Number 2?
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.
Ah, then you know the routine. Good. I like a man with experience. Now then, you wanna get out of the universe or don't you? If you do, then fork it over. Leave the rest to me.
You can trust me. After all, this is the internet.
This is partly true, Patrick. But you paint with too broad a brush: Arguably, neither the scholastic development of Aristotelian logic nor ethics was the issue in dispute by the Inquisition: It was Aristotelian natural philosophy -- the early term for “science.”
Just to amplify the record for the benefit of Lurkers, and to reply to the issues you’ve raised:
Aristotelian cosmology was geocentric; Galileo was a Copernican who earlier in his life argued against Aristotle’s view of astronomy and natural philosophy in public lectures without drawing down the wrath of the Church. But the time came when the Church, defending itself against what it saw as the challenge to its power by the forces of the Reformation, ultimately decided it had to act.
The Inquisition that condemned Galileo as a heretic perhaps was largely comprised of people rather like your hypothetical judge, having “an intelligence not much greater than the chair in which he sits.” Probably the same could be said of the jury of 500 that condemned Socrates to death in a split decision by a plurality of 27 votes about 1,500 years earlier. I’d describe both cases as essentially political trials – which is to offer an explanation, not an excuse let alone a justification.
You suggest that the majority of Cardinals returning the verdict were scholastics. But I don’t know whether this is true. The fact remains that Galileo had warm support from scholastically trained individuals, such as Cardinal John Bellarmine, S.J., whom many scholars regard as the leading Catholic theologian of his time. Plus Pope Urban VIII was known to have greatly admired Galileo for his enormous genius in the fields of mathematics and natural philosophy.
You suggest that the development of Aristotle’s system of logic by the Schoolmen is too abstract, “too ivory tower,” and has actually retarded scientific progress. Yet it seems to me that the Schoolmen, notably Thomas Aquinas, did not attempt to make “improvements” to Aristotle’s great systemization of logic, which has been the foundation of logic for two millennia. In what way has it retarded science?
Especially when we consider that it was this logic that undergirded Galileo’s own breathtaking achievements in the natural sciences. As a boy, he was educated by the brothers of the Camaldolese Order, an offshoot of the Benedictines. It was his desire to take religious vows and live as a monk, pursuing his studies in mathematics and natural science in the relative seclusion of the abbey at Vallombosa. Yet this was not to be, for his father Vincenzo strenuously objected to his son’s choice of career; he wanted young Galileo to become a medical doctor. Reluctantly, Galileo subsequently enrolled as a medical student at the University of Pisa (a Roman Catholic institution, as were all the great universities of Europe at that time).
But Galileo had no interest in becoming a doctor – his great loves were mathematics and science. Subsequently he left the University before completing his degree and found employment as a teacher of mathematics, while continuing his scientific pursuits – which were prodigious and literally earth-changing in the fields of optics, astronomy, mechanics, mathematics.
It was Galileo, in his book Il saggiatore (“The Assayer”) who first propounded the scientific method based on direct observation and rigorous experimentation. It was also in this work that he wrote these glorious lines:
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth. [bolds added]
Furthermore, in his Letter to Castelli, Galileo asserted that the Bible had to be interpreted in the light of what science had shown to be true. Probably that line, more than anything else, is what got him in trouble with the Church authorities – for it was an attack, not on the Bible itself, but on the princes of the Church, who at that time frowned on any kind of “interpretation” of the Bible by private individuals altogether.
The point is, Galileo had a profoundly religious temperament. But this didn’t stop him from discovering the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and so much else…. He never disputed that “this grand book, the universe” was a creation of God; and he was grateful to have been so made in the divine image that he, a man, could actually read this book….
Well, I’ve really run on long here as usual. Just one last point before closing. There seems to be some kind of widespread attitude this days that suggests people who believe in God are incapable of doing science, owing to doctrinal “brainwashing” or whatever. The life of Galileo absolutely refutes that supposition. Plus it is fascinating to me that there are 35 craters on the Moon that are named after Jesuit scientists, in honor of their contributions to physics, astrophysics, selenology, mathematics, astronomy, geophysics and seismology, optics, etc., etc. One of them is Clavius – named for Christopher Clavius, a colleague and correspondent of Galileo himself.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the father of genetic theory, was an Augustinian monk. Francesco Grimaldi (1613-1663), a Jesuit, discovered diffraction, and was one of the earliest physicists to formulate the geometrical basis for a wave theory of light.
I wasn't that Galileo had said this. I have used this same argument on these threads whenever someone argues that some Bible stores are parables, and some phrases are figures of speech, and the difference is obvious.
I agree, and the test is whether the literal reading is in conformity with fact. When the literal reading is contrary to fact, then the story is a parable.
My personal opinion, which doesn't seem to be widespread, is the that the Bible's primary function is to promote thinking about morality, not to teach science and history.
I wasn't [aware] that Galileo had said this.
There's nothing wrong with Aristotle's logic. But as I understand it, the Scholastics began their theological discourses, as Churchmen should, with certain truths already assumed, and then -- very logically -- debated about such matters. They also, quite understandably, accepted all of Aristotle's teachings, even those which turned out to be wrong. One example is that Aristotle, I believe, accepted the geocentric universe. Another is his well-known teaching that heavy objects fall faster than light ones.
Galileo was among the first to start with observations, and not with revealed (or approved) truths. Thus he had disputes with Aristotle's teachings. The Scholastics were so attached to Aristotle that this was difficult to accept. So the Scholastic method of doing philosophy, notwithstanding its adherence to logic, was most definitely an impediment to science. The scientific method, with its emphasis on verifiable data, is usually regarded as being in conflict with Scholasticism. They're both logical, of course, but Scholasticism is almost entirely deductive, while science is, at its root, inductive. Big difference.
Yeah, he said it:
... it appears that nothing physical which sense experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words.
"Induction" isn't really reasoning, at least in the usual sense. If it were, we could program computers to do it, AI would be with us now, and the world would be quite different.
I suppose this will start a small war, but there it is.
Them's pretty strong words. He asks us to believe our own lying eyes.
Call it what you will, but that's how hypotheses are made. Once an hypothesis has withstood some testing, and has provided some verifiable results, it becomes accepted as a theory. The theory can then be used as the basis for deduction, but it rests on an inductive foundation.
FWIW js1138, Christians believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and so a person like me -- who, like Galileo, has a "religious temperament" from childhood (even though, unlike Galileo, I did not receive any formal religious instruction as a child, or even later in life, for that matter -- and am still "unchurched," as it were) has absolutely zero expectation or anxiety that science will ever falsify anything in it. And so far, science hasn't.
The point is (IMHO) the Bible ought not to be read literally -- for you are right, it is written in figurative and allegorical language. But at bottom, such figures, parables, and allegories -- not to mention the positive statements that God makes in it (as for instance, in Genesis) are founded in God's Truth. As Francis Schaffer has said, "God tells us truly -- but not exhaustively." God does not lie.
God's language plays on many different levels in the Holy Scriptures. But you will never find one single self-contradition in it.
IMHO, Galileo is right: The "book of the Universe" is God's "other" book that calls us to truth -- the truth of the natural world He created. We glorify the Lord by looking into this book and trying to grasp and understand its language. My deep interest in science finds its motivation here, just as for Galileo. (Of course, I could never in a million years aspire to his genius, his sheer creative love....)
Yes of course, js, you are exactly right: the Bible is NOT a scientific textbook!!! And also right that it does teach "morality." But more than that, its main purpose, it seems to me, is to lay out the divine dynamics of the great hierarchy of Being -- God-Man-Nature(World)-Society -- for the purpose of bringing God and man into intimate communication and relationship. The order of the personal soul is fundamental to the good order of society, and of man's responsible relations with the natural world. Or at least that is my belief.
As for whether the Bible teaches history or not, I think the Jews would insist that it does. Many of the accounts of the Old and New Testaments have been independently corroborrated by some of the human race's earliest historians (e.g., Herodotus), who were neither Jews nor Christians.
The heliocentric system is also more æsthetic than the geocentric. In a heliocentric system, the object farther out from their center of rotation take longer to make a circuit. (Planets, moons of Jupiter, Saturn, etc.) This is not true in a geocentric system.
I believe the Bible teaches history, but not in the same sense that a pile of videotapes might teach history. I would disagree with anyone who argues that there are no liberties taken with specific stories.
But the heliocentric system still required epicycles until eliptical orbits were hypothesized. And eliptical orbits made no sense until Newton. So we have two or three hundred years in which the esthetic argument is somewhat shakey.
Personally, I believe whole heartedly in Creationism. I do not have any scientific facts to back why I feel the way I do. All I have is my own observations of life. When one has a 6 year old in the house, quite often one's eyes are opened to things that never ever would have even been considered before.
I have literally watched my beautiful, intelligent and often mischievious daughter grow from conception to the point she now has grown to become. I can not figure out for the life of me, how anyone could ever believe such an idea as evolution. Oh, I know someone will post a belligerant and rude response to my post, but to me, belief in evolution takes far greater faith than to believe that a Holy God created all.
When I observe all of the tiniest details of life, especially those pointed out by my little one who quite often excitedly points these things out to me, I realize there is something far greater than a slow but sure chemical transforming of life happening. Surely, we are all held in the Palms of the Hands of a Loving and Just Creator.
Life is just too intricately detailed to have come about by evolution. We are here for a purpose, and not by a series of Chemical reactions that happened because the conditions happened to be right that one point in history literally billions of years ago.
Let the insults and belligerant remarks, fly, but my position will not change. I stand by my belief we are created by God and not a series of chemical reactions from some primordial soup billions of years ago.
I will try not to be rude, but you are essentially placing arbitrary limits of the complexity of God's creation, essentially equating "chemistry" with a set of cardboard cutouts. I think it is foolish to think you know enough about creation to make this kind of judgement.
I do not by any means proclaim to be an expert on evolution. I have done a little reading on the subject. I have also followed the debates as they have occurred not only on Free Republic, but other arenas as well. From what I have seen and heard from other sources, it all comes back down to chemical reactions, no one has ever been able to recreate. Like I said in my earlier post, all I have is my observations. Again, I say I am no expert, and I do not claim to know all there is know about evolution. But, I have listened with great interest to all those who do appear to be very knowledgeable about the subject.
Not to pick nits, but in the Popperian formulation of science, the induction is NEVER used to prove anything. Instead, induction's role is limited to "extrapolating" from limited data a possible explanation that would be universally applicable. And thus an hypothesis is born.
Whether or not it survives to acheive the status of "theory" is entirely a deductive affair, assuming the hypothesis is amenable to falsification.
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