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.
The "guess what I'm talking about now" dialogue. I like to start with "Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
I'm laying money on table pounding.
In my post 636 I simply refuted your wrong/strange assertion that a fundamental branch of biology is somehow a religion, and in response you claim that I'm somehow going to be voting for the Kerry/Edwards ticket in November?
I will freely admit that your knowledge of the bible is greater than mine, but when it comes to cogent/topical comebacks, I've got you beat hands down.
I don't know the answer to this, but I think it's worth asking: What percentage of lab tecnnicians wind up publishing original ideas? What percentage of auto mechanics design new cars?
I don't consider your point of view completely irrelevant, but it isn't much of an argument. It is perfectly possible to use a complex tool, say Photoshop or an accounting program, without knowing how computers or electronics work.
Should we concentrate on what he does with his little glass tubes? Or what he CAN do with them?
Perhaps they would serve as an emergency substitute for lug nuts.
They would be a part of the evolutionary process. He was creating an environment that selected certain individuals from the breeding pool. But, as I keep saying over and over again in the vain hope that you will someday understand it, that does not define the actions as "good" or "bad", because evolution theory, just like everything else in science, is not about making moral judgements.
Under evolutionary theory, every form of life that exists today exists because it has survived the battle for survival. Under evolutionary theory, the creatures or species that survive the battle for survival are superior to those that do not. Therefore, those humans who survive the battle for survival are superior to those who do not. Therefore, those who practice genocide are superior to those who are victims of it.
The logic wasn't lost on Hitler.
I see. So does the evolutionary process apply to human beings or not?
(and the fit usually end up being people who are the most similar to the one making the decision -- regardless of whatever genetic baggage that might entail).
The evolutionary process doesn't apply to human beings because we interfere with the process by misinterpreting the people who are most fit for survival? But I thought the survivors are the most fit, by definition?
But Microsoft software is dead meat.
They do, which is tangential to the subject of whether Nazi genocide was good for the species.
This does not mean that the errors are ignored or that one fails to estimate them. It means that they are accounted for as best one can. It's is important to keep an explicit account of the fact that there is an error and some estimate of its magnitude.
Wolfram's rule 110 also produces a UTC. This rule is almost as simple as Life.
read what i posted once more.
Man had an understanding, not "Man had no understanding"
the post was also directed to people who refuse to accept the Bible, so i had to put it in there terms.
"Well, that's the problem: we can't reproduce it. "
allow me to requalify that for you.
"Well, that's the problem: we haven't reproduced it yet."
so now, whats the problem?
hypothetically speaking, we cant achieve Absolute 0 either, yet we're getting so close, it's frightening. (somewhere in the 1/12% range if i recall correctly)
just because we haven't reached it doesnt mean it does not/cannot exist.
here's one for you to think about as well though:
We have a concept of the abstract, yet we have nothing around us that we would have learned "abstract" from. where, precisely, did our understanding of "non-existance" come from? how do we dissociate this from "un-existance"?
and of course, a twist on my first big point in the thread:
if we have not seen (nor been able to replicate) "life" from simple matter.... where, still, did we come from? fine, evolution got us to this stage. what got us to live in the first place?
so it was darwinism, not racism that caused genocide? hmmmm....
You obviously are not following the conversation. Either that, or you do not comprehend that which you read.
"Does one want to call a mountain range "living"? They do grow, move, emit offspring, etc."
no, because a mountain range, while "emiting offspring" do not create an "offspring" that will one day be parallel to the original. if it produces more than one, they will be smaller, and most likely of a different composition. also, please, "kill" a mountain. if it is living, it must die.
thanks for citing a poet to explain sciene though, it proves you have some stock in abstract ideas. now apply them.
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