Science Icon Fires Broadside At Creationists

London Times vis The Statesman (India) ^ | 04 July 2004 | Times of London Editorial

[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.

[general_re]

ok, what preditory animal would you say couldnt kill a man with an iq of 40 easily?

How do chimpanzees manage to survive?

[PatrickHenry]

Thus is our knowledge advanced.

Scientists do research, producing results that can be verified; while the anti-scientists do public relations, appealing to the ignorant. Yes, it all makes sense.

[MacDorcha]

When the first raptors had wing-like appendages that gave them an aerodynamic advantage over the ones without it.

:snort: and you said i present false info? can you prove to me how wing-LIKE appendages would make a boon? aerodynamic advantages would be so moot that it would hardly be worth the effort. but then, now these animals that had simple scales and few bugs, are now crawling with mites!

[MacDorcha]

no, ignorant scientists do research on one field, and fail to relate it to the others.

"anti-scientists" take what we know, and put it all together. then they see there are huge gas all over the place.

[MacDorcha]

gas*gaps

[MacDorcha]

for several reasons. one, they live ni trees, devoid of most larger predators.

two, they have hair, protecting them somewhat in weather.

three, large communitites, which is the only acceptable trait we kept, yet a plane crash in the mountains with 10 survivors and well equiped still has a huge chance of none of them making it out alive. we are vey weak in the natural world, it is our created world that makes us stronger than them.

[MacDorcha]

No, creationism is not a theory. It makes no predictions nor does it provide explanations. It offers no tests of itself or anything else.


how many times do i ahve to say "origins of everything"?

and no, evolutionary theory, as we have both pointed out , does NOT include origin of life. the scientific supporters do though. they understand one aspect, now they hav to link it together. it seems you are a small picture person, which is fine, it helps with details. meanwhile though, there is more than evolution going on.

[PatrickHenry]

no, ignorant scientists do research on one field, and fail to relate it to the others.

"anti-scientists" take what we know, and put it all together. then they see there are huge ga[p]s all over the place.

Entirely wrong, like virtually all your posts in this thread. A scientific theory is worthless if it isn't consistent with everything else in other branches of science. Evolution, for example, is consistent with what is known by astronomy (the age of the solar system), geology (the age of the earth), genetics, chemistry, molecular biology, etc. There are no contradictions at all. None.

The anti-scientists reject it all, and come up with six-day creation and Noah's Ark. That's okay as theology, but there's nothing scientific about it.

[general_re]

for several reasons. one, they live ni trees, devoid of most larger predators.

Leopards and large constrictors climb trees, and both regularly prey on chimps.

two, they have hair, protecting them somewhat in weather.

We're not talking about the summit of Kilimanjaro here.

three, large communitites

That's part of it. Their social behaviors contribute to their survival, but those social behaviors are learned, not instinctive. They can learn how to fit into their tribes, as well as learn how to deal with their environment, and they're better at it than their competition is because they're smarter than their competition is. That's how they get by with limited intelligence - because the competition is even more limited in intelligence. It's like the old joke - if you and I are walking across the African veldt, and a lion comes along, I don't have to be faster than the lion, I just have to be faster than you. The chimp doesn't have to be smarter than people to survive, it just has to be smarter than the competition it encounters in the wild.

we are vey weak in the natural world, it is our created world that makes us stronger than them.

Exactly. That's why intelligence is a survival trait, and like all survival traits, having a little bit is better than having none at all. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Yes, there's more than evolution going on. However, theories being compartmentalized to make the books easier to carry, doesn't make creationism into a theory.

[ZULU]

"When anyone so strays, his opinion can be regarded as flawed. That's why so-called intelligent design gets no respect. It's based on nothing that can be verified."

Intelligent design, like anything dealing with religion, is a matter of personal faith and belief and in that respect my opinion and the opinions of those who support it are at least as valid as those of this old man. So WHY is he provided a forum for his personal beliefs on this matter when his opinion carries no more weight than yours or mine?

[VadeRetro]

this leads into "half a wing is useless" hypothesis. i dont recall the man, but it was shortly after Darwin released his theory that this was brought up.

And rebutted by Darwin in later editions of his work. But all you know here in 2004 is that someone brought it up in 1859 or 1860. Only certain things are allowed into the head of a creationist.

From the Sixth Edition of Origin:

All Mr. Mivart's objections will be, or have been, considered in the present volume. The one new point which appears to have struck many readers is, "that natural selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures." This subject is intimately connected with that of the gradation of characters, often accompanied by a change of function,—for instance, the conversion of a swim-bladder into lungs,—points which were discussed in the last chapter under two headings. Nevertheless, I will here consider in some detail several of the cases advanced by Mr. Mivart, selecting those which are the most illustrative, as want of space prevents me from considering all.

The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, fore-legs, head and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees. It can thus obtain food beyond the reach of the other Ungulata or hoofed animals inhabiting the same country; and this must be a great advantage to it during dearths. The Niata cattle in S. America show us how small a difference in structure may make, during such periods, a great difference in preserving an animal's life. These cattle can browse as well as others on grass, but from the projection of the lower jaw they cannot, during the often recurrent droughts, browse on the twigs of trees, reeds, &c., to which food the common cattle and horses are then driven; so that at these times the Niatas perish, if not fed by their owners. Before coming to Mr. Mivart's objections, it may be well to explain once again how natural selection will act in all ordinary cases. Man has modified some of his animals, without necessarily having attended to special points of structure, by simply preserving and breeding from the fleetest individuals, as with the race-horse and greyhound, or as with the game-cock, by breeding from the victorious birds. So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers and were able during dearths to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved; for they will have roamed over the whole country in search of food. That the individuals of the same species often differ slightly in the relative lengths of all their parts may be seen in many works of natural history, in which careful measurements are given. These slight proportional differences, due to the laws of growth and variation, are not of the slightest use or importance to most species. But it will have been otherwise with the nascent giraffe, considering its probable habits of life; for those individuals which had some one part or several parts of their bodies rather more elongated than usual, would generally have survived. These will have intercrossed and left offspring, either inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary again in the same manner; whilst the individuals, less favoured in the same respects, will have been the most liable to perish.

We here see that there is no need to separate single pairs, as man does, when he methodically improves a breed; natural selection will preserve and thus separate all the superior individuals, allowing them freely to intercross, and will destroy all the inferior individuals. By this process long-continued, which exactly corresponds with what I have called unconscious selection by man, combined no doubt in a most important manner with the inherited effects of the increased use of parts, it seems to me almost certain that an ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe.

Chapter 7, Objections to the Theory.

More importantly, in the "half a wing" case, you neglect that there is substantial evidence that the half-way thing existed at least once (more like several times at several places) in nature.

A theory that needs more detail to explain how this kind of thing happened is still to be preferred over one that says it didn't happen because it could never have. The one is merely incomplete at present. The other is already falsified, simply wrong.

[js1138]

ok, what preditory animal would you say couldnt kill a man with an iq of 40 easily?

How do chimpanzees manage to survive?

The concept of IQ doesn't really apply to nonverbal creatures. IQ is pretty much a measure of "scholastic aptitude", or ability to learn the things being taught in schools.

Any who has spent time around animals knows that individuals differ in intelligence and apptitude, but the term IQ, particularly with a number attached, is not useful.

I suspect among humans there is something of a negative correlation between IQ and ability to survive against preditors. ;^)

[general_re]

Yah, I know, but it makes a convenient shorthand for reasoning/problem-solving ability...

I suspect among humans there is something of a negative correlation between IQ and ability to survive against preditors. ;^)

Nonsense - why, just the other day I fended off a grizzly with nothing more than my slide rule and pocket protector ;)

[VadeRetro]

But Mayr says so many provocative things in this interview, it's hard to decide what to pluck out!

His soulless eyes, before we burn him! </creo_mode>

[js1138]

Nonsense - why, just the other day I fended off a grizzly with nothing more than my slide rule and pocket protector ;)

I was thinking more in terms of surviving a long walk in the dark through a bad neighborhood.

The concept of "the fittest" is not static. It does not lead in the same direction at all times.

[MacDorcha]

"Entirely wrong, like virtually all your posts in this thread. A scientific theory is worthless if it isn't consistent with everything else in other branches of science. Evolution, for example, is consistent with what is known by astronomy (the age of the solar system), geology (the age of the earth), genetics, chemistry, molecular biology, etc. There are no contradictions at all. None. "

and you have that entirely correct, except where you said i was wrong. the Bible does account for all of those things. read it sometime and see what i mean. the Bible may or may not be literal, but it was written to explain things to man who had not yet used combustion as a means of transport.

nothing i am saying completely refutes your view, it only includes the Bible, as both are not seperate and incongruent!

and the "anti-scientists" bit was my using your words to describe me. i am not what you say, though you claim i am.

[VadeRetro]

ALS lives!

[N. Theknow]

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.

At 100 years of age he should be reading the Bible - "cramming for finals."

[Doctor Stochastic]

Intelligent design, like anything dealing with religion, is a matter of personal faith and belief...

And thus does not belong in a science classroom.