Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
so them, the theory of theology is sound, but theology is not? (im not trying to be a smart ass, i think i just cleared up alot of trouble i was having with you)
But does it equal "1" Exactly?.
"Doctor Stochastic" didn't evade the question. There's no reason for you to be so squeamish.
Or do you think it is a Gödel statement?
I have made no comments about theory of theology nor about theology. In as much as creationism claims to be a science, it fails to rise to the level of a theory. In as much as it claims to be theology, it doesn't belong in a science class. This applies to all versions of creationism; none give methods to distinguish their claims from Last Thursdayism.
you have already stipulated that 3/3=0.999...., and you have ALSO stipulated that 3/3=1.
thus, we have:
0.999... =(3/3)=1
Now, the question for you to think about is what does the transitive property of equivalence relations tell us about the question of whether or not 0.999.... =1.
Another thing to ponder: 0.999... is a non-terminating repeating decimal. That means that there are an infinite number of "9's" to the right of the decimal place. That's what the "..." (ellipses) that are after the last "9" mean. Give some thought on how that bears upon the question I've been asking you.
Oh, you nasty man!
Be careful out there. You are dealing with a man who knows that "the source of gravity is still not entirely understood".
If you feel that .999... is not equal to 1, then you must be able to exhibit a number between the two of them. The rationals form a dense subset of the real line.
So, you're saying under SOME conditions 0.999... =1, and under other conditions, it does not =1.
I hate to point this out, but you are beginning to sound an awful lot like John Kerry ("Well, you see Larry, sometimes I support the war, and sometimes I don't....")
0.999.... has an infinite number of "9's" to the right of the decimal place UNDER ALL CONDITIONS and at ALL TIMES. It's exact value isn't wandering around. 0.999... =0.999... under ALL conditions. So how can it equal, and not equal, "1" depending on "circumstances"?
It is a shame that he hasn't yet evolved past that whole pneumonia thing.
Indeed I do.
Simple. When you get to the end of the infinite series, you sneak in an extra digit when no one is looking.
Some people can't count up to one.
If the set of objects you're working with is leaves, and functions result in piles of leaves, then 1 + 1 = 1, when 2 separate piles of leaves are raked into one larger pile of leaves.
Fortunately this has nothing to do with your discussion.
999gorlaB placemarker
To quote Sgt. Hartmann from "Full Metal Jacket":
"You're a sneaky little sh*t; I've got my eye on you!"
;-)
Yeah, yeah. I've heard that one before: "Give me your gold; gold is worthless where you're going." How do you think I ended up here?
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