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.
Actually, in Columbus' time it was pretty generally accepted that the Earth was spherical. The real question was how feasible it would be to go the "long way around" it. Most thought that the voyage would be too long to be practical and/or safe, and would be open to too many unknown dangers. Columbus thought it would be practical and wanted to give it a shot.
The funny thing is that at the core Columbus was wrong -- the Earth was a lot bigger than the believed it to be, and what he thought was the "Indies" reached from the "opposite" direction than that usually used to travel to it, was actually an entire new continent blocking his way. And in fact, had North America not been there, he and his crew would have probably died of starvation and thirst before they circumnavigated the globe as they had originally planned.
And the theory of evolution, as it exists now, needs to be questioned.
And it is.
In fact, many thoughts about the theory of evolution have changed as people research and question. So why was it wrong for this professor to do so?
First, because I think it's pretty clear she wasn't just "questioning it", she was trying to undermine it in the minds of her students. Second, because a classroom is not the proper place to do such things (in that manner). If you're trying to challenge the orthodoxy, do it in the science journals and other forums, *not* the classroom. It's one thing to point out the "open questions" in a given field. It's another thing entirely to try to "convert" your students (in a science class) away from widely accepted scientific views.
We'd all be dead if there were. Many if not most food crops are polyploid. And marijuana farmers have for decades been treating their crops with colchicine to make them polyploid. I suppose you could argue that making marijuana more potent is a harmful effect; hey, yeah, let's say that. All we need to really get this thread going is a War on Drugs discussion. Alert the Libertarians!
Oh? By what model? In order to calculate a probability, you must have a particular model of spontaneous formation in mind. Please state it. Then please state how you have ruled out all other of the nearly countless possible models of spontaneous formation.
We'll wait...
Hint: Those who presume to calculate the "impossibility" of spontaneous formation haven't even *begun* to examine the depths of the issue. It's like the famous "expert" who calculated that a flight to the Moon was obviously "impossible" because a shipful of even nitroglycerin wouldn't have enough power to lift itself against gravity:
"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialization will carry scientist working in thought-tight compartments. Let us critically examine the proposal. For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed is 15,180 calories... The energy of our most violent explosive - nitroglycerine - is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the earth... Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible..."The math is perfect, but obviously the conclusion is flat wrong. Why? Because he overlooked other methods and chemicals which might be used for the task. Chemicals: There are many fuels with *more* energy content per weight than nitroglycerin. Methods: His argument only applies if you intend to take ALL the original fuel into space with you -- as anyone who has watched a rocket launch knows, most of the fuel is burnt off and left behind well before the rocket leaves the atmosphere; the energy of a few *tons* of fuel is imparted into the velocity of just a few *pounds* of payload, giving the payload all the energy it needs.
-- A. W. Bickerton, Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Canterbury College (Christchurch, New Zealand, 1926)
And so it is with the creationists who think they know everything there is about how life could possibly have first come together, and thus calculate the improbability of it with great precision.
If that had been what she had actually been doing, I don't believe they *would* have "thrown a fit". Thus I doubt it's what she *was* actually doing.
The author of this article doesn't tell us if the woman taught an opinion one way or the other about the theories. The assumption is made that just because she uses "critical thinking" in title the point of the course was to trash evolution.
No, the assumption being made is that if she was given hell for what she was doing (and that much *is* clear from the article), there's probably a good reason.
I actually agree with you (and I am a [theistic] evolutionist), if that is actually what happened. All that we have, however, is a very vague article from a source I suspect may have an ax to grind. I'd love to know more.
Not at all. one of the benefits of my job is I get to see tons and tons of fallacious nonsense, pretty much every time I grade an hour exam, in fact. When someone tells me carbon is divalent or the entropy always decreases in a chemical reaction, I have no qualms about grading them dead wrong.
No we don't -- we only know that the tiny fraction of the Moon's superficial surface we've examined turns out not to be cheesy. For all we know, the other 99.99+% of it might have a very high cheese content. The most parsimonious *theory*, however, is that the rest of the Moon is reasonably similar to what we've managed to personally examine -- but there are no guarantees that we won't find some really big surprises (cheese or otherwise) as we examine more of it.
It is, in fact, highly unscientific to say that we have "PROVEN" that the rest of the Moon necessarily is like what we have looked at so far. As even your own flawed example illustrates nicely, this is why science does not deal in "proofs". All conclusions are open to revision by further discoveries or ways of looking at the known evidence.
For a nice but short introduction to this issue of epistemology, read 29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific Proof? . A longer discussion can be found at Evolution is a Fact and a Theory , and a broader examination at Evolution and Philosophy: An Introduction .
There is NO PROOF of the THEORY of evolution.
Of course not, just as there is "NO PROOF" that there are any such things as atoms. There is, however, very strong evidence for the existence of atoms, just as there is very strong evidence for evolution.
Even Darwin spoke to "micro" evolution, not "macro" evolution.
Wrong. Try reading The Origin of Species sometime.
It's, (evolution), a THEORY.
Read the above "fact and theory" link to understand where you're making your error.
Of course no "serious" "scientist" will ever disprove that THEORY, if they are not allowed to look.
But they are allowed to look, so your point is... bizarre.
Just how far have we come in scientific method, and honest exploration, in "science" from Galileo's time?
Ahem -- need I point out that in Galileo's time, as in the current anti-evolution flap, it's the *religious* community that's trying to suppress the scientific discovery?
I know this was from a ways back in the thread, but it's one of my favorite bugaboos. Let me do more than suggest that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not an issue with evolution. I will state it bluntly.
The second law states that the total entropy of a system always increases over time. Entropy is a statistical measure of the number of ways the atoms of a system can be arranged while retaining the same thermodynamic properties (temperature, volume, pressure, etc.) That's all it says!
There is no second law for information content, or any other such nonsense.
Now, like most systems that take place on Earth, the Sun is the primary source of energy. So, if we calculate the entropic inrease in the Sun, and find some way to calculate the entropic decrease due to evolution, we can talk about this in terms of the Second Law. The first calculation is horrendously complex, beyond our current ability. The second one - well, we don't even know how to start it.
In short, there is not a Second Law problem with evolution. Note: If anyone cares to perform the above calculations, I will cheer as loudly as anyone when you pick up your Nobel Prize.
Drew Garrett
It seems like you're looking for some acknowledgement that he was a genius or something, so that you can then bring in something he said or believed that is relevent to the current discussion. Can we get over the buildup, please?
Oh, and for myself, I'd say he was a good chemist, and an inspired inventor. His opinion in other fields is of historical interest only.
Drew Garrett
I gave this some thought by relating this issue to an area that I am knowledgable about, namely income taxes. Since taking courses in income tax at school and since studying it extensively while practicing accounting, I became aware of the various theories put forth by tax protestors that attempt to establish there is no income tax. They are of course totally bogus. However, I do believe it is helpful to learn these theories on a couple of levels.
The first reason is that it is a great way to learn the various assumptions and premises that the income tax is based on, something that is really not taught because its "obvious". When I took it upon myself to study these theories it gave me a better, stronger foundation for my over all knowledge about income tax. I could better see how the various parts of law and history of taxes comes together. There is no doubt in my mind that I am a better tax researcher because of my study of tax protester arguments.
A second reason it that it helps by observing these discredited theories in that one can see mistakes in logic, the misreading of the language and the errors in construction made by the theories. Its a great way to not only think critically it gives one the ability to apply critical thinking. This is helpful to me as a researcher because it is great case studies of the kinds of mistakes that are possible to make especially when you appear to be yielding the result you want.
A third reason it is helpful to study these theories is to simply be aware of them and the basis on which they are formed. What is interesting is that even though the theories don't work they each have some small amount of truth at their core.
So, upon looking at a comparison of this issue in my field, I would think a special forum to discuss the tax protestor theories at college would be a good thing and not something I would be afraid of and certainly not something I would fire someone from any posistion from.
The defensive nature of the person who fired this person makes me think they are too insecure in their own beliefs.
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