Posted on 07/27/2006 3:00:03 PM PDT by BrandtMichaels
Hard drives were being designed this way a decade ago. It has generated some of the most reliable/durable designs in the industry. It produced good baseline designs that the engineers could then tweak into a production designs; the evolutionary designs were solid, but there were usually a few bits that were noticeably suboptimal in evaluation and which could be fixed without breaking the design if care was taken.
sounds similar to the "designs" produced through biological evolution. the knee, as an example.
just one note: I'd hesitate to dignify Egyptology with the name "science" or "history"
Science in Merriam Websters dictionary; " a department of systemized knowledge as an object of study, (the science of theology).
"knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method"
Of course that includes a wide varied of subjects. And there are many very reputable creation scientists that would differ with your charcterization of the toe debate being over. They are no less qualified than any other scientist.
As the word (and meaning of) "science" stems from Latin, I'll now mildly one-up you with the Harper Collins Latin Concise Dictionary:
scio, scire, scivi, scitum - vt to know; to have skill in; (with inf.) to know how to; quod ~iam as far as I know; -ito you may be sure
you should be able to see that "scio" means "to know" as in: facts and figures, mechanisms, practical applications, real-world causality and consequence. It is clearly NATURALISTIC in its denotation. This is backed up with the denotations of the related words sciens (knowing, with purpose, deliberate), scientia (knowledge, skill), scisco (to inquire, to learn, to question), scitor (to inquire), and seems to have been derived directly from scindo (to cut open, to divide, to part, to dissect). <
Let's compare the root meaning of science with the following alternative Latin words having bearing on this discussion:
cognosco, cognoscere, cognovi, cognitum - (vt)
to get to know, learn, understand; to know, recognize, identify; (law) to investigate; (military) to reconnoiter
As opposed to scire, this indicates "to know" in a general, vernacular sense, and "to know" in a philosophical sense, as from study of Hellenic ditherings - it is, after all, directly derived from Greek "gnosis"
It is a long step away from the pragmatic knowledge indicated by scio
cogito, cogitare, cogitavi, cogitatum - (vt, vi) to think, ponder, imagine; to feel disposed; to plan, intend
credo, credire, cerdidi, creditum - (vt, vi) to entrust, lend, have confidence in; to believe; to think, suppose; ~eres one would have thought
Now, look, fabian - the Romans were a brutally pragmatic people, and their language reflected this. THEY were wise enough to distinguish between knowledge based on hard practical facts and "the other kinds of (cough!) 'knowledge'" imputed in the airy omphaloskepticisms of the philosophers and the pronouncements of self-described religious authorities.
It is a pity that Webster was not so wise as the Romans, really - it is, but that is not my problem.
Someone descirbed ID as "creationism dressed up in white lab vestments".
Observation, not presupposition. The Flood story in the Bible was known to be false by 1830 or so. There's just no way to reconcile the rocks and soils with such an occurence. Here's an interesting discussion of the geology in one place: Is Frenchman Mountain Evidence of Noah's Flood
yep - "creationism in a lab-coat"
as to all this thread's buzzings about how science is something other than, well, yanno... SCIENCE:
Q: whaddaya get when you wrap a lab coat around a cow?
A: a cow in a lab coat, not a scientist.
as with Bovines, so with Ovines.
Sciolism might be an interesting word to trace.
hrmn.
first principles: does that word actually exist in any modern language?
ah:
"sciolism: A pretentious attitude of scholarship; superficial knowledgeability."
Apparently not in contemporary American. It was a common word a century ago, usually in the form sciolist or sciolism.
appears to be from "sciolus" - smatterer
Aha! Not real far in meaning from sophism, and not far from dilettantism.
Smattering--how much Russian I know.
sciolus is from "Late Latin"
I'm not familiar with Late or Church Latin - was taught on Virgil et alia
actually, it has the flavor of a good epithet.
better than dilettante or sophist, it rolls off the tongue with bite.
I shall save, and savor, this word you have given me.
thanks.
I have a similar problem with Homeric Greek.
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