Posted on 04/29/2008 10:20:32 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
Postmodernism At Work
The following two statements are parts of comments made on the Free Republic forum in response to Pamela Hewitt's "Problems of Evolution."
"Nothing in Science is ever “proven”, just provisionally accepted pending further data." (—allmendream)
All science is tentative, and nothing is ever proved! (—Coyoteman)
Normally, I would not bother with such mindless statements, but they just happen to perfectly exemplify the post-modernist nonsense that is being taught in today's colleges and universities. It is why we are living in the age of gullibility. Do not suppose this is just ignorance, however. These things are being taught with a purpose. The idea is, if you convince people nothing is ever certain, proved, or absolute, you can then put over just anything and call it science.
If "nothing in science is ever proven:"
I must assume these two have "living wills" specifying that cardioversion or defibrillation is not to be used on them since the principle of using electricity to convert a fibrillaing heart to a sinus rhythm has never been proved.
I am going to feel very sorry for these two if they ever need an operation, since the efficacy of anesthesia (once a great scientific controversy) has never been proved.
And they must really be missing out on all those television programs and phone calls transmitted by satellites launched into orbit around the earth's equator at a distance of about 22,300 miles which maintain a stationary position over the earth, by maintaining an orbital speed of approximately 6000 miles per hour, because, according to them, the physical principles such satellites are based on have never been proved.
They must only use electricity if it does not come from nuclear power plants, since the scientific principles describing a sustained chain nuclear reaction have never been proved. (Maybe they use no electricity at all, since they are sure the theory of combustion and Ohm's law have never been proved either.)
Nor must they use computers, or any other electronic devices that would not and could not work if the theories of electronics and quantum mechanics they are based on were not proved. They must avoid all Sky Scrapers because the laws of physics which are the basis of their engineering from the materials used to the structural design would fail if those physical principles were mere unproven hypotheses which, according to them, they are.
I do not know what planet these two live on, but on this planet the principle of an electric current being generated simply by moving a magnet in a coil of wire discovered by Michael Faraday, who was considered a charlatan by his contemporaries, has been proved. The unbelieved assertions by Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi that wireless communication is possible, has been proved.
What kind of demented mind can insist that nothing in science has been proved? One that assumes things without evidence, based on nothing more than the fact someone does not accept their particular faith. Here is the evidence (a concept totally foreign to such second-hand minds).
"Being a nurse doesn't QUALIFY one, in and of itself, to make an academic argument on Evolution or Genetics. ... Nothing better than an educated layman."
The fact that the "nurse" happens to be a degreed geneticist who has both worked in the field and lectured in it as well, these dimwits did not bother to discover. Evidence is not something they care about, since their cherished faith is being threatened by objective questions their little minds are incapable of answering.
They are dripping with hubris and patent snobbery, exactly like those "scientists" who were publishing papers proving heavier-than-air human flight was impossible while two laymen, who were obviously not educated well enough to learn what they were doing was "scientifically" impossible, were too busy flying to notice. According to these two jokers, the possibility of heavier-than-air human flight has never been proved. They're still waiting for, "further data."
If you believe nothing in science has been proved, it makes it easy to swallow totally made up stories such as the following:
"Evolutionary Biology has unequivocally established that all organisms evolved from a common ancestor over the last 3.5 billion years;" [From Rutgers University]
What's the difference between "unequivocally established" and "proved?" In normal English, even as spoken by scientists, there is no difference; but these story tellers can always say they never said it was "proved" we all came from a common ancestor. It's meant to deceive and gain unquestioned acceptance.
And it's pure fiction. There is no way such a thing could possibly be established. If evolution could happen once, there is nothing in reason or evidence that even suggests it could not happen more than once or even hundreds or thousands of times; but it's happening more than once would not fit their story, so just ignore that fact and present your story as, "unequivocally established," and all the gullible academics will swallow it whole.
Shame on you. I normally like your posts, but that statement betrays the same kind of proud and willful ignorance so common in cretin creationists and IDiots.Scientific method itself is the product of philosophy. There would be no modern science were it no the insights of great philosophers like Aristotle, Bacon, and Hume, to just name a few.
Perhaps you're right, but science has moved on while in many ways philosophy has not. Philosophers seem to still be fighting the same issues they were 2,500 years ago.
Or, perhaps I am reacting more to the versions of philosophy we see on these threads. When I see what a couple of our resident philosophers post I am glad I managed to avoid philosophy entirely through 12 years of college.
(Courtesy pings.)
Hmmmm... explains a lot.
I managed to avoid economics and sociology too. Can't see that it has done me any harm either. ; - )
LOLOL!
But if it makes you feel superior, keep with it. I wouldn't want you to feel like one of us laymen.
I would advise you to step back and take a good look at what that statement says about you -- but I doubt if anyone who would engage in such mindless, broad-brush labeling would understand.
How very un-postmodern of me! ;)
Judging the merits of any scholarly discipline by the anonymous posts of people on internet forums seems rather unwise to me.
I am glad I managed to avoid philosophy entirely through 12 years of college.
You seem to be taking pride in your ignorance. That's not a very scholarly attitude, to say the least.
P.S. Twelve years of college? Surely you jest. I've never known anyone stupid or lazy enough to have taken that long to obtain an undergraduate degree. I hope you are including grad school and a stint as a post-doc in that 12 year figure.
Perhaps that's because certain universal issues haven't changed in 2,500 years. Science really hasn't any way of "changing" them, in the sense of bringing them to conclusions.
But philosophers don't "fight" issues. (I am beginning to detest the usage of words such as "fight," "struggle," etc., etc., so beloved of our socially progressive would-be world-changers....) Philosophers simply recognize that there are perennially open questions that need to be left open. All answers posed to them must in principle be considered provisional; contingent, not conclusive.
Questions like: Where did the world come from? What is life and death? What is knowledge? Why are things the way they are, and not some other way? Why is there anything at all, why not nothing? These are not scientific questions, though they ultimately lie at the very root of science....
The reason they are "open" questions is because the scientific method has no way to "close" them. Remember, the scientific method can deal only with phenomena capable of direct observation — that is, "detectable by human or machine sensors in observer time." To "close" philosophy's open questions would mean that the observer would have to stand outside of spacetime, to know not only the whole present, but the whole future as well as the whole past. And this no human observer can ever do.
Of course, it's entirely possible that questions like these have no appeal, no attraction for you. In which case, I'd wonder why....
Thanks for the ping, Coyoteman!
"I’m sorry, I have no idea. I do not believe in ID. As I said early, if the life on this planet was designed, it’s a botched design. Who would design life where most of it existed by killing and eating each other."
I think the nurse is a fan of the book Lifecode.
Just read the article and am, to be generous, not favorably impressed due to tripping over errors every few words.DNA does not code for triglycerides.
Eukaryotes are not just “multi celled organisms”.
Point mutations are not “almost always deleterious”.
There are more neutral mutations than beneficial or detrimental.
Recombination is not usually either neutral or deleterious, instead it is so beneficial that recombination is a major reason sexual reproduction is maintained instead of the more efficient asexual route.
Female gametes do undergo mutation (both eyebrows raised at the counter-claim).
New alleles are not required to be dominant.
We have observed speciation.
Wow. Ow. The pain. She apparently does not understand enantiomers. The directionality of an alpha helix is controlled by the stereochemistry of the amino acids involved, and that is controlled by biosynthesis. Same with DNA. It *can’t not* twist the way it does. Whee! Grab two complimentary DNA strands, drop them in buffer, heat, cool slowly, and watch them spontaneously match up and coil into a right-handed helix. That happens all on its own because that’s the lowest energy conformation.
“This does not, of itself, prove the Hox box does in fact control limb structure, since the product of the mutant gene is a shortened form of the required protein, therefore unrecognizable to the body and possibly treated as many other toxic elements are and consigned to the furthest limbs.”
Pardon me but, ZOMG WTF LOL?? Homeobox genes do in fact control body patterning, the truncated Hox gene would not be “unrecognizable to the body”, merely unable to interact with its substrates, and organisms do not ship toxins out to their extremities (”Hmm, this looks poisonous. I guess instead of letting it go on its way to the liver to be detoxified I’ll ship it to my hand. Who needs hands anyway.”)
“There is no genetic evidence which demonstrates the final skeletal form is purely and solely genetically driven.”
No one ever said that the skeleton was “purely and solely genetically driven”. Our skeletons are constantly modified by the stresses we place upon them (which is why astronauts have to worry about osteoporosis as their relatively unstressed bones are broken down by osteoclasts) but genetics!! pretty much is what runs the basic structure.
“That it is a combination of factors, including the environment which the forms develop in, which directs the final shape, and that the shape found in all animals, (with a series of minor variations) is so, not because of “descent” from a common ancestor, but because in the environment of this world, it cannot take another.”
She can’t even come up with something original. Evolutionists have studied distributions in morphospace and determined that some body plans are not possible to reach from current body plans or just plain not possible. However, the fossil record clearly demonstrates evolution of body plans.
All in all, massively error-filled, not the work of an expert. I would say she’s an educated layman, and an excellent example of the saying, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Either you and I mean something different when we say "degreed geneticist" or she's a disgrace to her field. Geneticists understand homeobox genes and body patterning and understand why DNA coils the way it does.
I didn't think you would understand what I'm talking about. To paraphrase a line from an old song -- "It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it."
And, the way you said it makes you come across like snobbish clod. Try a liottle tact and you might not be the target so often.
How do you soft peddle the “your source got everything wrong and is obviously vague about her credentials for good reason”?
You bristled at the word layman, which isn’t even a pejorative.
How nice do I have to be when dismissing incorrect and nonsensical tripe?
It seems to me that for being accused in the vanity thread of being a Postmodernist I have stuck to the subject of her credentials, her vagueness about her credentials, and the veracity of her statements (all of which is underestimating).
Nothing I have said was a personal attack or “snobbish” or being a “clod”. Please compare that to the litany of abuse dished out to me in post #62.
Post #7: Your “medical professional” (i.e. a nurse) who is a “degreed geneticist” (what pray tell is her degree? And what is her degree in?) is nothing better than an ILL educated layman. Her essay was full of basic and fundamental errors right from the beginning.
Post #34: I pointed out the nurses obfuscation about their supposed qualifications, and their obvious lack of knowledge of the subject due to numerous errors; this was not an attack on the person just their reasons for dissembling about their qualifications and their obvious lack of knowledge of the subject.
Post #42: The author states that most mutations are detrimental and the rest are mostly neutral. This is an error. By far the majority of mutations are selective neutral. Your author doesn't even understand the basics of Kamura’s neutral mutation theory and the basics of Molecular Evolution.
She also thinks that sharks maintaining the same basic body plan over millions of years is somehow a blow against the theory of evolution (Nevermind (sic) the millions of years, and the evidence of so many other species changing around them). Nothing in the theory of evolution through natural selection MANDATES major body changes. A shark had a great body plan and a great food procurement strategy back in the late Cretaceous, and over two thousand shark species have been described in the fossil record.
Should I point out all her other errors? She started out with fundamental errors in her first paragraph that showed her poor understanding of the subject and the history of Science.
So what is her degree? What work has she done in genetics? Her obfuscation about her credentials goes well with her obvious lack of knowledge on the subject.
Post #50: The author stated her credentials (same article different web site) exactly as you did; a “medical professional” (i.e. a nurse) who had “done work in genetic research” (did she collect samples?).
I read the entire article, otherwise how would I have known about the shark idiocy; you might recall that it was at the end of the article.
If she cannot take the heat maybe she should avoid the kitchen. You put up ideas in Science to have them critiqued and criticized; although it was obvious from her “so called Theory of Evolution” opening shot that she was singing to the “cdesign proponentist” AMEN chorus and expected only laurels for her juvenile critique that got the very basics of evolution incorrect.
I have seen better educated Biology undergraduates, which is all I suspect her “credentials” in genetics extend to. Wow, so impressive. She also looks from her pic that she got any degree a long time ago; maybe she should dust off those old text books, much of what she thinks she knows of the subject is incorrect.
Post #90: I was wondering why she was so vague about her actual qualifications. There is nothing to be ashamed about being a nurse. I like nurses. It is just that being a nurse is not a qualification, in and of itself, to make pronouncements on Evolution.
She revealed herself to be a rather ill educated laymen when she said that most mutations are deleterious and most of the rest are neutral. Over 90% of mutations in humans are neutral to selective pressure. Less than 5% of our DNA is genes or the regulatory sequences of genes, and less than 5% of non genetic DNA shows evolutionary conservation. Her essay is full of errors right from the beginning showing a complete ignorance of Molecular Evolution; and we are supposed to take her “Hewitt Conjecture” seriously when she so obviously hasn’t done her homework?
Is it not appropriate to point out that your “medical professional” who is a “degreed geneticist” is a nurse with a Masters Degree? Why is she ashamed of it? I am quite proud of my M.S.; a lot of work went into it.
Is it also not appropriate to point out that she betrays just how little she actually knows about the subject in each and every paragraph?
Post #107: As you pointed out, I am a layman in everything except Science, soldiering, teaching, and farming. Layman is not a pejorative, although it certainly is applicable to any nurse who wishes to be considered an expert in Science or Evolution by claiming to be a “medical professional”. But ill-educated seems incontrovertible. I notice nobody has tried to defend any of her numerous errors, they just say I am rude and snobbish for pointing them out.
How very un-postmodern of me! ;)
Post #109: I see no articles referenced for any Pamela Hewitt on pubmed for any work on the ARO9 gene. Does she have any publications?
Interesting to find an Aristotelianism here. However, the premise is incorrect, so the conclusion is neither correct nor incorrect. Science is built on the error of Cartesianism, the error being in not using reason to locate the limits of knowledge.
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