Darwinism and science.(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Ms Teichman's analysis of Darwinism (March 2003) was unpersuasive and misplaced. Her understanding of contemporary Darwinism was inadequate and her argument dogmatic: "evolution is quite compatible with creationism". As with all dogmatic arguments, holders feel empowered to dismiss deviations and counterviews without due reasoning and internal contradictions remain beyond perception. Ms Teichman's argument is that contemporary biologists are misguided because they hold onto, as atheistic dogmas, theories and ideas that were refuted long ago. Without finding the need to challenge her own beliefs, Ms Teichman's superficial and expeditious dismissal of Darwinian biology is indistinguishable from an Anglican primate's dismissal of other Christian and non-Christian beliefs as satanic.

While Quadrant is not a journal of scientific discourse, it was most disingenuous that an article better suited to a Christian lifestyle magazine was placed in the "Science" section. Disingenuous, because to masquerade dogmatic beliefs as scientific argument stifles rather than promotes intellectual debate. Scientific argument flourishes where empirical scientific principles are shredded by deductive reasoning (a reductio ad absurdum being an agreeable method). Ms Teichman's technique draws on external beliefs to refute the core tenets of Darwinism, that humans are distinguishable from animals because "Homo sapiens, our species, is in charge of its own destiny". Rather like using a titration to distinguish holy water and tap water. Scientific arguments are incompatible with dogmatic beliefs, such as creationism and the supremacy of humans over nature, because those beliefs are insusceptible to the deductive reasoning expected of empirical scientific principles.

Ms Teichman is obviously not a biologist. Her understanding of Hazlitt's contra-argument of Malthusian population analysis is a prime example. Malthus's reference to "food" does not equate with what appears on one's dinner plate. Why not, as Hazlitt's argument implies, just ask for a bigger plate--it does nothing to enlarge your meal.

"Food" refers to the chemical nutrients that are cycled within an environment and following biological processes become consumed by populations of biological beings. For example, the number of loaves of bread one can bake depends on the amount of wheat available, which in turn is limited by the essential nutrients sustaining the wheat crop. Reading the nutritional information adorning a loaf of bread, one observes that humans eat bread to absorb essential nutrients. The slice of bread is a mere conduit for our depletion of nutrients from the environment and into the population of voracious bread-eaters. In a natural system nutrients do increase in a linear (arithmetic) fashion such as lightning-initiated nitrogen fixation. Modern agriculture affects natural nutrient cycles by the saturation of synthetic nutrients, such as nitrate fertiliser. Therefore to sustain geometric increases in the number of loaves baked, the farmer must geometrically increase the amount of limiting nutrients that are sustaining his or her wheat crop (via synthetic fertilisers). Malthus' argument remains irrefutable, that is while the population of nutrient-consumers grows exponentially, natural systems only replenish nutrients in a linear fashion. There is no "mathematical absurdity," only an ignorance of empirical scientific principles.

Without the mathematical absurdity Ms Teichman's argument fails. Worse, ...