Creationism, the notion that all life on Earth was created at one instant around five thousand years ago and has not evolved since, is one of many baseless concepts in society that just refuses to die.

I recently came across a talk discussing the current status of creationism being taught in the classroom.  It appears that in the United States of America, creationism is alive and well in many states.  But, I must say, I do not know just how long this silliness can endure.

The very idea of teaching creationism in a science class is contradictory.  Science is an evidence-based field of study, and there is no evidence on which one can base the theory of intelligent design (another name for creationism).

Two hundred years ago, the origins of life were not well understood.  At that time, many scientists worked very hard to diligently categorize the overwhelming number of life forms on the planet.  Through this process of close examination of different species, one was faced with the question, "Where did all of these organisms come from?"

And then, along came Charles Darwin in the mid-nineteenth century.  Darwin's evidence-based theory of evolution by means of natural selection was man's first coherent alternative to creationism.  Since its first appearance, evolutionary theory has been backed by an overwhelming spectrum of evidence.  The central concept is simple: Genes are passed on from progeny to offspring, and the offspring who happen to inherit the qualities best-suited to their environment are more likely to thrive in it than those lacking them.  Those most likely to survive are also more likely to pro-create and pass on their genes to future generations. 

This concept is concisely summarized by the phrase, "Survival of the fittest."  And, there is a very key corollary to evolution, which says that those species that fail to adapt to their changing environment are at increased risk of extinction.

It should be noted that the laws of science go through a similar process of evolution as do living things.  The laws of science develop over a period of time, and are adapted through reason and observation.  Scientific data and the conclusions that they lead to must jump through several hoops in order to attain law status, and even more refined hoops in order to remain there.

A good example of the adaptation of scientific law may be found in the work of Sir Isaac Newton, who in the late seventeenth century, developed the laws of motion.  These laws describing the motion of all objects endured for over two hundred years, unchallenged by any scientific evidence.  But, in the early twentieth century, Albert Einstein showed that the very measure of time and space were relative, and as a result, Newton's Laws, while still applicable in most instances, were simply incorrect when discussing the motion of objects at very high velocities. 

So, the laws of motion were refined, adapted, such that they were congruent with observation.  Some decades later, the development of quantum mechanics showed that these laws needed to be refined even further, as they were also incompatible with very small objects, like subatomic particles.

Were Newton alive today, I am certain that he would appreciate that the best 'genes' of his scientific laws survived and continued to thrive, while those genes that were, well, false, did not.  That is because, science, by definition, is devoid of ego and authority (the same cannot be said of all scientists, but I digress).

This example illustrates why I believe that creationism is currently on its death bed.  It sits there because it is unfit.  It lay there motionless because it exists in a framework of religious literalism, which is itself, by definition, incapable of adaptation. 

In contrast, science is an area of study that is not just open to change - it is all about change.  Scientific research is an exploration in which one questions the extent of our knowledge, and aims to expand the boundaries of our knowledge.  If a scientific law is proven false within a certain context, scientists celebrate.  Here is what scientists do not do: Go to court to argue that an antiquated and clearly false scientific theorem be taught in schools.

A science class should not teach creationism just as it should not teach that fire is one of four elements of life.  We now know that fire occurs due to a chemical reaction we call combustion.  An introductory chemistry course will usually mention that fire was once thought to be one of four elements of life.  That is because science has a rich history, which is often as interesting as the scientific laws themselves.

In a similar way, a biology course should give an appropriate treatment to creationism.  Creationism should appear in the same chapter as evolution, but as a historical footnote.

Quite frankly, as a science teacher, I cannot imagine how to teach creationism to a class of students.  What educational material would the course consist of?  Every aspect of a science course is arrived at through some sort of observable, or at the very least, theoretical basis.  To attempt to validate intelligent design as a reasonable theory given all of the evidence in direct discordance with it amounts to an act of deceit.  How can the basis of a science class be, "It is so simply because it is so?" 

As legal battles continue to rage on in America, the majority of biology students are informed about evolution, while a reasonably sized minority are subjected to creationism.  This lie must not continue.  

It would be a 'darwinian irony' if creationists could not thrive and pro-create in the future, but this is unlikely to occur.  The real death of creationism will come about when the offspring of creationist progeny allow themselves to abandon the antiquated views of their parents.  This outcome is likely for anyone who embraces science, and its fundamental notion of inquisitiveness over authority. 

Creationists will one day be viewed by society with a similar regard to cigarette smokers who deny that their act of smoking has any negative health effects on themselves or others, despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary.  There is no question that the presence of creationism in the public discourse will eventually be phased out; the only question is "When?"

Unfortunately, nature has more patience than I do.

Science is my favourite realm of study.  Although physics is the branch that I am most comfortable with, I find science as a whole very fascinating.  It seems to me that science can be broken down into five categories: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology and sociology – in that order.

How do these five pillars relate to one another?  What is their connection?  Consider the following simple organizational chart.

A Scientific Road Map

The scientific road map shown above is organized in terms of causality and complexity.

Although my physics students would disagree, physics is the simplest science, as there are only a few key relationships to consider.  There are only four kinds of forces that affect the way in which matter interacts in the universe.  Conversely, there exist hundreds of known elements and millions of known chemicals, each with their own unique properties.  Chemistry is indeed more complex than physics.  Bring the chemistry to life, and you have biology.  The most baffling aspect of biology is the brain of an organism, which is the least understood organ in the human body by far.  The only thing more complicated than psychology would be how many psyches interact: sociology.

Let us now follow this chart in the reverse sequence.  Why do people act the way they do?  This is the root question in sociology.  Well, the answer may be found in the study of psychology.  What controls our psyche?  It is most certainly biological.  Biology is simply chemistry, and the way in which chemicals interact is governed by the laws of physics.

The neat thing about the scientific road map is that it is chronological from left to right.  What arrived first in the universe after the big bang?  For the first 5 billion years, the laws of physics were sufficient to describe everything in the universe.  After all, there were only two elements in existence (hydrogen and helium undergoing fusion within stars).  When stars burn out, they release many new elements, and the study of chemistry becomes necessary.  Perhaps 10 billion years after the big bang, life begins to emerge, and biology is born.  Evolution then runs its course, such that biological complexity increases from bacteria to organism.  Once organisms become sentient, the study of psychology pops up.  Finally, when groups of sentient beings begin to interact in large groups, the branch of sociology comes into existence.

It makes sense that the complexity of the universe should grow with time.  This is what the second law of thermodynamics predicts: entropy (chaos) can never decrease with time.

One final conclusion I take from this picture, which comes as no surprise, is that physics governs everything.  If you continuously ask “Why?” for any problem within the scientific realm, you will eventually arrive in physics territory.  Physics is where the why ends.  In truth, physics is the how, and the rest of science from chemistry on down is the what.  Physics is the king of the scientific jungle, sitting atop the scientific food chain.

 

This is what Rutherford meant when he said, “Physics is everything – the rest is stamp collecting.”

Life can be going along swimmingly one day only to turn utterly miserable the next, and the change can be solely attributed to a change in health.  The human body is a wonderful transport vessel for our respective journeys through life, but damage to the haul, engine failure, or a computer virus wreaking havoc with the operating system can make the trip a bumpy one.  The vessel’s state of well-being can turn ugly due to mismanagement, making it prone to trouble, by choosing to smoke on deck or drink way too much while on duty.  Most of the time, however, when the ship takes a turn for the worse, it is simply a case of bad luck: Unavoidable bad weather, an iceberg that appeared out of nowhere, or just the fatigue failure of an old part.  These are sometimes referred to as acts of God.

With a background in Mechanical Engineering, the science that flows off of my tongue with the greatest ease is Physics.  However, more than ever, today’s engineers and scientists are finding that the divisions between science’s three pillars (Physics, Chemistry, and Biology) are fading, with each discipline spilling over into the next.  Fields such as chemical engineering, and biomechanical engineering are growing (particularly the latter) at a staggering rate.  The most accomplished scientists of the twenty-first century will be those who see science as one great field without borders, and allow them to overlap and flow into one another where appropriate.

Let us look at the progression of the three scientific fields since the dawn of time.  The big bang occurred roughly 13.7 billion years ago.  For the first ten billion years, all can be explained with Physics alone (physical evolution).  There were really only two chemicals in existence (Hydrogen and Helium) in our galaxy until some four billion years ago.  This age of chemical evolution saw the periodic table fill itself in, and thus, to fully describe the Universe in this time domain, one would need Physics and Chemistry.  Shortly thereafter, cells emerged, and so began biological evolution, when all three scientific areas of study must be employed to fully describe everything.

These three fields are not really so different.  They all deal with the microscopic to macroscopic scales.  Biology uses cell building blocks to create tissues, which lead to organs, which make up systems, and eventually constitute an organism.  Chemistry begins with elemental building blocks, and on a larger scale, may constitute a cup of coffee or other liquid solution.  Physics has a truly universal range, with subatomic particles (elementary particles such as electrons) on one end of the spectrum, and cosmological systems such as galaxies on the other.

The most compelling parallels I see today exist between Biology and Physics.  Engineers have long tried to emulate biological systems when designing tools and technological gadgets.  Spiders make excellent support structures for themselves both in material and geometrical constitution.  Civil engineers can only dream of building a bridge as efficient as a spider’s web.  Steel’s strength properties are impressive, but fall quite short of that of a web.  The truss shapes used in bridges have, in some cases, been derived by our eight-legged friends.

There are countless examples in life of the beauty and engineering excellence of nature’s design.  Engineers have long desired to build robotic equivalents of certain wonders of biology.  In the best case, a pump would work as efficiently as the human heart, a robotic manipulator would be as dextrous as the human shoulder/elbow/wrist/hand/fingers system, and a computer would have the creativity of the human brain.  In some cases, the engineering technology is approaching and even surpassing the biological equivalent.  This occurred long ago if we consider the computational power of a cpu versus that of the human brain (with the exception of “Rain Man”).  Many of today’s surgeons perform certain surgeries with the help of robotic manipulators whose hands don’t ever tremor, even if the doctor had a wine cooler with lunch.

Engineers are beginning to use an alternative thought process to solve a problem.  Why try to redesign a pump with the same efficiency as a heart?  Would it not be better to grow a new actual heart from some cells?  Why use a less optimal design when the best current design beats within each of us?

If we are on the cusp of using biological parts to create mechanical tools, it seems a no-brainer that we ought to produce spare biological parts to service ourselves.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would denounce stem cell research as a “bad thing”.  With or without the support of every member of congress, the future of technological growth will be in the following fields: cell/tissue manipulation, DNA manipulation, and robotics.  When these three fields are superimposed, we see the emergence of some life-altering technologies.  These are the fields where investors ought to consider investing, and represent fields that young scientists ought to consider pursuing.

One ultimate result of combining our scientific ingenuity in the three pillars of science is that we may no longer find ourselves as slaves to our own bodies.  When our parts fail, replacement parts will become available.  The better we manage to understand our physiology, and the science that governs it, the more empowered we will become.  Knowledge leads to power, and scientific growth is our greatest source of new knowledge.  In my humble view, scientific knowledge is man’s greatest asset for improving the quality of life of future generations.  Of course, the knowledge is only useful if it is acted on appropriately.

As an ailing patient, one can often feel powerless; a victim of imperfect biology.  As the barriers between the sciences get broken down, new options for patients will surely emerge.  To expedite this process, citizens ought to inform themselves of the science behind such developments, and encourage governments to support research in these emerging areas.  It is the barrier between the public and science that causes inertia in technological growth.

What is the human body, but an optimized transport vessel?  We service ships when they break down, and with medicine, we service the human body as required.  The quality of the maintenance of the human vehicle will vastly improve as research in the above-mentioned fields continues.  Perhaps, one day, single-point failures in the human body, like many cancers, will not lead to complete system failure.  I am not proposing that human beings could or should live forever.  But I do believe that the quality of our lives is related to our physical and mental health.  Modern science will revolutionize many aspects of life, and the notion that we may no longer feel like slaves to our bodies when they break down represents one very promising and empowering revolution.