Re: Where is evolutionary theory?
Kevin O'Brien (Cuchulaine@worldnet.att.net)
Mon, 15 Feb 1999 10:48:19 -0700>Excerpts from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.3/sciphilo.html
>
>
>JOHN HORGAN is a senior writer for Scientific American and the author
>of The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of
>the Scientific Age (Addison-Wesley, 1996).
>
>Horgan: There's some proportionality between the lack of scientific
>substance of a field and the degree to which its most successful
>participants are good rhetoricians. For example, in evolutionary
>biology at this point, all of the really prominent people are great
>writers -- Gould, Dawkins, E. O. Wilson -- and that makes me
>suspicious that they're not really getting at something important
>scientifically, issues that can be empirically resolved, as opposed to
>fields like molecular biology and nuclear physics where rhetoric is
>pretty much irrelevant.
>
Interesting he should mention molecular biology, since it is molecular
biology that has verified much of basic evolutionary theory in the past
decade and which is starting to use basic evolutionary theory to discover
new protein-based therapeutics. It is also the field that will tell us much
more about how evolution works in the coming decades. I take it Horgan is
not a molecular biologist.
>
>[And, speaking of inflation:]
>
>Horgan: On the other hand, I don't think there's all that much
>difference between believing in astrology and believing in chaotic
>inflation or string theory. I'm sorry.
>
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but the only thing worse than a
blind believer is a seeing denier.
Kevin L. O'Brien