Venus Mousetrap
Posts: 201
Joined: Aug. 2007
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| Quote (Paul Nelson @ Mar. 13 2008,08:59) | Replies to various,
Gary,
I apologize: I thought you were joking, given the "No, I don't wanna read yer stinkin' book!" reactions of some others here. Please send me a PM with your mailing address.
Seussical reaction to the offer of a free copy of EE:
"I will not read it in a bar,
I will not read it in a car,
I will not read it here or there,
I will not read it anywhere,
I do not want yer stinkin' book,
and as far as I'm concerned,
you're a complete idiot."
Sorry, couldn't rhyme that last bit. ;-)
The offer of a free copy of EE continues for anyone else, of course, including those who previously responded seussically.
JAM -- still collecting data on body size. The issue has turned out to be far more interesting than I could have guessed.
Doc Bill -- why turtles? Why not? Turtles are cool. Here's the bigger point (sorry, JAM, can't help myself), from a recent survey by Massimo Pigliucci:
| Quote | Is There Something Missing from the Modern Synthesis?
...
What, then, is the problem? Without trivializing the great successes of evo-devo, it is hard to escape the feeling that we are making significant progress in understanding relatively circumscribed problems in the origin of form [he mentions butterfly eye-spots], and that advances are being made more at the interface between population genetics and developmental biology than in the broader field of evo-devo. For instance, baffling evolutionary novelties like the turtle carapace remain almost unscathed mysteries, with some speculation concerning their origin, but little in the way of detailed scenarios and solid empirical evidence (Rieppel 2001; Cebra-Thomas et al. 2005). In some sense, this is precisely the same sort of problem that bothered Goldschmidt so much during the shaping of the MS [Modern Synthesis], and although his proposed solutions (genomic mutations and hopeful monsters) are not tenable, the uneasy feeling that we are not yet tackling the big questions remains. |
Massimo Pigliucci, "Do we need an extended evolutionary synthesis?" Evolution 61 (2007):2743-2749; p. 2745, emphasis added.
If it is possible that (a) turtles share common ancestry with other reptiles, then it is also possible that (b) they do not. If one denies the possibility of (b), however, (a) becomes a necessary truth, and impossible to test (because it will be the case, come what may). The proposition of evolutionary theory, "turtles evolved from unknown reptilian ancestors" would then no longer be empirical, i.e., subject to the testimony of evidence, because no data could count against it.
Erasmus, moths exist to provide employment for entomologists, naturally. Also to flutter around candles and camping lanterns during the summer. :) |
I'd still like to hear the answer to the Doc's earlier question: is EE attempting to imply that tortoises were created suddenly in some unknown manner?
Or are we to skip past the fact that EE expresses exactly what creationists want kids to hear, while wrapping it up in a neat 'scientific analysis' package?
I don't understand why you're here Paul, honestly. Half the time you spend not answering questions, and the other half you give answers that I wouldn't even have gotten away with in school (unless you really expect us to be convinced by 'it's not creationism! It's just that all the arguments are FROM creationism!')
(long refuted creationism, at that... sure, I really want my kids on stale arguments made up for religious purposes.)
(if I had kids.)
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