CORRESPONDENCE

To the Editor:

I read Edward M. Gaffney Jr.’s review of Edward J. Larson’s “Summer for the Gods” (Book Review, July 12) about the 1925 Scopes trial on the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools hoping that I might find this book of interest. I learned little about the book. Instead, I was treated to a large dollop of so-called “intelligent design theory,” which is basically reconstituted “scientific creationism.” In seemingly scientific support of this intellectually discredited idea, Gaffney trots out such intelligent design icons as Michael Behe and Philip Johnson. Rather than being in any way scientific, intelligent design is a tenet of one particular religious group, the Christian Right. To legitimize this view, Gaffney fails to tell the reader what constitutes science--namely the use of the scientific method. This is why under the scrutiny of testing and retesting, evolution in general and Darwin’s natural selection in particular are supported ad nauseum in every science. Yes, we have added mightily to evolutionary theory, including modifications of natural selection, but this is the nature of science. It is testable and correctable, unlike intelligent design, which is a matter of religious faith.

P.S. I will buy and read Larson’s book in spite of Gaffney’s lack of a review.

J. David Archibald, San Diego

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To the Editor:

Edward M. Gaffney Jr.’s tendentious review of “Summer of the Gods” is so preoccupied with an unrelenting criticism of evolution that one is left bereft of any substantive critique of the book itself.

Gaffney’s slanted article begins with attacks on ACLU attorneys for promoting their agenda by “orchestrating the trial” in order to overturn the statute prohibiting the teaching of evolution. He then directs his invective against the late H.L. Mencken, who was one of this nation’s most brilliant critics and writers, for his allegedly tainted coverage of the 1925 trial for the Baltimore Sun.

Edward C. Bayan, Northridge

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To the Editor:

Regarding Edward M. Gaffney Jr.’s review of “Summer for the Gods”: The methods of science and religion are diametrically opposed. In science, when the facts disprove the theory, they discard the theory. In religion, when the facts disprove the theory, they discard the facts. One can be guided by reason or by emotions. This is the heart of the debate between science and religion--and science has no jihads or inquisitions to answer for.

Jon Nelson, Panorama City

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To the Editor:

I was looking forward to the review of “Summer for the Gods,” knowing it to be fascinating history. What did I get: Some decent initial reviewing and then a slide into the personal opinions of Edward M. Gaffney Jr. (who appears to be closely associated with a fundamentalist university), supported by a series of slanted quotes, some bordering on the ridiculous. What contemporary course in evolution would give weight to all of Darwin’s theorizing or Hunter’s primitive “nonsense” except as historical curiosities? We do not need divine guidance in book reviews.

Henry Walrond, Bakersfield

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Edward M. Gaffney Jr. responds:

Archibald objects to my review of Larson’s “Summer for the Gods” on the ground that he “learned little about the book.” I am glad that, notwithstanding my deficiencies, he promises to buy and read this Pulitzer Prize-winner. When he does, he will see that Larson focuses on two aspects of the Scopes trial, its historical setting and its contemporary relevance, in about the same division of material as my review.

I readily understand that Archibald does not acknowledge any intelligent design in the universe. That, of course, is the nub of the current controversy over Darwin, which is not an attack on his observations on the Galapagos, nor even his organization of data into a comprehensive theory. A lot of serious scientists part company with Darwin on the critical issue of natural selection because of the increasing complexity of subsequent scientific discoveries that point to intelligent design.

These claims about design may be unpersuasive to many, but it is a mistake to dismiss them as “religious faith” or “creation science.” True, the witnesses I invoked--biologist Michael Behe, physicist John Polkinghorne and lawyer Philip Johnson--are religious persons. But none is a member of the Christian Right (unless Catholics and mainline Protestants, such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are all comprehended within the meaning of this loose term). Neither was Albert Einstein, who wrote: “God is subtle but he is not malicious. I cannot believe that God plays dice with the universe.” In any event, it is unscientific to dismiss scientific or logical arguments on the ground that the proponents of these views are religious people. No one would ignore the Copernican revolution in the history of science because Copernicus was a Polish Catholic priest. Archibald correctly notes that “we have added mightily to evolutionary theory.” While we’re at it, we might as well credit the founder of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who sent Darwin his work on the basic principles of heredity as a more plausible explanation of the mechanism of sustaining evolutionary development than Darwin’s hypothesis of “natural selection.” Darwin resisted this explanation because he could not comprehend the mathematics undergirding Mendel’s famous “Experiments with Plant Hybrids” in 1866.

Bayan suggests that I attacked the ACLU attorneys for “orchestrating” the Scopes trial. Larson shows that is precisely what they did; they arranged the themes of the trial. This is not an attack on lawyers, any more than one would vilify Maurice Ravel by noting that he orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky’s piano pieces, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” To return the metaphor to law, other writers noted in the same issue of Book Review that orchestrating is what lawyers do for a living. Far from vilifying the ACLU (I serve on the board of the Calumet chapter in Indiana), I wrote: “What has endured from the Scopes trial is the ACLU’s agenda: that legislatures should not restrain the freedom of scientific inquiry . . . and that society should respect the value of academic freedom.”

Walrond notes that the racism advanced by Darwin and Hunter would not be promoted in a modern course on evolution “except as historical curiosities.” That, of course, is progress. Or dare I say evolution? Darwin never withdrew his prophesy that the white races would inevitably exterminate the nonwhites in furtherance of evolution. This vicious racism led William Jennings Bryan to oppose Darwinism in general and Hunter’s textbook in particular. Bryan viewed “survival of the fittest” as “the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” Neither in economics nor in politics is this view “right wing.” For these points, we are indebted not to the fairy-tale version of the Scopes trial in “Inherit the Wind” but to Larson’s painstaking research. As for Pepperdine University, I have not found it to be a “fundamentalist university” during the year of my sabbatical. Mischaracterizations like that do not advance the argument about science and religion. And no, I am not a fundamentalist either. As I wrote, “the big question of cosmology . . . is not whether we live in an evolutionary universe, but why.”

Both the letters and the scholars cited in my review demonstrate the point of Larson’s subtitle and concluding chapter: America’s debate over science and religion is very much a continuing one, not one settled once and for all in 1925. The terms of this important debate have changed dramatically since then, on both sides. Hence while acknowledging important differences in scientific and theological method, I do not accept Nelson’s statement that these methods are “diametrically opposed.” He writes: “science has no jihads or inquisitions to answer for.” I am unaware of any jihad ever waged against scientists by the people who gave us algebra. I readily concede that the church can never be humble enough about the Inquisition or its dreadful mistake in the Galileo affair. One such affair is one too many.