{"id":820,"date":"2009-11-09T22:05:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T22:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2009\/11\/09\/berlinski-still-pompous-still-wrong\/"},"modified":"2009-11-09T22:05:48","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T22:05:48","slug":"berlinski-still-pompous-still-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/09\/berlinski-still-pompous-still-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlinski – still pompous, still wrong."},"content":{"rendered":"

An anonymous tipster sent me a note to let me know that on one of the Disco
\nInstitute’s sites, my old pal David Berlinski has been arguing that all sorts of
\nfamous mathematicians were really<\/em> anti-evolution.<\/p>\n

I’ve written
\nabout Berlinski before.<\/a> In my opinion, he’s one of the most pointlessly
\narrogant pompous jackasses I’ve ever been unfortunate enough to deal with. He
\npractically redefines the phrase “full of himself”.<\/p>\n

This latest spewing of him is quite typical. It is mostly content free –
\nit consists of a whole lot of name-dropping, giving Berlinski a chance to talk
\nabout all of the wonderfully brilliant people he’s close personal
\nfriends<\/em> with. And, quite naturally, his close personal friends have told
\nhim all sorts of things about what other<\/em> famous mathematicians
\nreally<\/em> thought about evolution.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A typical taste of this is right at the start of the article. It’s set
\nup as an interview. Berlinski has been claiming that Jon von Neumann was very<\/em>
\nskeptical of evolution. Naturally, lots of people have called bullshit on that. So the
\n“interviewer” asks him about how he knows what JvN thought of evolution, when he
\nnever wrote anything about it. Berlinski’s answer:<\/p>\n

\n

How do<\/em> I know? Here’s how:<\/p>\n

I have been close to a number of mathematicians, and friends with others:
\nDaniel Gallin (who died before he could begin his career), M.P. Schutzenberger
\n(my great friend), Ren\u00e9 Thom (a friend as well), Gian-Carlo Rota (another
\nfriend), Lipman Bers (who taught me complex analysis and with whom I briefly
\nshared a hospital room, he leaving as I was coming), Paul Halmos (a colleagues
\nin California), and Irving Segal (a friend by correspondence, embattled and
\ndistraught). Some of these men I admired very much, and all of them I liked.<\/p>\n

I had many other friends in the international mathematical community. We<\/em>
\nexchanged views; I<\/em> got around.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

See, he very typically starts off with lots of name-dropping. What does this list
\nhave to do with the question? Nothing, really. It’s just that Berlinski always
\nneeds to make it clear just how special<\/em> he is, how he knows lots<\/em>
\nof famous people, and how truly smart and wonderfully connected he is.<\/p>\n

(Remember that this is the guy who tells
\nthe story<\/a> about how he<\/em> managed to make a bunch of mathematics
\nprofessors really<\/em> understand limits for the first time. He’s got a
\nreally amazing view of himself.)<\/p>\n

Anyway… He goes on to explain how Professor Rota really wanted<\/em>
\nto publish one of Berlinski’s anti-evolution screeds, but ended up deciding
\nnot to, for fear of the political damage that would be done to Berlinski. Of
\ncourse, we’re supposed to take Berlinski’s word for this: that this famous
\nprofessor of mathematics is really a huge fan of Berlinski’s anti-evolution
\nrubbish, but has never admitted to it, because he has “very refined political
\nsensibilities”.<\/p>\n

After a ridiculous additional amount of self-aggrandizing bullshit,
\nBerlinski finally<\/em> gets to the point:<\/p>\n

\nI now pass to the point of this exercise. Where did I get my
\ninformation? Let me tell you. I got my information about Von Neumann from the
\nhorse’s mouth, the horse one step removed from the horse himself.<\/p>\n

Quite obviously I did not know Von Neumann personally. He was too old and I
\ntoo young ever to have met. So what I know of views I know at second hand. I
\nknow it from my friends.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, “Ah, this apparently is some entirely new
\nuse of the term “from the horses mouth” of which I was previously unaware”.<\/p>\n

Berlinski knows what Jon Von Neumann thought of the theory of evolution, because
\nhe heard it from the horses mouth. By which he means that some of his friends who
\nmight<\/em> have spoken to JvN about it at some point in time allegedly passed
\nJvNs opinions on to Berlinski long after vN had died.<\/p>\n

Now, vN did have some criticisms of the theory of evolution. If you
\nactually look at the things that he wrote about it, it’s pretty clear that he
\nwas being a typical mathematician. That is, looked at mathematically, the
\ntheory of evolution was under-defined. And he was, of course, right about
\nthat. Remember that at the time von Neumann was writing, DNA had just been
\ndiscovered – but no one knew yet how it worked. No one knew how mutations
\nworked. No one knew much of anything about how genes functioned. No one had a
\nparticularly good understanding of how the development of organisms from
\nreproductive cells really worked. <\/p>\n

All of those things were holes in the completeness of a theory of
\nevolution: evolution could describe how populations change, how selection
\nworks, but without being able to explain the mechanisms of inheritance and
\nmutation, the theory was incomplete. (Just like Newton’s theory of gravity is
\nincomplete: it can describe most of how gravity works, but it can’t explain
\nwhy; and it can’t explain some of the corner cases. It’s a damned good theory,
\nand it’s close to the truth, but it needs refinements to be accurate and to
\nexplain why it works.) Some of those are still gaps in our knowledge: we still
\ndon’t know a lot about how genes really work. Some we understand pretty well;
\nothers we’re still completely clueless about.<\/p>\n

But what did von Neumann really say? The primary documented quote from von
\nNeumann comes from a letter to George Gamow, a physicist who had some theories about
\nhow the structure of DNA could be interpreted to describe proteins:<\/p>\n

\nI still somewhat shudder at the thought that highly purposive
\norganizational elements, like the protein, should originate in a random
\nprocess. Yet many efficient and purposive media, e.g., language, or the
\nnational economy, also look statistically controlled, when viewed from a
\nsuitably limited aspect. On balance, I would therefore say that your argument
\nis quite strong.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hardly a strong criticism, huh? But it gets worse. Berlinski represents
\nthis as von Neumann being skeptical of the supposed randomness of evolution.
\nBut this wasn’t part of a general argument about evolution. This was von
\nNeumann discussing Gamow’s<\/em> theory of how DNA worked. Gamow had worked
\nout an idea of how proteins were formed from DNA. He started with a null
\nhypothesis of random distributions of amino acids in proteins. Then he
\ncompared the results of looking at proteins with the result of what his model
\npredicted. His model was much better that the null hypothesis. The
\ncorrespondence with von Neumann was in relation to von Neumann working with
\nGamow to develop a complete mathematical model of the random amino-acid
\nhypothesis!<\/p>\n

In other words, Gamow and von Neumann were discussing a hypothesis that
\nthey were hoping to reject<\/em> in favor of something that seemed to make
\nmore sense!<\/p>\n

So, as usual, when you actually look at things in detail, Berlinski is
\nbeing his usual pompous self. He’s got nothing<\/em> to support his
\nclaims except some out-of-context quotes, and a bunch of supposed
\n“personal contacts” which refuse to publicly back him up because of their
\nfears of political retribution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anonymous tipster sent me a note to let me know that on one of the Disco Institute’s sites, my old pal David Berlinski has been arguing that all sorts of famous mathematicians were really anti-evolution. I’ve written about Berlinski before. In my opinion, he’s one of the most pointlessly arrogant pompous jackasses I’ve ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intelligent-design"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-de","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}