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To: atlaw
On the other hand, you say that HarperCollins exercises no selectivity at all and publishes what you believe to be junk like the "History of Evolutionary Dogmatism" (couldn't you name a real book to make your point?).

First, the book title was supposed to be a little funny, for Pete's sake. Breathe, everyone, it's the weekend.

Second, I said no such thing, re: HarperCollins. It's not that they don't exercise selectivity, but rather they are selecting for a different literary phenotype, if you will. They -- or let's say fiction booksellers in general -- are trying to publish entertaining books that make a really good read.

Yes, everyone wants to promote their own survival, but that doesn't mean they're all trying to occupy they same literary environmental niche. Each bookseller has selected a certain niche and tries to adapt itself as perfectly as possible for that niche.

In the case of academic and scientific booksellers, their fitness function is highly correlated to the intellectual integrity of their authors. For fictional booksellers, there's a different definition of fitness. This making any sense yet? It's not that complicated really, and everyone here knows it's true.

Are you really trying to argue that McGraw-Hill or Wiley or MIT Press are going to start publishing Howard Stern's autobiography just because it would make them lots of money? If that's the position you want to stake out for yourself, go ahead, and we'll all have a good long laugh at your expense.

Speaking of books, does anyone know anything about the late Barbara Stahl's text, "Vertebrate History: problems in evolution"? I was thinking of giving it a read, but if one of you evos who moonlight as specialists in claiming published books are full of errors could provide some insight, that would be great.

1,058 posted on 12/31/2005 7:20:11 AM PST by jbloedow
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To: jbloedow
In the case of academic and scientific booksellers, their fitness function is highly correlated to the intellectual integrity of their authors. For fictional booksellers, there's a different definition of fitness.

Are you really trying to argue that McGraw-Hill or Wiley or MIT Press are going to start publishing Howard Stern's autobiography just because it would make them lots of money? If that's the position you want to stake out for yourself, go ahead, and we'll all have a good long laugh at your expense.

So your point is that the likes of McGraw-Hill, Wiley, and MIT press only publish credible material by authors with intellectual integrity, and thus would never publish fictional nonsense supportive of, or expanding on, the theory of evolution. Can't say I agree, but that is your point, isn't it?

PS

A small sampling of McGraw Hill publications:

An Introduction to Biological Evolution
By: Kardong, Kenneth

Biological Anthropology
By: Park, Michael Alan

Understanding Evolution
By: Volpe, E. Peter
Rosenbaum, Peter A

Vertebrate Biology
By: Linzey, Donald

Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology
By: Relethford, John

-- Many more at the McGraw Hill Professional Bookstore website.

A small sampling of Wiley publications:

Handbook of Evolution: The Evolution of Living Systems (Including Hominids), 3 Volumes
by Franz M. Wuketits (Editor), Francisco J. Ayala (Editor)

Directed Molecular Evolution of Proteins: or How to Improve Enzymes for Biocatalysis
by Susanne Brakmann (Editor), Kai Johnsson (Editor)

The Theory of Evolution: What It Is, Where It Came From, and Why It Works
Cynthia Mills

-- Many more at the Wiley publishing website.

A small sampling of MIT publications:

Advances in the Evolutionary Synthesis of Intelligent Agents
Mukesh Patel, Vasant Honavar and Karthik Balakrishnan

Computational Modeling of Genetic and Biochemical Networks
James M. Bower and Hamid Bolouri

Computational Molecular Biology
Pavel A. Pevzner Biology

Evolution and Human Behavior
John Cartwright

Evolving Learnable Neutral Networks Under Changing Environments with Various Rates of Inheritance of Acquired Characters: Comparison Between Darwinian and Lamarckian Evolution
Takahiro Sasaki and Mario Tokoro

Radical Epistasis and the Genotype-Phenotype Relationship
David Sloan Wilson and Alexandra Wells

Evolution of Genetic Code through Isologous Diversification of Cellular States
Hiroaki Takagi, Kunihiko Kaneko and Tetsuya Yomo

-- Many more at the MIT press website.


1,067 posted on 12/31/2005 8:07:05 AM PST by atlaw
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To: jbloedow
In the case of academic and scientific booksellers, their fitness function is highly correlated to the intellectual integrity of their authors.

And the knowledge that they will put the right fiction in the book so someone won't mistake it for entertainment.

Their gaps are explained by statements of faith that it will be shown to be true at some time in the future.

They call it science, religionists call it prophecy. (same thing by another name.)

1,090 posted on 12/31/2005 9:36:18 AM PST by Dan(9698)
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To: jbloedow
"Speaking of books, does anyone know anything about the late Barbara Stahl's text, "Vertebrate History: problems in evolution"? I was thinking of giving it a read, but if one of you evos who moonlight as specialists in claiming published books are full of errors could provide some insight, that would be great.

If this as aimed at me, you might check back on my posts. You will see I claimed that appendix D of Sewell's book was full of errors. An appendix by the way, that had nothing to do with the focus of the book, which is Calculus. I also made the comment that if the rest of his text was as bad as the appendix I hoped it was not used as an education textbook. I did not claim that the text was full of errors.

1,143 posted on 12/31/2005 3:30:51 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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