Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
another i agree with. please dont turn on me as well.
the Bible is not disproved by any means by science, nor is science refuted by the Bible.
Why not, Mr. Science.
If science can tell it all, why not the afterlife?
yes he is, and those notes i have are detailed discussions. he has other sources, i may be able to cite those from him later.
It's fairly easy to ask nebulous, unanswerable question. Tiny kids do it all the time. Give us a mathematical description of your concept, and I assure you a qualified person will respond. Quite frankly, from my limited knowledge of the theory of gravitons, I think you are blowing smoke. I would suspect you have limited training in science, are very young, or completely nuts. I'm not sure which. But I will not hold my breath waiting for you to win a Nobel prize.
I am not a physicist (but we do have qualified people lurking on these threads) but I have read Einstein's 1905 papers. I don't have the training to judge them, but I can tell the difference between someone who reasons well and some who is terminally confused.
I may or may not agree. I am not sure yet. I do whole heartedly agree at least with the idea science does not refute the Bible. I am not sure about the other part of your comment.
I will not turn on you. I think we may be on the same side.
As the old saying goes... A house divided against itself can not stand.
Actually, yes. But that doesn't have anything to do with the existence of God. It does, perhaps have something to do with some people's reading of the Bible. But that is about human shortcomings, not God's.
How did that troll get the thread moved to the backroom? He's probably been pounding it continuously since it happened.****
I didn't post this, and it doesn't refer to you anyway. You only make yourself look paranoid by thinking it's about you.
Yeah, how dare you guys get a decent education, and post in rational, coherent, and grammatically proper sentences?
im sorry, when did talking about someone on the sidelines become the same as discussing a topic? where i come from, thats called "mud slinging" and has little or nothing to do with the topic at hand. when you attack a person, you stop figuring out a persons ideas. if the persons ideas are threatening to you, this isnt an issue. but im a harmless blogger, just like you. ....
The remarks weren't directed at you, but if you feel you resemble someone who is indirectly characterised by it, that's under your control, not mine.
....when does it become "rational" to mock someone instead of talk to them and teach them things? it fills the air with the stench of "elitism"
When the individual with whom I've attempted to have a rational discussion over the span of several days shows absolutely no sign of remotely understanding the topic on which I'm trying to have discourse, and just keeps evading the question and repeating jibberish, nonsensical answers by way of incoherent, grammatically appalling responses, I conclude that no rational communication with that person is possible beyond the realm of the most basic human needs.
And when that person further attacks thoughtful, intelligent members of this forum as "elitists," I do not think he is in a position to complain when the rest of us ignore him and and point out his folly among ourselves.
I was prepared to provide you with a proof that 0.999... is exactly equal to "1" two days ago, but you have been so cock-sure of yourself in your pronouncements that it can't be decided, and that math in general is "subjective" while at the same time evading the simple question of whether or not they are equal, that it became apparent to me that it would be wasted on you. The fact that you are in college and don't already KNOW the proof is even more appalling. You are, I am sorry to say, one of those rare people of whom it is said: "they are so off the mark, they aren't even wrong."
So, I'm sorry you take offense at the fact that you have been derisively dismissed by some of us, but frankly, you earned it. It will be a cold day in Hell before I apoligize for having paid attention in school and done the hard work to get a decent education at a top tier school (for what you apparently perceive as "elitism.") And while I don't speak for the others here, I am confident they share the sentiment...
I can safely assume you don't have children, and have forgotten being a child.
Educated-rational-elitist-placemarker!
You haven't said where you are from, but I hope English isn't your first language. (If you have recently started studying English, then good for you. I don't mean to ridicule you about that.) You should, however, give us some clue as to why you can't capitalize the first word of sentences.
So you coulda been a Mensa. What about the four sigma society?
the answers to all of your spouts about your perception of me i thought i regarded a few posts back.
i slipped into philosophy while discussing with a strict science crowd. i noted that is likely the cause of the friction.
i do not have children, but that doesnt explain how our naturally more curious youth becomes hard-headed (even myself) with age. when we simply explain a wave, and leave it there, we ask "how" and forget to keep asking "why?"
or at least, we dont approach "why" from enough angles.
Sleep ... Too much out-of-box thinking ... Must sleep ...
i slipped into philosophy while discussing with a strict science crowd. i noted that is likely the cause of the friction.
On that compellingly incoherent note, I rest my case; rational communication with you is impossible, except at perhaps the most primal of levels.
Science doesn't do "why", only "how".
my "inability" to capitalize the first letters more or less comes from my refusal to do so.
this is a blog setting, not a paper for work or school.
the rules are understood, yet there is little need for them to be used to communicate properly (when a 4 year old has "founded something" they demonstrate that rules can be over applied and still make sense tot he careful listener)
moreso: as dmenotsaretd by an eiaml ocne bfeor, eevn wrod srtcutre isn't ralely nedeed to cmomnuitcae fluly.
funny, because what we are discussing are the most primal rules of existance.
maybe thats another "problem" i have. i ask "why" in a puritanical science environment.
You simply don't know what science is and does. Stick to religion. they'll love you.
By the way, your childish refusal to conform to common grammar paints you as a fool. You are on a conservative site, not Jerry Brown's self-esteem academy. By your own standards (communication) you fail. Everyone sees your illiterate postings and thinks of a now-banned freeper who never made any sense. Do you really think running naked through the forum impresses anyone?
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