quote:
Originally posted by Robert:
... a person who is silent in the face of a crime is considered an accessory.
Surely not? An accessory is one who assist the perpetrator in committing a crime but dose not participate in the crime itself.
Being silent in the face of wrongdoing is often to be condemned, but those who remain silent are hardly accessories.
In the case of evolutionary biologists you're suggestion seems to be that they should condemn the misuse of their science. You will be aware that many leading evolutionary biologists to just that: Jones and Gould are eloquent in their frequent denunciation of racism and biological determinism. To expect
every evolutionary biologist to do so explicitly is a great danger - to see this, one need only think of the communist and fascist regimes where scientists were required to endorse a specific set of socio-political doctrines and their application to science.
Many evolutionary biologists are involved in research (on single celled organisms, for example) which have little application to the socio-political sphere. Of those evolutionary biologists who do touch on socio-political matters I have not come across the work of any contemporaries who do espouse anything remotely akin to "social darwinism." Do you know of any?
Equally, do you know of any whose work engages socio-politcal issues who do not condemn socially discriminatory applications of darwinism when they do cross the path of their work? I would be genuinely interested to hear of it.
[b] [QUOTE]Yassar Arafat ....[/b][/QUOTE]
I really don't think we should even start that discussion on this forum. There are plenty of opportunities to discuss it elsewhere on the net.
[b] [QUOTE]Another thought - Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker tries very hard to make an argument that random processes alone can account for the complexity of the universe rather than an intelligent designer.[/b][/QUOTE]
He does not. Indeed, to say so is to reveal almost complete incomprehension of the positon the book advances. It is not
random processes alone but
constrained random processes which is a hugely different matter.[b] [QUOTE]In attempting to do this he writes a program which he entitles "Evolution".[/b][/QUOTE]
A good, if naif, example of a constrained random process - in this case with a predetermined goal.
It is important to bear this in mind, because they represent two separate phases of the process, and often in discussing one phase in detail there is no need to reference the other. Thus one may read passages, or pick quotes, which deal only with the mutations without dealing with the constraints. To take the example of your favourite equation, F=ma, there will be passages in any disussion of Newtonian mechanics which explain the nature of acceleration with no reference to mass. It's a danger, especially when reading the quotations of others, to think that excerpts represent the entire thesis.
[b] [QUOTE]In reading Darwin's Origin of Species it seems to me that "improvement" is always uppermost in his mind. A less adapted species will die out - thus it will not evolve. Even a subtraction in its genetic code can be considered an "improvement" in the species if the subtraction actually helps the species to survive. Of course, this is all assuming that evolution is true.[/b][/QUOTE]
"Improvement" relative to what, however? The point is that evolution is not goal-seeking. An animal which evolves the means to survive better in a warm climate is up the creek without a paddle if the environment changes quickly adn its "improvement" may well lead to its extinction.