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Author Topic:   Biogeography?
lpetrich
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 15 (29579)
01-19-2003 2:31 PM


The creationists lose very badly there, which is most likely why the do not discuss it very much. They devote much more time attempting to demonstrate the impossibility of evolution than to trying to account for biogeography.
Biogeography was part of Darwin's case for evolution -- why are species distributed the way they are? Why do the large majority of species have ranges smaller than what they are capable of? Why are the species inhabiting oceanic islands the sort of species that can naturally get there? At least to within such changes as flying birds' descendants losing flight. Why do such islands sometimes have big birds and big turtles but never big rats? Darwin had long been concerned with that question; during his Beagle years, when he was still a creationist, he concluded that Australia's distinctive fauna might suggest that "there are two Creators at work". And in later years, he performed experiments on checking on whether seeds can survive after floating in seawater for several months.
To be more specific:
Why do rattlesnakes live in the Americas but nowhere else, despite the fact that poisonous snakes can successfully live on every continent but Antarctica?
Why do sloths live only in South America and not in any other place with tropical forests?
Why are there marmots and woodchucks only in the Northern Hemisphere and wombats only in Australia?
Why are there kangaroos only in Australia and rabbits only elsewhere before their introduction to Australia?
Why are there ostriches only in Africa, extinct Aepyornis birds only in Madagascar, cassowaries only in Australia and New Guinea, emus only in Australia, kiwis and extinct moas only in New Zealand, and rheas only in South America?
There are numerous other such examples, but my patience has run out.
[This message has been edited by lpetrich, 01-19-2003]

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by Brad McFall, posted 01-19-2003 5:59 PM lpetrich has not replied
 Message 4 by Randy, posted 01-19-2003 8:17 PM lpetrich has not replied
 Message 15 by Peter, posted 01-29-2003 8:09 AM lpetrich has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 2 of 15 (29590)
01-19-2003 5:59 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by lpetrich
01-19-2003 2:31 PM


We dont even know how th eXenodontinae Worm snake has distribution west of missippi, between tha appleachians and the river and along the eastern Seaboard. I simply tried to have museum speciemns sent by mail to ITHACA without concerning where the biodiversity data base devolepement would be natively rooted and this totaly pragmatic and achievable goal especially for an undergraduate was routed out for the same reasons Gould can not consesus decsions on his more elaborated proposal. Do you think one can do more than speculate an answer to these kinds of questions. I even knew just about as much herpetology as any one at the time being a memeber of the Hepetologists Leaugue and SSAR and haveing started my own club. The evolutionists are to blame for any desire to not see this more fully developed creationist wise.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by lpetrich, posted 01-19-2003 2:31 PM lpetrich has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by edge, posted 01-19-2003 7:07 PM Brad McFall has replied

  
edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 3 of 15 (29599)
01-19-2003 7:07 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Brad McFall
01-19-2003 5:59 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Brad McFall:
We dont even know how th eXenodontinae Worm snake has distribution west of missippi, between tha appleachians and the river and along the eastern Seaboard.
Of course we don't 'know' in the absolutist sense of the term. Evolution may bean explanation of the existing data, however.
quote:
... Do you think one can do more than speculate an answer to these kinds of questions.
Yes, because we have some data and we have working hypotheses. This is not exactly blind speculation.
quote:
I even knew just about as much herpetology as any one at the time being a memeber of the Hepetologists Leaugue and SSAR and haveing started my own club. The evolutionists are to blame for any desire to not see this more fully developed creationist wise.
Actually, I would guess that evolutionists have little to do with it. It is just as likely that no one thought it worth the time, regardless of the creationist implications. Don't feel badly, it happens to practically everyone.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by Brad McFall, posted 01-19-2003 5:59 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
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Randy
Member (Idle past 6248 days)
Posts: 420
From: Cincinnati OH USA
Joined: 07-19-2002


Message 4 of 15 (29606)
01-19-2003 8:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by lpetrich
01-19-2003 2:31 PM


Biogeography is one of several falsifications of the flood and it has been discussed before on the Great Flood forum.
http://EvC Forum: Biogeography falsifies the worldwide flood. -->EvC Forum: Biogeography falsifies the worldwide flood.
As usual creationists could only answer, God must have done it somehow.
Fred Williams tried to answer it here
http://EvC Forum: Evolution vs Creation -->EvC Forum: Evolution vs Creation
But a little analysis easily showed that his attempts at explanation are total nonsense. Creationist often try partial answers to small parts of the problem as if it solved the whole problem but biogeography is a falsification of the flood myth that creationists have no real answer for other than "God did it".
Randy

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Brad McFall, posted 01-28-2003 11:27 AM Randy has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 5 of 15 (29608)
01-19-2003 8:34 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by edge
01-19-2003 7:07 PM


This WAS not so. It was an UNDERGRADUATE Program called the College Scholar and I had ALREADY recieved ONE SEMESTER support for a 4 fold indpenedent study including 3 credits on Croizat to broach the larger questions of biogeography which WERE APPROVED. Provine REFUSED to help bring all the work to a head and as I was making DECISIONS since he would not participate on how the indpenendent study contents would devolve into the senior year last semester which HAD to result in a THESIS I started to scale back some of the goals THAT WERE ALREADY APPROVED such that a reasonable amount of result could be ACTUALLY accomplished in the year. I was not writing a curriculum to support the MASTers degree etc. IT does not happen to every one. If I had gone to any other school but Cornell I doubt this would have happened essentially because other schools do not give there best students as much free range as Cornell did. This program has been historically criticized for this very reason.
The issue of what the NZs were doing with biogeographic data was very much up in the air at that time and no one really KNEW what the Croizat "take home" lesson was if anything. The curator had been coming at the issue from a phenetists standpoint and this "clashed" NOT with my own views but only with what I was trying to understand Croizat to have said. Statistics NEED not be a priori if one was to do as I proposed simply to scan Camera Lucida drawings in to the system from all the collection localites assembled at CU. It was possible by only collecting the data on the HEAD of the snake and SVL and tail length I might not have been able to make the conculsions as to rooting the biogeography which was the target but this was not a graduate student thesis and the project was ambitious enough to be presented to the trustees of Cornell as something unique in its history and never done before. I heard later I was even being considered for the Oxford Univ scholarhship from Cornell.
In the end it is likely Gould misfocus on creationism and Provine's toeing closer to Mayrs line than Gould would have like that made me a casuality but I knew nothing of this social work. I merely thought that doing bio-change without eugenics was enough. I was wrong(then). The creationists were correct they run a closed shop. The biotech building was built outside the place I always walked.
Evolutionists neve came to biological consensus on Croizat's hope for a deductive biogeography which was to be my goal and my fomalist position vis a via bilateral symmetry Kant Pastuer and Cantor was too much for the Fisher influence. I think Gould is basically correct only HE does use a very specific puntuation that my thinking does not longer hope to embrace BECAUSE THE creationists are socially correct even if millions of years may be seeming have more intertia too its outwork. The nonliearlity can STILL Be pursued without the particular founding extrapolation to the larger time scales. WOlfram is a case in point.
The Aboslutist sense of the term was a claim that gene flow occured west to east across the Mississippi to where Helenes worm snake recieved the vernacular enuciation. I was going to use affine transforms of the fusion of head plates and collection localites to test this. I could decide the statistcs to be used AFTER the data was sent to CU. This never happend the social stuff got in theway.
I had a mathematician going to help me but Adler balked on the systematics part and Levin could seem to afford tyring out the confidence necessary to test such an acutal claim to the relation especially with scales on herps about nonadpative charcters that so still dominates Goulds reframing all this interms of PAley vs Agassiz. How ironic.

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 Message 3 by edge, posted 01-19-2003 7:07 PM edge has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by robinrohan, posted 01-22-2003 6:51 PM Brad McFall has not replied
 Message 7 by Brad McFall, posted 01-22-2003 9:09 PM Brad McFall has not replied

  
robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 15 (29942)
01-22-2003 6:51 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Brad McFall
01-19-2003 8:34 PM


Brad, may I say something? I hope you don't mind. It is very difficult to figure out what you are saying. Your sentence structure is very confused. Simplify, because I'm interested.

This message is a reply to:
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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 7 of 15 (29955)
01-22-2003 9:09 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Brad McFall
01-19-2003 8:34 PM


Pough from Cornellpublished in 1998 spanning tree diagrams for herps that can be found at psu.edu with John Grehan and the entomology Museum WHICH was the SIMPLEST alternative I had proposed to do for worm snake geographic distributions and was the only substantive issue at issue with my being placed on leave. The placement in Florida was coincidental on my parents moving to a place I was unfamiliar with. Cornell NEVER saw the united picture I attempted to state in 98 but instead, illegally, in this sense broke relations with me.
I had prepared on coming out of Africa in 87 a plan of senior year studies of the biogeography of the worm snake. 4 credits had been approved to figure out what it was that Croizat was *really* saying. The dispute between the New Zelanders and AMNH had already become visiblie in SYStematic ZOOlogy and yet it was not clear that cladistics was really what was at stake in the discussion. This was before some work in ancestral area biogeography began.
Subsequently and in an attempt to inform Cornell as per tort of the state of biogeography I was able to DO what this senior year was supposed to credit by THINKING of Cantor's Motivation for set theory (which for me began in reaction to proove methods in group theory classes at CU)(the debate with Dedekind about GREEK notions of dimension)ordinate some of Panbiogeography that could explain with incidence geometry why Croizat was so misuderstood in the Formalist tradition that Gould so-wants the sturcture of. The New Zelanders were promoting minimal spanning trees but it was MY, proposal to follow up on Hilbert's program in biogeography that seemed to prime the issue for a fight over the fleshy tissue of the specimens rather than getting on with the work. Now that biodiversity informatics has found out that the data base is itself an end it is clear that the cause of this was adminstrative and unresolved issues in vaulation of databasewarehousing but I was knowing nothing of this only finding it rather curious that MACS began to populate the campus. I know I ramble a bit but it is hard to keep this up to date and try to second guess where you specifically need to be filled in on. Lets assume that covers all of yours or SUMACs interest in rumors about me from Cornell. I had dinner with Lewontin and a sack lunch with Gould and spoke to Mayr while I was there. I knew some herpetology. As a freshman I knew more about Anuran husbandry than the graduate students who used the creatures as their research subjects.
Gould seems to play any a priority of the science off against a bet to use probability in an ontological sense rather than a only epistemolgical perception. In this he may indeed agree on some things with WOlfram. Reading Croizat makes it obvious that no such position is any but empirically justified. Gould is not mistaken to hold such a view. The problem was that a student such as myself was rather being misunderstood than allowed simply to get what by right and contract was legal. I clearly percieved this but not in the creationism I now see as more often on the top tier I simply wanted to graduate with a BA degree. I did not know there was talk among the faculty or no talk etc about me and OXFORD or Adler who was judging what I was allowed to do ON HIS not mine decision that HE could not sensibly write a graduate degree recommendation if I insisted on this course I was really coming around to biogeogrpahically on reading croizat etc. That was fine with me. I often knew things in the LIbrary that the faculty had no idea was there. I, BSM, was surprised to find Croizat's work so voluminuous and NOT reported anywhere but by the NewZelanders and withing the nascent cladistics. This became MY problem. I did not care if the school did not understand. I paid to go there , took the courses , was undercontract to discuss downward causation or in today's words Gould time tiering and ALL i actually did was attempt a third person explaination of what happened IN THE SCIENCE. They broke the contract and Illegally at theory but that is for a judge to decide.
Biogeography itself became since island biogeogrpahy somewhat confused ( I think it due to not understanding Wright better) and Croizat method to get zoogeographers etc away from this bad blood has not really succeeded as of yet, yet becuase I had started to collect areas of herp locations in central jersey since I was 9 I really wanted a natural history able if not to predict geographic distribution at least indicate some directions on the map. This I had found out had been Croiat's question at Harvard too. I asked it at cornell. The scientists couldnt say what a gene was and no one answered me as to how to count apriori an organism. I matured in my views on any progress. Carl Zimmer began to write more narratives. I think like Ian ball that this has not really helped biology.
I think the reall insight in Gould goes back to Pascal but at the time then I was only thinking in Kantian terms. It is possible that this will only be availale to us once CHiense Science becomes more integrated but to say so would only put me on the level of croiat and gould. I have been trying to resist the social domain and stick to the unit physico-chemically.
I fully expect that some day as computer use enters its own retirement that being able to PREDICT or DEDUCE things simply from plots of lat/long clade presentations will be possible. As a Senior in College I had ASSUMED that such a sCience already existed. It did not. Croizat decided that something very radical needed to happen to biogeography before this spatial interest garnered the support it deserved. Lerner in genetics new of the importance of location. No one got here becasue age and area challged natural selection but Gould IS correct to show a decade after I was kicked out that natural selection itself is not challenged but he achieved his result by scarficing the revival in creationism that developed concurrently with croizat's isolation. I think Post 9-11 goulds position will not work but as a popularizer for what is needed I have made a 180.
As a highschool student I had sided with Mayr's repose (in conversation with Zimmer for instance) but after Reading Croizat against gOULD i AGREE WITH gould and NOT MAYR.
I have nothing else nice to say.
This would have been easier and more informative over a beer. This for message 6of6-thanks for your interest. As I get less upset about what happened to I guy who jumped thru more than you average number of hoops I expect my writing to be(C0me) easier to read and understand.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by robinrohan, posted 01-23-2003 3:44 PM Brad McFall has replied

  
robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 15 (30051)
01-23-2003 3:44 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Brad McFall
01-22-2003 9:09 PM


I picked up some of that, especially when you talked about yourself personally. I would like to hear more about you. Can you recommend a book on your subject (actually, you seem to have many subjects) that is not too technical?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Brad McFall, posted 01-22-2003 9:09 PM Brad McFall has replied

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 9 of 15 (30060)
01-23-2003 6:30 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by robinrohan
01-23-2003 3:44 PM


robinrohan- read MAXWELL's reading to the the Royal Society of Jan22 1855 titled : Description of A New Form of the Platometer, an Instrument for measuring the Area of Plane Figures drawn on Paper...if you like. You can tell T. Blair to do the same::
I got the work in a DOVER edition of Maxwell's papers collected. I will then give you my reading of the word "strip" mentioned in this text. Show how the interpreation of the art relates to Gould's project and attempt to review this by using biogeographic homologs to bound a point set in the plane.
Admittedly ALL OF it becomes so far a bit speculative and you are not asked to have the same ontological confidence for any actual epistemology on talk-back that results but I hope that the arbitraryness of the volume of biota becomes better comprehened I as I, BSM, prepare for the only left eventuality-- the writing of patent claims. It was a wrong social action to have committed me just becuase I think this work is possible. It was like Hitler with the Jews only I have some recessive biological idea that in the probabilistic environment of the new age being LIKE ex nihilo of small possibility was dealt with impersonally. Thanks for your interest. The upshot of getting any patents copyrighted etc is that Einstein's seperation emprically of rods and clocks may not stand in the 3-D the patent claims devolve from. I hope to broaden Physically Gould's simplistic view of Christianity in the spirt of the times that needs to see Islam, Judism and Christianity come to gether and not come apart for big oil or liberal rehtoric.

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 Message 8 by robinrohan, posted 01-23-2003 3:44 PM robinrohan has not replied

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 Message 10 by lpetrich, posted 01-28-2003 12:23 AM Brad McFall has replied

  
lpetrich
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 15 (30394)
01-28-2003 12:23 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Brad McFall
01-23-2003 6:30 PM


I can't make any sense out of Brad McFall's postings. I suggest that we ignore him until he learns how to write prose that the rest of us can understand.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Brad McFall, posted 01-23-2003 6:30 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Brad McFall, posted 01-28-2003 11:15 AM lpetrich has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 11 of 15 (30438)
01-28-2003 11:15 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by lpetrich
01-28-2003 12:23 AM


Shame on you. You could have known better about me if you bothered to read around. There are enough people here who know when to respond to me. I proposed some learning and prep. If you had said that you had read the Maxwell paper I would have given you more information.
I DO KNOW when I speak. You are free to ignore me if you like but to try to circle the wagon by detrimental posting against me will not avail. I simply start from another angle.
I WENT to Cornell to DO biogeography. I never got the chance. First if you have a notion of geometry that would have been Einstein's by all means disregard my slant "against" above. I can also speak about this but it may not be strictly biogeographic which was what this thread was to be on.
The net IS NOT like a college dorm BULL session. Really only the site adminsitrators have the POWER to cause a change in the way the threading operates. They do a good job here. I would not like to see peoples "names" becoming the modus of subject operation per topic but that would be your intent it seems to me, if I read; your fire correctly.
Sense is something we all have but some are more sensitive than others.

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 Message 12 by John, posted 01-28-2003 11:18 AM Brad McFall has replied

  
John
Inactive Member


Message 12 of 15 (30439)
01-28-2003 11:18 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Brad McFall
01-28-2003 11:15 AM


quote:
Sense is something we all have but some are more sensitive than others.
Brad, buddie, this quip is brilliant. I like it very much. Can I keep it?
------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Brad McFall, posted 01-28-2003 11:15 AM Brad McFall has replied

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 13 of 15 (30440)
01-28-2003 11:27 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Randy
01-19-2003 8:17 PM


If one reads THE CREATION TRILOGY, and perhaps I should open a book nook topic on this publication of ICR MORRIS', the message loud and clear is about how PUNC EQ acutally can be worded (I mean the science invovled interpreted) FOR creationist thinking. This IS indeed true insofar as some stake is made as to a priori origins of the science that Einstein spoke primatively of... Mayr made his. The younger Gould put his flag in the ground of Croizat and claimed his own territory shortly before his death and I am in the process of the same.
The Morris's made an astute obeservation of Fuytuma's critical attitude of creation science and since the evidence IS biogeographically the same for both under the Occams's Razor of applied cladisitcs in Croizat's Catholicism and Panbiogegraphy the reason the originator of this thread was unable to pick up on the note I last left off on seems to be because this poster may be unable to work Gould's words to any Croizat paragonal effect which indeed overdetermines the biogeography but IS a prerequisite to a more appropo discussion WITHIN Scientific Creationism of the Price.Clark ecology that would or would not invovle the Marsh BARA etc.
That ICR now percieves receipt of genomics is not indication that the topograhic object technically the same for evolution or creation can not be gainsaid.
The c/e part will come out in nanoecology BEFORE nanotechnology no matter the punc that stasis Gould wanted the enviroment of the younger generation of evolutioany theorists to attain to. It is not clear if the same catstrophe applies embyogenically as geologically and GOULD knew that he had NO macroevolutaionary constriction developmental constraints of the past.
I am in process of a pattern in panbiogeography that works neobiologically even to some extent neodarwinistically insofar as there may still be a tension with generational randomness ... but this gets me into my own ideas for geographic information systems and NOT biogeography proper which all bets seem to be that THE TRILOGY will indeed hold up in any technical devolvement of the future of c/e.
I hope this helps to explain and make more easily the thought process involved in the sematic difference between creation and evolution as a DUALITY that clade logic can but only TURN. Mayr had already thought this apriori and without evidence. GOUld Knows.

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 14 of 15 (30441)
01-28-2003 11:30 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by John
01-28-2003 11:18 AM


yes

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by John, posted 01-28-2003 11:18 AM John has not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 15 of 15 (30554)
01-29-2003 8:09 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by lpetrich
01-19-2003 2:31 PM


Did god put different animals in different locations
after the flood ... or were they just released and
left to wander?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by lpetrich, posted 01-19-2003 2:31 PM lpetrich has not replied

  
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