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 Now online (1)ijonspeches ...and 290 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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evolution is not just a theory, actually, it's in every standard science book on the planet, it's just quiet and subtle: charles darwin theorizes about man's descent from apes etc, but he solidly outright says that things (plants, animals, laws, technology) change through the process of natural selection, i.e. if one version is weaker than another it will eventually be cycled out, trial and error or what have you, which is very much a part of biology and the complex life systems that comprise this planet, undeniably, not to mention countless other aspects of our day to day life... why is it that people think that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive? I worship evolution, inasmuch as I worship the fact that the world is round |
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didn't read the last 100 or so posts but: re: jupitah i'm just pointing out that evolution is considered amongst the accademic community to be as true as the spherical earth theory. Not really - there is certainly a faction, such as Richard Dawkinites who think this - but there is huge debate about all types of "evolution" - Developmental Systems Theory in my opinion is one of the most interesting new developments in evolutionary theory. Some points: 1. DST criticizes gene selectionism on grounds of preformationism (ie. the idea of a genetic blue print) and ignoring or underestimating the contextual relevance of extra-genetic/environmental factors in accounting for the phenotype. DST refutes the gene/environment dichotomy in terms of phenotypic explanation. 2. DST proposes talk of genes, extra-genetic/environment and phenotype be replaced with talk of developmental resources (comprised of causally equivalent resources, such as genes and various environmental factors) and developmental processes (analogous to the phenotype). |
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Karl Popper also had quite a "Darwin-esque" theory of the progress of scientific knowledge. I think from what Key_Secret repeatedly tried to point out, there are problems in defining what a species is. At what point, does one geographically isolated group of animals become another species from the original group? Also, there are equal worries about the definition of a "gene" because the initially naive conception of a sort of gene-phenotype correspondence certainly does not seem to be the case. These are serious problems for "evolutionary theory", but at the same time, the theory has pragmatic value which i think, at least in this "technological" age will not be discarded too quickly. |
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oh .. and DST doesn't turn out to be "all that" .. which can be put as a fundamental problem of evolutionary theory - namely identifying "heritable factors" and "non-heritable factors" ... The contingencies of factors DST stresses, seems to undermine Gene selectionisms naive approach quite successfully .. at the same time however - there is a serious worry for DST as to how "scientifically" feasible its heritable complex is - as this complex changes over variations -> and in my opinion begs to be a holism. |
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Questions from mister Pye, from the promotion page for his book Everything You Know Is Wrong (which it most certainly is if he is your main source of information): why we humans use only about 10% of our massively supercharged brains? This is an urban legend. why idiot-savants can somehow access parts of the remaining 90% Did he just make that up? why we humans have a gene pool with over 4000 genetic defects? why our closest genetic relatives, chimps and gorillas, have very few? What is his source? Sounds like bullshit to me. A more interesting question is, why do humans and apes have a gene for manufacturing vitamin C that is broken in the exact same way in both? Gee, you don't think we're related or something, do you? why we humans have genes that are only 200,000 to 250,000 years old? What percentage of human genes is he making that claim about? why anthropologists insist that we descend from creatures 4,000,000 years old? Multicellular life goes back to the cambrian explosion about 600 million years ago, so he's off by a pretty wide margin, don't you think? why we humans in no way resemble those ancient so-called “prehumans”? Has he ever even glanced at fossils of a. afarensis? He says we resemble them in no way?!?! |
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science and problems, huh? ;) well you seem to be up-to-date. thanks for posting. |
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why we humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes for a grand total of 46? why our closest genetic relatives (sharing 98% - 99% of our DNA) total 48? Because two of them merged. Now if two chromosomes merged you would expect to see an extra centromere... which is exactly what we DO see. how we humans could lose 2 whole chromosomes in only 250,000 years? See above. We didn't lose them. They merged. why our skin is so poorly adapted to the amount of sunlight striking Earth? Speak for yourself, honky. why we are so physically weak compared to our closest genetic relatives? What nonsense. How can my mother be related to me? Why I bet she can't even pick up this desk. |
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heh, you know more about mister Pye than I do... But you have to agree, he's funky isn't he? =) |
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why our closest genetic relatives, chimps and gorillas, have very few? few what - genetic similarities (i assume). apparently 99% of our genes are the same/similar as chimps? i remember a pro-creationist science teacher telling me that .. he went on to go - but do you know HOW many genes that one percent contains .... I don't think he really understood the concept of percentages :) |
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that should read DNA not genes .. :/ |
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I don't think he really understood the concept of percentages :) hehe... |
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why Earth is minus a huge part of its crust, the part where the oceans are? What a retard. Because it's covered by water, it isn't crust? I guess that's because he thinks it's "soggy". why Earth is the only planet or moon with moveable tectonic plates? Has he examined every other planet and moon in the universe to come to this conclusion? why Earth’s moon is so extraordinarily outsized relative to other moons? Aliens did it! why megalithic structures like the Pyramids cannot be duplicated today? It's harder to come by all that slave labor, what with unions and everything. Besides, we can engineer much larger and more efficient structures. So I guess he thinks modern architects must also be aliens. why stones in those structures would buckle today’s largest moveable cranes? I'm inclined to think this is also bullshit given his other misinformation... how the ancient Sumerians knew all about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto? They didn't. why we found Uranus only in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930? What? Hold on, he just got through telling us the Sumerians knew about them! how and why the Sumerians kept cosmic time in units of almost 26,000 years? Er, calendars? And what was cosmic about their time? if these questions will ever end? I can't believe I typed that much... |
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that should read DNA not genes .. :/ science and problems? ofcourse, how else do you think there is anything such as scientific progress? it is (according to some) an attempt to account for anomalies etc. as it turns out every scientific theory has had anomalies, and in so far as its accounts implicitly rely on a correspondence notion of truth, my guess would be that a scientific theory will continue to have anomalies. |
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Sir Fleetmouse, Knight in service of Reason, at your service. |
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yeah... how -objective- do you feel that the science is today? |
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you really did write a lot of text =) |
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ancient sumerians and 26 000 year old calendars sounds an awful lot like graham hancock (i think that's his name), and his whole pyramid conspiracy theories etc. |
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objective? in relation to what ... ? ie. how do you define objective? objective within a context perhaps ... science seems to give us a handy vocabulary to express a lot of ideas, whether "objectively" or not ... Knight of Reason :) hehe .. wearing a pikelet crown .. oh sorry hotcake crown ... |
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well objective in it's present (not it's past) meaning. I mean science is suppose to objective... But I have a feeling it is not. I'm sure you know this better than me. I just feel that when money is involved as much as it is today, it's even more difficult to get objective results. |
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How would you know if the results are objective? |
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well it seems you carry such a correspondence notion of truth with you also - check out thomas kuhn for that sort of slant - science in large part is directed by funding which in turn is directed by certain demands .. bu t i don't think one can completely udnermine science in this way. |
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"hail king pikelet oh crusader of reason ... " hahaha |
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still at it, eh? ;) |
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I consider myself a naive realist. |
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I don't know, but I have a feeling they are not, since, to get funds to do resarch you most likely have to do resarch for a company or an industry, which has expectations... |
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Yes, you have to laugh when you see studies debunking global warming that were sponsored by petroleum corporations. But is there a way other than examining the source of funding to know whether or not the results of research are objective? What's that, little birdie? "Peer review", you say? |
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fleetmouse: ohh .. smooth key_secret: so what? evolution is just an economic cultural tonic to keep the masses happy? |
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yeah of course there are other ways of finding out if the resarch, and its' results, is done objectivly. damn... I was tired when this thread started, and now I am almost asleep... |
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ROTFLMAO I gotta get an "evolution is the opiate of the masses" t-shirt. |
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evolution is just an economic cultural tonic to keep the masses happy? where did you get that from? evolution - I don't see how money is involved in it.... Not sure people are happy with the evolution either, if it is true it is nothing they can do about it anyway =) |
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naive realism you say andy? strange coming from you ... (if that was a purposeful dig at my avatar, very clever :) Re: objectivism - surely a naive realist can come up with a definition ? |
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how was the essay? |
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Objectivism is a political philosophy founded by hysterical anti-communists. |
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Key_secret: I don't see how money is involved in it now now .. weren't you say not too long ago that science is money driven, and didn't we say that evolution was a scientific theory? Perhaps not then i guess huh? fleet: put me down for one of those t-shirts :) |
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i dunno.. im partial on evolution.. |
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jenf. you mean is .. still a tad incomplete, and as per usual well overdue .. but i've got heidegger by the balls i think. |
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alright, i think im going to step back from this thread from now on... 283+ posts and all that has been happening is uncontrolled debates back and forth about unrelated equivocations of definitions and redefinitions of words, ideas and facts, etc. sigh... time to play nice... |
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well... you can't obviously make money of the theory of evolution, unless you write a book, of course. You don't have to put things like that, seriously I'm sure you know what I mean by money & science... E.g. the medical industry is greedy as hell. |
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It's called "fun". |
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yeah, fine line between 'fun' and 'flamewar' ;) |
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And now they're working on a vaccine for SARS. Those bastards. |
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How much do you know about vaccination really? |
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not the point anyway. |
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Vaccination... point... hahaaaa I get it. :-) |
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i don't know about the stuff mentioned, but there are many valid mysteries that suggest there are complicated aspects of reality that we have yet to cover in the realm of science. science in general searches for the simplist answer to the question and in doing so leaves room for vast areas not yet covered. how did the Dogon tribe know about the star Serius b before telescopes? It is absolutely invisible to the naked eye. |
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"but doesn't everything degenerate into name-calling anyway - so why not stick with it? ;)" and indeed we did :) |
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kiss : keep it simple stupid! there defintely seems to be a tension between a correlational sense of truth - which science claims to tap into, and a coherence notion of truth which it also identifies with. science is surely admirable in the sense that it attempts to find rules/laws that underlie such seemingly complex concepts and make them appear simple. |
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what we call life started when matter began replicating- making copies of itself. it might seem hard to understand how this could possibly have happened, but a good theory is possible because the mechanism for copying is implicit in the shape of dna (parts have an affinity for other parts, like A-T, G-C) dawkins describes this really well, how the survival of the fittest is really part of a more general rule of survival of the most stable, so I won't bother writing what he wrote more lucidly and intelligently. Ok, let's assume for a moment we don't even care whether evolution is the CAUSE of life. Evolution as a process can be put into effect and actually work even if it does not involve life, as long as it involves something making copies of itself. Assume there is a thing making copies of itself. Due to flaws, however infrequent, in any copying process, there will gradually be a variety of different lines of decent (each copies off of the other copies, not of the original prototype) so you see, this simple copying process makes variety. Now these are just indifferent pieces of matter that don't care if they are being copied or what, but they all exist in the same environment, and it follows, that some of the lines of decent will be more successful than other lines... the possible reasons are nearly endless. Ah, I don't care. |
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natural selection is not about survival of the fittest, it is about survival of the most likely to reproduce viable offspring. there are species, like peacocks, that evolved features that shorten their lives yet allow them to reproduce more in the time that they live. |
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yeah, but as you use the word "fittest" you can have it stand for "most successful at replicating". anything that increases replicating speed, replicating quantity, or long life (to allow more time for replicating) will be more "fit". |
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