Posted on 03/11/2003 3:01:59 PM PST by Remedy
A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.
During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."
The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.
"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."
Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.
"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."
Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.
Yes, indeed he does. You clearly don't, however.
Your misconception is so basic that it can be addressed by this website introducing children to science.
They say, "A scientific law describes an observed regularity of nature, like 'air resistance causes falling objects to reduce their speed.' It is a generalization that scientists make from their research findings. A useful scientific law can be used to accurately predict what will happen in many situations."
As for theory, they say, "A scientific theory is an interrelated collection of concepts and models, which together form a rich system that can describe, predict, and explain some phenomena. You see, any phenomena can be represented with several different types of models. And, you often need more than one type of model if you are trying to understand something deeply. This set of models, taken together, is a scientific theory. And, scientific theories form the basis for understanding and making sense of the world."
Close enough. Another way of looking at it is that a "law" is just a theory (or portion of a theory) simple enough to express in one pithy sentence.
And if you think that "laws" are somehow more "proven" or "reliable" than theories, I'll point out that Newton's laws of motion break down at speeds near the velocity of light, and the gas laws break down for low or high enough temperatures or volumes, etc.
Funny. The professor understood.
In your first sentence you refer to questions (plural) and then in the next sentence you refer to the question (singular) so maybe you could understand that I might not be "getttng the gist" of your question.
I admit ignorance of Haldane's rule but I did go look it up before I posted this. I'm not sure what it has to do with the fact that each species seems to have a specific number of chromosome pairs that occur in each of the cells of its normal population. Maybe you could enlighten me.
ML/NJ
One of the sillier demands for validation of authority I've ever seen on these threads. If someone isn't practicing the profession they claim, they'll trip up. As for smart versus stupid, even Forrest Gump remembered what his Mama told him.
Could you provide some addition information? I would especially be interested in information about whether there is any known case of a non-23-pair-human producing a child?
ML/NJ
You wrote:
Evolution has as much to do with biology as theories about the origin of the solar system have to do with chemistry, which is nothing.The "nothing" claim was the central error. Evolution has a *huge* amount to do with biology -- it's the formative factor in almost every aspect of why modern organisms are as they are, in both the largest sense (i.e. the structure of our bodies) and at the smallest (i.e. why we have the biochemistry that we do).
As for your claim that the origin of the solar system has "nothing" to do with chemistry, that's in error too, although not to as great a degree. True, many of the laws of chemistry would remain unchanged no matter how the solar system was formed, but that doesn't make the formation of the solar system irrelevant to chemistry in general, because it does affect the chemical makeup of our planet's crust and atmosphere and the types of chemical reactions that occur naturally (a valid field for chemists). In fact, the chemical makeup of our planet (and the Moon, and so on) gives great clues to how our solar system must have (and could not have) formed, precisely *because* the nature of that origin affects the chemical makeup of the results. And conversely the laws of chemistry had a lot to do with how our solar system did form. So the subjects are hardly related by "nothing".
Okay, Einstein, if you're so smart, don't just sit there casting nebulous insults, tell *us* what the differences really are. I could use some entertainment.
You might be correct about your second assertion. But I like to think that the old standardized tests, at least, were excellent predictors. I find that most of the people who would rather brush them off didn't score very well.
ML/NJ
Yes, yes it is. Your point? Are you under the mistaken impression that evolution doesn't deal with the subject of living organisms?
Certainly can't disprove it. Agnostic on the whole issue since I was a pre-teen. It's not a science question.
Was that supposed to be hard?
As for your claim that the origin of the solar system has "nothing" to do with chemistry, that's in error too, although not to as great a degree. True, many of the laws of chemistry would remain unchanged no matter how the solar system was formed, but that doesn't make the formation of the solar system irrelevant to chemistry in general, because it does affect the chemical makeup of our planet's crust and atmosphere and the types of chemical reactions that occur naturally (a valid field for chemists). In fact, the chemical makeup of our planet (and the Moon, and so on) gives great clues to how our solar system must have (and could not have) formed, precisely *because* the nature of that origin affects the chemical makeup of the results. And conversely the laws of chemistry had a lot to do with how our solar system did form. So the subjects are hardly related by "nothing".
I would ask you to identify a single chemistry test at any level, that has a chapter on the origin of the solar system. (None of mine did.)
I stand by my assertion that the origin of the solar system has nothing to do with the study of chemistry. My analogy attempted to demonstrate the absurdity of coupling evolution (non-science, to my mind) with biology (verifiable science) by coupling it with the absurd claim that speculation about the origin of the solar system is a part of the science of chemistry. I'm sorry if it went over your head.
ML/NJ
The vast majority of XXY males do not produce enough sperm to allow them to become fathers. If these men and their wives wish to become parents, they should seek counseling from their family physician regarding adoption and infertility.I am not arguing that abnormal chromosome counts are not harmful in these instances, but they do happen and they are not fatal. There are instances in other species where changes in chromosome count have no harmful effects.However, no XXY male should automatically assume he is infertile without further testing. In a very small number of cases, XXY males have been able to father children.
In addition, a few individuals who believe themselves to be XXY males may actually be XY/XXY mosaics. Along with having cells with the XXY chromosome count, these males may also have cells with the normal XY chromosome count. If the number of XY cells in the testes is great enough, the individual should be able to father children.
Karyotyping, the method traditionally used to identify an individual's chromosome count, may sometimes fail to identify XY/ XXY mosaics. For this reason, a karyotype should never be used to predict whether an individual will be infertile or not.
I believe the term spontaneous generation concerns the very first organism from which every other organism supposedly evolved. Where did the first organism come from? It spontaneously generated! Sure, but that's outside of the field of study of evolution (although there is certainly interest in it from the evolutionary research community). Evolution deals with how things change generation-to-generation while reproducing themselves. By definition, abiogenesis (literally, "life's origin") itself is a different field of study, which worked by different "rules" than those which govern evolution.
It's a fundamental shift in processes that occurs once replication manages to occur for the first time (however it occurs). Evolution would remain a valid explanation for how modern life came to be no matter how the first *seed* was planted (e.g. by God, by chance, by aliens starting a science project, by a meteorite bringing simple life from another planet, etc.)
Additionally, you have a misconception in your wording. You write of the first "organism", but most likely (i.e. according to the best research as it now stands) the first successful replicator would likely have more resembled an autocatalytic collection of chemicals than anything we would call an "organism". But evolution works on replicators of any kind to improve and refine them, not just those that are undeniably "living", and thus the first replicator would eventually be honed by evolution into complex enough systems that they would later be rightful subjects of the title "organism". Creationists grossly distort the picture when they try to imply that scientist believe that life took a sudden leap from a soup of random chemicals to something resembling a modern cell, *poof*. There are many stages in between.
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