Government approved!
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.]
Boxing Day accident, perhaps?
They're [creationists] still thinking how to spin this. Give it time.They're still busy trying to recover from the Dover debacle by explaining how Judge Jones is no true Scotsman:They haven't figured out a good angle yet.
Dover in Review, pt. 4: Are the newsmedia reinventing Judge Jones as a conservative Republican?... I do object to the media's transparent attempt to reinvent Judge Jones in order to supply a veneer of credibility to his incredibly biased decision. The media are cultivating the impression that Judge Jones must have been fair and impartial (his sloppy and biased opinion notwithstanding) because he is a deeply-religious conservative who should have been initially sympathetic to the school board and intelligent design.
In reality, there is very little evidence to suggest that Jones is either a conservative or particularly religious. ...
The reaction against Judge Jones ("He ruled against us, so he's evil!") has a certain resemblance to the reaction against Alamo-Girl after her principled mediation efforts during the Luddite War in mid-2003.
There've been many bottlenecks in our history. How do we know that humans weren't hairless prior to 200,000 years ago?
My personal expectation is that hairlessness is an adaptation for heat regulation for long-distance running that went hand-in-glove with the ability to walk upright. (Why? To chase down game. It is said that no land animal can outdistance a well-conditioned human.) Accordingly, I expect that the adaptation goes back millions of years.
All of these ideas are mere speculations, however. I'll be gobsmacked if there is ever any solid evidence for any of them.
Humans can hunt down far faster game by having greater endurance. When in good condition, a team of human hunters can chase virtually any game animal to exhaustion. But I don't know if hairlessness is really involved. Wolves hunt the same as we do (or as we did), and there aren't any hairless wolves. I've read that humans and canines are the only long-distance hunters.
Wolves/canines have a different heat dissipation system than humans, one that doesn't involve evaporation of sweat secreted to the skin. Fur constitutes not only an additional layer of insulation, but also an impediment to evaporation of sweat for humans, but not wolves/canines, as the latter dissipate excess body heat by respiration, not perspiration.
I was arguing with an ultra-lib buddy--I've known this guy since we were both in Little League--and mentioned FBI director Louis Freeh's deep suspicions of the very Clinton White House that appointed him to his job. My buddy just said something like "Oh, well! Flaky ol' Louie Freeh! Grumble, grumble! Harumph! Dismissed!"
In the Holy War, you're right and the other guys are wrong. There is no evidence against you. There are no inconvenient facts. Victory is inevitable.
Shortly after developing this ability, mankind soon developed an even more advanced clothing capability: fashion. What cavewoman could resist a man sporting a club over one shoulder and a fresh saber-toothed tigerskin smock over the other, with a contrasting bear-skin loin cloth with Woolly Mammoth teeth trim around the nether regions?
That reminds me of the the scene in Mel Brook's "History of the World" with the first cave artist, and then the first cave art critic.....
What's the term for that "modern" viewpoint so popular in certain radical circles -- there are no objective standards, it's all about power. So Shakespeare isn't really any good, it's just that a buncha white guys say he is; and when our side comes to power, it's gonna be different.
Anyway, whatever you call it, that's what's happening to Judge Jones in certain circles.
Rumor has it that the Cristal dropped tortoise at the stroke of midnight...
Oh, it must be. I remember reading an article in which an experiment was described, wherein a world-class bicycle racer was put on a stationary bike and hooked up to all sorts of machines that go "ping", in order to quantify his endurance. The surprising result was that he didn't remotely have the endurance he regularly exhibited on the road. It turned out that the vital missing condition was the air rushing past him on the road, evaporating his sweat and cooling his blood. Heat dissipation is one of the keys to human endurance.
One of my professors thought that this form of hunting, which he called "persistence hunting," was critical in evolution. Along with that came large brains (to remember where you were, where you had been, and where the camp was, etc.). Also involved were the high-value foods obtained by hunting.
The usual Darwinist dreck crock-of-crap from PH. Can you just imagine the 24/7 this guys lives???? Evo-nut alert!
Ah! There's a long, rambling, wishy-washy, present-both-sides-of-everything kind of article on that in Wikipedia (Postmodernism), as a Wiki article on such a topic must inevitably be, but it in the "political science" section it has this:
Charles Murray, a strong critic of postmodernism, defines the term:I think it's all starting to come together ..."By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation of views that come to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender, deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in assessing art and literature, to the idea that hierarchies of value exist, hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the overarching label that is attached to this perspective."
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