Letter: Scientists kept occupied by evolution

Barbara Webb
Sunday 13 April 1997 23:02 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Sir: Mark Smith (letter, 10 April) takes Paul Vallely ("Creative tension", 8 April) to task for believing in evolution without "looking at all possibilities before accepting one as fact" as scientists are supposed to do.

I'm not sure why he is so certain that Mr Vallely has not examined the creationist explanation. The problem is that, though it could be true, it is not a scientific explanation. That is to say, it is not an explanation that generates testable hypotheses.

The theory of evolution and natural selection has generated enough hypotheses to keep thousands of scientists occupied all their lives in exploring them: from the search for order in a fragmented fossil record to the conditions under which altruistic behaviour might be expected to emerge from the selfish interactions of genes. Even if it turned out not to be true (although the evidence is so far overwelmingly in favour) it would still have been the most valuable scientific hypothesis that man has yet produced, because of the huge expansion in our understanding of the natural world that has resulted.

What does the creationist hypothesis do for science? It answers every question of "why?" with "God made it that way". There is nothing for science to do if any explanation in terms of complex interactions of structures and forces could be undermined by a miracle. If God could create the world, and trivially keep animals alive on an ark, then what's the point in researching cancer? It must be even more trivial for him to start or stop the reproduction of malignant cells.

Far from being common sense, for the scientist, creationism is a counsel of despair.

BARBARA WEBB

Nottingham

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in