Thursday, August 22, 2002

In biology class I absorbed the message of the famous peppered moth experiments. The moths near industrial towns in England, I remember well, adapted to pollution by getting dark while the ones in the countryside stayed less dark. Birds ate the ones that weren't camoflaged appropriately and natural selection made for a population of moths that could blend with their darker surroundings. Turns out those birds didn't really feed on those moths! A scientist named Ted Sargent exposed the lousy experimental procedure of the scientists and made all their claims suspect. This doesn't undo Darwin's theory, as many sky-god worshipers argue, but it makes for a great story in the new book "Moths and Men". It means that science works as a system that can self-analyze and self-criticize. True, it took about 20 years for this to come to light and like in so many systems of belief, the original messenger was roughed up quite a bit for challenging one of the foundations. A review of the book "Moths and Men" appears in the Wall Street Journal and here in The Guardian. 3:52:18 PM    comment []