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.
When you add emphasis you should be careful not to add typos and spelling errors. It dimishes you argument, assuming you have one.
I disagree. If I wanted to be an atheist, then I would reject all religion. There would be no necessity of simultaneously embracing evolution (or what you call "materialism"). There were atheists long before Darwin, and if the Inquisition didn't burn them, I suppose they managed just fine. Darwin's science is accepted by Christians, Jews, and loads of Asians of other sects. And atheists too. It stands (or falls) on its own merits as science.
Fortunately I didn't add emphasis. I am curious what is wrong with the quote, other than hyperbole. Prior to Darwin, evolution was accepted by Christians, with the assumption that the various stages were the result of special creation. Darwin indeed argued against special creation. That is precisely the point of natural selection.
Well yes, if you don't keep track of the errors in assumption, you don't know whether they are small enough to bury within allowable engineering error. What experience buys you is that you learn when you need to keep track of such things and when you don't. Kind of like knowing when Newtonian physics gives good enough answers and when it doesn't.
I guess the important thing is to know that there is an error out there that may need to be accounted for. Some things are more sensitive to errors than others. Typical allowable error way back when I was doing ChemE was 10% for the system. Sometimes more, sometimes less. If you had error to burn you could often take substantial shortcuts in the system model, saving time and the possible introduction of errors while doing things the long way. These days it is less of a factor due to the extensive automation of engineering computation.
Your word of the week is "asymptotic". Very important when dealing with discrete systems.
The theoretical reasons some things are impossible are much deeper than the level you are looking at them. Things like thermodynamics are said to be what they are not because it is a strong scientific hypothesis (e.g. the Big Bang), but as a necessary mathematical consequence of fundamental properties. You are allowed to get "close" to absolute zero as you want to, so getting "close" is not a sign that the laws of thermodynamics are about to be broken. Saying so is similar to saying that we are getting close to breaking the speed of light, and we just need to build faster rockets to do it.
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"?
This isn't intended as a flame or anything like that, but you aren't really ready to go there. We're still working on the fundamentals here.
This reply confuses me.
Yet, a scientist claimed to have "created" them.
Any news? I'll be back with a link to your "new species of fruit fly" thread as soon as I've found it.
What part of it confuses you? I oversimplified, but evolution was widely discused prior to Darwin:
http://www.aboutdarwin.com/literature/Pre_Dar.html
There were lots of theories, but when it became evident that extinction had occurred, modern creatures seemed more complex that extinct forms, the usual explanation was that God had worked his way up to the present forms, and each level was an individual creation.
Right, but it looked like you were replying to yourself. The context was what confused me.
Sorry. In one of my frequent brain spasms, I made fun of someone els's typo, and in doing so, included one of my own. I replied to myself and then added some more stuff.
I need a break, and some coffee. I've spent the last week restoring a server. Absolutely none of the backup software worked as advertised.
No. An ambiguous sentence is not gibberish.
Any casual reader of this thread can see that either you do not know what the words you are using mean or do not wish to acknowledge that your statements have been false. As one familiar with your performances over the years, I'm reasonably sure which but could care less in any event.
Galileo, that great scientist, is so confused by Saturn that he refuses to look at it anymore. The quotes have lately come to my attention and they're real. Science is confused by Saturn! Can angels really be pushing the planets around after all? My faith in Godless materialist athiestic Satanist science wavers.
Stagnant thread placemarker.
Wow, two more deleted posts from uncouth people! Did I show during up an alcohol induced blackout and not remember it?
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