MIT Course Materials

In case anybody didn't know it, MIT publishes almost all it's course materials online for anybody who wants to STUDY for themselves for FREE

Here is the line.

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/index.htm

Biology

Courses on Evolution

Courses on Ecology

Courses on Biogeography

So much to do so little time ...

Biology Courses on Evolution Courses on Ecology Courses on Biogeography

What, no Creationist literature??

What, no Creationist literature??

Just a small oversight, I'm sure.

Here you go.

Excellent!

What, no Creationist literature??

Curiously the course on Evolution and Society discusses the early, pre-Darwin, investigations that led to the understanding that deep time was involved, and reviews the various Christian integrations and reactions. They don't make more than a passing references to Creationism, such as:

Lecture #2 PDF

quote:

---

Criticisms of Historical Science

“Historical science does not benefit from
the repeatable observations that have
served as the cauldron of truth for
scientific knowledge.”

Institute for Creation Research (http://www.icr.org/assumptions/)

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... where they discuss the differenced between "Historical Science" and "Experimental Science" and they do provide answers via things learned that invalidate certain concepts (such as a Young Earth). Such as their demonstration that:

quote:

---

Historical events may be unrecoverable
(and unrepeatable), but scientific
experiments designed to test hypotheses
about what happened during such events
are not.

---

So it appears that they are well aware of the Creationism talking points but choose to deal with them tangentially by showing the basis for scientific knowledge that makes such thinking obsolete and scientifically irrelevant.

Interesting factoid: Darwin had the same dorm room at Christ’s College ... as William Paley.

Material is in PDF and look like they would be used as slide shows for lectures, and thus many questions are left for the student to answer.

Quite a different format from Berkeley Evolution 101 which is more like an on-line textbook.

In Lecture 9 they make the argument that his inspiration for natural selection came from reading Malthus:

quote:

---

Darwin’s Malthusian “Eureka! moment”

“In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my
systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on
Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued
observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck
me that under these circumstances favourable variations would
tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The
result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I
had at last got a theory by which to work....”
Charles Darwin, Autobiography, 1876

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AND then Wallace

Lecture 10 PDF:

quote:

---

Wallace’s Malthusian “Eureka!” moment

“While vaguely thinking how this would affect any species, there
suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the fittest –
that the individuals removed by these checks must be, on the
whole, inferior to those that survived. Then, considering the
variations continuing occurring in every fresh generation of
animals or plants, and the changes of climate, of food, of enemies
always in progress, the whole method of specific modification
became clear to me, and in the two hours of my fit I had thought
out the main points of the theory. That same evening I sketched
out a draft of a paper; in the two succeeding evenings I wrote it
out, and sent it by the next post..” where exactly?

---

He sent it to Darwin. So they were very much on the same page at the same time.

Edited by RAZD, : added lecture 9

Edited by RAZD, : added

Thanks Ramoss. A great link. Didn't know about it. Or forgot about it.

The calculus I video course is outstanding. I recommend it for anyone whose college education did not include Calculus. It is accessible for a student who has had trigonometry, but the trig stuff can be skipped.

Yale has online courses as does Cal Berkeley. I highly recommend the Berkeley Astronomy Course with Alex Filippenko if it is still available. Probably not YEC friendly...

... I highly recommend the Berkeley Astronomy Course with Alex Filippenko if it is still available. Probably not YEC friendly...

links?

Alex's video course is no longer on line at Cal Berkeley. I did find a link to the audio, but the quality of the recording does not do the material justice. It does get better after lecture one.

https://archive.org/...tro_C10_LS_C70U_Fall_2006_UC_Berkeley