Posted on 01/02/2006 4:14:37 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The mechanisms driving the process of evolution have always been subject to rigorous scientific debate. Growing in intensity and scope, this debate currently spans a broad range of disciplines including archaeology, biochemistry, computer modeling, genetics & development and philosophy.
A recent $2.8 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to the Cambridge Templeton Consortium [link] is providing the resources for further investigation into this complex and fascinating area. The funds will support 18 new grant awards to scientists, social scientists and philosophers examining how complexity has emerged in biological systems.
Attracting 150 applications, the grant process has generated much interest from a wide range of disciplines. Unique in the interdisciplinary nature of their applicants, the Cambridge Consortium grants will encourage and enable high quality research that approaches the issue from many angles, and will also sponsor collaborative work by people from different academic specialties. All of the work will study how biological systems (molecular, cellular, social etc) become more complex as they evolve.
"This is clearly an emerging area of science, and we are pleased that these grants are specifically aimed at encouraging work that would not easily fall under the parameters of any other grant-awarding body," says Consortium Chairman, Professor Derek Burke.
Questions to be addressed by the projects include:
* Why are biologists so afraid of asking 'why' questions, when physicists do it all the time?Among the institutions receiving grants from the Cambridge Templeton Consortium are Duke University, Harvard University Medical School, University of California, San Francisco, University of Cambridge, UK, and Australian National University.* Can experiments using a digital evolutionary model answer why intelligence evolved, but artificial intelligence has been so hard to build?
* What lessons can rock art and material remains teach us about the development of human self-awareness?
* Can the geometric ordering of specific sheets of cells throw light on the questions currently being raised about design in nature?
* What principles allow individuals to develop social and colonial organizations?
The mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science through a rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused methodology, drawing together talented representatives from a wide spectrum of fields of expertise. Founded in 1987, the Foundation annually provides more than $60 million in funding on behalf of work in human sciences and character development, science and theology research, as well as free enterprise programs and awards worldwide. For more information about the Templeton Foundation, go to www.templeton.org [link.].
[Omitted some contact info, available at the original article.]
The John Templeton Foundation does not support research or programs that deny large areas of well-documented scientific knowledge. In addition, we do not support political agendas such as movements to determine (one way or the other) what qualified educators should or should not teach in public schools. ... [T]he Foundation does not support the movement known as Intelligent Design as such, as an intellectual position or as a movement.
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Well, at 2.8 million, it's a beginning, but certainly not on the scale of the genome project. And I doubt that it will provide any significant advances concerning the evolution of "intelligence." And, also, The snubbing of Behe is just the beggining of his and ID's decline.
If there is no God, nature does one hell of an imitation. ;-)
Thanks for the ping.
Is this thread dead already? I figured it for a winner -- a list of thoughtful biology questions, serious funding, plus a well-deserved slap at ID and the DI. Well, back to the search engines ...
People are perhaps still battling hangovers since Darwin Central's new years party? I heard rumours several noted operatives were found passed out in the janitor's cubby hole.
There are the usual lying techniques -- Templeton is a nazi, or a homo, or an atheist, or a commie, etc. But it's going to be tough to make any of that stick. Sir John Templeton.
Care to guess how many successful applications rely upon the book of Genesis? ;-)
Thanks for the ping!
I don't know how those guys entertain themselves. The janitorial pool usually has their own party, after the Grand Ball in the Piltdown Room which everyone attends. Once the Crystal Tortoise drops at the stroke of midnight, and we all sing the Darwin Central anthem, there is a general scattering to several private parties. In the executive wing, the Grand Master provides for us by flying in a few dozen Hollywood starlets.
Questions to be addressed by the projects include:* Why are biologists so afraid of asking 'why' questions, when physicists do it all the time?
I suspect their comments will be enlightening....
The John Templeton Foundation does not support research or programs that deny large areas of well-documented scientific knowledge. In addition, we do not support political agendas such as movements to determine (one way or the other) what qualified educators should or should not teach in public schools. ... [T]he Foundation does not support the movement known as Intelligent Design as such, as an intellectual position or as a movement.All the Discovery Institute can do is put out propaganda, issue press releases, maintain a pretty website, raise money from fools, and con the science-illiterates who sometimes make up the school boards in rural locals. It's easy to flim-flam a bunch of real estate salesmen, funeral directors, and dentists' wives. The Templeton Foundation ain't gettin' sucked in.
And neither was the Federal Court, as evidenced by the judge's decision in the Kitzmiller case:
from pp. 137-138 of the Court's decision:
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.[emphasis added]
Templeton isn't falling for it, and neither did a conservative Republican Federal judge appointed by Bush, who just pounded a wooden stake through the heart of the ID movement.
Wolfram has shown, in finely printed plate after plate, that apparently stultifyingly simple rules give rise to hugely complex patterns time after time. The debate is over, although some seem to have not got the word.
(But see the true story here.)
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