Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee might just be the perfect candidate. With a preference for myth over truth and a willingness to publicly parade his ignorance, he’ll fit right in at the White House.

Standing before a crowd in the small town of Newton, Iowa, Huckabee summed up his election hopes with a familiar quip. “It’s scientifically impossible for the bumblebee to fly,” he said. “But the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, flies anyway.”

It was the perfect statement for Huckabee, an evangelical christian who is not shy about his dismissal of evolution and his desire to see creationism (in the dishonest disguise of ‘intelligent design’) taught in schools.

It was perfect because it so ably demonstrates Huckabee’s own qualities. For a start, it’s a lie.

The myth that science has ‘proven’ that bumblebees can’t fly is entirely without foundation. The origins of the myth are obscure – it may have originated at a dinner party in Germany in the 1930s when an aerodynamicist, chatting to a biologist, made some very quick calculations on the back of a napkin, using calculations based on a grossly simplified set of conditions and (probably joking) said something to the effect that, by his calculations, bumblebees were unable to fly. There are other versions of the origins of this fairytale, some going back further. All are equally fallacious.

However the myth started, that’s all it is. Not only is science perfectly capable of proving that they can fly, it has the knowledge to show precisely how they fly, and in very great detail.

According to Wikipedia: “It is believed that the calculations which purported to show that bumblebees cannot fly are based upon a simplified linear treatment of oscillating aerofoils. The method assumes small amplitude oscillations without flow separation. This ignores the effect of dynamic stall, an airflow separation inducing a large vortex above the wing, which briefly produces several times the lift of the aerofoil in regular flight. More sophisticated aerodynamic analysis shows that the bumblebee can fly because its wings encounter dynamic stall in every oscillation cycle.”

The simplified case, which is supposed to show that the bumblebee can’t fly, assumes a rigid wing and calculates only the amount of lift produced by that wing moving through the air. It ignores the more complex aerodynamics actually involved in bumblebee flight. In effect, it simply shows that these insects can’t glide, which is true.

Of course, it’s not surprising that an evangelical christian would prefer a myth to the truth. That is, after all, the entire basis of their creed. The opportunity to take a cheap shot at science (albeit by lying) is obviously one that Huckabee could not resist.

Of course, judging by past history, if Huckabee plans to get elected through exploiting crowd-pleasing lies, he stands every chance of being successful.

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