Was what you posted the complete transcript, or is there a link to the rest by chance?
That’s a transcript of the relevant portion. I didn’t feel like typing out the irrelevant portions, where they were discussion entirely other subjects. It was not an interview about evolution; it was just “checking” in with Vonnegut; an overview. Evolution was touched on but briefly.
Not every answer surely. We might have when and how and who.
What about WHY? 
I thought he might have been making an entirely reasonable argument like Jerry Fodor, who points out that evolution is great at explaining how things get that way in the first place but cannot be said to explain every detail of how things actually work. His favoured example is of a wing: evolution explains how it appeared over millions of years, but is silent on the engineering and physics of how wings cause flight. He, and Vonnegut, might only have been arguing that cognitive science is no more identically equal to evolutionary biology than is engineering or physics.
But no. lissener’s quote (“natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such a machine”) is no such reasonable argument. It is simple superstitious inability to appreciate what billions of years of continual replication, variation and selection could achieve, even in principle.
Sure, in principle, evolution/natural selection has achieved some stupendous stuff. Hey, it has allowed us Dopers to infect the interweb, so it must be a good thing!!
But given that ‘life’ has only appeared on this planet for quite a limited few years (in terms of the life of the planet) it is still remarkable that we have evolved from single celled blobs to the grunting, farting blobs that we are now. As much as I appreciate the evolutionary model, I still find it hard to measure that we have come from blobs to sentient blobs in such a relatively short space of time.
The Australian’s New York correspondent David Nason interviewed Vonnegut a few months ago. His account of the interview was very depressing, He was very keen to meet Vonnegut but:
*As it continued it became quite sad. Vonnegut has clearly reached a stage in his life where he just can’t be bothered anymore.
His conversation reflects this. Often he just repeats his book.It’s almost as if he has deliberately memorised his best one-liners so he can werave them into whatever conversation he is forced to endure.*
Vonnegut goes on about Bush (“the only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected”) and his admiration for suicide bombers (“It must be an amazing high”) and eventually:
*At this point I give up. I can’t be bothered asking him about any of the things I’d thought about…
But now he is old and doesn’t want to live any more. You only have to read his book to understand that. And because he can’t find anything worthwhile to keep him alive he finds defending terrorists somehow amusing.*
Sad reading.
Actually, life appeared almost as soon as Earth formed.
4 billion years is not a short space of time. Heck, it’s nearly a third of the universe. Think what can happen in a thousand years (especially given the huge variation which sexual reproduction produces). Then think of a thousand such periods. Than think of a thousand of them!
lissener’s quote omitted some important info. Here is the rest of the conversation:
So, he says he is a secular humanist. And it seems that he does not doubt that things came about in a non-supernatural way. It’s just that the explanations he has heard up to now are not satisfactory to him.
From wikipedia
Thanks lissener.
Oh, well if we’re snipping quotes, Vonnegut also said, “evolution, it surely happened; the fossil record shows that” and “I don’t think that Pat Robertson, for instance doubts that we evolved.”
Now that lissener posted that, I do seem to recall the tone of the statements. The main idea in the interview was “tribal behavior”. He was talking about his book, “a man without a nation” and was sort of addressing group think.
To illustrate that, he was just saying, “take evolution. There might be something bigger going on here, but if you say that you’re perceived as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, religious fundamentalists.”
He wasn’t trying to present an argument against evolution. Not even close. He was illustrating that if you give one inch on it, tribal behavior kicks in. I think this thread illustrates THAT pretty clearly.
I think it’s a little clueless for him to say, "if I were a physics teacher, or a science teacher, what’d be on my mind all the time is how the hell we really got this way, " because that IS what scientists are working on, just within a scientific framework, but still, it’s silly for the OP to read what he said as “vonnegut doesn’t accept evolution.”
Actually, he didn’t say that. He said that scientists say that it surely happened:
Whatever the context, the sentence “natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such a machine” is pretty inflexible. He is stating that there are features of homo sapiens, whatever they are (advanced cognition, emotion, consciousness, I don’t know) that must have appeared by some other mechanism than replication-variation-selection. That is actually the very kernel of Intelligent Design: if I’m going all tribal on him by saying so, so be it. I’ll continue in this manner until he replaces the word “possibly” with “in my opnion” in the quote in question.
It’s just that it wasn’t what he was talking about.
He could have said, “take abortion. maybe a fetus is alive and we should look into that, but if you say that, you’re giving aid and comfort to the fundies.”
Or, “take the Red Sox. Maybe they do suck, but if you say that, you’re giving aid and comfort to the Yankees.”
If someone wants to debate evolution, go do it in GD. To gang bang Kurt Vonnegut in a Pit thread because of a throwaway comment in the middle of an interview is just silly and lame.
I agree. I have enjoyed many of his books. He is welcome to any opinions he wants to express, nothing he says now will diminish what he has written.
If you listen to the pauses in his speech, it’s pretty clear that he IS saying that evolution surely happened and that the fossils show that. He kind of drops the “the scientists are saying” bit.
Daniel
Have you read his books? They’re not characterized by clarity of thought. He’s an entertaining writer to some, and that’s about it. His comments are consistent with the level of intelligence I find in his fiction.
I had a slightly different take on his comments. What I took from his comment about natural selection was that he believes that evolution was guided by some higher power, thus, not attributable to natural selection. It’s not quite ID which [as my understanding goes] states that evolution simply could not be responsible for the existence of certain organisms/functions/etc [the whole irreducible complexity thing].
To put it another way, we can control the environments/interactions of animals over time and we can breed in and out certain traits that would be highly unlikely to become prevalent in a more ‘natural’ environment. I put “natural” in quotes, because say, a lab rat’s cage, is just as real and as valid an environment as a field mouse’s field, or an owl’s burrow. Similiarly, a greater power could decide where to put isolated landmasses, what the weather was, which mutations got food, who critters met with tragic accidents, etc. Thus, while the process of evolution would be the same, there would be an outside force controlling all the ins and outs of fate which can influence what sorts of species make it and which don’t.
Perhaps a better analogy would be an incredibly large deck of cards. Keep dealing sets of five random cards and eventually you’ll get a bunch of valid poker hands. However, sort through the cards and stack the deck and you’ll be able to do it quicker and come up with a few more royal flushes.
Anyway, that’s my take on what he’s trying to say, basically, not that evolution wasn’t the process through which species…uhm… well evolved, but that evolution came out a certain way because that’s how a higher power wanted it. Not something I advocate, but it puts the statement into a realm of the un-proveable/un-refuteable personal convictions to which we are all entitled.
At least that’s what I hope he means, because for some reason it just makes me a little sad to think of him as simply being ignorant. Not sure why. I guess it’s because I’ve always liked his writing and irrationally I want the author to demonstrate positive traits as well.
I went back and re-heard it, and I agree with you. He is saying that he believes evolution surely happened.
Which is interesting, since he later says that natural selection cannot possibly be the mechanism by which the human body came to be.
So he is someone who believes that evolution happened, by non-supernatural means, but that natural selection is not the mechanism of this evolution.
Are there any other non-supernatural theories of evolution besides natual selection?
I have heard others, but nothing overly mainstream. As an example:
There was a theory floating around in the early 90’s that rather than small incremental changes, there may have been many short spurts of rapid evolution.
I would not treat it too seriously, but there was apparently some minor scientific agreement that it was at least plausible.
I am sure someone else can provide the details and maybe even the name of the theory. I basing it on dim memories from science Mags I read in the early 90’s. Probably Scientific America.
Jim
Actually, punctuated equilibrium is a thoroughly acceptable evolutionary theory, to the best of my knowledge. It’s not fringe at all: it suggests that environmental stressors or opportunities result in relatively rapid spurts of speciation (e.g., over a few thousand years, not over a few million), and that once speciation occurs, a particular species may be happy for aeons before another environmental stressor or opportunity leads to more speciation.
I’m not sure what to make of Vonnegut’s comments. His novel Galapagos means I give him a lot of leeway.
Daniel
I have to say, his comments threw me for a bit of a loop when I first heard them. But I pondered his words that morning and figured out what he meant.
The point he was trying to make is pretty simple: neither intelligent design nor evolution has yet given a complete explanation as to how the world got the way it is. Maybe both are right and maybe neither, but as long as they both disregard the other, they’re both ignoring valid arguments. Ignoring a valid argument isn’t going to get you anywhere as either a scientist or a debater.
The conversation came up when speaking of tribalism and family groups, not the origins of mankind. He just used it as an example of factionalizing.
I don’t much care what he does believe, to tell the truth. It doesn’t change what I believe just because he’s published and respected. I don’t get my political views from Kiefer Sutherland or financial advice from my cat, either.