Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
By WILL SENTELL
wsentell@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
High school biology textbooks would include a disclaimer that evolution is only a theory under a change approved Tuesday by a committee of the state's top school board.
If the disclaimer wins final approval, it would apparently make Louisiana just the second state in the nation with such a provision. The other is Alabama, which is the model for the disclaimer backers want in Louisiana.
Alabama approved its policy six or seven years ago after extensive controversy that included questions over the religious overtones of the issue.
The change approved Tuesday requires Louisiana education officials to check on details for getting publishers to add the disclaimer to biology textbooks.
It won approval in the board's Student and School Standards/ Instruction Committee after a sometimes contentious session.
"I don't believe I evolved from some primate," said Jim Stafford, a board member from Monroe. Stafford said evolution should be offered as a theory, not fact.
Whether the proposal will win approval by the full state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on Thursday is unclear.
Paul Pastorek of New Orleans, president of the board, said he will oppose the addition.
"I am not prepared to go back to the Dark Ages," Pastorek said.
"I don't think state boards should dictate editorial content of school textbooks," he said. "We shouldn't be involved with that."
Donna Contois of Metairie, chairwoman of the committee that approved the change, said afterward she could not say whether it will win approval by the full board.
The disclaimer under consideration says the theory of evolution "still leaves many unanswered questions about the origin of life.
"Study hard and keep an open mind," it says. "Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth."
Backers say the addition would be inserted in the front of biology textbooks used by students in grades 9-12, possibly next fall.
The issue surfaced when a committee of the board prepared to approve dozens of textbooks used by both public and nonpublic schools. The list was recommended by a separate panel that reviews textbooks every seven years.
A handful of citizens, one armed with a copy of Charles Darwin's "Origin of the Species," complained that biology textbooks used now are one-sided in promoting evolution uncritically and are riddled with factual errors.
"If we give them all the facts to make up their mind, we have educated them," Darrell White of Baton Rouge said of students. "Otherwise we have indoctrinated them."
Darwin wrote that individuals with certain characteristics enjoy an edge over their peers and life forms developed gradually millions of years ago.
Backers bristled at suggestions that they favor the teaching of creationism, which says that life began about 6,000 years ago in a process described in the Bible's Book of Genesis.
White said he is the father of seven children, including a 10th-grader at a public high school in Baton Rouge.
He said he reviewed 21 science textbooks for use by middle and high school students. White called Darwin's book "racist and sexist" and said students are entitled to know more about controversy that swirls around the theory.
"If nothing else, put a disclaimer in the front of the textbooks," White said.
John Oller Jr., a professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, also criticized the accuracy of science textbooks under review. Oller said he was appearing on behalf of the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian lobbying group.
Oller said the state should force publishers to offer alternatives, correct mistakes in textbooks and fill in gaps in science teachings. "We are talking about major falsehoods that should be addressed," he said.
Linda Johnson of Plaquemine, a member of the board, said she supports the change. Johnson said the new message of evolution "will encourage students to go after the facts."
Other able physicists, Evan Harris Walker and Roger Penrose among them, would not agree, if this is argument from authority.
The speed of light in classical physics is constant relative to what? To the observer. Or am I mistaken?
Physicist, the mind cannot be this easily discounted or dismissed.
No, the word "evolution" refers to a theory as to how a sequence of events caused the world to be as we see it today.
The point I'm making is that the author's use of the word "evolution" in this context is DIFFERENT than when someone uses it to refer to the biological Theory of Evolution.
Yes, he's referring to an all-encompassing theory of evolution. Why can't you bring yourself to admit that there are those who try and link Darwin's theory to cosmology.
(If the link doesn't work the address is http://hometown.aol.com/darwinpage/universe.htm)
Novelty.
I guess you've been told. Do what the fantasy Marine says, son. Crawl back in your hole and die.
;^)
I don't know about Walker, but Penrose most emphatically does believe that it is electrochemical. In fact, he believes to have pinpointed the crucial trick mechanism as a quantum electrodynamical effect owing to a particular molecular arrangement in microtubules. In any case, his ideas are simply hypotheses, and don't count as evidence for or against anything. But make no mistake: Penrose is a frank and unabashed materialist when it comes to consciousness.
Personally, I think Penrose is wrong. First, I didn't accept the arguments he laid out in The Emperor's New Mind that consciousness cannot be algorithmic. (I confess to having only skimmed his arguments in Shadows of the Mind, despite owning a beautiful signed first edition of same.)
Second, trick mechanisms such as the one he describes don't make evolutionary sense. (I know, that doesn't count as a strike against it in your book, but he doesn't present his ideas as being in anything but perfect consonance with evolution.) You see, according to Penrose, microtubules possess exactly the physical properties necessary for the apparently non-algorithmic aspects of human thought. But microtubules aren't peculiar to humans, or even to organisms that could remotely be construed as conscious, and yet they have always had that structure. How likely is it that this crucial mechanism has lain fallow for a billion years against the day when a creature could make proper use of it? It has teleology written all over it (I know, I know) but Penrose doesn't see it.
[Aside: Penrose would say that lesser minds do make use of the mechanism for what consciousness they possess. But since their consciousness isn't anything that couldn't be functionally (if not specifically) modelled algorithmically, no quantum hocus pocus was necessary. But since human consciousness does (according to Penrose) require such trickery, the accusation of teleology stands.]
(Although I didn't agree with the conclusions of The Emperor's New Mind, it really is an excellent book on many levels. It lays out the basics of both quantum mechanics and computer science as well as I've seen anywhere.)
The speed of light in classical physics is constant relative to what? To the observer. Or am I mistaken?
Relative to everything in the universe.
No.
"evolution" in that sentence = "the sequence of events caused the world to be as we see it today." That's the function of an appositive in grammar, to further define and elaborate on the word it refers to, which in this case was "evolution." This is consisteent with Webster's first definition for "evolution": "a process of formation or change; development."
Thus "evolution" as used in the sentence is the "sequence of events...." NOT an THEORY about the "sequence of events...." encompassing biology, geology, and cosmology.
We know this, aside from the grammar and construction of the sentence, because there is no scientific "theory of evolution" that even purports to provide an explanatory framework for biology AND geology AND cosmology. If you think there is, please, by all means, provide us with a citation from a mainstream peer-reviewed scince journal where it is proposed or discussed.
Why can't you bring yourself to admit that there are those who try and link Darwin's theory to cosmology.
There are those trying to link Elvis sightings and UFO's, crop-circles and time-travelers, and fluoridation and the International Communist Conspiracy. What of it? When you can provide citations from mainstream peer-reviewed science journals where your "well-known" "all encompassing" Theory of Evolution (that provides an explanatory framework for biology AND geology AND cosmology) are being discussed, and can provide evidence that the author was referring to it, we'll have something more to discuss.
In the meanwhile, I think there's nothing more I can do to convince you that your interpretation is clearly in error. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect you just can't stand the word "evolution," regardless of what sense in which it is being used ......
Ooh, ah! And on a silver platter, no less!
All material is ultimately quantum mechanical in nature. People think that when one billiard ball hits another, the action is obvious and simple, but it's not. What is actually happening is that a billion billion electron wavefunctions are interacting with each other nonlinearly, diffracting through each other, interfering with each other, amplifying and cancelling each other out by turns.
People also think that an electron wavefunction propagating is magical and incomprehensible, but it's not. It seems impossible because we try to think of it in terms of billiard balls and water waves and things like that. But this method of conceptualization is doomed to failure, because, billiard balls and water waves are composed of electron wavefunctions. It is not philosophically possible to describe the more fundamental in terms of the less fundamental. It just can't be done, and materialism has never required that it be possible.
The only correct way to think of it is that all material is quantum mechanical. The classical properties of matter that we experience every day are not the essential and irreducible properties all things material; they are simply emergent properties of material in quantity.
Far from refuting materialism, the quantum probabilities and correlations you fling at me are precisely what constitute the material world. You call them intangible, and you are correct, because tangibility itself is composed of them. It is true that matter is not the clockwork that Newton might have envisioned, but what is that to me? Material is the way it is, and not how anyone would wish it to be.
Surely, you jest....
;-)
"Evolution, the sequence of events by which the world came to be as we see it today, is the central organizing principle of the historical sciences -- biology, geology, and cosmology"If the clause "the sequence of events by which the world came to be as we see it today" is an apostive to the subject noun "evolution" why did you initially say the subject noun "referred" to said clause in Post 3565?
What the subject noun "refers" to is the object of the sentence "the central organizing principle of the historical sciences -- biology, geology, and cosmology."
"Evolution," as it's being used in that sentence, is "the central organizing principle." Now, you can say that "central organizing principle" is an axiom -- which I reject but one I strongly suspect that those who claim "evolution reveals an universe without design" seek to establish. You can claim it as a law, which I don't think anyone scientifically minded will support. Or you can call it what it is -- a theory attempting to tie together the historical sciences.
A completely worthless "explanation." This would explain the opposite too. The entire Creation-ID-Post-Modern nexus has zero explanatory power precicely because "designed that way" can be said of anything. It is the agressive denial of knowledge.
The other problem is that there are not only shared mutations among primates, but shared viral genes incorporated into primate genomes. These are in the "non-coding" regions and thus seem not to be subject to selection pressure. There are those shared by chimps, gorillas, and humans but not by orang-utans. The chances of this happening are coecively less that 1^720.
What do molecular fossils tell us about early microbial evolution? How can the study of contemporary microbes or geochemical samples inform us of past events? The work of the staff in this Branch also provides the conceptual basis and measurement criteria for future spacecraft missions to other solar system bodies such as Mars, Titan, and comets, in search of answers to such fundamental questions in non-terrestrial settings.
Astrobiology shares with other space related science programs a broad range of research interests. Astrobiology encompasses the understanding of biology as a planetary phenomenon. This includes how planetary processes give rise to life, how they sustain or inhibit life, and how life can emerge as an important planetary process; how astrophysical processes give rise to planets elsewhere, what the actual distribution of planets is, and whether there are habitable planets outside of our solar system; a determination of whether life exists elsewhere and how to search for and identify it; what the ultimate environmental limits of life are, whether Earth's biota represent only a subset of the full diversity of life, and the future of Earth's biota in space.
The mission of the NASA Astrobiology Institute is to further our understanding of these profound questions by:
carrying out, supporting and catalyzing collaborative interdisciplinary research;
training the next generation of astrobiology researchers; providing scientific and technical leadership on astrobiology investigations for current and future space missions;
exploring new approaches using modern information technology to conduct interdisciplinary and collaborative research amongst widely-distributed investigators;
supporting outreach by providing scientific content for K-12 education programs, teaching undergraduate classes, and communicating directly with the public
The Flute Playing Locust, the Scietologists, the Moslem version of Gilgamesh (as opposed to the Creationist version of Gilgamesh), the Yoruba version, the story of Quetzalcoatl (with particular attention to Tlaloc), etc. Okay for a history course but only wasting time for science.
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