Evolutionary Concepts: Natural Selection and Patrick Matthew
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Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century: Natural Selection and
Patrick Matthew
It is a long-held distortion of scientific history which claims that
evolution by natural selection was a scientific innovation first
promulgated by Charles Darwin. It has been a popular, yet spurious,
myth in England for so long that the name of the great man has become
synonymous with Evolution itself. But nearly thirty years before
Darwin, a Scottish gentleman farmer and fruit-grower, Patrick Matthew,
had detailed in his book, Naval Timber and Arboriculture (1831), the
basic principle underlying what came to be termed Darwinism. In this
completely revised and updated edition of this definitive work on
Matthew, Mr Dempster sets the record straight - on Matthew, on Darwin,
on Lamarck and on Cuvier. Dempster shows that Darwin never used the
word Evolution. The true founder of Evolution was Lamarck and the true
origin of the principle of natural selection lies with Matthew.
Matthew was not only a scholar, with an original and enquiring mind,
rooted in the traditions of the Scottish Enlightenment, but also was a
practical man, having long experience as a commercial grower with the
techniques of improving fruit-tree stock by selection. He brought a
distinctive Scottish contribution to the development of scientific
thought which has been almost overlooked by history.
=== Notes ===
natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
natural means of selection - Matthews
natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit to
Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on the
Beagle.
NS is actually Democritus atomism . Replace natural with atom: atom
competitive selection.
Arkalen
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Concepts-Nineteenth-Century-Selection/dp/1858213568/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310318307&sr=1-6
>
> Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century: Natural Selection and
> Patrick Matthew
Who cares about evolutionary concepts in the Nineteenth Century ? This
is the twenty-first, or had you missed that ?
History lessons are fascinating but their relevance to current
scientific theories is limited.
Atoms are selected in many different contexts, crystallization and
biochemistry are the more obvious examples, but I can't imagine why one
would describe this process as "competitive".
And of course that has nothing to do with natural selection in the
context of the theory of evolution.
Boikat
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Concepts-Nineteenth-Century-Sele...
If you like, you can start a movement to change "Darwinism" to
"Matthewsism". Will that make you happy?
Boikat
Nathan Levesque
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Concepts-Nineteenth-Century-Sele...
>
I thought Darwin's legacy was producing one of the earliest, and more
importantly, the arguably most comprehensive argument for a collection
of principles, namely natural selection.
Mitchell Coffey
[snip]
> === Notes ===
> natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
> natural means of selection - Matthews
>
> natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit to
> Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on the
> Beagle.
What evidence do you have that while on the Beagle Darwin read Matthews'
book on growing trees for the Royal Navy?
> NS is actually Democritus atomism . Replace natural with atom: atom
> competitive selection.
>
Actually, replace natural with atom and you get "atom selection." Also,
no honest person can say that natural selection is the same as
Democritus' atomism.
Mitchell Coffey
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wrote:
darwin credited Aristotle with ns , he wrote how aristotle pre-
conceived of the concept. If you carefully read what , patrick
matthew , james hutton and others during 18th/19th century wrote you
will see that they all merely reformulated aristotle, codifying for
aristotle's tautology with the following terms:
natural competitive selection
natural means of selection
natural preservation (darwins preferred term)
survival of the fittest.
The theme is that the good atom/rabbit/human are better adapted then
the bad atom with the premise that the universe had no beginning.
Democritus believed the universe was eternal, thus he did not have to
explain how the good/bad atoms came into existence in the first place.
aristotle in turn reformulated democritus tautology. tautologies
allows one to come to any non-sequitur conclusion.
backspace
wrote:
> On 7/10/2011 1:23 PM, backspace wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > === Notes ===
> > natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
> > natural means of selection - Matthews
>
> > natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit to
> > Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on the
> > Beagle.
>
> What evidence do you have that while on the Beagle Darwin read Matthews'
> book on growing trees for the Royal Navy?
matthews book was on tree/wood production, it was required reading.
back then getting wood for naval ships was a matter
of survival for the British empire. the purpose of the beagle trip was
to get wood/trees, they did not go for a joy ride. darwin claimed he
was the ships naturalist, which is a lie, the ships doctor was the
naturalist. darwin's purpose was to provide company to the captain who
would otherwise be alone , not able to socialize with the lower caste
sailors. Darwin lied about these facts.
David Hare-Scott
Assuming for the purpose of discusion this is all true what are the
consequences of it? In what way (other than historical interest ) does it
matter?
David
backspace
> backspace wrote:
> >http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Concepts-Nineteenth-Century-Sele...
It matters because Wilkins in his latest journal paper and blog post
used 'Darwin' and 'natural selection' in the same context.
What is he talking about? I also want to know what Darwin's
ideas(hutton, lamarck, democritus, aristotle, buffon) has got to do
with the partial differential equations that describe the flagellum
movement and its neural network PID control algorithms.
backspace
Or for that matter Buffon or Buffonism, because Darwin understood
French and extensively plagiarized his works. Osborne Quoted DArwin in
one of his letters trying to explain the remarkable similarities
between him and Baffon '..... large sections of my and Baffon's works
are *laughably* the same......'.
Yes, Darwin actually wrote laughably!
Pz Myers again referred to Darwin in one of his blog posts. There is a
strange type of mental block , if we are referring to Darwin and it
can be shown that DArwin in turn ''laughably'' had written sections
with striking resemblance to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_de_Buffon,
should we not rather refer to Buffon instead?
What we must determine is in what way did a French man in 1760 explain
the PID flight control algorithms of a virus as it makes a rocket
reverse thruster type descent.
Viruses implement math algorithms to coordinate their movements. Every
single biological machine is implementing some sort of mathematical
algorithm or PID control loop.
As put forth on my wiki , the question actually goes back to Aristotle
and Democritus, the ideas we are really dealing with , reformulated
using volitional type language i.e. selection, evolution etc.
Everybody tries to impose a meaning on 'selection' instead of
understanding that it was a proxy for Malthus competition between
species, which in turn is an extension of the mythologies of Gods
slaying seemonsters as narrated by Gandalf the tribal wizard 3000B.C.
His ideas in turn were reformulated using many Deity's such as Osiris,
Dagon, Zeus etc.
The catholic church coopted the Fish God's hat and infused Aristotle
metaphysics into Xtianity with the mass. Greek philosophy under
Democritus took the fight between Gods and Seemonsters to be the fight
between atoms.
They all had a fire/water , black/white , yin/yang theme. Today we are
told about the fight between the 'alleles'. Problem though arrived
with genes as a cybernetic abstraction.
Arkalen
Democritus was wrong. The Universe isn't eternal, and there are no
"good" or "bad" atoms, and atoms aren't systematically subjected to an
optimization process by virtue of their existence. (unless...
radioactive decay ? Okay, ONE optimization process. That works
differently from natural selection, as atoms don't replicate)
>
> aristotle in turn reformulated democritus tautology. tautologies
> allows one to come to any non-sequitur conclusion.
>
How could Democritus's statement be a tautology if it's false ? Which it
is ?
gdgu...@gmail.com
college. The professor was attempting to illustrate a special feature
of human language as compared with say, bird calls; our ability to
construct a sentence that has never been uttered before in all of
human history. "My, but she has lovely green hair" was his example,
back when human hair came in fewer colors.
Somehow I was just reminded of that.
Arkalen
category:
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However, we can get the gist of Matthew’s ideas from the following
passage quoted from On Naval Timbers by Wallace:
''..............As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied,
it is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-circumstance
individuals who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these
inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation
and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind: the weaker and
less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle
is in constant action: it regulates the colour, the figure, the
capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose
colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from
enemies, or defence from inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate,
whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and
support: in such immense waste of primary and youthful life these only
come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which nature tests
their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue
their kind of reproduction. ..................''
Matthew then goes on to show how this law “tends to the production of
almost uniform groups of individuals, which we term species.” No
wonder then that both Wallace and Darwin were so impressed by
Matthew’s work and had to concede, somewhat grudgingly on Darwin’s
part, that Matthew had beaten them both to the theory of natural
selection.
What then of the “cover up “? Why is the fact that Darwin and Wallace,
on their own admission, relinquished priority of the theory of natural
selection not generally known? Let us go back to the opening quote
from the letter which Darwin wrote to Lyell. Darwin spells Matthew’s
name wrong, but goes on to provide a clear admission of Matthew’s
priority. Firstly, there is no doubting the date of Matthew’s book,
1831, and the fact that his theory of natural selection appeared well
before the Darwin–Wallace papers presented at the famous meeting of
the Linnaean Society in 1858. Secondly, Darwin states that Matthew
“briefly but completely anticipates his own and Wallace’s
contribution. To add more emphasis to this point, Darwin states,” it
is certainly I think, a complete but not developed anticipation.” It
needs to be remembered that this letter appeared in 1860, only a year
after Darwin’s triumphant release of the On the Origin of Species.
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Review of Dempster’s study of Patrick Matthew
Hiram Caton
W. J. Dempster. Natural Selection and Patrick Matthew. Evolutionary
Concepts in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh: Pentland Press. 1996
What selection means
This study rescues from obscurity the wealthy Scottish aboriculturist
who in 1831 devised the concept of natural selection as the mechanism
of species evolution. Not only is his concept very similar to Darwin’s
(as Darwin acknowledged), but like Darwin, Matthew derived it from
domestication experience. The key premise is the belief that the
structural and phenotype variation achieved by domestication proves
the mutability of species: there is no limit to the variation that may
be induced in a variety, given time and effort. Dempster shows that
this far-reaching theoretical position arose as an ‘obvious’
implication of the breeder’s experience. That breeding might achieve
just about any result was part of the shop talk of breeders,
expressing as it did a no-limits optimism. But then there was the
other side of the story: time and effort. In practice, breeders dealt
constantly with the persistence of the original type through the
permutations and combinations of dominance, reversion, back-crosses,
and hybridization. Marvellous things might be done with pigeons, but
breeders didn’t really believe in the possibility of a flightless or
four-legged pigeon. An acknowledged limiting condition, called
correlation of parts, was that selection for any trait generates
changes in other traits as well. Had this phenomenon been subjected to
insightful empirical tests, it would have refuted the idea that
domestic breeds are indefinitely variable. But breeders, as practical
men, lacked the wherewithal to devise theoretically informed tests of
heritability. This applies to the theoretically aware Matthew and
Darwin
Darwin did indeed conduct many breeding experiments, but he lacked the
theoretical sophistication to conceptualize them quantitatively. His
results thus amounted to little more than anecdotal glosses on
variation. Dempster highlights Darwin’s deficiency in this respect by
passing in review his reaction to the experiments of Gabriel Naudin
(1852). Naudin’s work highlighted particulate inheritance (later
confirmed by Mendel), but Darwin’s strong bias in favor of
‘gradualism’ prevented him from recognizing the importance of Naudin’s
work. It would have been relevant for Dempster to mention as well
Alfred Wallace’s response to Mendel’s discoveries when they finally
came to light: he dismissed them as of no relevance to evolution, and
did so in Darwin’s name as well as his own.
A very significant aspect of Dempster’s investigation (implicit in the
foregoing remarks) is the vast gulf between breeding practice and the
more formal knowledge of naturalists, botanists, zoologists,
paleontologists, and the like. He illustrates the gulf in the case of
Thomas Huxley and a few others. Their ignorance of breeding limited
their ability to evaluate Darwin’s arguments for evolution, which
depended heavily on evidence from domestication.
A prominent part of this study is Dempster’s rehabilitation of
Lamarckian theory from Darwin’s snide remarks and deprecations, and
the misrepresentation of his theory by a long string of theorists and
historians. The excuse for this excursion is Dempster’s attention to
Darwin’s heavy purchase on Lamarckism through his Pangenesis theory
and in the extensively revised fifth and sixth editions of Origin.
Wallace and Matthew, he points out, rejected Lamarckism without
qualification, but many other evolution theorists incorporated it in
one form or another. He points out that Darwin took Pangenesis from
Buffon. He omits mention of Darwin’s correspondence with Herbert
Spencer about the theory, relevant because Spencer also proposed a
version of Pangenesis.
There are some errors. Cuvier’s theory of successive appearances of
new taxa in the fossil record was interpreted by creationists as a
warrant for claiming successive moments of divine creation through
time, but, contra Dempster, Cuvier himself did not advocate this
position. He held instead to an empiricist stance that in the absence
of evidence no speculations should be advanced. Dempster also errors
in ridiculing Lord Kelvin’s dating of the age of the Earth to 30
million years. This dating was independently confirmed by Heinrich von
Helmholz and was accepted as warranted until the discovery of
radioactivity added a hitherto unknown energy source. It is also
incorrect to attribute an evolution theory to Mendel. He believed that
his two laws refuted Darwin by showing that the variability required
by his theory was contrary to fact.
The author’s discussion of the state of evolution theory in the
decades prior to the publication of the Origin is generally good,
particularly in his recognition of the importance of the work of
Edward Blyth. But he follows the crowd in dismissing the scientific
value of Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. This
book went through numerous editions that were updated to take account
of new evidence, and this was done with the collaboration of three
established biologists. Dempster fails to acknowledge that Vestiges,
and its companion volume Explanations, set out very trenchant
arguments for a wholly naturalistic conception of natural phenomena
and of human origins. Indeed, far more trenchant than anything Darwin
wrote.
The Darwin fan club won't like this book. As Dempster notes with a
whiff of Schadenfreude, the commissars of orthodoxy strongly
discourage the faithful from reading the heretical sixth edition of
Origin. I add my own cynical smirk by noting that the sixth edition is
the one where Darwin changed the title from On the Origin of Species
to the now standard Origin of Species.
To sum up: Dempster shows that domestication evidence is essential for
understanding the selection concept used by Matthew and Darwin. He
doesn’t quite say so, but his exposition suggests that the evidential
value of Darwin’s long argument turns on the validity of his
understanding of domestication.
It is a pity that the sales rank of this book is so low.
gdgu...@gmail.com
> http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Milton_Wain_collection_of_pre_Darwin...
>
> However, we can get the gist of Matthew’s ideas from the following
> passage quoted from On Naval Timbers by Wallace:
>
> ''..............As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied,
> it is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-circumstance
> individuals who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these
> inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation
> and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind: the weaker and
> less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle
> is in constant action: it regulates the colour, the figure, the
> capacities, and instincts;
Kind of looks like the Theory of Evolution was there to be found,
rather than the work of one bitter atheist. Did you have another point
to make?
Greg Guarino
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> On Jul 11, 12:37�pm, backspace <stephan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Milton_Wain_collection_of_pre_Darwin...
>
> > passage quoted from On Naval Timbers by Wallace:
>
> > ''..............As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied,
> > it is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-circumstance
> > individuals who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these
> > inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation
> > and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind: the weaker and
> > less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle
> > is in constant action: it regulates the colour, the figure, the
> > capacities, and instincts;
>
> Kind of looks like the Theory of Evolution was there to be found,
> rather than the work of one bitter atheist. Did you have another point
> to make?
''........What does Richard Dawkins have to say about Matthew? Dawkins
only reference to Matthew is to claim that he saw natural selection as
�a negative force only� (Dawkins, 2008), and he clearly sees no need
to dwell on the fact that both Darwin and Wallace admitted that
Matthew had priority on the theory of natural selection. In contrast,
the late Steven Jay Gould claimed that Matthew�s natural selection
refers to a positive, rather than negative, force (Gould, 2002). We
therefore have the two great evolutionary writers of our age at odds
over a fundamental point- was Matthew�s view of natural selection
positive or negative? ............''
A tautology allows one to come to any non-sequitur conclusion,
positive or negative.
backspace
''..........In fact, there exists more than a hint that Darwin did, in
fact, read Matthew’s book. This hint revolves around the similarity of
language found in the two accounts of natural selection. Matthew
states: There is more beauty and utility of design in this continual
balancing of life to circumstances, and greater conformity to those
dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in the total
destruction and new creation. Now compare this with Darwin:
There is grandeur in this view of, with its several powers having been
originally breathed by the Creator into few forms or into one… Loren
Eisley, in his book on Darwin (Eisley, 1959) provides evidence that,
by 1844, Darwin was well aware of Matthew’s book; and that he took the
phrase “natural process of selection” from it and modified it to
“natural selection”. Although the term “selection” was used, by
Victorians, in relation to plant and animal breeding, I can find no
other reference to the use of a “natural process of selection”; as a
result, it cannot be said that Darwin modified a term that was already
in wide use. ......................''
Lets see now, we have:
Natural process of selection
Natural competitive selection
Natural means of selection.
Natural selection (contracted by Darwin, leaves out process ,
competitive or means)
Natural survival.
Natural preservation.
Survival of the fittest.
Reduces:
The natural means of selection was the good animal outwitting the bad
animal and thus dominating his ecological niche.
Democritus:
The natural means of atomic selection was the good atom outwitting the
bad atom and thus dominating his atomic niche.
These all are variations on the Malthus theme.
Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org
Thus it may have been chosen independently.
We have another alternative claim to Darwin's anyway, that of
Wallace. It doesn't matter very much who had the idea: it's whether
it appeals to other people by intellectual persuasion that counts.
David Hare-Scott
> positive or negative.
The T word at last! I will collect my $64,000 at the cash window tomorrow
thanks.
D
David Hare-Scott
I am astounded at your narrow vision. I would have expected you would also
be interested in the relationship between the nth roots of unity and the
roots of citrus trees. It's a lemon tree dear Watson.
D
John Stockwell
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Concepts-Nineteenth-Century-Sele...
>
> Patrick Matthew
>
> It is a long-held distortion of scientific history which claims that
> evolution by natural selection was a scientific innovation first
> promulgated by Charles Darwin. It has been a popular, yet spurious,
> myth in England for so long that the name of the great man has become
> synonymous with Evolution itself. But nearly thirty years before
> Darwin, a Scottish gentleman farmer and fruit-grower, Patrick Matthew,
> had detailed in his book, Naval Timber and Arboriculture (1831), the
> basic principle underlying what came to be termed Darwinism. In this
> completely revised and updated edition of this definitive work on
> Matthew, Mr Dempster sets the record straight - on Matthew, on Darwin,
> on Lamarck and on Cuvier. Dempster shows that Darwin never used the
> word Evolution. The true founder of Evolution was Lamarck and the true
> origin of the principle of natural selection lies with Matthew.
> Matthew was not only a scholar, with an original and enquiring mind,
> rooted in the traditions of the Scottish Enlightenment, but also was a
> practical man, having long experience as a commercial grower with the
> techniques of improving fruit-tree stock by selection. He brought a
> distinctive Scottish contribution to the development of scientific
> thought which has been almost overlooked by history.
All the more reason that you should accept the idea. Great minds think
alike.
-John
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> And of course that has nothing to do with natural selection in the
> context of the theory of evolution.
rephrase:
The concept with natural competitive selection in the context of the
theory of evolution - grammatically correct and meaningful in terms
of Malthusian theory.
The concept with natural selection in the context of the theory of
evolution - grammatically correct but meaningless.
backspace
The way Spencer used the phrase Theory of Evolution in 1852 in
Leader magazine indicates that it wasn't the first usage or coined by
him. ToE was a different term for Prof. Owen's Doctrine of
Derivation.
Darwin lifted ToE from Spencer and others ,leading to the widespread
delusion that Darwin coined ToE - he didn't.
Free Lunch
backspace <steph...@gmail.com> wrote in
<0544bd81-2b8e-461d...@t9g2000vbs.googlegroups.com>:
Are you still confusing yourself about the difference between grammar
and physical reality? You are not the only one who can form many
grammatically correct sentences that have either no content to them at
all or are shown to be false by logic or physical evidence.
DanaTweedy
> On Jul 11, 1:20 am, Mitchell Coffey<mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 7/10/2011 1:23 PM, backspace wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>> === Notes ===
>>> natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
>>> natural means of selection - Matthews
>>
>>> natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit to
>>> Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on the
>>> Beagle.
>>
>> What evidence do you have that while on the Beagle Darwin read Matthews'
>> book on growing trees for the Royal Navy?
>
> matthews book was on tree/wood production, it was required reading.
Required by whom?
> back then getting wood for naval ships was a matter
> of survival for the British empire.
Yes, but Darwin wasn't in the Royal Navy.
> the purpose of the beagle trip was
> to get wood/trees, they did not go for a joy ride.
No, the purpose of the trip was to chart the waters off South America.
They weren't looking for trees.
> darwin claimed he
> was the ships naturalist, which is a lie, the ships doctor was the
> naturalist.
Darwin didn't make that claim, and he did act as the naturalist, as the
ship's doctor chose not to spend his time that way.
> darwin's purpose was to provide company to the captain who
> would otherwise be alone , not able to socialize with the lower caste
> sailors. Darwin lied about these facts.
Darwin didn't lie about that. You are mistaken.
DJT
Ray Martinez
> On Jul 11, 1:20 am, Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On 7/10/2011 1:23 PM, backspace wrote:
> > [snip]
>
> > > === Notes ===
> > > natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
> > > natural means of selection - Matthews
>
> > > natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit to
> > > Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on the
> > > Beagle.
>
> > What evidence do you have that while on the Beagle Darwin read Matthews'
> > book on growing trees for the Royal Navy?
>
> matthews book was on tree/wood production, it was required reading.
> back then getting wood for naval ships was a matter
> of survival for the British empire. the purpose of the beagle trip was
It was a mapping/surveying voyage. And like most voyages they had to
deliver and pick up certain things.
> ....they did not go for a joy ride. darwin claimed he
> was the ships naturalist, which is a lie, the ships doctor was the
> naturalist. darwin's purpose was to provide company to the captain who
> would otherwise be alone , not able to socialize with the lower caste
> sailors. Darwin lied about these facts.
This is one thing Darwin did not lie about. He was ship naturalist.
See the official voyage narrative published by Captain Fitzroy. In it
he lists Darwin as naturalist (page 20).
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F10.2&viewtype=text&pageseq=1
Ray
David Hare-Scott
> On Jul 11, 1:20 am, Mitchell Coffey <mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 7/10/2011 1:23 PM, backspace wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>> === Notes ===
>>> natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
>>> natural means of selection - Matthews
>>
>>> natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit
>>> to Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on
>>> the Beagle.
>>
>> What evidence do you have that while on the Beagle Darwin read
>> Matthews' book on growing trees for the Royal Navy?
>
> matthews book was on tree/wood production, it was required reading.
> back then getting wood for naval ships was a matter
> of survival for the British empire. the purpose of the beagle trip was
> to get wood/trees, they did not go for a joy ride.
This is nonsense, you are allowing your desire to belittle Darwin to
overtake the facts.
The voyages of the Beagle to South America (and then round the world in the
second case) were primarily to map the coastlines of those regions and to
verify the longitude of key ports and destinations, for this purpose they
took no less than 22 chronometers. The accuracy of maps was crucial to the
Empire as their domination of the seas would be reduced if their ships could
not reliably get to their destinations due to poor maps whether it be for
military or commercial purposes. The second voyage was the first
circumnavigation to carry working chronometers all the way IIRC. Fitzroy
was disappointed that after nearly 5 years at sea he returned home and his
time was out by 33 seconds compared to Greenwich.
darwin claimed he
> was the ships naturalist, which is a lie, the ships doctor was the
> naturalist. darwin's purpose was to provide company to the captain who
> would otherwise be alone , not able to socialize with the lower caste
> sailors. Darwin lied about these facts.
What specimens or published works on naturalism did the doctor produce from
the voyage? AFAIK none at all. Darwin was selected to both keep the
captain company and to study the lands that they encountered. His main
qualification at that time was not as a naturalist but a geologist.
Nevertheless the study of nature was an official part of the trip approved
by authorities. As well as Darwin they took an artist to provide images of
the landforms, natives and other matters of interest along the way.
Fitzroy at least was convinced that Darwin was there to study nature as he
asked for a suitably qualified person, if it were only as a companion no
particular expertise would be required. This is recorded in Fitzroy's
journal of the voyage and supported by the fact that he approved of Darwin
using ship's resources (boats, stores and crew) to assist in some of his
studies. Part way through the voyage he assigned the seaman Syms Covington
to be Darwin's assistant storing and cataloguing his specimens. For a bloke
who went on a voyage as captain's companion he sure sent home a huge
collection of specimens. Why do you think he did that?
If you are going to say Darwin lied about this I have three points of issue.
1) What lie exactly did Darwin tell? Specifically where and when did he
tell it?
2) What evidence do you have that what he said was false?
3) In what way is the discrepancy between Darwin's stated purpose and the
purpose intended by the Admiralty (if any) relevant to his later work?
David
Harry K
>
> - Show quoted text -
And at the end of the day, it has ab zero effect on the fact that the
ToE is correct (to the best of our ability to tell "correct").
So you are still stuck with denying a theory well founded on the
evidence and research.
Harry K
TomS
<ae974c3b-e9b8-4fc5...@10g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>, backspace
stated..."
[...snip...]
>The way Spencer used the phrase Theory of Evolution in 1852 in
>Leader magazine indicates that it wasn't the first usage or coined by
>him. ToE was a different term for Prof. Owen's Doctrine of
>Derivation.
Spencer didn't use the phrase "theory of evolution" in the 1852 version
of that essay, but only in the slightly modified versions printed after
"On the Origin of Species". See Wikisource for the 1852 version and read
the accompanying notes:
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Development_Hypothesis>
--
---Tom S.
"... the heavy people know some magic that can make things move and even fly,
but they're not very bright, because they can't survive without their magic
contrivances"
Xixo, in "The Gods Must Be Crazy II"
backspace
> "On Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:26:50 -0700 (PDT), in article
backspace
Until you define what this ToE is and why it's wikipedia page doesn't
exist , you're not even wrong.
Note that Evolution is a word not a theory. The Theory_of_evolution
redirects to a word, not an actual theory that explains how the PID
differential equations are transferred from human to baby without us
having to actually undestand Hamilton Jacobi theory.
backspace
tautological banal essence: what happens, happens.
''..............As the field of existence is limited and
preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-
circumstance
individuals who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these
inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation
and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind: the weaker and
less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed. This principle
is in constant action: it regulates the colour, the figure, the
capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose
colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from
enemies, or defence from inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate,
whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and
support: in such immense waste of primary and youthful life these
only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which nature
tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to
continue their kind of reproduction. ..................''
Reduce:
the better-suited individuals ..... struggle forward to
maturity, ....the weaker are prematurely destroyed.
This principle is in constant action: it regulates the capacities;
those individuals in each species whose colour and covering are best
suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from
inclemencies or vicissitudes of climate, whose figure is best
accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support: in such
immense waste of primary and youthful life these only come forward to
maturity from the strict ordeal by which nature tests their
adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue
their kind of reproduction. ..................''
Reduce:
the better-suited individuals ..... struggle forward to
maturity, ....the weaker are prematurely destroyed.
This principle regulates the capacities of those individuals....
best suited to protection from enemies, .....
whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and
support: in such immense waste of primary and youthful life these
only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which nature
tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to
continue their kind of reproduction. ..................''
Reduce:
the better-suited individuals ..... struggle forward to
maturity, ....the weaker are prematurely destroyed.
This principle regulates those best suited to protection from
enemies, .....they only come forward to maturity from the strict
ordeal by which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of
perfection and fitness to continue their kind of
reproduction. ..................''
Reduce:
the better-suited individuals ..... struggle forward to
maturity, ....the weaker are prematurely destroyed.
This principle regulates those best suited to protection from
enemies, ..... nature tests their adaptation to her standard ...
of perfection or fitness to continue their kind of
reproduction. ..................''
Finally:
the better-suited individuals ..... gain maturity, ....the weaker
die.
This principle regulates those best suited to protection from
enemies, ..... nature tests their adaptation to her standard ...
of perfection or fitness to continue their kind of
reproduction. ..................''
-------------------------------
Conclusion:
The weak die and strong survive is a trivially true tautological
banality from which any conclusion is a non-sequitur Their strength
<=> survival and weakness <=> death. This isn't a theory but
generally true and assumed trivially true principle, by stating it ;
becomes a truism. It is the same theme from the Greek philosophers,
reformulated down the ages. In addition it begs the question because
it assumes that species had an increase in information or gained
attributes that weren't previously there .
Nothing is ever adapted to its environment, it only expresses its
attributes. A fish is not adapted for swimming and a human for
walking, because there was no point in time where humans couldn't
walk, they only express their attributes.
TomS
<41271e73-e23e-4e49...@q17g2000vby.googlegroups.com>, backspace
stated..."
I don't have any idea what this relates to.
But I will mention that White's book does not have a high reputation.
Mitchell Coffey
> On Jul 11, 1:20 am, Mitchell Coffey<mitchelldotcof...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On 7/10/2011 1:23 PM, backspace wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>> === Notes ===
>>> natural competitive selection - 1831 Matthews
>>> natural means of selection - Matthews
>>
>>> natural selection - Darwin contracted to ns to avoid giving credit to
>>> Matthew from where he lifted the idea while reading his book on the
>>> Beagle.
>>
>> What evidence do you have that while on the Beagle Darwin read Matthews'
>> book on growing trees for the Royal Navy?
>
> matthews book was on tree/wood production, it was required reading.
> back then getting wood for naval ships was a matter
> of survival for the British empire. the purpose of the beagle trip was
> was the ships naturalist, which is a lie, the ships doctor was the
> naturalist. darwin's purpose was to provide company to the captain who
> would otherwise be alone , not able to socialize with the lower caste
> sailors. Darwin lied about these facts.
Matthews' book was on growing trees for the Royal Navy. The purpose of
the Beagle voyage was most certainly /not/ to get wood or trees.
(Neither is "getting wood/trees" the same as "tree/wood production," as
anyone who can read with a high school proficiency could tell you.)
History shows that the Beagle's ship's doctor left the Beagle early in
the voyage, upon which Darwin was the ship's only naturalist; I can cite
for you the ship's captain referring to him as such during the voyage,
if you wish. You are in truth lying about every single statement of fact
you made in that paragraph, which is quite an achievement even for you.
Mitchell Coffey
Mitchell Coffey
Once again when you've been caught in a misrepresentation you don't
admit your sin, as an honest man would, but respond with a non sequitur,
hoping that some people would be convinced you'd made an honest response.
Mitchell Coffey
John Stockwell
So what? Any of the previous notions of evolution were philosophical
notions. Darwin
used the notion to build a scientific theory of the origin of species,
or more correctly the
origin of variation that leads to species. Darwinian evolution is a
process. it is not an
entity.
-John
John Stockwell
The notion is quite clear--descent with modification and natural
selection. The basic process
is the process of reproduction. The result is that our observations of
biology are understandable
through the notion of common descent.
TomS
<53bf888b-1f42-4270...@q1g2000vbj.googlegroups.com>, John
Stockwell stated..."
It's important because of the deathbed retraction of Darwin, and
because of the way that Darwin would shoot dogs.
If Darwin didn't invent the theory of evolution, then those don't
make any difference.
Did Lady Hope make a visit to Spencer in his final illness?
backspace
darwin lifted 'common descent' from Halloy back in 1836 somewhere
around, its on wikipedia look it up. Are you referring to this paper
by this French geologist? Virtually everything Darwin wrote he lifted
from other authors.
From the sources I have read,Darwin's original purpose was to be
companionship for the captain. Nothing is made up, but I should have
quoted the sources directly instead of from memory.
backspace
I meant descent with modification was lifted from Halloy. It took me a
while to get this info into his page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Julien_d'Omalius_d'Halloy
The Epicureans rewriting history at Wikipedia did't took kindly to
this, but they eventually had to relent and report the facts.
I also wrote the main section of the wikipedia rhetorical tautology
article and specifically 'sneaked' in the phrase '...the truth of the
proposition cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another
self-referentially....' because darwin wrote that the truth of his
propositions cannot be disputed.
Ideas for the article was lifted from TD Tone and his article 'natural
selection, Darwin's great tautology', where he ironically failed to
notice a tautology in one of the sections he quoted. As time allows I
will make a full post as well as a new entry on the issue at my wiki:
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/TauTology
backspace
>
> The Epicureans rewriting history at Wikipedia did't took kindly to
> this, but they eventually had to relent and report the facts.
> I also wrote the main section of the wikipedia rhetorical tautology
> article and specifically 'sneaked' in the phrase '...the truth of the
> proposition cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another
> self-referentially....' �because darwin wrote that the truth of his
> propositions cannot be disputed.
>
> Ideas for the article was lifted from TD Tone and his article 'natural
> selection, Darwin's great tautology', where he ironically failed to
> notice a tautology in one of the sections he quoted. As time allows I
> will make a full post as well as a new entry on the issue at my wiki:http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/TauTology
One thing I forgot to mention was that Darwin said '''... descent
with modification .... or natural selection ....''. This must be seen
In terms of Matthew's * natural competitive selection* or really
*competitive selection*. (Remember Darwin lifted Matthew's term
'natural competitive selection' (1831) and contracted it to ns, to
avoid giving credit to him.
We thus interpret their ideas: As the strong animal engaged in a
struggle against the weak animal ,he adapted to the environment via
this process of *competitive selection* dominating his ecological
niche.
This at least makes sense, 'natural selection' doesn't. We can phrase
it as follows in terms of athletics(design):
One of the two teams was selected to play for the Chicago Cubs after a
process of *competitive selection*. This is both grammatically correct
and meaningful. The following isn't:
One of the two teams was selected to play for the Chicago Cubs after a
process of *natural selection*. The only way this sentence can become
meaningful is we mean with 'natural' , 'competitive'.
natural <=> competitive.
Mitchell Coffey
> From the sources I have read,Darwin's original purpose was to be
> companionship for the captain. Nothing is made up, but I should have
> quoted the sources directly instead of from memory.
You wrote that Darwin lied about being the naturalist on the Beagle. You
wrote nothing about "original purpose." You simply lied, as you
compulsively do. Get some morals.
Mitchell Coffey
r norman
This has all been hashed over frequently in the past, but maybe once
more might be useful.
First, it is well known that the notion of evolution of species was
"in the air". It had been used to help understand what was clearly a
nested hierarchy of morphology in comparing existing species. It may
well have been known that a process of differential reproduction could
result in adaptation. What Darwin did, though, was to put everything
together so that adaptation through natural selection explained
evolution to produce the evolution of species. He did it in such a
masterful fashion, with so compelling an explanation based on such a
tremendous amount of evidence, that there could be no question as to
who was the real "author" of the full notion of evolution with all its
implications.
People before Newton had equations for the motion of the planets.
People before Newton had equations for the motion of objects on earth
due to gravity. I don't believe people before Newton understood that
the same equations applied equally to both types of system. Hence
Newton's greatness. That plus his work on so many other areas of
mathematics and science -- just as Darwin excelled in so many other
areas of biology.
People before Maxwell had equations for electricity and for magnetism.
People before Maxwell new about the funny lack of continuity for
electric currents in regions of changing electric fields that could be
satisfied using a "funny" type of displacement current. I don't
believe that people before Maxwell understood that those equations,
modified to include displacement current, explained the phenomenon of
light.
People before Einstein had the Lorenz transformation but not
relativity theory.
It goes on and on. All truly great innovators and creators in science
had predecessors. Finding early references to selection detracts not
in the slightest from Darwin's accomplishments.
But wait, there is more!
Even if Darwin lied and cheated and was a truly nasty person (which
all indications show is a totally incorrect impression) it would
matter not one bit. There are a number of Nobel Laureates in science
who turned out to be very unsavory people. One was convicted of child
molestation, another accused of racist claims, some were members of
the Nazi party or worked on weapons of mass destruction. A
surprisingly large number have disputes as to who really deserves
proper credit for the work. None of this detracts from the validity
of the science, itself.
Both Darwin's reputation and the validity of evolutionary theory are
quite safe.
John Stockwell
You have to understand that the only sources that matter in scientific
matters
are current sources. Seeing the influences on Darwin and the ideas
that were
floating around in Darwin's time are interesting from an historical
vantage point,
but these things really have no impact on the science.
>
> From the sources I have read,Darwin's original purpose was to be
> companionship for the captain. Nothing is made up, but I should have
> quoted the sources directly instead of from memory.
It's pretty obvious if you actually read Origins and read the other
items that you
are referring to that Darwin's work was his own. Of course, it doesn't
really matter.
The science of biology does not depend on the identity of a particular
investigator.
Darwin signed on as a naturalist.
-John
John Stockwell
>
> The Epicureans rewriting history at Wikipedia did't took kindly to
> this, but they eventually had to relent and report the facts.
> I also wrote the main section of the wikipedia rhetorical tautology
> article and specifically 'sneaked' in the phrase '...the truth of the
> proposition cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another
> self-referentially....' because darwin wrote that the truth of his
> propositions cannot be disputed.
>
> Ideas for the article was lifted from TD Tone and his article 'natural
> selection, Darwin's great tautology', where he ironically failed to
> notice a tautology in one of the sections he quoted. As time allows I
> will make a full post as well as a new entry on the issue at my wiki:http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/TauTology
Yep. D'Halloy did write a short paper in 1831 outlining the notion of
descent with modification. It
is not uncommon in science, with the 20/20 vision of hindsight to find
the same ideas being
put forward in a past era.
As to the notion of evolution being a "tautology" you fail to
recognize that the notion of common ancestry
and descent with modification is the description of a process.
-John
John Stockwell
Not really. The term "natural" in the context of evolution, means that
the process is not guided, nor
is it teleological. Organisms do not have the forms they do because
the forms are seen in advance
to be "useful" but because organisms with forms like those produced
more descendants.
Stuart
<Darwin said or didn't say X gibberish snipped>
What does any of that have to do with whether or not TOE is a valid
scientific theory?
I take you have given up the ghost in trying to falsify TOE and now,
out of pique, are assassinating Darwin's character?
Sad. Truly Sad.
Stuart
backspace
Evolution is a word not a tautology.
Tim Anderson
If the precursors to Darwin's theory of descent by modification is of
interest in this thread, you may enjoy this quote from Ian
Tattersall's book "Paleontology" (my sincere apologies to Professor
Tattersall for any infelicities of punctuation below, as I transcribed
the text from a spoken version of the book). I believe I have included
enough of Professor Tattersall's text to avoid the charge of quote
mining:
“The repeated divergence of new species from common ancestral forms
that lies at the core of evolution inevitably results in the pattern
of ‘sets within sets’ that we actually observe. What’s more, people
have for a very long time been making this observation, and drawing
conclusions from it, independent of their religious, philosophical or
scientific beliefs.”
“The physicist and science historian, Jim Al-Khalili, has, for
example, recently quoted the following from ‘The Book of Animals’ by a
Ninth Century Arab intellectual, Abu Uthman al-Jahith (781-869):
‘Animals engage in a struggle for existence, for resources, to avoid
being eaten, and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms
to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming
into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their
successful characteristics to their offspring.’”
“As Al-Khalili points out, these words have an eerie resemblance to
those Charles Darwin would use a thousand years later in summarising
his theory of evolution by natural selection.”
Musing on this quote, I wondered how different the intellectual
history of Europe (and of its state of knowledge) might have been if
the humane, inclusive and intelligent spirit of Roger of Sicily had
prevailed over the narrow and brutal crusadism of the papacy of the
time.
If you are interested in Abu Uthman al-Jahith, Wikipedia provides an
excellent introduction to his life and work.
John S. Wilkins
...
A few points:
One is that I prepared a "Darwin's Precursors and Influences" FAQ many
years ago:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwin-precursors.html
Another is that natural selection is very different a matter from common
descent. The views you quote from al-Jahith (or al-Jahiz) while they
certainly indicate that variants will survive differentially, is not
itself a matter of evolution; two reasons why - one is that he relied
upon the widely held view that novelties arise by direct environmental
influence (sometimes we call this Lamarckism, unjustly to Lamarck as it
was the default opinion) and so what caused the change was that action.
The other is that the notion of species did not then exist in a special
biological sense and so he may very well have been speaking of the
occurrence of new varieties (like the varieties of flowers or humans);
or he may have been speaking of entire new groups as large as cats and
dogs. It is very hard to tell without speaking Arabic and looking at the
context.
The Book of Animals is a kind of retread of Aristotle and Pliny, both of
whom were available to the high culture Persian intellectual scene, and
similar comments can be found in both. I don't think of his (or their)
ideas as being evolutionary for a number of reasons I won't bore you
with here.
Most of all, there is not the slightest evidence that Darwin or anyone
else working in zoology was influenced by him, contrary to a lot of
pro-Muslim scholars' claims, and if he were a contender, then Pliny and
Aristotle would be a much greater likely source. There was no English,
or French edition at the time Darwin was working for a start and he
didn't read Arabic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jahiz
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
Tim Anderson
> But al be that he was a philosophre,
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
I retreat before your superior knowledge.
Tim Anderson
John
I am not so stupid as to represent a ninth century philosopher as
someone who pre-figured a fully formed version of Darwin's method. My
only point was to say that at least one person thought about this
problem a long time before Darwin. Darwin got it right, and provided
the starting point for a mechanism. But at least we should acknowledge
what these people thought.
T
Tim Anderson
> The Book of Animals is a kind of retread of Aristotle and Pliny, both of
> whom were available to the high culture Persian intellectual scene, and
> similar comments can be found in both. I don't think of his (or their)
> ideas as being evolutionary for a number of reasons I won't bore you
> with here.
>
> John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydneyhttp://evolvingthoughts.net
> But al be that he was a philosophre,
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
Feel free to bore me (since the quote is clearly concerned with the
evolution of animals).
backspace
> One is that I prepared a "Darwin's Precursors and Influences" FAQ many
> years ago:
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwin-precursors.html
> Another is that natural selection is very different a matter from common
> descent.
do you mean natural competitive selection? Note that Darwin meant
competitive selection with NS , the term he lifted from Matthews.
Mitchell Coffey
Coward. Anyway, as a practical matter I find it more effective to
advance before John's superior knowledge.
Mitchell Coffey
John Stockwell
What is your point?
Mitchell Coffey
> On Jul 14, 11:38 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>> One is that I prepared a "Darwin's Precursors and Influences" FAQ many
>> years ago:
>
>> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwin-precursors.html
>
>> Another is that natural selection is very different a matter from common
>> descent.
>
> do you mean natural competitive selection?
No, he means natural selection.
> Note that Darwin meant
> competitive selection with NS ,
Changing what you call a theory doesn't change the theory.
> the term he lifted from Matthews.
Note that you've been shown to be lying, as usual. Your only evidence
was that Darwin and Matthews once used a vaguely similar version of a
common figure-of-speech; furthermore, you provided no evidence that
Matthews' book was available to Darwin on the Beagle. You furthermore
lied about the purpose of the Beagle voyage; and yet furthermore lied
about what Darwin was doing on the Beagle voyage.
Mitchell Coffey
backspace
Mitchell Coffey
Then how come you've never been published?
Mitchell Coffey
Mitchell Coffey
It is not ordinarily my practice to libel the dead, but Al Jahiz is said
to have prefigured certain element of modern economics. I forget the
details.
Mitchell
RAM
This is precisely how your writing is viewed. A jumble of words used
by scholars and you empty them of meaning. Science is about evidence
first and words second. You persist in assuming the opposite. Darwin
had evidence for his work. You have lots of vacuous sentences that go
nowhere and can't understand the empirical canons of science.
John Stockwell
At most you have suggested that Darwin synthesized his notions of
evolution from other
sources. However, it is apparent that Darwin did make the observations
that he made on
his journey on the Beagle, and that many (but not all) of his ideas
were valid, because they
have been shown to work by other investigators. Modern science does
not depend on
Darwin, or his writings in any active way. All of the copies of
Darwin's writings could be lost,
and we will still have the theory of evolution to guide us through the
issues of biology as
related to common descent and the origin of variation and of species.
Even if all of Darwin's writings were totally fiction, this would
still be true, because it is the truth
of observations we make today that is the basis of science, not
something written in some old
book.
-John
backspace
> On Jul 14, 10:07 am, backspace <stephan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jul 14, 5:00 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 14, 5:27 am, backspace <stephan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Jul 14, 11:38 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
> > > > > One is that I prepared a "Darwin's Precursors and Influences" FAQ many
> > > > > years ago:
> > > > >http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/darwin-precursors.html
> > > > > Another is that natural selection is very different a matter from common
> > > > > descent.
>
> > > > do you mean natural competitive selection? Note that Darwin meant
> > > > competitive selection with NS , the term he lifted from Matthews.
> > > What is your point?
> >http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/15/hoax_paper_accepted/
> At most you have suggested that Darwin synthesized his notions of
> evolution from other
> sources.
The story of Gods/seamonsters, animals , atoms or alleles competing
against each other in a game of *natural competitive selection* to
see who would dominate are as old as the myths of Thor, Yin/Yang,
Osiris itself. Each generation retold the myth and codified for it
using various terms. Prof. Owen called it Doctrine of Derivation.
Around 1852 it seems the volitional terms 'evolution' was used to
codify for the mythology.
James Hutton 1792 formulated the concepts in a treatise he wrote
spanning 2000 pages, recently discovered at Edinburgh University where
he was a graduate. Hutton didn't magically conjure up his ideas in
a vacuum, it was in print and each author reformulated the mythology,
many give credit and cite sources, many like Darwin give credit but
not enough. In effect Darwin rewrote the ideas of others verbatim.
Note how the section below from Hutton is the same essential variation
as that by Matthew's.
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/JamesHutton
''.....This wisdom of nature, in the seminal variation of organised
bodies, is now the object of our contemplation, with a view to see
that the acknowledged variation, however small a thing in general it
may appear, is truly calculated for the preservation of things, in all
that perfection with which they had been, in the bounty of nature,
first designed. Now, this will be evident, when we consider, that if
an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best
adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an
indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be
assured, that ... those which depart most from the best adapted
constitution, will be most liable to perish, while ... those organised
bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present
circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving
themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race....''
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/PatrickMatthew
''.....We can get the gist of Matthew’s ideas from the following
passage quoted from On Naval Timbers by Wallace:
As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied, it is only the
hardier, more robust, better-suited-to-circumstance individuals who
are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the
situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater powers
of occupancy than any other kind: the weaker and less circumstance-
suited being prematurely destroyed.
This principle is in constant action: it regulates the colour, the
figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each
species whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or
protection from enemies, or defence from inclemencies or vicissitudes
of climate, whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength,
defence, and support: in such immense waste of primary and youthful
life these only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by
which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and
fitness to continue their kind of reproduction....''
Darwins version in OoS:
''....It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly
scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the
slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all
that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever
opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in
relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see
nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has
marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into
long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are
now different from what they formerly were......''
David Hare-Scott
Stephan have a cup of coffee and try to focus. How is this answer to the
question "what is your point"? Is this a round about way of accusing Darwin
of producing a hoax? Do you have any evidence or is this just another
attempt to belittle the man because you feel like it? Why do we have to
play 20 questions to find out what you mean?
David
backspace
My point is this:
Chomsky in 1953 made the breakthrough with 'Colorless green ideas
sleep', he showed that it is possible to construct grammatically
correct but meaningless sentences.
Darwin, by contracting Matthew's *natural competitive selection* to
'natural selection' the grammatically correct and meaningful ideas
from James Hutton 1792 and Matthew 1831 became grammatically correct
but meaningless in 1859(Darwin).
Darwin himself struggled with this and thus preferred 'natural
preservation' to try and deal with his meaningless sentence
construction.
We also conclude from what Hutton and Matthew's wrote that their ideas
were trivially true banalities: obviously the strong survive and weak
die, but this doesn't explain where the weak and strong came from in
the first place nor the actual reason for survival.
John Stockwell
No. The mythology of the day was the notion of the "Great Chain of
Being". The
ultimate expression of those notions of natural theology was made by
Paley, who
collected all manner of "design" speculations.
You might want to actually learn something about science, and read
Darwin. Darwin's
notions biology into the realm of science, by proposing a testable
process of the
origin of variation and origin of species.
You can engage in all of the character assassinations against Darwin
and his contemporaries
that you want. It doesn't matter. The science moved on since then.
Your failure to understand science is obvious.
-John
RAM
A very good point that will fly right over his religiously saturated
brain.
"Backspace" can't believe it is not sanctified Darwinism that holds up
the specious tautology of evolution. Contemporary biology is for him
just an extension of Darwinian ideology. Scientists are just like him
committed to distortion. He knows his distortions are from a rigid
theology and therefore it must be true for science. He believes
empirical evidence is just garnered to support a belief not to modify,
advance or question biological reality.
Backspace because of a religious disorder is all about rationalizing
not intellectual growth.
backspace
'.... While Matthew was an evolutionist of the social radical variety,
he did not present selection as a mechanism of evolution...''
Could you cite from the works of Matthew directly. He used 'natural
means of selection' by which he meant 'natural competitive
selection'.
John S. Wilkins
> On Jul 14, 8:38 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
> > The Book of Animals is a kind of retread of Aristotle and Pliny, both of
> > whom were available to the high culture Persian intellectual scene, and
> > similar comments can be found in both. I don't think of his (or their)
> > ideas as being evolutionary for a number of reasons I won't bore you
> > with here.
>
> Feel free to bore me (since the quote is clearly concerned with the
> evolution of animals).
Basically it is this: until and unless one has a notion of species as
fixed kinds, the idea of evolution is not really possible. The ancients
and medievals knew that kinds were mutable and had monsters and sports.
The idea that a theory of evolution was required would literally not
have made sense, even under the Great Chain of Being, which flourished
from the 16th century onwards.
There simply was no concept of biological species until the 16th
century, although the term "species" was used in various ways, only a
few of which were coterminous with our modern notion of species. A
"kind" (either genus or species in Latin - the terms were used
interchangeably, sometimes in the same paragraph) could be a kind of
flower (what we could call a varietal) or something at the "level" of
"elm" (which covers many species).
In the 16th century Cesalpino, Gesner and Bauhin and others started to
refer to "species" of herbs and animals more or less at the level of
resolution we now use it, largely because they started to actually go
and look, rather than rely upon folk taxonomies and prior authorities.
This led to a period in the late 17th century (interrupted by the
Reformation) when botanists in particular were asking what a species of
plant or animal was, and John Ray wrote, in 1686 in the _Historia
plantarum generalis_:
"In order that an inventory of plants may be begun and a classification
of them correctly established, we must try to discover criteria of some
sort for distinguishing what are called "species". After long and
considerable investigation, no surer criterion for determining species
has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate
themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations
occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of
one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as
to distinguish a species ... Animals likewise that differ specifically
preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs
from the seed of another nor vice versa."
Here, at last, was a definition to work by. This definition was widely
adopted, in particular by Linnaeus, who in 1735 published the Systema
Naturae and subsequent writings (he often repeated himself) in which he
asserted that species are fixed:
"There are as many species as the Infinite Being produced diverse forms
in the beginning." (Species tot sunt diversae quot diversas formas ab
initio creavit infinitum Ens, Fundamenta botanica No. 157, 1736).
Note that this is in 1735/6. Less than *7 years* later, Pierre
Maupertuis writes _Venus Physique_ in which the first evolutionary view
is presented. Basically, once you had a notion of species as fixed
kinds, which was what Linnaeus was influential in spreading, the
question arises whether species might not be. The sports and monsters
and gradual variations between kinds of the middle ages now become
evidence that species are not fixed *in time*. By 1800 there have been
at least four accounts in which species are mutable, and at least a
dozen more before Darwin does his thing in 1858/9.
So I conclude that in order to have an evolutionary view, you must have
1. A definition of living species (as opposed to logical and other
definitions)
2. An assertion that species are fixed kinds
3. Some idea that species change from one to another over time
None of this applies to anyone before 1686.
Hence, "precursors" like al-Jahiz, Aristotle, Empedocles, and so on are
not evolutionary, because they are dealing with what Linnaeus thought
later as the "filling up of empty territories" in the plan of God or
nature, rather than an open-ended process, and because they don't have a
notion of species as such (despite the ways careless translators use the
modern latinate term to translate terms in Greek and, I presume, Arabic;
for example, much of what is translated as "species" in Aristotle's
Liber Animalium is not "eidos" but terms like "homogene").
--
backspace
> But al be that he was a philosophre,
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
at what point did a mutable monkey give birth to a talking monkey?
Burkhard
So what? Scientists all stand "on the shoulder of giants". Science is
mostly cumulative, with every generation adding to the insights of
their predecessors.
>
> > From the sources I have read,Darwin's original purpose was to be
> > companionship for the captain. Nothing is made up, but I should have
> > quoted the sources directly instead of from memory.
>
> I meant descent with modification was lifted from Halloy. It took me a
> while to get this info into his page athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Julien_d'Omalius_d'Halloy
>
> The Epicureans rewriting history at Wikipedia did't took kindly to
> this, but they eventually had to relent and report the facts.
> I also wrote the main section of the wikipedia rhetorical tautology
> article and specifically 'sneaked' in the phrase '...the truth of the
> proposition cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another
> self-referentially....' because darwin wrote that the truth of his
> propositions cannot be disputed.
Yes, and it was pointed out to you that you misunderstood the meaning
of the phrase It is nothing more problematic than the typical
structure of a scientific argument that first states those things for
which the evidence is so overwhelming that there is no real
disagreement any longer, and then focusses on the contested issues.
It is not a statement about logical impossibility, but simply a
statement of the strength of the empirical evidence.
Richard Harter
<steph...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
>at what point did a mutable monkey give birth to a talking monkey?
>
Never, as far as we know, unless you feel that vervet monkey alarm
cries are speech. Perhaps you were thinking of apes.
Bob Casanova
appeared in talk.origins, posted by backspace
<steph...@gmail.com>:
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/precursors/precursnatsel.html
>
>'.... While Matthew was an evolutionist of the social radical variety,
>he did not present selection as a mechanism of evolution...''
>
>Could you cite from the works of Matthew directly.
No. Do your own homework.
> He used 'natural
>means of selection' by which he meant 'natural competitive
>selection'.
And your point, if any (highly doubtful) is...?
--
Bob C.
"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless
Bob Casanova
>On Jul 16, 2:42�am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>at what point did a mutable monkey give birth to a talking monkey?
Do you ever tire of looking like an idiot who has no desire
to learn? Your best response to John's informative and
fairly comprehensive (for Usenet) effort to provide
information is to post an irrelevant canard about "mutable
monkeys" and "talking monkeys"?
Actually, it probably *is* your best possible effort, your
brain having atrophied from long years of disuse.
You're pathetic.
Ernest Major
<5d921b29-6e5c-4eec...@t38g2000prj.googlegroups.com>, Ray
Martinez <pyram...@yahoo.com> writes
>On Jul 15, 6:42 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>> Tim Anderson <timothya1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Jul 14, 8:38 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>>
>> > > The Book of Animals is a kind of retread of Aristotle and Pliny, both of
>> > > whom were available to the high culture Persian intellectual scene, and
>> > > similar comments can be found in both. I don't think of his (or their)
>> > > ideas as being evolutionary for a number of reasons I won't bore you
>> > > with here.
>>
>> > Feel free to bore me (since the quote is clearly concerned with the
>> > evolution of animals).
>>
>> Basically it is this: until and unless one has a notion of species as
>> fixed kinds, the idea of evolution is not really possible. The ancients
>> and medievals knew that kinds were mutable and had monsters and sports.
>> The idea that a theory of evolution was required would literally not
>> have made sense, even under the Great Chain of Being, which flourished
>> from the 16th century onwards.
>>
>> There simply was no concept of biological species until the 16th
>> century, although the term "species" was used in various ways, only a
>> few of which were coterminous with our modern notion of species. A
>> "kind" (either genus or species in Latin - the terms were used
>> interchangeably, sometimes in the same paragraph) could be a kind of
>> flower (what we could call a varietal) or something at the "level" of
>> "elm" (which covers many species).
>>
>
>concept of "kind" the way YECs define and use the concept. It is also
>important to reiterate that Wilkins has defined "kind" to mean
>"species" (or genus), which is, of course, correct.
If you are referring to the above, he hasn't defined kind at all; he has
only reported on the usage of early naturalists. Furthermore that usage
does not correspond to a modern conception of species - .
--
alias Ernest Major
Rolf
> On Jul 15, 6:42 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> concept of "kind" the way YECs define and use the concept. It is also
> important to reiterate that Wilkins has defined "kind" to mean
> "species" (or genus), which is, of course, correct.
>
>
> Since Maupertuis accepted spontaneous generation his view of
> "transmutation" is not how we understand evolution since the rise of
> Darwinism.
>
>> ....Basically, once you had a notion of species as fixed
>> kinds, which was what Linnaeus was influential in spreading, the
>> question arises whether species might not be. The sports and monsters
>> and gradual variations between kinds of the middle ages now become
>> evidence that species are not fixed *in time*.
>
>
>> By 1800 there have been
>> at least four accounts in which species are mutable, and at least a
>> dozen more before Darwin does his thing in 1858/9.
>>
>
> Wilkins) 4 "accounts" advocated some conception of basic mutability
> (and we are not talking about common descent). That's 4 out of how
> many hundreds, if not thousands of practicing naturalists worldwide.
> In other words mutability existed in a state of scientific rejection.
>
> Between 1800 and 1859 (according to Wilkins) 12 "accounts" advocated
> mutability. That's 12 out of how many hundreds, if not thousands of
> practicing naturalists worldwide. In other words mutability existed in
> a state of scientific rejection.
>
> "We see this in the plainest manner by the fact that all the most
> eminent palćontologists, namely Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz, Barrande,
> Falconer, E. Forbes, &c., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell,
> Murchison, Sedgwick, &c., have unanimously, often vehemently,
> maintained the immutability of species. But I have reason to believe
> that one great authority, Sir Charles Lyell, from further reflexion
> entertains grave doubts on this subject. I feel how rash it is to
> differ from these great authorities, to whom, with others, we owe all
> our knowledge" (C. Darwin 1859:310).
>
> In my own research: I can't find 1/one practicing naturalist in
> America or England who advocated mutability between the years 1800 and
> 1859, not even 1/one. Until 1858-59 Darwin never published a word
> about mutability. Wallace was not a practicing naturalist. Joseph
> Hooker and T.H. Huxley were Darwin's first converts.
>
> But Wilkins said "accounts," which could include non-scientists.
>
>
>> So I conclude that in order to have an evolutionary view, you must
>> have
>>
>> 1. A definition of living species (as opposed to logical and other
>> definitions)
>>
>> 2. An assertion that species are fixed kinds
>>
>> 3. Some idea that species change from one to another over time
>>
>> None of this applies to anyone before 1686.
>>
>
> had any conception of common descent or mutability without
> teleological influence, including spontaneous generation (a Biblical
> concept).
>
> So much for these "accepting evolution" as we understand evolution
> since the rise of Darwinism.
>
Nevertheless, http://www.iep.utm.edu/evolutio/
Why are you wasting your life here?
> Ray
>
>> Hence, "precursors" like al-Jahiz, Aristotle, Empedocles, and so on
>> are
>> not evolutionary, because they are dealing with what Linnaeus thought
>> later as the "filling up of empty territories" in the plan of God or
>> nature, rather than an open-ended process, and because they don't
>> have a
>> notion of species as such (despite the ways careless translators use
>> the
>> modern latinate term to translate terms in Greek and, I presume,
>> Arabic;
>> for example, much of what is translated as "species" in Aristotle's
>> Liber Animalium is not "eidos" but terms like "homogene").
>>
>> --
>> John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of
>> Sydneyhttp://evolvingthoughts.net But al be that he was a
Ray Martinez
> In message
> <5d921b29-6e5c-4eec-b61c-659164d87...@t38g2000prj.googlegroups.com>, Ray
> Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> writes
He reported what early naturalists meant by "kind," which is exactly
what the word means in Genesis (species).
> Furthermore that usage
> does not correspond to a modern conception of species - .
>
> --
> alias Ernest Major
"Kind" has no place in modern scientific thinking, yes I agree.
Ray
backspace
> On Jul 15, 6:42�pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Tim Anderson <timothya1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Jul 14, 8:38 pm, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
> > > > The Book of Animals is a kind of retread of Aristotle and Pliny, both of
> > > > whom were available to the high culture Persian intellectual scene, and
> > > > similar comments can be found in both. I don't think of his (or their)
> > > > ideas as being evolutionary for a number of reasons I won't bore you
> > > > with here.
>
> > > Feel free to bore me (since the quote is clearly concerned with the
> > > evolution of animals).
>
> > Basically it is this: until and unless one has a notion of species as
> > fixed kinds, the idea of evolution is not really possible. The ancients
> > and medievals knew that kinds were mutable and had monsters and sports.
> > The idea that a theory of evolution was required would literally not
> > have made sense, even under the Great Chain of Being, which flourished
> > from the 16th century onwards.
>
> > There simply was no concept of biological species until the 16th
> > century, although the term "species" was used in various ways, only a
> > few of which were coterminous with our modern notion of species. A
> > "kind" (either genus or species in Latin - the terms were used
> > interchangeably, sometimes in the same paragraph) could be a kind of
> > flower (what we could call a varietal) or something at the "level" of
> > "elm" (which covers many species).
>
> concept of "kind" the way YECs define and use the concept. It is also
> important to reiterate that Wilkins has defined "kind" to mean
> "species" (or genus), which is, of course, correct.
Your reply is so good that I made an entry for it here:
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Species_Concept
Please edit the wiki with a link when your paper is ready. All of us
can't wait to read it, we are sure it will be chock full of facts,
reasoned discourse and extensive citations. I don't read the nonsense
on talk.origins since my thesis is that anybody using 'ns' is writing
meaningless nonsense, thus I don't really have anything further to add
and will probably be making very little further posts, thus please
post a link we can monitor from time to time as we await your paper.
May I suggest that your release the paper as a wiki with the
disclaimer that any previous idea of yours can be edited by you should
new data arise. This way we can focus on your ideas instead of what
usually happens that people try and protect their ego, instead of
admitting that new data changed their minds.
John Stockwell
> On Jul 15, 12:11�am, "David Hare-Scott" <sec...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >backspacewrote:
> > > On Jul 14, 5:00 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
Again, so what? Science is not some religion that requires that we
sift through the
verbatim quotes of people from the past for enlightenment. It is the
vast collection
of observations and experiments in biology that constitute the raw
material for
our understanding of origin of species. It doesn't matter what hairs
you split, or what subtle
nuance that you tease out of something that some guy wrote in the 19th
century. Nobody
cares ultimately what Matthews or Darwin said. It doesn't matter.
-John
Ray Martinez
>
> - Show quoted text -
Thanks, Stephan. But I have no problem admitting errors or a change of
mind. When I am done I will publish my work on-line on my own website.
Errors can be fixed or corrections added every so often by indication,
or what is called a "revision number."
While I do not agree with your arguments concerning the history of
natural selection before Darwin, I want you to know that your analysis
of the logic of natural selection (via the many topics you have
created here during the last year or so) exhibit excellence. Your
logic is invulnerable. You have exposed natural selection for what it
actually is: nonsense.
In the book I am writing I come to the same general conclusions
(natural selection is nonsense/non-existent). The fact that we have
arrived at the same conclusions independently is quite telling. But
don't forget I have had a Eureka moment of insight (dramatic new
evidence that will falsify Darwin's ToE).
I am working as fast as I can.
Ray
Ray Martinez
>
> - Show quoted text -
In "The Structure Of Evolutionary Theory" (2002) Stephen Jay Gould
wrote:
"I need hardly stress Darwin's impact as one of the half dozen or so
most revolutionary thinkers in western history. I want, instead, to
emphasize a more curious aspect of his status----his continuing
relevance, indeed his benevolent hovering over almost all our current
proceedings. We may revere Newton and Lavoisier as men of equal
impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the
ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on
the other hand, continues to bestride our world like a colossus----so
much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of
evolutionary theory by laying out Darwin's detailed vision as a modern
starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than
a century of work" (p.96).
John Stockwell, like most Evolutionists here at Talk.Origins, is
completely ignorant.
Ray
John Stockwell
Here is what Stephen Jay Gould really said:
"I need hardly stress Darwin's impact as one of the half dozen or so
most revolutionary thinkers in western history. I want, instead, to
emphasize a more curious aspect of his status — his continuing
relevance, indeed his benevolent hovering over almost all our current
proceedings. We may revere Newton and Lavoisier as men of equal
impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the
ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on
the other hand, continues to bestride our world like a colossus — so
much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of evo
lutionary theory by laying out Darwin's detailed vision as a modern
starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than
a century of work. I do, in this book, advocate some major
restructuring, in the light of new concepts and findings, and with the
approbation of more and more colleagues as our understanding of
evolution broadens. But Darwin remains our context — and my proposed
restructuring represents an extension, not a replacement, of his
vision. The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
from Darwin's in many important respects, but we do so by extending
his mechanism of selection to a larger realm than he acknowledged —
that is, to levels both below and above his focus on the struggle
among organisms."
In short, Gould is giving Darwin credit where credit is due, but this
book is about *Gould's* view of
evolution, which is more modern and more relevant to biology.
>
> John Stockwell, like most Evolutionists here at Talk.Origins, is
> completely ignorant.
Ray Martinez, like most Creationists here at Talk.Origins is a out-of-
context quote miner who
is devoid of honesty and competence in matters of science.
>
> Ray
-John
Ray Martinez
You said what Darwin said doesn't matter anymore. I produced a quote
by a major scholar that said the exact opposite. Your reply asserting
quote-mine means in addition to being horribly ignorant about the
relevance of Darwin today, you are also dishonest. All because you are
completely out of touch with the fact that what Darwin said is
relevant today and can't admit it.
"Nobody cares ultimately what Matthews or Darwin said. It doesn't
matter" (John Stockton).
"....[Darwin's] continuing relevance, indeed his benevolent hovering
over almost all our current proceedings....." (Gould 2002).
Ray (anti-evolutionist)
John Stockwell
> On Jul 18, 11:34�am, JohnStockwell<john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jul 18, 11:53�am, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 18, 7:41�am, JohnStockwell<john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Jul 15, 12:00 am, backspace <stephan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Jul 15, 12:11 am, "David Hare-Scott" <sec...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > >backspacewrote:
> > relevance, indeed his benev�olent hovering over almost all our current
> > proceedings. We may revere New�ton and Lavoisier as men of equal
> > impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the
> > ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on
> > much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of evo�
> > lutionary theory by laying out Darwin's detailed vision as a modern
> > starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than
> > a century of work. I do, in this book, advocate some major
> > restructuring, in the light of new concepts and findings, and with the
> > evolution broadens. But Darwin remains our context � and my proposed
> > restructuring represents an extension, not a re�placement, of his
> > vision. The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
> > his mechanism of selection to a larger realm than he acknowledged �
> > that is, to levels both below and above his focus on the struggle
>
> > In short, Gould is giving Darwin credit where credit is due, but this
> > book is about *Gould's* view of
> > evolution, which is more modern and more relevant to biology.
>
> > > completely ignorant.
>
> > Ray Martinez, like most Creationists here at Talk.Origins is a out-of-
> > context quote miner who
> > is devoid of honesty and competence in matters of science.
>
> > > Ray
>
> > -John- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> You said what Darwin said doesn't matter anymore. I produced a quote
> by a major scholar that said the exact opposite. Your reply asserting
> quote-mine means in addition to being horribly ignorant about the
> relevance of Darwin today, you are also dishonest. All because you are
> completely out of touch with the fact that what Darwin said is
> relevant today and can't admit it.
>
> "Nobody cares ultimately what Matthews or Darwin said. It doesn't
> matter" (John Stockton).
What I said was:
"Again, so what? Science is not some religion that requires that we
sift through the
verbatim quotes of people from the past for enlightenment. It is the
vast collection
of observations and experiments in biology that constitute the raw
material for
our understanding of origin of species. It doesn't matter what hairs
you split, or what subtle
nuance that you tease out of something that some guy wrote in the 19th
century. Nobody
cares ultimately what Matthews or Darwin said. It doesn't matter."
-John Stockwell.
The meaning is quite different in context.
>
> "....[Darwin's] continuing relevance, indeed his benev�olent hovering
> over almost all our current proceedings....." (Gould 2002).
No doubt the parts that Darwin got right are of relevance. These items
are of relevance not because
Darwin said them, but because they work.
What ever character assassination that creationists engage in by out-
of-context quoting and barefaced lying
has nothing to do with science.
Are you even capable of an honest thought, Ray?
>
> Ray (anti-evolutionist)
-John
Burkhard
> On Jul 18, 11:34�am, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jul 18, 11:53�am, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > relevance, indeed his benev�olent hovering over almost all our current
> > proceedings. We may revere New�ton and Lavoisier as men of equal
> > impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the
> > ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on
> > much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of evo�
> > lutionary theory by laying out Darwin's detailed vision as a modern
> > starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than
> > a century of work. I do, in this book, advocate some major
> > restructuring, in the light of new concepts and findings, and with the
> > evolution broadens. But Darwin remains our context � and my proposed
> > restructuring represents an extension, not a re�placement, of his
> > vision. The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
> > his mechanism of selection to a larger realm than he acknowledged �
> > that is, to levels both below and above his focus on the struggle
>
> > In short, Gould is giving Darwin credit where credit is due, but this
> > book is about *Gould's* view of
> > evolution, which is more modern and more relevant to biology.
>
> > > John Stockwell, like most Evolutionists here at Talk.Origins, is
> > > completely ignorant.
>
> > Ray Martinez, like most Creationists here at Talk.Origins is a out-of-
> > context quote miner who
> > is devoid of honesty and competence in matters of science.
>
> > > Ray
>
> > -John- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> You said what Darwin said doesn't matter anymore. I produced a quote
> by a major scholar that said the exact opposite.
Well, even the opinion of the most respected scholar in a field is
only as good as the evidence he provides. So what does Gould offer in
support of his view? And in fact, what would be the standard by which
he judges the claim of "greater relevance"? Darwin's OoS cited more
often than Newton's Principia in contemporary research? (and would
one have to adjust for the fact that Darwin is simply more recent?) Or
the name Darwin used more often than that of Newton? Or the percentage
of the work that has subsequently been falsified or substantially
changed. In which case, do we count Newton's dabbling in alchemy - in
which case ore of his work has been rejected, or do we only look at
the Principia? My guess is that less of the Principia has been found
wrong than of OoS, but could not pronounce on this without much more
detailed comparisons - and of Netwon's Arithmetica, I'd say pretty
much everything is still valid today.
So unless Gould specifies a metric for "continuing relevance" and then
gives some hard data to support the view that Darwin is more relevant
than Netwon, even his opinion is simply that, a personal impression,
soemthing akin to taste. Selection bias woudl be one explanation for
his view: He just happens to know more about Darwin than Netwon since
he works in the same area. Another is more personal to Gould: he was
first and foremost a great science communicator and populariser of
scientific ideas. Scientist who communicate ideas to laypeople often
find a historical account that focusses on individuals a very good
approach - it adds "human interest" to the cold facts. hence his
interest in history of biology, which one can argue gave him a
distorted vision of the actual relevance of Darwin for actual
scientific practice these days.
Your reply asserting
> quote-mine means in addition to being horribly ignorant about the
> relevance of Darwin today, you are also dishonest.
So you posting a short quote is evidence, posting the same quote in
its full context is dishonest? Strange!
All because you are
> completely out of touch with the fact that what Darwin said is
> relevant today and can't admit it.
>
> "Nobody cares ultimately what Matthews or Darwin said. It doesn't
> matter" (John Stockton).
>
> "....[Darwin's] continuing relevance, indeed his benev�olent hovering
> over almost all our current proceedings....." (Gould 2002).
The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
from Darwin's in many important respects... (Gould 2002)
>
> Ray (anti-evolutionist)
Ray Martinez
> On Jul 19, 6:08 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jul 18, 11:34 am, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 18, 11:53 am, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > relevance, indeed his benev olent hovering over almost all our current
> > > proceedings. We may revere New ton and Lavoisier as men of equal
> > > impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the
> > > ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on
> > > much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of evo
> > > starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than
> > > a century of work. I do, in this book, advocate some major
> > > restructuring, in the light of new concepts and findings, and with the
> > > evolution broadens. But Darwin remains our context and my proposed
> > > restructuring represents an extension, not a re placement, of his
> > > vision. The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
> > > his mechanism of selection to a larger realm than he acknowledged
> > over almost all our current proceedings....." (Gould 2002).
>
> The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
> from Darwin's in many important respects... (Gould 2002)
>
>
>
>
>
> > Ray (anti-evolutionist)
I did not post a short and out of context quote. I posted the relevant
portion that contradicted your fellow Evolutionist.
Your dishonesty is quite brazen, nothing new for you.
Ray
Ray Martinez
> On Jul 19, 11:08 am, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jul 18, 11:34 am, JohnStockwell<john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 18, 11:53 am, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > relevance, indeed his benev olent hovering over almost all our current
> > > proceedings. We may revere New ton and Lavoisier as men of equal
> > > impact, but do modern physicists and chemists actively engage the
> > > ideas of these founders, as they pursue their daily work? Darwin, on
> > > much so that I can only begin this book on the structure of evo
> > > starting point, a current orthodoxy only lightly modified by more than
> > > a century of work. I do, in this book, advocate some major
> > > restructuring, in the light of new concepts and findings, and with the
> > > evolution broadens. But Darwin remains our context and my proposed
> > > restructuring represents an extension, not a re placement, of his
> > > vision. The hierarchical theory of selection builds a world different
> > > his mechanism of selection to a larger realm than he acknowledged
> > over almost all our current proceedings....." (Gould 2002).
>
> No doubt the parts that Darwin got right are of relevance. These items
> are of relevance not because
> Darwin said them, but because they work.
>
> What ever character assassination that creationists engage in by out-
> of-context quoting and barefaced lying
> has nothing to do with science.
>
> Are you even capable of an honest thought, Ray?
>
>
>
> > Ray (anti-evolutionist)
>
> -John
Your reply is so dishonest....this is why evolution is rejected
(Evolutionists are recognized to be brazen liars or Atheists).
Ray
Burkhard
Yes you did, as Goukd qualified the statement in the very next
sentence, just as John said.
>I posted the relevant
> portion that contradicted your fellow Evolutionist.
No, you posted the part that seemed to support your position, unless
one read the rest
johnetho...@yahoo.com
You are the one lying Ray, as is immediately obvious to anyone reading
the thread. No surprise, you lie about everything all the time. This
is obvious to anyone who reads almost anything you post, but
apparently your mental illness is so severe that you don't realize
just how stupid and dishonest you appear.
John Stockwell
Hey, you are the guy posting the out-of-context quotes. Not me.
>
> Ray
-John
John Stockwell
Sorry, ray, but posting shorter and shorter quotes is dishonest.
Pretty soon, your
quotes will consist only of
...
-John
>
> Ray
Rolf
> Your reply is so dishonest....this is why evolution is rejected
> (Evolutionists are recognized to be brazen liars or Atheists).
We only have your word for that, don't you ever stop to consider the
relevance of what you write? It is a well established fact that most
creationisists are ignorant, idiots, or both. You fit the latter cathegory.
Evolutionists are both respected and qualified. Whereas the few
creationiss having some legitimate claim of a scientifis status have
been shown to be crackpots. They, like you, have a religious agenda that
clouds their brain. May I mention Dembski, Behe, Egnor, and their
miserable entourage at UcD? You must be aware of them all, AiG, CMI and
the lot, they are your brethren in faith even though you may claim to be
different. You have much more in common than you may want to admit.
You can only keep on doing what you have been doing here for so many
years by closing yuor mind to science. You concentrate on rhetorics and
quoting ancient texts, including what Darwin wrote, ignoring completely
150 years of science. That's a lot to cover, are you certain you can
dismiss science without ever opening a science book?
Poor Ray, I am not sorry for you, I am relieved to see someone like you
frying in his own fat. That is what hell is about, not some eternal
damnation in a hypothetical future.
Rolf
backspace
What Darwin , Matthew and James Hutton wrote is as relevant as what
Lucretius and Aristotle wrote, we are actually dealing with the
tautological ideas of Lucretius , Democritus and Aristotle under the
grammatically correct but meaningless rubric of 'natural selection' ,
which in turn are used to displace the design paradigm of Irreducible
Functionality.
John Stockwell
It may be relevant if you are studying the historical development of
ideas,
but in terms of science, the parts that are relevant are the parts
that have held
up under scientific investigation. So, no, it is not what they said
that is relevant,
but the support of those ideas by scientific investigation. This is
true of anything that
Steven Jay Gould said as well.
The claim of "intelligent design" was an intellectual dead end,
because the assumption of
design is never on the table to be tested and potentially refuted.
Instead, the process is
"assume a designer" and then look for anything that "design" seems to
explain.
The real impact of Darwin's work was to give scientists a process for
the origin of species
that could be tested.
-John
-John
backspace
> Instead, the process is
> "assume a designer" and then look for anything that "design" seems to
> explain.
Exactly, we have to assume something we cannot prove as defined by
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Godel's_incompleteness_theorem
Your materialism is an assumption , you can't prove, the evidence for
it is your belief that it is true.
==Godel's incompleteness theorem==
Godels theorem states([[Perry Marshall]]):"...Anything you can draw a
circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something
outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove..".
The syllogism is that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem applies to all
logical systems and the universe is logical. Therefore the universe is
incomplete(something must be assumed). Logic is not a set of circular
propositions. It’s a progression of inductions that ultimately rest on
axioms that are known to be true but are not provable nor refutable.
Godel's Incompleteness theorem shows that the integers can't be
axiomatized - for any finite
axiom set there will always be a true statement not provable from the
axioms. The only reason we would know it is true, is by faith, the
evidence for things not seen.
The universe itself acts like an axiomatic system. Therefore, it needs
something analogous to an axiom outside of itself to be consistent and
complete: Thus God(Christ) exists. Our description of the universe
uses base axiomatic arithmetic, there will always be something about
it that we have to assume(incomplete) because it can't be proven
within the arithmetic reference frame. Even if it can be shown that
Godel's theorem doesn't apply to all logical system, it applies to our
'''''intuitive integer''''' axiomatic reference frame and thus all our
descriptions will always assume something that can't be proved. Any
chain of reasoning, religion or [[world view]] eventually runs into a
[[Godelian Wall]]]].
==Notes==
'''d/dx''' is a universal operator in math that is applied to a
function. The study of Life (biology) lacks this operator because we
can't define life. Epicureans try to emulate d/dx by invoking the term
NS, which as some sort of universal mechanism is no more plausible
than a single differential equation explaining all of physics. Alchemy
was only stopped after Gold and lead were defined in terms of
molecular theory. Prof. Cleland from Nasa astrobiology pointed out
that before the discovery that water is H<sub>2</sub>0, acids were
called 'weak' and 'strong' water. Likewise the very thing that
Epicureans claims to study - Life(biology) itself - isn't defined, and
thus we don't know whether anything analogous to d/dx is applicable -
[[Life1]] . See also calls Darwin's theories 'weak'.
==Links==
[[Godelian_Wall]]
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/CAT:Godel's_theorm
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/CAT:Godel
Penrose points out, correctly, that Godel's Theorem proves computers,
no matter how powerful, are subject to fundamental limitations. He
then claims, Tipler thinks incorrectly, that human beings are not
subject to the same limitations. What the Logician Kurt Gödel did in
the 1930s was to show that the full theory of arithmetic-the theory of
arithmetic we are all familiar with, which includes addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division-contains a self-reference
statement equivalent to: "This statement is unprovable." If it is
true, then the statement itself is unprovable, and arithmetic is
incomplete--a theory is said to be incomplete if it contains a true
statement which cannot be proven from the axioms of the theory. On the
other hand, if the statement is false, then, since it is equivalent to
a statement of arithmetic, arithmetic would be logically inconsistent.
A farther consequence of this argument is that arithmetic, if
consistent, must be incomplete, and hence must be undecidable--a
theory is said to be undecidable if there is no algorithm which, given
any statement in the theory, can tell you whether the statement is
true or false(pi24)
Few of us would have been surprised to learn that there is no
algorithm-no effective criterion, no outright test- for truth in
elementary number theory. Such a test would make short work of
unsolved problems such as Goldbach's conjecture and Fermat's Last
Theorem; too good to be true. On the other hand, Godel's theorem came
as a shock, for we supposed that truth in mathematics consisted in
demonstrability. Substantially the same argument that establishes
Godel's theorem, however, establishes something stronger: that truth
for elementary number theory cannot be defined in protosyntax at all,
either by proof procedure or otherwise(slp236)
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Meaningless_sentence
==Meaningless sentences==
* ''... a free-rider is a trait that could have been acted upon by
selection,...'' - [[PatternOrDesign]]
*''.... by the process of natural selection ....''* Decisions can
contemplated, directed, thoughtful, hasty, slow measured, reserved ,
reluctant but not 'natural' - [[DernavichInfidels]]
*''..... natural selection cannot increase information .... ''. This
is a favorite amongst my fellow YEC brothers in the Lord Jesus. They
are sadly more confused then the atheists.
* ''...Julio cranks his wooden cheese...''
* ''.... Colorless green ideas sleep furiously ...'' [[Colorless
green]], [[Chomsky]]
* ''....couldn't account for human intelligence purely by the action
of selection...'' If by selection we mean survival, then we have a
cause-effect inversion. Survival is an effect, not a cause -
[[Chomsky#selection_all_about_survival]]
==Prof. Herrmann==
Prof. Herrmann at http://www.raherrmann.com wrote ".....A language, as
we know it, if improperly applied along with classical logic can lead
to meaningless statements when meaningful phrases are employed....The
fact that there exists millions of meaningless statements in the sense
of classical logic is relevant in that it shows that the descriptive
power of any human language is limited...
==The Blank Swan==
The Blank Swan.
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470725222
"Contingency is the writing/trading thread that we keep pursuing
despite the fact that the context has been saturated by replication."
William Russell commented '....That's a great sentence.
Unfortunately, it took me two days of thinking before I understood it.
This is an interesting book, but it is not a leisurely read for the
average Joe.....'
'''Notes:''' William Russell should consider that in trying to sound
clever and over-awh with rhetorical wit , one could actually wind up
writing grammatically correct but meaningless nonsense that obfuscates
what might be a valid concept.
Gianantonio Bissaro wrote:
The author wrote in some blog that his "ideas" are so advanced that it
will take years for people to understand them (I quote literally: "I
don't expect my writings to make sense to you immediately; they
probably won't before a few years"). ....... I think that all clever
readers have already realized what is here to be understood. Nothing,
unfortunately
backspace
>
> > > Ray (anti-evolutionist)
>
> I did not post a short and out of context quote. I posted the relevant
> portion that contradicted your fellow Evolutionist.
>
> Your dishonesty is quite brazen, nothing new for you.
> Ray
This is correct. Elsewhere I quoted Fodor ''''..... what then is the
intended meaning of natural selelction ....? ''' from his London
review of books essay. Burkhard attempted to pass this off as a
rhetorical question, it is no such thing, but a question posed by a
man concerned that with 'natural selection' we have had 150 years of
what he calls '....wasted ink ...'
Let me add as YEC that the wasted ink comes from both sides Ken Ham,
Dembski and Dawkins. Ham has the correct world view, but his sentences
with natural selection, like with everybody else is meaningless.
Burkhard
> On Jul 19, 10:21 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > > Ray (anti-evolutionist)
>
> > I did not post a short and out of context quote. I posted the relevant
> > portion that contradicted your fellow Evolutionist.
>
> > Your dishonesty is quite brazen, nothing new for you.
> > Ray
>
> This is correct. Elsewhere I quoted Fodor ''''..... what then is the
> intended meaning of natural selelction ....? ''' from his London
> review of books essay. Burkhard attempted to pass this off as a
> rhetorical question,
As I recall, I provided you with a direct quote from Fodor just a
few lines further down the article where he gives his own answer.
Good tip for both you and Ray: try reading a whole article first,
don't stop at the point where you think they say something you can
use.
Burkhard
> On Jul 21, 11:35 pm, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Instead, the process is
> > "assume a designer" and then look for anything that "design" seems to
> > explain.
>
> Exactly, we have to assume something we cannot prove as defined by
>
> http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Godel's_incompleteness_theorem
>
> Your materialism is an assumption , you can't prove, the evidence for
> it is your belief that it is true.
For metaphysical materialism, as for every metaphysical position, this
is arguably true - though short of proof, you can develop more of less
convincing arguments for or against the position. However, we are
dealing here with nothing more ambitious than the recognition that
_all_ scientific practice follows certain methodological rules, and
that to the extend you want to build on the success of science, you
have to abide by the same rules. Of course you can say that you are
merely not interested in the type of results science provides, and
that you prefer to meditate a lot and wait for intuitive insights
about a deeper reality - that is indeed a lifestyle choice. What is
not possible though. a a matter of internal consistency, is to confuse
whatever insight you get this way with a scientific insight, or cherry
pick thse parts of science that you "like" and try a metaphysical
critique on those parts you don't
>
> ==Godel's incompleteness theorem==
> Godels theorem states([[Perry Marshall]]):"
Isn't that one of the characters working on OBA and other
problematic marketing techniques?
You know, writing snooping software that profiles your behaviour and
then gives you "relevant" pop ups whenever you go online
>...Anything you can draw a
> circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something
> outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove..".
> The syllogism is that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem applies to all
> logical systems
No it doesn't. Haven't we been over this before? There are quite a
number of formal systems to which it does not apply, propositional
logic for starters, and large chunks of mathematics too (Pressburger
arithmetic for instance) It only applies to systems that are at least
as strong as PA, and abide by a number of other restrictions (no
infinitely long sentences e.g.)
and the universe is logical. Therefore the universe is
> incomplete(something must be assumed).
Fallacy of the ambiguous middle term. the universe may be "logical" in
the sense of "intelligible to humans", but that does not make it a
logical system for the purpose of the major premise, which only
applies to objects that are sets of sentences.
>Logic is not a set of circular
> propositions. It’s a progression of inductions that ultimately rest on
> axioms that are known to be true but are not provable nor refutable.
>
> Godel's Incompleteness theorem shows that the integers can't be
> axiomatized - for any finite
> axiom set there will always be a true statement not provable from the
> axioms. The only reason we would know it is true, is by faith, the
> evidence for things not seen.
If this were true, then Goedel's theorem would be pretty much
irrelevant, no? It would only be valid for people who have "faith"
that the Goedel sentences are true. What we would expect in this case
is mathematicians as divided along tribal lines as religions are -
some would religiously believe Goedel to be right, others, equally
validly believing him to be wrong, and all that in numerous variations
and degrees. In reality, we find of course something a bit different.
While it is true that people who shared Goedel's metaphysical position
(his number platonism) found the results immediately convincing and
intuitive, it took constructivists and formalists a bit longer,and a
number of failed challenges against the proof, before it was wildly
accepted. Which puts "worldviews", as far as science is concerned,
where they belong: they play a role in the heuristics and the learning
process (e.g.the speed a result is accepted) , but have no impact on
the correctness or lack thereof of the actual theories
>
> The universe itself acts like an axiomatic system.
No it doesn't, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is for
instance not the case that most of it fits in a textbook.
> Therefore, it needs
> something analogous to an axiom outside of itself to be consistent and
> complete: Thus God(Christ) exists.
Even if the above were true, that conclusion would not follow. There
would be "something" outside it, but that something, if the analogy
were true, would be as trivial as a Goedel sentence. Not only that,
you could add that Goedel sentence axiomatically to the system and get
a stronger system with a new Goedel sentence, ad (trans)infinitum. So
if you follow though your analogy, you get lots and lots of gods, each
one of them utterly trivial, and never stop adding new ones.
I'd say he was rather spot on. Just another unjustified out of context
application of Goedel, whose result really only have a role in meta-
mathematics.
While there are still some (not very good) philosophers who try to get
leverage from Goedel, the consensus is well summarised by Haugeland:
"most people are agreed ... that his (i.e.Gödel's) result does not
make any difference to cognitive science" [Mind Design, p. 23]
What the Logician Kurt Gödel did in
> the 1930s was to show that the full theory of arithmetic-the theory of
> arithmetic we are all familiar with, which includes addition,
> subtraction, multiplication, and division-contains a self-reference
> statement equivalent to: "This statement is unprovable." If it is
> true, then the statement itself is unprovable, and arithmetic is
> incomplete--a theory is said to be incomplete if it contains a true
> statement which cannot be proven from the axioms of the theory. On the
> other hand, if the statement is false, then, since it is equivalent to
> a statement of arithmetic, arithmetic would be logically inconsistent.
> A farther consequence of this argument is that arithmetic, if
> consistent, must be incomplete, and hence must be undecidable--a
> theory is said to be undecidable if there is no algorithm which, given
> any statement in the theory, can tell you whether the statement is
> true or false(pi24)
>
> Few of us would have been surprised to learn that there is no
> algorithm-no effective criterion, no outright test- for truth in
> elementary number theory. Such a test would make short work of
> unsolved problems such as Goldbach's conjecture and Fermat's Last
> Theorem; too good to be true.
That is utterly garbled and misunderstands what "efficient" means.
Once we have a proof for them, we will in all likelihood be able to
determine mechanically if it is a proof.
> On the other hand, Godel's theorem came
> as a shock, for we supposed that truth in mathematics consisted in
> demonstrability. Substantially the same argument that establishes
> Godel's theorem, however, establishes something stronger: that truth
> for elementary number theory cannot be defined in protosyntax at all,
> either by proof procedure or otherwise(slp236)
>
> http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Meaningless_sentence
>
> ==Meaningless sentences==
> * ''... a free-rider is a trait that could have been acted upon by
> selection,...'' - [[PatternOrDesign]]
> *''.... by the process of natural selection ....''* Decisions can
> contemplated, directed, thoughtful, hasty, slow measured, reserved ,
> reluctant but not 'natural' - [[DernavichInfidels]]
> *''..... natural selection cannot increase information .... ''. This
> is a favorite amongst my fellow YEC brothers in the Lord Jesus. They
> are sadly more confused then the atheists.
> * ''...Julio cranks his wooden cheese...''
> * ''.... Colorless green ideas sleep furiously ...'' [[Colorless
> green]], [[Chomsky]]
> * ''....couldn't account for human intelligence purely by the action
> of selection...'' If by selection we mean survival, then we have a
> cause-effect inversion. Survival is an effect, not a cause -
> [[Chomsky#selection_all_about_survival]]
>
> ==Prof. Herrmann==
> Prof. Herrmann athttp://www.raherrmann.comwrote ".....A language, as
> we know it, if improperly applied along with classical logic can lead
> to meaningless statements when meaningful phrases are employed....The
> fact that there exists millions of meaningless statements in the sense
> of classical logic is relevant in that it shows that the descriptive
> power of any human language is limited...
Why on earth would that follow?
> ==The Blank Swan==
> The Blank Swan.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470725222
>
> "Contingency is the writing/trading thread that we keep pursuing
> despite the fact that the context has been saturated by replication."
>
> William Russell commented '....That's a great sentence.
> Unfortunately, it took me two days of thinking before I understood it.
> This is an interesting book, but it is not a leisurely read for the
> average Joe.....'
>
> '''Notes:''' William Russell should consider that in trying to sound
> clever and over-awh with rhetorical wit , one could actually wind up
> writing grammatically correct but meaningless nonsense that obfuscates
> what might be a valid concept.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Swan-End-Probability/product-reviews/0470...