Bill Nye (1) (1955–)

In February of this year (2014), Bill Nye the Science Guy debated Ken Ham, a Creationist over the question of evolution. Who won, of course, depends on which side of the question you fall on but one thing was very clear: in his own calm, inimitable way, Bill is very passionate about the subject. This passion comes through in his new book Undeniable in which he discusses evolution and all the ways it matters.

He talks about the scientific basis for evolution including Darwin’s theories and show more what they really mean. According to Nye, it is not as straightforward as ‘survival of the fittest’. Evolution occurs, mainly, in small increments, some small advantage that, as it is passed down through generations, becomes a big advantage, allowing the offspring to survive when others of the species are lost to history: it is not so much ‘survival of the fittest’ as ‘survival of the just good enough’: the giraffe with the slightly longer neck, the bird with the slightly hooked beak, the group of hominids with a slightly bigger brain in relation to their size. Whatever this small advantage is, over generations, it evolves incrementally within the species. That first giraffe with the slightly longer neck eventually leads to the giraffes we see today with their extremely long necks.

He also discusses how evolution affects us today in terms of science and ethics: cloning, GMOs, and stem-cell research among other issues. He explains the difference between micro- and macro- evolution and how it is happening all around us not to mention to us and has been happening for approximately 3.5 billion years from the first one-celled organism to us, homo sapiens and why the idea of different races doesn’t exist scientifically – we are all descended from that same one-celled creature that appeared an eon or two ago or, if that’s just too far back to imagine, the same pair of hominids who ‘got it on’, 100,000 years ago give or take a millennium.

And he goes further, speculating about what the future holds for future generations as well as what might be out their among the stars waiting for us to discover or perhaps to discover us. He also explains why Creationism fails as a theory in explaining the diversity of ecosystems and species extant today or the discovery of fossils of animals long gone, as well as its inability to predict future possibilities – denying evolution means denying any effect we might have on the planet or that there is anything we can do to change outcomes.

Undeniable is a fascinating read. Nye makes the science behind evolution easily accessible to those of us who don’t come from a scientific background. He infuses the work with interesting anecdotes about his own life as well as just a touch of humour to help those of us who never paid attention in biology because boring. So here’s to Bill Nye the Science Guy for making it clear why choosing evolution over creationism isn’t just a matter of philosophy but that it has real-world consequences and here’s to us, the survivors, the just good enoughs. show less

Sometimes you just want to yell at an author to "stop it already!" This is one of those times. The constant (pun intended) became more than just a bit annoying by the third iteration, but continued non-stop throughout the book, often puns that were unlikely to be caught by a person with no prior science background. That said, the book itself was a typical book by a typical engineer - promoting various engineering solutions at rapid fire speed, dismissing some of them, but giving all of them show more at least an "interesting idea". Never once did he bother to acknowledge one of the most important issues that will come into play - biology. He mentioned other species about three times, twice in passing, and once to dismiss them as relevant, while he focused solely on technological, anthropocentric solutions that would make humans happy but would, at least in many cases, create more problems than they solve. If we do not acknowledge the biological realities of the planet, we will get the solutions wrong. To his credit, he does dismiss many of these solutions as unworkable, but fails to notice problems with others. Then he gives us a personal rundown of the things he has done to make his house greener, and suggests these are the sort of things everyone can do, without noticing that he is a highly paid TV star and the rest of us...aren't. These solutions would be out of the range of the budget for nearly all Americans. There are other, low-tech solutions that don't require inventing anything, or buying anything, that are available now, but few of these get even a nod. Yes, he's a tinkerer. Yes, he can afford to go out and buy windows that he acknowledges cost about the cost of a mid-sized car. He says that to make them sound extremely affordable, without realizing that few Americans can cover that cost and still pay their basic expenses. In short, a naive, unrealistic book that fails to take into account anything but engineering solutions, some of which are feasible and a good idea, but many of which are not. A very big disappointment. show less

I'm a fan of the TV show "The Big Bang Theory" and recently saw snippets of Bill Nye's appearances on that show, so when my library was selling this audiobook, I decided I would buy it to listen to while I drove. I bought it fully expecting that I was going to be arguing with Mr. Nye as I listened. I was surprised that I wasn't arguing with his thoughts as much as I thought I would be.

Certainly in areas of biology/evolution, he and I hold vastly different views. I also don't agree with some show more of what he says Christians believe. (For example, we don't all say evolution doesn't exist--microevolution certainly does exist in the world. But do I believe all that evolution teaches--no, I don't.) I think he denigrates Ken Ham several times in the book--mostly because Mr. Ham doesn't believe the way Mr. Nye does, apparently.

I enjoyed one of Mr. Nye's early (in the book) stories about physics class--and how it captured his interest. I enjoyed his stories about slide rules. (I owned one once--that my dad gave me--but never did learn to use it. I grew up in the calculator era instead, I guess.)

I do think he has some good ideas about renewable energy and about how to go about changing the world. show less

“Teach the controversy”, they say. The “gaps” in evidence on evolution validates an alternate theory. “Irreducible complexity” of certain anatomical features (e.g. the human eye) must mean that sequential modifications were not possible since without all of its parts the whole would be non-functional. Evolution is, after all, just a “theory”, little more than speculation or a guess. Bah!

Few things make my blood boil more than the deceitful attempts of Christian/politico show more groups to impose religiously motivated doctrine on school curricula. These proponents of “creationism” and, lately, its thinly masqueraded cousin “intelligent design” claim that the theory of evolution has deep flaws and that other “scientific” explanations for the origins of the earth and the species deserve a place in classrooms alongside, if not instead of, evolution of life via the mechanism of natural selection.

It is astonishing that these arguments have received even the slightest hearing and very troubling that many school districts have caved in to such pressures. The unwillingness of many Americans to accept evolution as an established scientific principle throws unsettling light on the state of education and thinking in our supposedly advanced nation. Creationism and intelligent design may indeed have a place in the classroom, but it is in the social studies or civics classes considering issues related to church-state separation, not in the teaching of biology.

Theologians and religiously minded people have had difficulty with Darwin’s precepts from the instant of its publication. If you are a bible literalist the idea of an aeons-old earth and the incremental development of the vast species extant on the planet via random genetic mutations that help or hinder life to sustain is turned completely on its head by Darwin’s theory. Those willing to abandon literalism find comfort in reconciling religion and evolution by opining that evolution, while certainly at play, was started by and guided by a supreme being whose shining creative apotheosis is human kind. I personally find this notion incompatible with science since it requires a great conceptual leap from evidence-based, provable theory to a supernatural etiology beyond the reach of science. Religion has many useful functions for man, but explaining the natural world just isn’t one of them.

Creationists seem to hold on to the “it just ain’t so” approach to disputing the theory of evolution. This is acceptable for the pulpit, but not for public school classrooms since our constitutional principles forbid promoting religious doctrine in organs of the state. The tactic employed successfully by the creationists for decades was to get authorities to prohibit the teaching of evolution in biology classrooms. As the pressure of science educators to teach real science increased, the creationists "evolved" a new approach, the so-called intelligent design theory. Intelligent design (ID) claims to be a scientifically grounded theory that says because life is so complex it follows that it must have been purposely designed; ergo, there must be a designer. After all, the most complex machines such as airplane or computers could not exist unless designed by someone. While this notion has a certain intuitive cache its mortal flaw is that it is untestable, hence unprovable. Unlike all valid theories, intelligent design has no predictive potential. (Evolution by contrast has had enormous success in predicting the presence of once undiscovered evidence that supports the theory.) The intelligent design crowd is careful never to suggest that the “designer” is the Christian God or any other supreme being; that would undermine their advocacy that ID is constitutionally permissible in the public sector. They often resort to tautology in trying to support their assertions of the rationality of ID. They make use of “arguments of ignorance”, i.e. that flaws or gaps in proof for one theory prove the validity of an alternate theory. So, by this thinking, gaps in evidence (say, the so-called missing links in transition of species) of natural selection prove that another theory must be right. Well, a brick wall with a few missing bricks is still a brick wall. While careful to avoid sounding theological in public pronouncements ID advocates in their strategy sessions have been clear that they are seeking to advance religious credo. In the well-known federal court case Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, the judge held, after a long bench trial where the views of ID and evolution were closely argued, that intelligent design was a ruse blatantly misrepresented as science whose introduction into classrooms was an impermissible crossing of the church-state boundaries.

Nye’s book is a collection of short chapters outlining the principles upon which the theory of evolution is grounded. Intended for the lay reader, Nye cogently describes how evolution works and, importantly, how the advance of theoretical, exploratory and experimental work since Darwin has cemented the validity of the theory. (For instance, the role of genes in passing along functions and traits was unknown for years after Darwin’s work.) Nye is a well-known science educator and recently engaged in a televised debate with a prominent creationist. This man’s position was so outlandish in its total adherence to the narrative of the bible that debating him was almost valueless until you consider that many people believe this version of history. It is a bit of a puzzle that Nye did not critique in much detail the positions of the intelligent design proponents as these are much more subtle and beguiling to the general public than strict biblical literalism show less