Posted on 04/22/2005 4:21:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2000 |
"for basic work on information and communication technology" |
"for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics" | "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit" |
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Zhores I. Alferov | Herbert Kroemer | Jack S. Kilby |
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Russia | Federal Republic of Germany | USA |
A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute St. Petersburg, Russia |
University of California Santa Barbara, CA, USA |
Texas Instruments Dallas, TX, USA |
b. 1930 | b. 1928 | b. 1923 |
The Nobel Committee has asked me to discuss my life story, so I guess I should begin at the beginning.
I was born in 1923 in Great Bend, Kansas, which got its name because the town was built at the spot where the Arkansas River bends in the middle of the state. I grew up among the industrious descendents of the western settlers of the American Great Plains.
Graphic --beware ... People who live in glass houses, etc.
Creation "Science" has no place in the schools, let them teach that fantasy in church.
Since when does Dawkins write school text books?
My idea of rationality omits the "No True Scotsman" fallacy and omits judging scientific theories by the extreme statements of polemicists.
You seem obsessed with the possibility that there might be atheists.
Well, yes, there are, and most of them are likely to be attracted to a system of knowledge that doesn't start with the assumption of an inerrant text written by God.
What you are doing is asserting that because "all" atheists are philosophical materialists, then all methodological materialists are atheists. Not just atheists, but evangelical atheists.
That is your perception, Oztrich Boy; and out of respect for you I will not dispute it here. All I ask is that you return the favor, and train a like analysis on the doings of your side of the argument.
Otherwise, I might suspect that you are trying to change the subject I raised. I would consider that a dodge, to be aided and abetted by further subterfuge and misdirection.... FWIW.
Thanks so much for writing!
So far, that's about three out of hundreds of millions.
Joseph Priestly was a clergyman, is it any wonder the religion of Chemistry was born?
Well I don't know anything about Einstein's "goofy socialism." I just give thanks and praise he wasn't a freaking communist. :^)
He was not a notably "religious" man. But I have to tell you, IMHO, any man who could utter these words with complete sincerity and humility would be one I recognize as a true "son of God." My tale of Einstein begins here:
Thus I came -- despite the fact that I was the son of entirely irreligious [Jewish] parents -- to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively frantic [orgy] of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing experience.... It was clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal."... The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of the given possibilities swam as highest aim half consciously and half unconsciously before the mind's eye."
Somewhere along the line the "youth" gathered the following impression:
Nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas. I am convinced that we can discover, by means of purely mathematical constructions, those concepts and those lawful connections between them which furnish the key to the understanding of natural phenomena. Experience remains, of course, the sole criteria of physical utility of a mathematical construction. But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed."
Please note the man who said this is clearly "outside of 4D space/time reality" in his perceptions.
Certainly he must have had at one time or another further preoccupations with divinity, that is, beyond age 12 -- as we are to gather from his remarks on the occasion of Eddington's 1919 solar-eclipse confirmation of the predictions of general relativity, as reported by Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider:
When I was giving expression to my joy that [Eddington's] results coincided with his calculations, [Einstein] said quite unmoved, "But I know the theory is correct," and when I asked, what if there had been no confirmation of his prediction, he countered: "Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord -- the theory is correct."
Einstein seemed ever gracious towards/about the divinity, which a man of his intellectual excellence probably realized was the essential criterion or test of any discovered truth. But for our purposes, it seems two things need to be remarked here. (1) Einstein clearly resonated throughout his entire life and career to standards of truth that were not of his own making. And (2), he recognized that he was so good at what he did, that he might "converse with God" on a more or less equal footing.
My point -- finally -- is that Einstein -- irreligious as he was -- still recognized the existence of God, however obliquely.
Certainly his famous statement, "God does not play dice" hardly sounds like an "agnostic confession" to my ears.
It might be proposed that the "god" to which Einstein referred here is only himself. But I would have difficulty reconciling that conclusion with all that is known of Einstein's life, in the manner in which he conducted it....
Life my dear Patrick is a sublime, ever-so-complex puzzle. Please do not ever think to reduce it to convenient slogans or labels, such as "goofy socialist."
Or so it seems to me, for whatever it's worth... maybe about 2 cents???
I rather think Professor Dawkins writes books for the parents of schoolchildren. Who consequently make no objection to schoolbooks that largely reproduce/incorporate his ideas. For he undoubtedly is an outstanding, influential public figure and universally-acknowledged "expert" in his field. (In today's language, that means he is a "pop star.")
Any more questions???
And yet, somehow, he never recognized the existence of religion. What a smart man!
Yup
What evidence do you have that school textbooks incorperate Dawkins philosophical beliefs?
You responded:
Well I don't know anything about Einstein's "goofy socialism." I just give thanks and praise he wasn't a freaking communist.
He was indeed a socialist. But we don't let it affect our opinion of his scientific work. Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein. I don't see why the same compartmentalization can't apply to biologists, some of whom are atheists (and some aren't).
And I, for one, am glad that he does. The persistence of abject superstition and hopeful mythology in human relations and politics cannot last much longer without bringing about a new Stupid (or Dark, for those of you in Rio Linda) Age.
Come, let us embrace the future and bring Institutional Stupidity to a righteous end right now!
Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
you: Well, it is. Individual scientists aren't neutral, of course, nor are they required to be.
At the moment, any hint of theology will doom a scientist's effort but overt atheism is waived.
The new Pope will be playing a huge role in this shift, considering his views on this topic. This area is his biggest difference from his predecessor.
But let a neo-Darwinist cite a "naturalistic" miracle (e.g., turning a reptile into a bird), and that's just fine and dandy with them.
I wonder if the the atheist code word for "miracle" is "anthropic principle" or "we'll have a materialist answer in [pick a number] years".
Oztrich boy: And yet, that is Intelligent Design in one sentence.
Atheism, OTOH, is a "doctrine" in that it takes a position on God (as not-existing) and embraces ideology, philosophy and politics based on the notion that "all that there is" is that which physically exists in space/time. (corporeal, spatial, temporal)
If Intelligent Design were doing theology under the color of science, it would have a doctrine. Scientists who "evangelize" for atheism under the color of science [Lewontin, Pinker, Mayr, etc.] do have a doctrine.
Deductive logic on my part having read so many polls like these:
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