olegt
Posts: 1405
Joined: Dec. 2006
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| Quote (Ftk @ July 17 2008,23:38) | “Altenberg 16 participant chemist and engineer Stuart Pivar...”
Casey described Jerry Fodor in the same way, and Fodor wasn’t one of the actual 16 either. They were both “participants” of the conference....not two of the 16. There is nothing wrong with the way he phrased that sentence. Heck, I’m not sure how anyone could have misunderstand it the way Nick did as Casey includes several links that give the names of the 16.
Darwinism = Intellectual Cult....Alpha Male says so. :p :p :p |
FtK, neither Fodor, nor Pivar were “participants” of the workshop in any sense or form. Here's a direct link to the authoritative source (Pigliucci) who explains what this was all about:
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The so-called “Woodstock of evolution” (not my term, and a pretty bad one for sure) will see a group of scientists, by now known as “the Altenberg 16” (because there are sixteen of us, and we’ll meet at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for theoretical biology in Altenberg, near Vienna) has been featured on blogs by a variety of nutcases, as well as the quintessential ID “think” tank, the Discovery Institute of Seattle. They have presented the workshop that I am organizing in collaboration with my colleague Gerd Müller, and the proceedings of which will be published next year by MIT Press, as an almost conspiratorial, quasi-secret cabala, brought to the light of day by the brave work of independent journalists and “scholars” bent on getting the truth out about evolution. Of course, nothing could be further from the (actual) truth.
The workshop is part of a regular series organized by the KLI (they do a couple of these a year), that has been going on for years now. Each workshop is limited to a small number of participants, both for logistical reasons (the Institute is small, and they have to budget the costs of paying for travel and lodging for all scientists involved) and because the idea is to get people to focus on discussing, rather than lecturing (hard to do with large groups). Articles and commentaries on the web have also made much of the fact that the meeting is “private,” meaning that the public and journalists are not invited. This is completely normal for small science workshops all over the world, and I was genuinely puzzled by the charge until I realized (it took me a while) that a sense of conspiracy increases the likelihood that people will read journalistic internet articles and ID sympathetic blogs. You’ve got to sell the product, even at the cost of, shall we say, bending, the reality.
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I have run workshops and Pigliucci's explanation totally makes sense to me. A typical workshop features a small number of people and is often run on a shoestring budget. The press is not invited: a workshop is not a conference, people come there to explore new directions, not to show off results. Here are workshop guidelines for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, CA.
| Quote | * The workshop should begin within about six months of the time of the proposal.
* The duration of the workshop should be 1-3 weeks, usually 2 weeks.
* There should be 10-30 participants. |
Mazur made stuff up and Casey swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Totally his fault.
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