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.
100-year old placemarker.
Okay. Do you believe that there is a scientific theory of creationism?
Amazing thread placemarker.
So is good science left brain or right brain intellectual activity?
"Good science is that which adheres to the scientific method."
Scientific method is what constantly continues to evolve.
Maybe you can get a refund?
The ICR loonies are supposed to be scientists? Real science is an investigation of nature. It has a spirit of inquiry. It isn't what you studied, it's what you do.
On the other hand, when scientists are criticized by insurance salesmen from Chicago, everyone is supposed to take it seriously, right?
Should be easy enough, as long as he held on to his receipt - K-Mart is much better about refunds when you have a receipt.
Ernst Mayr, the last survivor of the intellectual giants who developed the modern version of the theory of evolution, turns 100 today.Hard to believe that a graduate biologist, with post-doc work, has never heard of this guy. Anyway, continuing:"Among the great evolutionary biologists of this century," Mayr was called by Harvard sociobiologist and author Edward O. Wilson -- as well as "one of the best writers" on the topic.
In biology, "everybody stands in some way in (Mayr's) shadow," said Professor F. Clark Howell, co-director of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies at UC Berkeley, who first met Mayr in 1946. "He's done a huge amount of work and had a great influence."
His stature has also earned him some enmity: To creationists, Mayr is their No. 1 scientific foe -- "the unquestioned dean of the modern evolutionary establishment," claims an online site run by the Institute for Creation Research in Santee, in San Diego County.It's a pretty good article.
I mean reality is about to rain on his parade like a ton of fire and brimstone bricks. Capiche ?
Just as church and state must be kept separate, so must Creationism and science. It's as simple as that.
They worship Charles Darwin, ergo they believe in him as their creator. They are just too fey and gay to realize it.
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