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To: ThanhPhero
“Gravity” used to mean importance would just perplex a physicist when someone said “it has no gravity because it isn't important” in the context of a celestial body.

Also I guess it depends upon if you are describing the change itself as evolution - or if you were ascribing the change to being the RESULT of evolution.

If you said that Chinese Americans are taller than Chinese BECAUSE OF evolution - you would be wrong.

If you were saying the change itself was ‘evolution’ you might make a biologist want to correct you - but you would be semantically correct.

So how did the conversation go....

“Of course there is a constant evolution, as man has changed noticeably just since our arrival on this continent. Men of the Revolutionary War and Great War of Northern Aggression were much smaller and shorter lived than are we, so we can see evolution in our own families.” Concho

“The increased size of 20th century Americans seems to be from improved nutrition and health care and not from evolution.” Lucius Cornelius Sulla (obviously speaking of evolution as the MECHANISM of change)

“Increased nutrition and health are evolution every bit as much as genetic change. Evolution just means change.” ThanhPhero

NOT in the context of biological evolution - which was what was being discussed. Why are modern men taller than those during the Civil War? The change itself may be semantically described as ‘evolution’ i.e. gradual change - but the MECHANISM of change was better nutrition and medicine.

73 posted on 05/12/2011 3:56:47 PM PDT by allmendream (Tea Party did not send the GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism.)
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To: allmendream

Very clear explanation of terminology there. Good work.


78 posted on 05/12/2011 5:33:08 PM PDT by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable -- Daniel Webster)
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To: allmendream

Igrant that it would perplex a physicist. The physicist has a proprietary approach to language and feels that he and his brother scientists define words as they would be useful to themselves, jargon, as it were. They can speak their own language among themselves.


86 posted on 05/12/2011 7:12:14 PM PDT by ThanhPhero (Khach hanh huong den La Vang)
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