Posted on 01/15/2009 1:19:48 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Jan 15, 2009 — A common attitude among scientists is that they are not responsible for what people do with their discoveries. Facts are facts, after all, and nuclear energy can be used to power a city as well as destroy it. Is this a truism or a half-truth? Are there cases where a scientist is responsible for what he or she proclaims as a fact about the world?
In its continuing celebration of Darwin, Science magazine printed an article about “Darwin’s Originality” by Peter J. Bowler.1 This philosopher from Queen’s University of Belfast described how Darwin’s theory of evolution had “disturbing” ramifications. “In this essay,” he began, “I argue that Darwin was truly original in his thinking, and I support this claim by addressing the related issue of defining just why the theory was so disturbing to his contemporaries.” He used the word disturbing five more times.
Bowler elaborated on what was most disturbing. It’s not that Darwin invented or discovered evolution – evolutionary thinking was already in the air in Victorian Britain. “Most thinkers—including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and [Robert] Chambers—took it for granted that the development of life on earth represents the unfolding of a coherent plan aimed at a predetermined goal,” he said. Darwin was different. Darwin attributed all the “unfolding” (which is what evolution means) to result from the environment. His critics understood what this implied:...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
ping!
No one has yet to prove to me scientifically that Darwin ever existed. Therefor I reject any of these so-called Darwinian theories.
Lots of bolding and colors on that page.
The writer never escapes his own cage -- you can no more blame Darwin for those who apply the principles outside of its context than you can blame Edison for Nazi Concentration camps.
Thanks for the ping!
Should we just move this to chat, bloggers or the SBR now to avoid the inevitable?
But this is the 2009 model of FD — no snideosity, no insults, minimum snarkiness, and dry humor only when it would be wrong not to.
I love it, Science is Scientist worst nightmare
No offense my friend, but you are pretty much wrong and in many ways. TToE does not say "horses were once cows." It says they have a common ancestor.
I love it, Science is Scientist worst nightmare
No, the scientific basis for the theory is quite intact and has been expanded over the last 200 years.
TToE is one of the most comprehensive and best understood scientific theories in all of the Life Sciences.
Having read the article, I believe that is exactly what the author stated many times. Maybe it's related to the so-called Law of Unintended Consequences.
I am glad it wasn't just me. The summary is "well, you can't blame inventors for how their inventions are misused but here is a list of where that happened..."
I am not sure this moves the ball for anyone...
The article is kind of like a radical-left "history" course on the eeeeevils of "Amerikkka", only less intellectually honest.
No more than Nobel was responsible for what people did with dynamite, or Columbus was for what happened after he set foot in the New World.
I love it, Science is Scientist worst nightmare
If scientists aren't responsible for what people do with their discoveries, they would do well to be more vocal when their discoveries get hijacked by special interest groups. Not speaking out against the misuse of science in establishing political policy or determining morals, does the reputation of scientists no good. People only presume by their silence that they agree with what's going on.
It seems to me then, that scientists are science's worst nightmare.
Much to do about nothing except getting paid for writing some drivel.
Creo red meat earns $$$
This will upset many on this site, I’d wager, but Darwin was the catalyst for horrors and evils that most Darwinists desperately try to distance Darwin from. Facts are facts though.
Darwin prepared the way for eugenics. Indeed, his immediate family would soon be involved in that movement — his sons George and Leonard became active in promoting it (Leonard serving as “president of the Eugenics Education society, the main eugenics group in Great Britain”), and his cousin Francis Galton became the founder of the “eugenics crusade.” Evidently, Darwin was sympathetic to eugenics: West quotes him as vowing “to cut off communication” with his disciple Mivart when the latter “criticized an article by Darwin’s son George that advocated eugenics.” Darwinists are always trying to set a distance between the theory of evolution and the eugenics ovement, but West cites
Darwin, in The Descent, as approving of how “the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated” among “savages,” and disapproving of how civilized men “build asylums for theimbecile, the maimed, and the sick,” with the result that “the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind.” Then, comparing man to livestock, Darwin added, “no one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.”
Darwin again complained about how “the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members.” He would return to this point in his last conversations with Alfred Russel Wallace, speaking “very gloomily on the future of humanity” because “in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive.” (Although Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” Darwin readily appropriated it as an “accurate” description of natural selection.) The Darwinian basis for eugenics is often downplayed, West observes, yet it is a fact that eugenicists drew their “inspiration” directly from Darwinian biology. A number of the chief eugenicists of the early 20th century declared that natural selection was the “law” they followed to improve the race. Moreover, the American leaders in eugenics, who were “largely university-trained biologists and doctors” affiliated with places like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and the Museum of Natural History, presented eugenics as biologically “justified.” Between 1920 and 1939, West shows, Darwin’s theory was constantly used in high-school biology textbooks to support eugenics, something that shows how much mainstream science accepted this form of population control. The book that Darwinist schoolteacher John Scopes was using in his Tennessee high-school classroom before his infamous “Monkey Trial” was G.W. Hunter’s Civil Biology (1914), which followed the trend of advocating eugenics on Darwinian grounds. There Hunter spoke of “parasites” in society who, if they “were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.”
The more they try to deny Darwin, the more they draw attention to Him.
Scientists are one of the most highly respected professions in the USA, and for good reason.
No more than Nobel was responsible for what people did with dynamite, or Columbus was for what happened after he set foot in the New World.
In this case it is the inventor of the boat being blamed for what happened with Columbus (which wasn't as bad as portrayed -- and I think you know that). I am not sure where you are going with the Noble thing -- are you saying Noble is responsible when dynamite is used by terrorists?
I love it, Science is Scientist worst nightmare
If scientists aren't responsible for what people do with their discoveries, they would do well to be more vocal when their discoveries get hijacked by special interest groups. Not speaking out against the misuse of science in establishing political policy or determining morals, does the reputation of scientists no good. People only presume by their silence that they agree with what's going on.
You realize that the misapplication of TToE was well after Darwin's death, right? Einstein did, indeed, speak out about mis-use of the Atom Bomb, but also understood that its use in pursuit of peace was important. It isn't black and white for anyone.
It seems to me then, that scientists are science's worst nightmare.
Op Cit.
You were pretty moving at a good clip until you posted this little excerpt.
We are back to the electricity=Nazism analogy. You can't blame Darwin for "inspiring" anyone any more than you can blame Jodi Foster for that Hinckley guy who took a shot a Ronald Reagan.
“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
- Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,” 1859, p. 155.
You can no more blame Darwin for Eugenics, than you can Jesus for the Inquisition.
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