Science But Not Scientists (ISBN 1425969917)

A must read:
The weakest section of Vernon L. Grose's remarkable book Science But Not Scientists is the earliest. When he deals with the Big Bang theory as it existed in 1975, he accurately summarizes its weaknesses. However, since the time when this book was written (and then suppressed) that theory has gained a great deal of strength. Grose's book is an account of his experiences from 1969 to 1975 in trying to get the science textbooks issued in California to represent the origins of life and human beings as beyond the reach of science. That is, since the evidence that they happened is complete, but the evidence of precisely how they happened cannot possibly be determined, since we can't go back and be there to watch, it would be a good idea if more than one hypothesis of how they might have happened were presented to students so that they could think about it from their own creative point of view. After all, that is the way science has always worked. Various hunches, hypotheses and even theories compete until one of them is so well established that all others give way before it. Nevertheless, even the most well established of theories, such as Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation was eventually corrected by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which, by the way has still not been reconciled with Quantum physics. Ironically, the greatly increased strength that the Big Bang theory has gained over the last thirty years only supports the thesis of Science But Not Scientists. Each time progress has been made that supports the Big Bang theory, the result has been to make the miraculous nature of the universe all the more evident. Today scientists are agreed that a universe, in which life as we know it would be possible, could not vary from the structure of the one we live in by even a very slight degree. So delicately balanced are the relationships among the physical laws that supposedly came into being at the time of origin, that the evidence of intelligent design is greatly advanced by the precision introduced into the cosmos at the supposed moment of its creation (assuming the theory is correct, which is an assumption that is by no means airtight). For example, if any of the four basic forces had been slightly different from what it is, the universe would either have collapsed very early in its history or never have formed the stars and galaxies - together with the all-important solar systems that it has today. Therefore, to give these four forces even slightly different values would have made life as we know it impossible. Does this seem to indicate a designer, or does it make more sense to postulate the "accidental" creation of an infinity of universes, which would thereby have had room for one so delicately balanced as ours. The point Grose is making is that since we never can know the answer, we are ill-advised to present any answer under the guise of being the correct one. The same holds for many other relationships that were set into motion at the moment that the Big Bang supposedly occurred. Perhaps it is true that the Biblical sentence, "And God said let there be light" shows an intuitive understanding, millennia before the Big Bang was described by science, that a creative act made light possible and separated the heavens from the earth and so forth. What can be said for the Big Bang theory - that it has achieved momentous advances in the last three decades - cannot be said for the theory of evolution. There has been little significant change in that theory during that same time period. While many Darwinians believe that we can say for sure that life came into being in a colloid mass formed in the primeval oceans and then proceeded in a study stream until it accidentally happened to create the human brain, there is not the slightest evidence that that really happened. The fossil record does not show the progression that the theory supposes. No credible explanation has been found for the very strange differences between humans and all other species - one of which that I've never seen mentioned is that our maximum lifetime allows four times as many heartbeats as that of any other mammal. What could have caused that difference? All Darwin proved, or even claimed to prove, was that over time species differentiate among themselves and eventually break off to form new species. But the enormous jumps that had to occur to differentiate plants from animals, birds from reptiles or creatures with tiny brains from creatures with huge ones have never been demonstrated from the paleontological record. All scientists are agreed about that. This leads Grose to observe a defensiveness in scientists that resembles that in spoiled children who are afraid they might not get their way. For example, no scientist tries to explain that Darwinism does not violate the law of gravity, which it doesn't. But they go to great pains to explain that it does not violate the second law of thermodynamics or the law against abiogenisis. To argue for Darwinism as a system that accounts for the present state of man is perfectly fine. It is an opinion that anyone is welcome to entertain. But to argue that this system has been proved when the necessary evidence has not yet been found, may never be found, and is probably theoretically impossible to find is another matter altogether. Grose is simply saying that if you pass laws forcing teachers to teach that Darwinian evolution rules out any kind of intelligent design, you are forcing them to teach something that has not passed the test of scientific proof in the way the general theory of relativity passed it when astronomical observations proved that light rays passing the sun are pulled away from a straight line despite the fact that they have no mass. The theory was further demonstrated when it was found that the astronauts who returned from the moon were wearing watches that had fallen behind the time registered by watches worn on earth. By traveling as fast as they had for such a long distance they had demonstrated that as you speed up your time slows down. That's how scientific proof is established. It's not established by saying, "Well, it sure makes sense, so we're bound to find the evidence that it's true somewhere along the line." The problem is that Darwinians claim to be certain that their story of the creation and evolution of life is the correct one because they think that it eventually will be demonstrated by the fossil record, but without any evidence to prove that they are right. Furthermore, they are so determined to prove themselves correct that they use Gestapo-like techniques to silence the opposition. That is an extreme statement that before reading Grose's book I would not have believed. I believe it only because this book is such a thorough and compelling report on the evolution of the debate between Darwinism and creationism that we are able to see clearly for the first time who did what to whom in the genesis of the debate. Many people believe that God created Adam and Eve in the manner described in Genesis, but few of them are scientists. Even the most avid creationists who have scientific training tend to believe that the Bible is more a metaphor or allegory for what happened than a literal report of the actual event. What God is supposed to have done in the creation of man and woman - two quite separate and distinct forms of human being - The Los Angeles Times actually did with the Creationist debate. It led its readers to believe that a bunch of wild eyed fundamentalist Christians attempted to force their will on the science teachers of America and thus debase the huge progress toward a higher level of civilization wrested from the tyrant churchmen of the 19th century. Nothing like that actually happened. The above-described event happened in the pages of the newspapers, but did not happen in real life. I have been the subject of articles in newspapers many times and am accustomed to the fact that they routinely lie in order to make their stories more interesting. I was once asked by a reporter whether I believed that the method of education I espoused would solve all the problems in the schools. I replied with a categorical "no." I told the reporter that the method in question would solve a great many problems in education but obviously could not, by itself, solve all of them. Nevertheless I was quoted in that newspaper as having said that it would do exactly what I had said it would not do. This particularly kind of reversal of my intended meaning happened to me only once. Exactly the same thing happened to Vernon L. Grose dozens if not hundreds of times. The newspapers lied about him over and over and over and over during a period of several years. It is not that they misunderstood him, though that may sometimes have been the case. It is that they read his written reports and deliberately and with malice aforethought rewrote the story that he helped to create. Today when the words "intelligent design" are used, most intellectuals automatically assume that a group of really stupid fundamentalist religious fanatics coming from the Bible belt have mounted an attack on the sanctity of science by forcing educators to change textbook accounts of creation to include accounts of Genesis. Some even believe that they don't want evolution taught at all. Vernon L. Grose is a distinguished engineer trained in physics who understands science (in which he is a qualified expert) well enough to know that you can't make predictions about events that by nature cannot be examined experimentally. The origin of anything is by nature a non-repeatable experiment. Life cannot be created a second time once it has been created, because the environment in which it must be created has changed and is no longer pure in being totally devoid of life. There's a joke about a bet between God and a Scientist. The scientist tells God that he can create life just as well as God did. He bets his soul on this. God, of course, being a thoughtful, loving and cooperative deity, agrees to the bet. Whereupon the scientist reaches down and grabs a handful of dirt. God intervenes at that point. "Use your own dirt," he says. So nobody can prove that the origin of the universe or the origin of life or the origin of our particular species happened in a certain way, because there is no way to repeat the experiment. Therefore, logically, we cannot know what happened, though we can know that it happened. It's interesting to observe at this point that some of the sciences - physics and chemistry are obvious examples - have enormous practical value. Because of advances in these sciences we can do all sorts of things that otherwise we couldn't possibly do. We can send rockets to the moon, for example. However, there is no practical value that anyone has ever suggested to knowing precisely how the universe or life or human beings were created. Whether they were created by chance or by a conscious being who decided to create them and did so makes no difference to our ability to accomplish anything that has practical value. It is purely a question of curiosity and belief. Personally, I am curious about all sorts of things, like for example, what it felt like to be Mozart. Since Mozart left a lot of clues, but never actually told us precisely what it felt like to be him (not even necessarily in his music) this is something that by its nature I can never know. My curiosity on this subject will forever remain unsatisfied. There are zillions of questions like that about which we can be curious and yet know that our curiosity will never be satisfied. It would seem that precisely how we got here is one of those questions. Let me at this point pause to reflect on the fact that I have four cats who have essentially lived their entire lives inside my house. They have some notions about what the world consists of and know that most of what it consists of is inside my house and a little bit of it can be seen through the windows but never actually experienced more directly than that. Knowing what I know about how my house came into existence and the many things that exist beyond it, I sometimes ask myself what it would be like for me to have the perspective of some being that knew as much about what is outside of the universe that I am aware of as I am aware of what is outside my house and therefore unknowable to my cats. Interestingly, my house is one of a great many different kinds of structures that can be built for people and cats to live in. Those structures can vary mightily. But from what I now know about the universe I gather that if one of the relationships that existed when it was created were even very slightly different, I could not exist. Therefore this created universe has a design that is almost infinitely more precise than the design of my house. To create it required an intelligence at least as far beyond my intelligence as my intelligence is beyond that of my cats. That's a whole lot of intelligence beyond what I have access to - a whole lot of intelligence that I could never hope to understand - anymore than my cats can understand how to measure off a slab of wood before sawing it in order to create a floorboard. I can't imagine teaching a cat how to understand that process. And yet there are a very large number of eminent scientists in the world who claim that they do understand all this, that science is on the very brink of understanding it and that only terminally stupid people like me can't understand it. That's what Vernon Grose's book is about. In it you'll meet many preeminent scientists who throw hissy fits in public meetings and repeatedly demonstrate the behavior of playground bullies when you would expect them to reveal discoveries that they have made that show how it is that they, with the help of Darwin, proved beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that all religion is dead wrong and that a deity of any sort cannot possibly exist. Before I read this book I would not have believed such a thing possible. Having read it, I am extremely concerned about the future of science. I know what the Catholic Church did to impede the growth of science. I would think therefore that scientists would know that adopting that same behavior (or the closest possible facsimile of it) does not create the kind of environment in which new scientific ideas can find their way. It would seem that these scientists want to freeze science at its present level and add to it only a few fine details - but no new major discoveries. In 1899 there was a similar attitude. Physics had reached such maturity that nothing could possibly be added to it. Therefore, many scientists believed, it was time to shut down physics. There was one problem that hadn't been solved yet. That was the black body problem, which you can Google if you don't know what it is. That problem would obviously get solved. The trouble was the solution to that problem created quantum mechanics, which has yet to be reconciled with relativity, which was also just about to be created. The world of the twentieth century changed unimaginably because the physicists who thought the essential discoveries in physics had all been made were dead wrong. A similar situation exists today. Many scientists are proudly announcing a forthcoming Theory of Everything at a time when the above mentioned reconciliation has not been accomplished. One is led to suspect that we may be on the brink of a whole new world of discoveries that will take us places we never imagined we would go. Meanwhile, you can't win a Nobel Prize in the science of evolution, because there is no science of evolution. No one is officially trained in that field. Therefore there is no such thing as a scientist who can speak authoritatively in that field of knowledge - which may be a good thing, because aside from the facts that Darwin announced and that have been neatly elaborated from then until now, no really new discoveries have been made in that field, or perhaps ever will be. So what is it that the Darwinists who are so sure they know where everything came from are afraid of? It seems that they are afraid that people might read this book and discover that, like Alice, they are nothing but a pack of cards. Well, it seems that their fear is fully justified.

A Goldmine of History:
Science But Not Scientists by Professor Vernon, L. Grose, an accomplished scientist and academic, was written 30 years ago and just published last year. On page 557 to 558 Grose explains the reason for the delay. The book was written under contract with the Free Press division of Macmillan and typed on an IBM Selectric typewriter to meet Macmillan's specifications by Grose's secretary, Shirley Markus (the completed book is 707 pages of small type printed on large pages, so the manuscript must have been much larger). When the manuscript was completed Grose flew to New York to personally deliver it to Edward R. Perry, President of The Free Press. In the mean time Gross found out that G. Ledyard Stebbins and Richard M. Lemmon orchestrated a campaign to force Macmillan to not publish to book by starting a boycott of their textbooks, no small concern to a publisher that makes much of its income from college texts. An investigation by the California Attorney General Confirmed this. So the manuscript sat for 30 years until scanners made it feasible to put the only hand copy in existence then in print. Now to the book itself. Most is a detailed history of Grosse's involvement in the science standards of California and his efforts to insure that Darwinism was not taught dogmatically. It is an incredible story of intolerance and hatred and dirty politics which makes one wonder how can such go on in America. No one can write intelligently about the history of this struggle without consulting this excellent, well written book.