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Author Topic:   All Darwinists are Liars
Cold Foreign Object 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3047 days)
Posts: 3417
Joined: 11-21-2003


Message 31 of 37 (379876)
01-25-2007 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by Percy
01-25-2007 4:07 PM


Re: Please welcome the Darwinian Deity
http://groups.google.com/...alk.origins/msg/ae0ea2d071060d1c&
Please note that in the link the message author is Jon "Augray" Barber of Talk Origins, and he accepts the quote as genuine.
Ray

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Percy, posted 01-25-2007 4:07 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by Percy, posted 01-25-2007 9:08 PM Cold Foreign Object has not replied

Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 32 of 37 (379894)
01-25-2007 6:46 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by Cold Foreign Object
01-24-2007 4:41 PM


Re: Please welcome the Darwinian Deity
I can 'speak' "to" the quote somewhat.
In THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST (with Levin
http://dannyreviews.com/h/The_Dialectical_Biologist.html
) and elsewhere Richard set up differential equations that showed how "standard" evolutionary theory (probably what is denotable via words used, "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in particular"," that not exactly the situation ","created the conditions for natural selection ", "quantified so", “observations about nature that”, “is then”,” because”) needed to be replaced with (extended, post-synthesis, evolutionary theory) where Organisms construct Environments and Environments ”construct’ Organisms creating what has come to be discussed as the O-E(organism-environment) match among niche contructivits(see NICHE CONSTRUCTION
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~seal/niche/
).
That is how Lewontin can be skeptical but be confident with the phrases, “
Now I tried to figure out just what this notion materializes to in the one converstation I ever had with Richard Lewontin. It is clear to me that he may have understood by now that the way he responded to me in the mid80s was inadequate and THE REASON - “space and time” themselves.
What was *really* the background of evolutionary theory discussions IN THE 80s %was not% simply the content of the new then “Bradford Books” publishing attempts and the simple separation of “molecular evidence for evolution” but the internalization that “Tertiary” rather than “Pleistocene” time coordinated the “space and time” of form-making in its best spatial evolution internalization.
This problem continues precisely at the juncture that I struggle to express my own opinions. Less because of metaphysics but more because the “purpose” is never made as obvious as it was mistakenly so thought in the past. THAT is an issue for both creationists and evolutionists and not one that be written for a consensus or horizon of all scientists. Lewontin may not “lie” in the sense that any use of “confidence” in a theory lies to some statistical extant (hence arguments about IQ etc.). I trust the thread is not about a simple split end or the hairy interpolation but much of EvC trailing discussions can often not be cut off by the local barber.
So, WHERE THE DIFFERENTIATION or dovetail IS, and in A PARTICULAR case of frequency and/or density dependent selection the SHAPE of the theoretical path through the space and time of evolutionary changes one struggles to separate the “conditions” of the environment from the “behavior” of organisms themselves via the semantic information across generations that divides differnently biotically from abiotically, exists.
Until this is completed, Lewontin seems correct to call afoul of the whipping boy of bad creationism but . .Gladyshev’s thermostat portends to displace this narration as the “conditions” in some generalized sense DO constrain the smooth (non catastrophic) O-E match. This is where I start to write .
I am not privy any longer to the inside workings of the elite establishment of biology but it is no secret that Richard was upset that many of the paths of 60s biology were never constructively pursued and part of the reason seems to not merely that molecular biology was too economically powerful but that evolutionists have failed to pass on a proper intuition to the next EVOLVING generation. Because there is no consensus that the Darwinian algorithm can not be measured in bits as to the difference of selection and information, we are still stuck with Bill Clinton’s “is-is” without USING the actual locations and minimal times given by fossils.
So while the Standard Theory “can never be falsified” what current thinkers think, may be. I do not see any deep enough institutional efforts being made however move the advances in theoretical conceptions displacing the popular imagination and part of the problem here IS (the) English used to do the discussing . .
If as I suspect there is “limit” to forms here then . ..
One only need “look” for some general conditions . etc.
I feel there is an undlaying issue with chemistry rather than the automatable association of gene trees and species trees that is at work but now I get off the topic and onto my own soap box .
What did I say?
Well, if one thinks that Lewontin’s quote shows that there is a “Darwinian Deity” this is simply to miss by amelioration “standard” and “extended” evolutionary theory. But because there ARE these problems for the evolutionary elite this then is no reason to confuse popular Lamarckianism with popular Darwinism and THIS Richard avoided with his writing.
Edited by Brad McFall, : comprehension
Edited by Brad McFall, : existentialisms

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by Cold Foreign Object, posted 01-24-2007 4:41 PM Cold Foreign Object has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by Cold Foreign Object, posted 01-25-2007 7:19 PM Brad McFall has replied

Cold Foreign Object 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3047 days)
Posts: 3417
Joined: 11-21-2003


Message 33 of 37 (379912)
01-25-2007 7:19 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Brad McFall
01-25-2007 6:46 PM


Re: Please welcome the Darwinian Deity
Hi Brad:
I read your post. But I do not understand most of it. Sorry.
Ray

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Brad McFall, posted 01-25-2007 6:46 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 34 by Brad McFall, posted 01-25-2007 7:53 PM Cold Foreign Object has not replied

Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 34 of 37 (379927)
01-25-2007 7:53 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by Cold Foreign Object
01-25-2007 7:19 PM


Re: Please welcome the Darwinian Deity
Well,
I guess I had meant to have said, that "Darwinism", popularisms of Darwianian biology, and evolutionary theory as it "was" taught (in the 50s say or earlier if I needed to have said) isnt really "a religion" (unless anything said with statistical certianity as it's rasion d etre is..) but the funny thing is that pretty much ALL OF the lingo of religious speech needs be comprehended JUST to understand what the best and brightest evos are saying...
To the extent that elite evos darken the students' prospects for a better generation of thinkers then, yea, there is not really a problem leveling them with the same social contraint they have tried IN RESPONSE to ply towards creationists etc., but this is mere psychology beyond the "confidence limited" decision on what counted as 'knowledge' etc that may be passed sematically among generations of scholars whether scholastic or popular.
Now if instead evos accepted religious instruction alongside evolutonary speculating for the expository benefit of students then there really would be better evolutionists and better believers but silly U.S., we think that seperation of Church and State implies that this can not "encroach" on the university but must remain in the couch as crumb left behind. This would eliminate, in time, the comparision of Darwinism TO religion and c/e saying that "it takes more faith to believe in evolution than Jesus..." Exact refrences TO SPACE AND TIME may also accomplish this less socially and this is trail I am exploring BETWEEN my two sites
http://axiompanbiog.com/default.aspx
http://aexion.org/default.aspx
but I do not know what would happen if debates worked their ideas ONLY from information eminating out of acutal collection locals rather than local "envirnoments" generatlized.
You are aware of "standard" evolutionary theory (variation, mutation and selection) that is the foil of Dick's pen, yes?? Well, he simply is trying to show how "the differentiation" is constructivist. The problem is that evos are not really doing the "constructing" and all that there really is out here instead is "design" but then again there is structural OR functional design and this is different bit wise where the semantics are yet to be full differentiatied between concepts and intuitions....
Edited by Brad McFall, : BB codes

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 Message 33 by Cold Foreign Object, posted 01-25-2007 7:19 PM Cold Foreign Object has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 35 of 37 (379948)
01-25-2007 9:08 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by Cold Foreign Object
01-25-2007 5:37 PM


Re: Please welcome the Darwinian Deity
Hi Ray,
It looks like Augray already explained this to you. The Lewontin paragraph you quoted was followed by a paragraph that begins, "The trouble with this analysis is..." That paragraph explains why the analysis presented in your quote doesn't hold up.
I think there must be some more global context that we're missing, because Lewontin's eventual point seems both dumb and poorly made, and Lewontin was neither dumb nor a poor logician. But I can't even guess what that global context might be.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by Cold Foreign Object, posted 01-25-2007 5:37 PM Cold Foreign Object has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by Brad McFall, posted 01-27-2007 4:05 PM Percy has not replied

Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 36 of 37 (380515)
01-27-2007 4:05 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by Percy
01-25-2007 9:08 PM


Re: Please welcome the Darwinian Deity
You are asking what is the “larger” perspective that Richard Lewontin may be included within? Where Auguray transitions to . .
quote:
Let's first take a look at what comes before your quote:
The theory of evolution by natural selection states that changes
in the inherited characters of species occur, giving rise to
differentiation in space and time, because different genetical
types leave different numbers of offspring in different
environments. In particular, a species of bird with a small bill
may evolve a larger bill size, because some aspect of the
environment has changed so that large billed birds now have more
offspring. Or the species may split into two new contemporaneous
species with different bill sizes, because geographically
separated populations of the original species lived in different
environments in one of which large-billed birds were more fecund,
while in the other small-billed birds left more offspring.
Well the obvious and simple answer is that that was the place of value in world of fact where a detailed consideration of the philosophy of probability exists. Such a sentence however hails from a past time that is likely extripated although I would not guess that it is not not true for Dick. There are plenty of ideas (just trying showing that there is some ”ontology’ left out of the quote before the quote, this I do just about every time I post on EvC) which value Popper’s falsifiability less than statistical confidence in data sitting just in front of oneself or the observation itselff. So getting to Gould’s “bad old days” of creationism would be premature, at least in my mind.
Another possible context has to do with the claim made by niche constructors:
of a different kind of “causality”
quote:

no matter the ontology.
quote:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~seal/niche/
which idea was lauded by Richard(on the back cover of the book in the link above; two 'thumbs' below also from the same source)
Lewontin could have said “casual” where “causal” is thought in place and setting. Just listen to what Jesse Jackson said today in the Washington D.C. peace march. Jackson could have easily meant “causal” when said “casual” because similarly for Richard if the idea in “niche Cosntruction” Bit wise or “off by a letter wise” the Niche Constructors intending a “system” to survive the cartoon version
no matter the epistemology is really a “landmark” in Lewontin's thought and thus have truth for some place/location re-marked on the planet, the larger perspective could be --while the Niche Contructors attempt to say this:
and yet the Constructors use the word “a priori” throughout when trying to say just what the “semantic information” is that is not captured by “bits” but by Richard's O-E match in differential equations.
Richard, in his book, "Triple Helix"
tried to admonish molecular bit biologists, so he probably IS sensitive to all of this including the “casual” use of Causality that Kitcher used:
quote:

And the careful reader of Kant will NOTICE that whatever this “different causality of Darwin” is in the first thumbnail above for any SHAPE of the theory from niche construction so lauded by Dick, it is not, the different Causality judged by Einstein nor in my estimation being hoped for by IDists as written by Kant. So evos have to extend the discussion as well as creationists.
How many evos can really do this is probably equal to those that can see “the alternatives” as NOT EQUAL. It would be nice if this number was more than that supposed to have understood Einstein’s implication before 1919 but this probably a wish that even if willed will not come true soon.
Edited by Brad McFall, : proper evc referencing

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by Percy, posted 01-25-2007 9:08 PM Percy has not replied

AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 150 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 37 of 37 (380560)
01-27-2007 9:06 PM


Am I the first one to perceive that fMRI brain scans of Herepton and Brad Mcfall would be indistinguishable?

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