Bertvan posts:
>The Boston Globe, May 30, 2000, Tuesday, Pg. E1
>HEADLINE: A LITTLE FISH CHALLENGES A GIANT OF SCIENCE
>BYLINE: By Fred Heeren, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
> The debate over Haikouella casts Western scientists in the unlikely
>role of defending themselves against charges of ideological blindness from
>scientists in Communist China. Chinese officials argue that the theory of
>evolution is so politically charged in the West that researchers are
>reluctant to admit shortcomings for fear of giving comfort to those who
>believe in a biblical creation.
that is only partly the case
> "Evolution is facing an extremely harsh challenge," declared the
>Communist Party's Guang Ming Daily last December in describing the fossils
>in southern China. "In the beginning, Darwinian evolution was a scientific
>theory. . . . In fact, evolution eventually changed into a
>religion."
This is straight out of Creationist literature, almost word for word.
Religions are static. They are RIGHT therefore they may never change (they
do, of course, evolve over time, but it's considered tacky to notice).
Paley's idea, published in 1803, is still alive and kicking unchanged 200
years later. It's been dressed up in new clothes, sanitized of it's
religious language, but unchanged.
> "NeoDarwinism is dead," said Eric Davidson, a geneticist and textbook
>writer at the California Institute of Technology. He joined a recent
>gathering of 60 scientists from around the world near Chengjiang, where
>Chen had found his first impressions of Haikouella five years ago.
He is also author of publications such as:
Davidson, E. H., Peterson, K., and Cameron, R. A. Origin of the adult
bilaterian body
plans: Evolution of developmental regulatory mechanisms. Science 270,
1319-1325,
1995.
and
Springer, M. S., Tusneem, N. A., Davidson, E. H. and Britten, R. J.
Phylogeny, rates of
evolution, and patterns of codon usage among sea urchin retroviral-like
elements,
with implications for the recognition of horizontal transfer. Mol. Biol.
Evol. 12,
219-230, 1995.
so I wonder why he would say that? Could this sound byte be out of context?
> According to Chen, the two main forces of evolution espoused by
>neoDarwinism, natural selection ("survival of the fittest") and random
>genetic mutation, cannot account for the sudden emergence of so many new
>genetic forms.
> "Harmony can be a driving force [of evolution], too," Chen proposed at
>the Chengjiang conference.
If the 2nd paragraph above is supposed to say the same thing as the first
paragraph above, it doesn't. This is very frustrating. I have a feeling a
lot was left out of this article. (Though I'm not suggesting Bertvan edited
it.) It sounds like Chen is arguing against a straw man. "Harmony" can be a
very dandy survival mechanism, conferring fitness on a population.
Cooperation is the main human survival mechanism. It's old news. So what's
the "too"? In addition to what?
> But conferences such as the one in Chengjiang may be changing some
>views. One of the symposium organizers, paleontologist David Bottjer of the
>University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said he disagrees with
>the idea of rapid evolution,
Is Bottjer disagreeing with punctuated equilibrium? I doubt it. Most
scientists now think evolution proceeds at different rates. Is he really
disagreeing with the idea of "sudden appearance"?
>but he conceded, "The Cambrian Explosion is
>going to tell us something different about evolution, in the sense that
>it's not the same story that we have always been taught."
That's funny. It sounds like he's perfectly willing to accept new
information as it comes in and modify the theory in light of that new
information. Religion is static. Science is not.
Susan
----------
For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus
http://www.telepath.com/susanb/
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