupil These tend to fall into five conceptions (Fortin 1993, 2000b): • The “pseudo evolutionist conception” admits a common origin of life and the extinction of species (Fig 42.1) Pupils generally propose mutation as the means by which species are biologically transformed “It must have been luck when the wheel of fortune led to the birth of man but things could have worked out otherwise because it is one chance in infinity” (pupil 17 years old, high school level, Literature option) The wheel of fortune refers to games of chance (the lottery, Russian roulette…) where from a limited number of possibilities there is, by chance, a result 42 Evolutionary Theory in Secondary Schools: Some Teaching Issues 903 Fig 42.1 Pseudo evolution conception Each group or species has a common origin and can become a new group Extinction is possible Each circle represents a group or species: the arrows indicate their transformation (Fortin 1993) Fig 42.2 Transmutationist conception Each group or species can become another Extinction is impossible This vision integrates probability into the history of life “There could have been something else, birds with men’s heads, that could have happened: personally I think luck should not be minimised, we might have lived underground if life on the surface had been impossible Lots of things could have happened Anything could have happened or nothing at all” (pupil 18 years old, high school level, Science option) • The “transmutationist conception” also accepts a common origin for life but extinction is excluded No genus or species disappears (Fig 42.2) For these pupils, dinosaurs became today’s reptiles, mammoths became elephants, Australopithecus became modern man etc To explain the causes of species transformation, pupils propose mutation, environmental pressure, metamorphosis such as from tadpole to frog “Before man there were fish, reptiles and other animals which, as time passed, became men” (pupil 17 years old, high school level, Economics option) • The “non-evolutionist conception” is characterised by the absence of relationship between the species (Fig 42.3) For these pupils, only mutations within a species are possible, new groups or species are impossible: “All kinds of life have evolved and transformed Before, horses were small Now they are big It’s the same for elephants” (pupil 16 years old, high school level) 904 C Fortin Fig 42.3 “Non-evolutionist conception” Each group or species is separated Extinction is possible as is transformation within a species Fig 42.4 “Creationist conception” Each group or species is created by God separately Extinction is possible as is transformation within a species Each group or species is independent of all others Each lineage can be transformed or indeed disappear entirely A group or a species can disappear • The “creationist conception” is of religious origin and adheres literally to the Bible The Book of Genesis is considered to be an historical work All species were created separately: they can have no kinship (Fig 42.4) Adam and Eve are treated as historical figures that lived at the dawn of humanity “I am a Jehovah’s Witness and it is said in the Bible that God created Adam and Eve There is no evolution” (pupil 15 years old, middle school level) “In my view, and according to Holy Scripture, it is entirely possible that man and the dinosaurs lived side by side until the latter were destroyed during the Great Flood and never reappeared.” (pupil 17 years old, high school level, Economics option) • The “concordist conception” accepts the idea of a common origin and of the transformation of species but it considers that the evolutionary process is part of a divine process (Aroua et al 2002) which we not and cannot understand: “Those who know the Koran know well that the idea of evolution is already in 42 Evolutionary Theory in Secondary Schools: Some Teaching Issues 905 the Koran” (pupil 18 years old, high school level, Science option) “God created life and he also created the modifications which transform nature” (pupil aged 18, high school level, Economics option) These various conceptions express resistance and obstacles to the scientific idea of evolution For example, the vividness of the Creation myth, interpreted as an historical truth, is a religious obstacle The creative universe of science-fiction where everything is possible is a socio-cultural obstacle Mutation seen as a way of adaptation, bypassing natural selection, is an epistemological obstacle Amongst other obstacles encountered, vitalism and competition can also be mentioned The vitalism obstacle sees the adaptation of organisms as a response to their vital need “Organisms evolve to adapt” is a frequent statement made by pupils Vitalism also adopts the metamorphosis image, thus effacing the historical dimension of evolution in favour of a physiological process of development in which “animals transform themselves” Vitalism is often accompanied by an apocalyptic version of history in which the coming of mankind is the final stage of evolutionary development The environmental obstacle sees the adaptation of organisms as a response to environmental pressure It is common for pupils to state that “the environment causes animals to mutate” Even though there are powerful environmental factors, some pupils imagine that only the environment is capable of transforming organisms “which then evolve.” They reject the idea of random mutation and of natural selection on the survival or disappearance of particular allels Lastly, the competition obstacle refers to the “struggle for survival” as a defining law of nature, obliging organisms to adapt or die “I think that life is governed by the law of the survival of the fittest Extinction comes about when the weaker die and are replaced by the stronger who transform themselves, from generation to generation, so as best to adapt” (pupil 18 years old, high school level, Science option) Natural selection is seen as “the survival of the fittest” (Bishop and Anderson 1990) and not as a differential in reproduction by those allele carriers who have an adaptation advantage in a given environment There is another, possibly more important, obstacle – that of the word “parent” (Fortin 2009a) In common usage, parents evokes mother and father But in scientific discourse, evolutionary is the outcome of speciation from a stem specie Family and evolutionary relationship are not one and the same nature Yet some pupils imagine evolutionary relationship on the twin mother and father parent model One species breeds with another and give birth to a new species Evolution is seen as a form of hybridisation of the species which borrows its concepts from mythology (Centaurs, Pegasus) or science fiction (cross-breeding between humans and aliens) Thus species are transformed by genetic mixing and not by genetic rupture, as was the case of speciation, by isolated reproduction of populations In general, the idea of the development of living beings is understood: however, the idea of a common origin remains unclear for a lot of pupils As for the biological mechanisms of evolution (natural selection, genetic drift, etc.) they are quite often reinterpreted so as to suit the pupils’ personal misconception We can see here the 906 C Fortin distance between how pupils understand scientific concepts concerning evolution and the teaching journey necessary so that pupils can modify their own conception, indeed abandon them entirely The Representation of the Theory of Evolution Among Teachers Teachers’ epistemological views about the functionality of the theory of evolution are as important as how pupils see evolution There is some variety A survey undertaken within a group of 20 secondary teachers (Fortin 1993) shows that opinion is divided in two For some, the theory of evolution “is the result of the accumulation of facts”, “facts build theory”, “theory is deduced from anatomical, palaeontological, embryological and molecular facts” For others “facts nourish theory and vice versa” and “everyone has different knowledge about the theories (plural) of evolution” These differing points of view have an effect on teaching practice and, here too, the approaches contrast “I teach facts and their scientific meaning, not philosophical explanations”; “theory only aids experimental validation occasionally”; “theory makes it possible to interpret the facts.” Studies undertaken in the United States (Osif 1997) and Europe show that teachers are often uncomfortable when explaining evolution (Rutmedge and Mitchell 2002) They are unsure that they have mastered the subject and dread pupils’ questions (Griffith and Brem 2004) Some are sceptical about evolution (Munoz et al 2007), others find it hard to separate the religious sphere from the scientific (Stolberg 2007) There is clearly uncertainty within the teaching body (Sanders and Ngxola 2009) about how to teach evolution and the importance that should be given to theory What concerns teachers is the status of the biology of evolution as an historical science Generally won over by a predictive or probabilist view of biology in genetics or physiology, they are uncertain about contingency The biology of evolution does not need of the concept of final causes Even if the forming of a species is not predictable, speciation can nevertheless be explained rationally As Stephen Gould said “I am not speaking of randomness, but of the central principle of all history—contingency An historical explanation does not rest on direct deductions from laws of nature, but on an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states, where any major change in any step of the sequence would have altered the final result This final result is therefore dependent, or contingent, upon everything that came before—the un-erasable and determining signature of history” (Gould 1989, Wonderful life) If the biology of evolution cannot be predicted, it can be retrodicted (Gayon 1993), that is to say, it makes it possible to see what the material causes were which presided over the origin of a species If there is a finality it is in terms of deterministic biology, where nothing is possible because of the constraints of the 42 Evolutionary Theory in Secondary Schools: Some Teaching Issues 907 living organism and not because of the final cause(s) of the history of living organisms So the epistemological conceptions of teachers have an influence on their teaching When the theory of evolution is seen as the end result of the collection of facts from observation and experimentation, the teaching concentrates on the description of these facts, without necessarily making any reference to the usefulness of theory in the discovery of evolution facts When theory is seen as a coherent model capable of showing or refuting, by means of data from observation and experimentation, that species are not immutable, teaching is organised around a ‘to and fro’ between the facts and the mechanisms of evolution In this case, the teaching also touches on the possibility of amending the theory so as to introduce hitherto unknown mechanisms and new possibilities of evolution (Neo-Darwinism, Punctuated Equilibrium, Neutral theory of evolution, etc) The permanent to and fro between the explanation provided by the theory and the facts makes it possible to construct, retrospectively, the scientific fact of evolution Without this it would just be an ordered collection of facts connected by induction and the mechanism of evolution would be a dogma Towards Teaching Effectively Today, in the eyes of their pupils and students, neither school nor university is as serious as an internet site Indeed, in counterpoint to teaching by showing there is another “showing” strategy, that of creationism and of Intelligent Design (Baudouin and Brosseau 2008) The pupils put what is taught in school up against anti-evolutionist discussion and decide their value on the basis of their own convictions (Fortin 2006) Given the need by pupils to criticise so as to understand, how should the pertinence of the theory of evolution be explained? In some countries, and in particular in the United States, teaching guides aimed at helping teachers to answer pupils’ questions have been published.2 For example, to the standard creationist question “If man descended from the ape, why did all the apes not become men?” the scientific reply is that apes today (including man) are issued from fossil apes, that there are several ape lines of descent including the human one and that man and the chimpanzee have a common ancestor However, these explanations are only comprehensible to those who already have scientific knowledge (definition of a species, distinction between current species and fossil species, degrees of relationship…) This indispensable work of scientific communication and outreach (publications, lectures) helps teachers to explain and the general public to understand the objective reality of evolution But it is not at the centre of the act of learning Despite school instruction, qualified teachers, information for the general public, evolution remains suspect for many pupils (Woods and Scharmann 2001) and National Research Council (1996), National Academy of Sciences (1998, 2008) 908 C Fortin sometimes for teachers Here, for example, is the remark of a pupil of final year of high school after a class on homology “It’s normal that there are similarities in homology between the vertebrates, because all the vertebrates develop the same way That doesn’t prove that they are related Take the ape and man for example, even if they have similar development, the same organs, the same limbs etc… they’re both mammals so they develop in the same way That doesn’t mean they have a common ancestor A monkey’s a monkey Man is man.” In fact, contrary to the appearance, this pupil does not believe in creationism He is just saying to the teacher that the educational objective – proving kinship between man and the other primates – has not been reached What is the obstacle? The pupil shows that he wants to understand For him, homology is not sufficient to prove a relationship between primates He awaits an argument that will have sufficient weight for him and can be accepted as proof, hence his criticism of what is taught and what he perceives as an argument of authority The scientist and the teacher, both well-versed in the theory of evolution, both know that homology is a concept concerning the transmission of hereditary characteristics from a common ancestor An expert can tell what can be attributed to homology and what is just similarity But for the pupil, things are much more difficult Distinguishing between resemblance and homology is, for him, a bridge too far The gap between how the expert (scientist or teacher) thinks and how the novice (general public or pupil) proceeds is at the heart of learning Building on the observation of anatomical, molecular, experimental and taxonomical facts does not in itself lead to the idea of a common origin Otherwise Cuvier, Owen and von Baer would have been proponents of evolution The anatomical unit, indeed the embryological unit of organisms, not lead to a common ancestor Even more so, given that it is a reconstructed concept within the framework of the theory of evolution Teaching by showing has its limits (Keynes 2009) By wanting to show and show again, one neglects to refute the non-evolutionist way of thinking And yet the confrontation between non-evolutionism and the transformation of species from a common origin obliges us to clarify the epistemological status of the raw data, to explain the concepts being used, to justify the need for rational and scientific debate (Mc Bride et al 2009) From this, comes another way of teaching evolution, not just based on results but on groping, dead-ends and how the construction of scientific knowledge is validated Teaching by refutation should look at the supposed non-evolution of species and put it in doubt It should be examined in the same way as was the idea that the sun revolves around the earth Refutation does not replace demonstration: it is another valid way of teaching It aims at requiring the pupil to follow his own reasoning until the end, while knowing perfectly well that the idea of evolution will not be spontaneously discovered The teacher accompanies the pupils Questioning by the teacher encourages questioning by the pupil The result will not be for – or against – evolution, as one might be for – or against – genetically modified foods, nuclear power, but the fruit of a reasoned argument using shared knowledge in which natural phenomena are explained by natural causes