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To: Fred Nerks
Is that a reply to my statement:

'And if it was based on hard scientific data then it wouldn't be a THEORY, would it?' (you)


"Yes, it would. Theory is the highest level a scientific idea can achieve. There is nothing higher. That's why it's the theory of gravity, germ theory, theory of evolution, and so on." (me)

? If it is, I sure don't see how.

"I am interested in the theory of catastrophes."

Then Vilikovsky is your man!
50 posted on 01/12/2006 2:22:16 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

Darwin's journal describes numerous catastrophic scenes - he just didn't include the information in his final works.


'I was interested by finding on the highest peak of one range (about 700 feet above the sea) a great arched fragment, lying on its convex side, or back downwards. Must we believe that it was fairly pitched up in the air, and thus turned? Or, with more probability, that there existed formerly a part of the same range more elevated than the point on which this monument of a great convulsion of nature now lies. As the fragments in the valleys are neither rounded nor the crevices filled up with sand, we must infer that the period of violence was subsequent to the land having been raised above the waters of the sea. In a transverse section within these valleys the bottom is nearly level, or rises but very little towards either side. Hence the fragments appear to have travelled from the head of the valley; but in reality it seems more probable that they have been hurled down from the nearest slopes; and that since, by a vibratory movement of overwhelming force, the
fragments have been levelled into one continuous sheet. If during the earthquake1 which in 1835 overthrew Concepcion, in Chile, it was thought wonderful that small bodies should have been pitched a few inches from the ground, what must we say to a movement which has caused fragments many tons in weight to move onwards like so much sand on a vibrating board, and find their level? I have seen, in the Cordillera of the Andes, the evident marks where stupendous mountains have been broken into pieces like so much thin crust, and the strata thrown on their vertical edges; but never did any scene, like these "streams of stones," so forcibly convey to my mind the idea of a convulsion, of which in historical records we might in vain seek for any counterpart: yet the progress of knowledge will probably some day give a simple explanation of this phenomenon, as it already has of the so long thought inexplicable transportal of the erratic boulders which are strewed over the plains of Europe...'

http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin/texts/beagle_voyage/beagle_front.html


51 posted on 01/12/2006 3:29:10 PM PST by Fred Nerks (Read THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD free pdf download - link on My Page)
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