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Member (Idle past 5055 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: All about Brad McFall II. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18310 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
Mike, I also thought that Brad was clear and concise in his explanatory response to my queries...but...I don't believe that he owes anyone anything! Brad is just Brad and shall always be thus....
It is good to be able to get to know the man behind the curtain, however....and I am glad that we all are getting to share our observations about life and human development in general. Mr. McFall.....one more question: Are you optimistic about the future of humanity?
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mike the wiz Member Posts: 4755 From: u.k Joined: |
Mike, I also thought that Brad was clear and concise in his explanatory response to my queries...but...I don't believe that he owes anyone anything! I agree. But then, for all we know he could have had a bet and lost, and ran away. So perhaps he does owe somebody something.
Mr. McFall.....one more question: Are you optimistic about the future of humanity? Philosophat strikes again.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5055 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
Hi Mike,
I'll answer your other post later. It may be that I have lost my bet. I just don't know yet. Yet, I doubt that I have. Why? (gibberish...Pascal>Leibniz...) I have simply wanted to know if it is possible to look at distributions of creatures on Earth in today's society as the ancients looked at the stars? My website (Axiomatic Panbiogeography), according to an independent reviewer notes that this is only the second website on panbiogeography in existence. There I have placed my bets that one can use group theory to sort the differences among gene and species "trees". No one has told me that I lost this bet to a better thesis. I may indeed owe my children something, but that is hard for me to say. Thanks for mentioning Matchett, or however you spell his name. I'll respond to that later. Indeed, I am optimistic about the future. I did not "run" away, this past week, I just spent time doing normal things with family, i.e. nothing intellectual necessarily. As for always being able to write clearly in precise conscription, that should always be the goal. Some of the unclarity comes while I am less confident, but tis true, those less clear posts ARE the ones I put the most thought into. If I do not put everything "out" there sometimes, I can not expect the same in response, when I call for it. Sometimes, I want to drag the converstation into "metaphysics", sometimes... I just want to be understood.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5055 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
Taz, I tis back.
I am off work Tuesday. If you post a time today to talk tommarow, that too should come true. Till then(or not),Brad. I will be in South Carolina for the duration of next week and it may be possible to talk then as well.
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Phat Member Posts: 18310 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
McFall writes: Sometimes, I want to drag the converstation into "metaphysics", sometimes... I just want to be understood. Occasionally, I have the discipline to attempt to understand complex scientific disciplines that are way way over my head! Is this an acceptable definition of Panbiogeography?
Answers.com writes: Panbiogeography is an intricately related offshoot of biogeography. Biogeography is the study of how very similar organisms are distributed throughout a region, and panbiogeography studies how organisms came to be in a particular location. Panbiogeography figuratively “connects the dots” that biogeography makes. Brad writes: Thats what I wanted to hear! I try to be optimistic as well! None of that Armageddon belief system for me! We need more kids taking an interest in the pursuit of scientific disciplines such as the many that you lovingly embrace! Indeed, I am optimistic about the future. On a seemingly unrelated note, I have a question that you may provide some insight towards: Of all the animals, why are humans the only animal that wears clothes?
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kuresu Member (Idle past 2535 days) Posts: 2544 From: boulder, colorado Joined: |
Of all the animals, why are humans the only animal that wears clothes? Phat, what do you think a fur coat is? A better question to ask would be:Why are humans the only ones that have to make their own clothing (as distinguished from growing their own clothing). The reason we need to make clothing is because we like to go to places like antarctica (as an extreme). Well, some of us do. That skimpy amount of hair we have just doesn't cut it down there.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3313 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
Phat writes:
The people who lived in the tropics wore their birthday suits all their lives before they were Europeanized. Of all the animals, why are humans the only animal that wears clothes? Seriously, Phat, are you so desperate to prove that there is some godly purpose to us that you are willing to use obviously BS arguments? If everyone naturally feels ashamed of his body because of the fall, there shouldn't be a law in Hawaii forbidding women to go around topless. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
kuresu responds to Phat:
quote:quote: Neither of those statements are true. Other animals do wear clothing (hermit crabs) and make their own (there are some insects that glue things like rocks to themselves in order to protect themselves.) There really isn't anything that humans do that other animals don't also do. We may do it differently, more efficiently, etc., but that doesn't make us unique. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Phat Member Posts: 18310 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
Taz writes: My question was primarily directed at Mr. McFall, whose input I value. I was not necessarily implying any sort of a Godliness argument at all. I was merely wondering why humans are so unique from other animals.... Im not always a fundie, ya know!
Seriously, Phat, are you so desperate to prove that there is some godly purpose to us that you are willing to use obviously BS arguments?
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Phat writes:
quote: But we're not. There is nothing that humans do that other animals don't also do. While humans are unique (in that humans aren't some other type of animal), that uniqueness comes about due to degree, not kind. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Phat Member Posts: 18310 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
Rrhain writes: Welcome back, Rrhain! Nice to see your smiling logic once again. There really isn't anything that humans do that other animals don't also do. We may do it differently, more efficiently, etc., but that doesn't make us unique. So humans are not that unique, eh? You must admit that we have accomplished many tasks that any ordinary animal could never do.
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Taz Member (Idle past 3313 days) Posts: 5069 From: Zerus Joined: |
Phat writes:
I don't know exactly what Rrhain was trying to say, but I can say this much. All of the things you pointed out are very human-centric in that other animal couldn't care less. You must admit that we have accomplished many tasks that any ordinary animal could never do. A while ago, a christian fundamentalist tried to prove to me that the Jesus Christ was the true savior and that all other religious deities are false by pointing out that Jesus was the only one that resurrected from the dead... supposedly. I told him that resurrection was a christian criteria and not of a buddhist's. I could have easily pointed out that Buddha was the one true deity since he was the only one that was "enlightened". The same sort of argument is right here. You are using human criteria and then use things that are only essential for human to meet those criteria to prove our uniqueness. I could just as easily point out that the Argentine ants are the true unique species considering it is the only species in the world who's ALL individuals form a single colony. In other words, you could take an Argintine ant from Mexico and throw it in an Argentine ant nest in Italy and this ant would have been treated by the others as just another member of the colony. There, I just proved that the Argentine ant is god's true chosen. Disclaimer: Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style. He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5055 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
I have an interesting, though somewhat “whimsical” take on the clothes question I will answer later. I will try to explain how the zipper
(see picture development here(see "crosscap final etc.")) in quote:(PDF) quote: forms for the surface of the human body what were clothed in the standard form, thus “disproving” that older saying that the emperor does not wear clothes. Sorry EvCers, there are so many responses I can not reply in real time to them all. I have read the answers.com result for searching under “panbiogeography”. I think the harderst thing about defining or bounding the domain that Panbiogeography (as an independent biological discipline) is that Leon Croizat wrote many books and papers, only one of which was titled, “Panbiogeography.” So Panbiogeography may refer to what is involved in the contents of that one book or as often happens when people not dedicated to the discipline itself, attempt to explain, it is referred to as, anything resulting from Croizat’s work that bears on geographic distributions. The book “Panbiogeography” deals with the distributions of animals and was written after he wrote one on plants. He then wrote a general book on plants and subsequently a work titled “Space, Time and Form”. That is as far as I have read his largest works. The rest of his life he concentrated on writing Spanish titles while composing some smaller papers for the English world. I suppose that is why Answers calls it “intricate”. It really is not all that. The truth is that no one had tried to create a discipline where geographic distribution was the first but not the last preoccupation of the biologist. I was particularly looking for such a whole discipline at Cornell and only found it in Croizat’s writings, yet no one knew much about his work there in Ithaca. The biophilosopher Hull has recognized Panbiogeography as a fourth “offshoot” among the triple of phlylogenetics, phenetics, and cladistics. The other two sentences in the Answers' answer will take a bit more effort to describe so I will do that also later. “Connect the dots” refers to the modernization of Croizat’s work, largely at first in New Zealand, where “minimal spanning trees” were applied to distributions. Croizat never invoked this specific algorithm by name. As for what biogeography is or was, that requires one to discuss Darwin vs Lamarck a bit. I would say that the Answers.com could have written a more positive entry. Edited by Brad McFall, : last sentence
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Phat responds to me:
quote: Nope. It seems that you glossed over the "degree, not kind" part of the argument, as you are about to get bogged down in details rather than concepts.
quote: And thus, you prove my point. You are confusing the specific outcome with the underlying process. By your logic, modern humans are unique compared to ancient humans since only modern humans made the Internet and if we could somehow transport ancient humanity to the present day and provide them with the same materials and training, they would never be able to do so.
quote: Actually, animals have communication networks. The dance of bees, for example.
quote: Spiders, wasps, bees, termites, nesting birds, chimpanzees, orangutangs, etc.
quote: Bees and some apes.
quote: This is the same as "engineering," so the list is quite similar: Spiders, bees, wasps, termites, nesting birds, chimpanzees, orangutangs, etc.
quote: Ants.
quote: Birds and insects follow electromagnetic fields as do sharks and some fish use electricity directly. Again, you're confusing degree with kind.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5055 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
John Grehan has recently posted to SEBA
http://www.sebasite.org/ A copy of an early version of Croizat’s most cited paper. I have uploaded here http://aexion.org/product.aspx as /Documents/croizat1974ms.pdf For any one interested if answering “Are homologues parts of semaphorants or parts of holomorphs?” quote:http://axiompanbiog.com/comparisons.aspx 1974 paper Rhain, I can explain in detail how Darwin’s ideas as criticized by Croizat (Center of Origin, Active Migration, Means of Distribution, Essential Permanency of Continental Outlines) in the above PDF are a result of what improper economics Croizat named as a medieval involution. Gould can be read in this stew as well. He tries to keep the random jiggling back to worms of the Cambrian rather than settle the score with Croizat at the Jurrasic/Cretaceous. It is the apparent need of an evolutionary defense to NOT specify a specific history (Gould extended out to the longest time scales) so as to keep criticism at bay that prevents evos from turing the holomorph space into the form of a semaphorant bird Croizat lays at Mayrs essentialistic numberism. Sure this does not make much of “clear” response to you but then again you did not seem to relate what Phat was saying to anything I have said, so I just did. In the Croizat paper, he writes of "natural process" that Darwin got wrong in his opinion. It would take some doing to show that Kant's ideas of natural purpose can be drawn INTO the very process that is supposed by Darwin to overlay the entire example of plants and animals other than us but I could do that. Darwin had so...ooo unique (human in Phat's sense) a view that life is telling him, in his grave, that he was wrong. Instead Darwin (not Phat) brought in "miracle" instead. READ THE PDF for yourself. Croizat found out where improper creationist rethoric covered lack of scientific knowledge. Gould, however follows paying in kind under the table, and has subtly replaced "production of species" in the extremes of fans of Darwin's "diversity" for Croizat's "wing" disperal (this is why the obscure technical question about the concept holomorph vs the part of individual organism life cycle semaphorant is needed, sorry). Evolutionary biology is not a tolerant world even if it is like electrical engineering. Edited by Brad McFall, : forgot a link
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