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.
What is the IQ of a bass? A hummingbird? A fly? A snail?
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. "
hence the qualifier "most"
"We're not talking about the summit of Kilimanjaro here. "
we arent talking about a 72 degree room either. also hence the term "somewhat"
and intellect is our trait, i came to that conclusion for you in earlier posts. my point was (though now reading, i guess ill-worded) that WHEN did we get so smart? and what did we lose that we had to use brains instead? why would we have lost it?
Flying squirrels and flying fish do not have fully developed wing structures.
Perhaps an individual with a higher IQ would be better able to avoid such a hazard, or at the very least, acquire and use appropriate tools to increase their chances of survivability.
This thread has revived a species of argument that was thought to be extinct. Hope they didn't use frog DNA.
So it would seem.
As I put it to my YEC friends...
"God created evolution. What's the problem, again?"
it's as much a theory as evolution. you replecate evolution in a complex organism. (not micro-evolution, but full scale animal divergence)
i can state just as easily as a secular evolutionist that things we cannot see happen. the only difference is, you let personl bias get in the way, and accept one while rejeting the other. all im saying is there is nothing wrong with both being used to further our understanding. you say there is.
I agree that intelligent design is a matter of faith. This "old man" is talking about science. That's why his opinions are worth more -- in science -- than the opinions of a theologean, who is not doing science.
... Thus proving that there are no precursors for fully developed wing structures! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! </creo_mode>
There's also the "flying lemur," which doesn't really fly and isn't really a lemur. They're occasionally spotted transporting Martians around.
Only certain things are allowed into the head of a creationist.
either that or its been 8 years since i heard about it, thus memory degeneration occured.
you seem intellegent, dont attack me on this one. i am presenting a view, you are presenting a view. this is not "you're wrong im right" this is "whats right?"
some of your fellow evolutionists state that God is improbable. i say they have no basis for that. i am singled out and picked apart, but they still cannont disprove God, yet by the nature of what defines God, i can. Faith and reason.
Of course that's true, but it assumes a lot. Kids, for example, seldom get to choose their neighborhoods or schools, and arent allowed to carry knives and guns. So the strong and stupid often rule the early school years.
Only certain things are allowed into the head of a creationist.
either that or its been 8 years since i heard about it, thus memory degeneration occured.
you seem intellegent, dont attack me on this one. i am presenting a view, you are presenting a view. this is not "you're wrong im right" this is "whats right?"
some of your fellow evolutionists state that God is improbable. i say they have no basis for that. i am singled out and picked apart, but they still cannont disprove God, yet by the nature of what defines God, i can prove Him. Faith and reason.
I've done that too, and my superior intellect allowed me to learn from that situation - specifically, I learned not to do that any more ;)
The concept of "the fittest" is not static. It does not lead in the same direction at all times.
Very true, but intelligence is, I think, I bit different than other adaptations, insofar as it's a sort of general solution to a whole host of problems - consider for a moment just how broad the range of medical problems that can be solved is, to take a very limited subset of the survival problems we've applied our intelligence to.
and as any evolutionists will eagerly point out, our development from conception mimics the evolutionary cycle. thus, at one point, we were nothing more than children, capable of being dominated by the less intellegent yet more powerful.
this post is corrected, dont bother with it.
Slow down. Use the spell checker and learn to punctuate. Don't post the same comment twice. Appearances matter in a public debate.
Talk about assumptions - do "strong" and "stupid" always correlate? Do you have any empirical data suggesting a rate of correlation? Lets hope they don't run into anyone who is strong and smart . . .
heh, it isnt the same post, i just caught something a bit late.
Would you care to cite a source for this assertion?
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