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.
actually, i just popped back in after a day or two off. so no, i dont have a full grasp of everything said.
What does "parallel" have to do with anything here?
Note that the Ancestral Rockies did not necessarily give rise to the current Rockies though.
for something to be living, it must consume, reproduce (to make a larger population), and grow (in simplest terms)
if the mountains are alive, they will grow after they are produced, not shrink, like the Appalachians have. "parallel" means that the offsrping will grow in number AND equal in size the original.
It is gibberish because "DNA is a normally double stranded macromolecule. Two polynucleotide chains, held together by weak thermodynamic forces, form a DNA molecule."
And the function of DNA is to act as a repository of information. This function does not change with a change in the arrangement of DNA.
The arrangement of DNA is normally a double helix with a further arrangement which is modified during cell reproduction.(simplistic description only to point out that the arrangement changes but the function of DNA remains the same.)
Now what was probably meant would look something like-->When a biologist uses the word information in discussions about DNA, he's talking about the arrangement of the bases on the backbone, which along with the decoding element determines what the information ultimately describes.
With bugs.
Define "the good for the species." Who survived, the Jews or Hitler? Which group is more "fit"?
he then goes on to explain, sometimes in excruciating detail, why this is so.
I addressed this as well: I do know what you are trying, and fail utterly, to say. Yet you are more mistaken than correct in your point.
The Himalayas are growing; they are young. The Appalachians are old; they are eroding. There's a whole cycle here.
I'm not claiming that I would use "life" to describe mountains; only that most proposed definitions of life are either too broad or too narrow.
That's because I wasn't being clear. Is the matter/energy directly feeding the metabolism significantly less complex? Take the case of your parasite, say an intestinal parasite. Although it lives within a complex host, it feeds on matter of a very simple nature. In fact the host is optional - place the parasite in a broth of shredded proteins and other nutrients and it would do as well. And similarly would its host if the broth were directly delivered to the gut.
I wasn't really making an argument.
It's simply a fact that studying for a biology degree or biochemistry degree or related today, Ernst Mayr's name just wouldn't come up much if at all.
The insults spewed forth at dmcnash bu more than one person were not only overly rude but inappropriate based on substantive considerations.
OK. What point did I restate rather than address.
Going back to an earlier comment, there is not need to guess what I am saying. It is clear. based on PH's statement:
when a biologist uses it in discussions about DNA, he's talking about the arrangement of the molecules, which determines their function.
what is the "arrangement" referred to, what are the "molecules" being referred to and what is the "function" being referred to.
Answer these basic clear questions and a lot will be elucidated.
wildly elliptical placemarker (back by popular demand)
This then leads us once again into the realm of the "abstract"
we know what it is, even without knowing what it is. why/how?
What classes was he discussed? How many lectures were devoted to his work in those classes. What is his main finding that is taught?
This isn't a challenge.
but genocide can cite darwin as an acceptable support. the s felt they were the "strong", so they were to kill the "weak" so they could have a "more pure" environment.
pack animals kill the young of rival males to ensure it is only their that continues. this is the reasoning the 's made. they viewed their race as supperior, thus being racists... but they used "survival of the fittest" to reason it, thus making them darwinesque. (note, not totally darwin, but they used elements of it in teachings and what not to convey their point of view.)
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