jeff witters wrote:
>
> On Wed, 12 Jan 2000 Massie wrote:
>
> >A physicist is a scientist looking for a grant. Generally, they
> >do not care at all what the philosophical consequences of the
> >physics are. This is for some lunnies in another building. Not
> >so in biology where some blatantly insert philosophy and
> >unsupported assumptions and begin with "evolution (meaning
> >evolutionism) is the central concept of biology. Actually, I
> >would like to propose the counter that "design" (meaning God) is
> >the central concept of biology.
>
> Something smells funny...I think it's a physics snob. Naturally,
> physics, being such a good, pure field in which to work, attracts
> all those who seek knowledge for its own sake (hang the philosophy)
> and biology is what the loonies (philosophers?) do when they decide
> to dabble in science.
**************
Physicists as a group do not generally care about the philosophical
implications of their work. This is not because they are so pure
hearted but they do not as a group care much about how they dress
either. Perhaps the word "oblivious" better sums it up.
Biologists on the other hand are frequently scholed in evolutionary
thinking and therefore its phisophical import.
***************
> Come on. You sound so well informed about biologists that I must
> wonder from where you got your experience. Textbooks at the survey
> level? Books by sophisticated God-of-the-Gappers like Behe? In
***************************
I am not talking about microevolution. I am not talking about species
adopting to their environments. I am not taling about ecology.
The real issue is macromutations. The real issue is wholesale invention
of organs. Why, lets take the eye for example. what an idea.
*******************
> my field of ecology (really just a bunch treehuggers ;) ) you
> might be surprised that evolution is actually a unifying concept
> there as well. And no, we would not sit around saying, "Well,
> evolution proves there's no God, so I guess it is up to us to save
> this place." Rather, when considering relationships within
> ecological communities we talk in terms of competition, selection,
> exclusion, disturbances as selective forces, as well as centers of
> endemism (as indicative of ground-zero pts. for adaptive radiation)
> as focus for reserve selection. Population biology, animal
> behavior, taxonomy and systematics (ever heard of a cladogram?),
> and immunology are but a few of the many disciplines in biology
> relying on evolution for more than an initial disclaimer to
> frighten off the faithful.
>
> >Reality is that evolution is inserted in the text here and there
> >almost as a chant to some unknown god but not realy for much
> >explanatory power and certainly and absolutely no predictive
> >power.
>
> Hmmm. My year of college physics (not just the alg. based) did
> not mention the general theory of relativity more than a couple
> times, and quantum mechanics, per se, never came up. Oh well.
>
> As for lacking explanatory power, I am really dumbfounded. I can
> only suggest that you might try digging a little deeper into the
> field (beyond BIG survey books and Johnson 'n' the Wedgies) and
> you just might find yourself surprised. Try reading a paper in
> paleontology (one of my side interests), remove references to the
> big E word, and see how much sense it makes.
****************
Take out the E word and the book is a lot smaller. And, yes I have
actually mentially blocked out the E word and then a lot of things make
since.
"Animal A evolved into animal B"
Becomes
"Animal A preceeded animal B."
***************
What sort of
> predictive power are you looking for? Power to make predictions
> like Hal Lindsey and the end-of-the-world crowd?
************
No I am not talking about Hal Lindsey and you know it and why do you
bring him up? I am not supportive of him and this is a side issue and
you know it. Lets stay to the issue and not bring up the views of
certain people.
**********************
I'm satisfied
> that one can make predictions like, if evolution predicts that
> we would find a hierarchical pattern of relatedness within life
> then I would expect to be able to quantitatively measure degees
> of difference in character states (ie, DNA, cytochrome c,
> morphologies, etc.) between living creatures and find they fall
> into a hierarchical pattern. You might check out one of Glenn
> Morton's posts of a few days ago about the predictive power of
> the evolutionary assumption in the oil business.
*********************
Rubbish. In the oil business there is a model of when organisms occureed
and how they lived and it is a good model and it considers a very old
earth. This is good and it works and it predicts the oil deposits but
the evolutionary theory does not need to be part of it. IT works just
fine without the e word.
What the e word does not do is predict the future in terms of organism
invention (not small modifications, but invention). What I clearly
referred to would be the predictive power of evolutionary (meaning
invention) theory to predict the next big organism.
**********************
I never took
> that industry to be much of a refuge for philosophers.
>
> I have nothing wrong with design, per se. I, as a Christian,
> also believe God did it. But to claim God's fingerprints reside
> only in what we don't know (haven't figured out yet) or what is
> misconstrued as mystery (irreducible complexity), then my God
> would be an ever-shrinking God. That, along with producing a
> dead form of science, makes for poor theology.
>
> Don't let others make up your mind for you. Check it out
> before blowing us off as kill-God cultists and Tom Sawyer
> white-washers.
>
> Grace and peace be with you. Jeff
****************************
Bert M
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