Steve Clark wrote:
>Then science also was slow to embrace phrenology and cold fusion,
>both of which turned out to be false.
Just BTW, phrenology enjoyed a bit of a vogue, enriching quite a few
authors and lecturers.
>So, a conservative scientific enterprise works very well.
It may not be working well in evolutionary theory, which seems at a
dead end in regard to the origin of metazoan complexity, the Cambrian
explosion, and of course the original abiogenesis.
Different fields are conservative to different degrees. Physicists find
a ready audience for outlandish speculations about micro- and
macroscopic matter, while in the richer realm of biology evolutionists
are very cautious. The supposed big insight of our times--PE--is a joke.
"The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is
no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an
insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a
blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly
one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any
nation which had not previously heard of their existence, would not
appear to him as indecent and unnatural.
"...
"The biological invention then tends to begin as a perversion and end
as a ritual supported by unquestioned beliefs and prejudices."
(J.B.S.Haldane, Daedalus, 1923)
--Cliff Lundberg ~ San Francisco ~ cliff@cab.com
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