As usual, though, Mazur gets the science all wrong. There will be no paradigm shift. I am confident that there will be a gradual integration of more developmental biology into evolutionary theory, a process that is going on right now, but that this will require no radical re-evaluation of theory — evo-devo is exciting and opens up new areas of productive research, but it doesn’t turn the world upside-down. It’s a specific subset of evolutionary theory, not a replacement. As for structuralism, it has its place, too, and this isn’t some sudden ploy by me — you can find me writing about it in 2003 and 2004, for example. Again, it will not replace the molecular/genetic approach to development, but it can supplement it.
I think not, Mr. Myers. At least someone in the journalism circuit has the nerve to report on what should be public knowledge: Darwinism is dead.
So it is the Darwin fanatics who have gotten the science wrong.
Your post acknowledges indirectly that there is a problem.
The hypocrisy here is tremendous. Scientists don’t want anyone to know there was ever a problem and want to absorb a new paradigm into the old.
They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.
And it won’t work. Evo-devo is an example of how this distorts science. Evo-devo should have made clear that Darwinism was wrong. Instead it got grafted onto the old paradigm. The result is incorrect science.
They don’t want to lose their beloved natural selection. So be wary of the gang of crackpots at work in biology circles trying to rig the new research to make it fit with Darwinism.
This is a gross distortion of Mazur’s articles, which were all linked to on this blog. I will put up the links again, and you will see that Myers is afraid that anyone will realize what is going on.
Meanwhile, the real crackpot was Darwin, the true crank theory based on natural selection, delusively passed off at the ultimate science.
PZ Myers is an exceptional asshole, the new breed of the Darwin Mullahs.
He might read the Shakespeare sonnet, ‘those that have the power to hurt and will do none’.
This egrgious attack on Suzan Mazur, which Myers has to know is a rank deception, is nothing more than inquisitional posturing in a culture where we still have enough free speech to dissent from Darwinism, but without big media. Woe to anyone who tries to penetrate the news system.
This slander on Suzan Mazur doesn’t conform to the facts.
Her writings of the last year have made clear that a significant body of biologists think Darwin’s natural selection theory is inadequate. They had a conference at Altenberg Germany, which Mazure reported on.
Those who read Myers’ brazen statements here should be aware of the facts. And that the Darwin establishment is intent on suppressing any evidence of dissent on the ‘paradigm’.
Category: Kooks
Posted on: June 26, 2009 9:35 AM, by PZ Myers
There are science crackpots, and then there are journalist crackpots. Suzan Mazur is a strange writer who runs about trying to convince the world that there is going to be a revolution in evolutionary biology…but her sources tend to be fringe figures like Stuart Pivar, or she relies on mangling quotes from people like Massimo Pigliucci or Richard Dawkins. Her theme, as you might guess from her fondness for Pivar, is that structuralist tropes are going to replace genetic/molecular explanations for development.
To judge from previews, the new Darwin biographical movie Creation will emphasize the challenge Darwinian theory posed from the beginning to religious belief. Yet the life of evolution’s co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, suggests that properly understood, and that’s a major proviso, evolution needn’t upset faith at all. On the contrary, Wallace reasoned from what he knew about life’s history to a belief that an “Overruling Intelligence” guided life’s development, much as intelligent design (ID) does today. Science historian Michael A. Flannery calls Wallace’s evolutionary thinking a “preamble” to ID.
Nothing that Wallace proposed is the same as what we are getting from the current ID movement.
It is impossible and dangerous to embrace ID in the current environment.
We cannot equate Wallace’s thinking with that of the Discovery/ID group.
Yes, that’s right the famous “deist,” skeptic, and author of the Declaration of Independence judged that there was empirical evidence of a designing intelligence at work in biology, cosmology — and norms of justice, which in turn justified him in invoking “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” to explain the righteousness of America’s cause in separating from Britain.
New Fossil Tells How Piranhas Got Their Teeth
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2009) — How did piranhas — the legendary freshwater fish with the razor bite — get their telltale teeth? Researchers from Argentina, the United States and Venezuela have uncovered the jawbone of a striking transitional fossil that sheds light on this question. Named Megapiranha paranensis, this previously unknown fossil fish bridges the evolutionary gap between flesh-eating piranhas and their plant-eating cousins.
Stem Cells Created From Pigs’ Connective Tissue Cells
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2009) — For years, proponents have touted the benefits of embryonic stem cell research, but the potential therapies still face hurdles.
Climate Change: Some Winds Decreasing Across United States
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2009) — Declining wind speeds in parts of the United States could impact more than the wind power industry, say Iowa State University climate researchers.
Ancient Climate Change: When Palm Trees Gave Way To Spruce Trees
ScienceDaily (June 25, 2009) — For climatologists, part of the challenge in predicting the future is figuring out exactly what happened during previous periods of global climate change.
Ghana’s environment refugees
I went to Nandom to try and understand a phenomenon known these days under names that combine words like environment, migrant, displaced person and refugee. In short, the idea that climate change is going to displace millions of people. Since 1990, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that “the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration”, the prospect of rising seas, spreading deserts and a concatenation of natural disasters has been accompanied by the image of people on the move.
The logic is powerful: 10 per cent of the world’s population would be inundated by a 1 metre rise in sea levels – possible by the end of this century – while another 30 per cent, more than 2 billion people, live in drylands, like Nandom, that are vulnerable to endemic drought. All these people, the argument goes, will have to end up somewhere. In February, the British ecologist James Lovelock suggested that they might come here, and that the UK will become a “lifeboat nation” of migrants. Estimates of the number of environmental refugees in 2050, when the global population is expected to peak at 9 billion and the planet is forecast to be in the throes of a 2°C-or-more temperature rise, vary between 50 million and 1 billion people. But the most commonly repeated number – included in Britain’s 2006 Stern Review – is between 200 and 250 million, or around 10 times the number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world today.
Published on Friday, June 26, 2009 by Agence France Presse Author Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Israel
BILIN , West Bank – Bestselling author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters.
Bestselling Canadian author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters. ‘Boycott is a tactic . . . we’re trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,’ she said. (Photograph by: John Kenney, National Post)”It’s a boycott of Israeli institutions, it’s a boycott of the Israeli economy,” the Canadian writer told journalists as she joined a weekly demonstration against Israel’s controversial separation wall.
Published on Friday, June 26, 2009 by The Associated Press
Slowdown in Once-Booming Organics Troubles Farmers
by Rick Callahan
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/26-4
Westby, Wisc. – The organic dairy industry was thriving when Allen and Jean Moody bought a 200-acre Wisconsin dairy farm in 2006 and joined the ranks of farmers churning out milk raised without growth hormones, pesticides or other chemicals.
In this photo taken Tuesday, June 9, 2009, organic farmer Allen Moody is seen on his farm in Westby, Wis. A growing number of farmers who went all-natural in the years when organic food sales were growing at a double-digit pace are giving up their organic certifications. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)Three years later, the good days are gone and the Moodys aren’t alone in wanting out.
Published on Friday, June 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org People for Sale in a Hungry World
by Ramzy Baroud
One might be tempted to dismiss the recent findings of the US State Department on human trafficking as largely political. But do not be too hasty.
Criticism of the State Department’s report on trafficked persons, issued on 16 June, should be rife. The language describing US allies’ efforts to combat the problem seems undeserved, especially when one examines the nearly 320- page report and observes the minuscule efforts of these governments. Also, it was hardly surprising to find that Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria — Washington’s foremost foes — languish in the report’s Tier 3 category, i.e. countries where the problem is most grave and least combated. Offenders in Tier 3 are subject to US sanctions, while governments of countries in Tier 1 are perceived as vigilant in fighting human trafficking.
gnxp
Canadian scientists are breeding a special type of cow designed to burp less, a breakthrough that could reduce a big source of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming
Truthdig June 24, 2009
California couldn’t get the White House to guarantee $5.5 billion in
short-term notes to avert severe cuts in state and local payrolls, from
prison guards to schoolteachers. Compare that with the $50 billion already
given to Citigroup, plus an astounding $300 billion to guarantee that
institution’s toxic assets.
By Robert Scheer
Yes Magazine Summer, 2009
People Power Pushed the New Deal
Roosevelt didn’t come up with all those progressive programs on his own.
By Sarah Anderson
During the Great Depression, my grandfather ran a butter creamery in rural
Minnesota. Growing up, I heard how a group of farmers stormed in one day and
threatened to burn the place down if he didn’t stop production. I had no
idea who those farmers were or why they had done that-it was just a colorful
story.
Now I know that they were with the Farmers’ Holiday Association, a protest
movement that flourished in the Midwest in 1932 and 1933. They were best
known for organizing “penny auctions,” where hundreds of farmers would show
up at a foreclosure sale, intimidate potential bidders, buy the farm
themselves for a pittance, and return it to the original owner.
New York Times June 22, 2009
Op-Ed
Who Are We?
It was thought by many that a President Obama would put a stop to the
madness, put an end to the Bush administration’s nightmarish approach to
national security. But Mr. Obama has shown no inclination to bring even the
worst offenders of the Bush years to account, and seems perfectly willing to
move ahead in lockstep with the excessive secrecy and some of the most
egregious activities of the Bush era.
I was (re)reading The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?, and then was looking through the Biologos website, with this from Francis Collins: Religion and Science: Conflict or Harmony, with a bit on the ‘anthropic principle’ and the fine-tuning evidence….See below the flap here.
Collins and Davies seem to have cousin views here, at least in the sense of being proponents of natural selection.
Theistic evolutionism is one thing, but Collins’ theistic darwinism is, to me, problematical.
Perhaps the answer is in Davies’ approach. I find it hard to see how Davies can maintain the party line on natural selection even as cosmology is producing another possible answer. Davies goes through the multiverse material, and shows it up, perhaps.
One problem is that too many physicists are obsessed, like creationists, with the god question, but a closer look shows that the anthropic principle, for good Kantian reasons, can offer no evidence for divinity. That’s an illusion created by provocative human ‘ape talk’ like ‘fine-tuning’ which immediately suggests a designer.
We have often distinguished what we call g-design and n-design here on this blog (g for god?? and n for natural), with the suggestion that these two are constantly confused. It is hard to deny the possibility of n-design looking at the functional properties of biochemical systems (systems that do things), and surely the fine-tuning evidence is better explained by this different perspective.
The point is that n-design should be indirect evidence of ‘natural teleology’, and it begins to get suspicious that this is just what scientists are discovering, keeping in mind that ‘teleology’ is an old metaphysical term that can’t solve the problem except in hindsight after we independently discover what it means by looking at nature. Davies is strongly against teleology for good reasons that he outlines, but I remain unconvinced. Still, nothing wrong with that: Kant gives us a warning that teleology tends to founder in a contradiction, but that works both ways: there is some contradiction with respect to the totality of causal physics that is related to a teleological issue, it seems. Surely we have a good example with evolutionary biology. the contradiction is desperately obvious from the Darwin debate: Yes, evolution is random, No, evolution is not random, etc….
It violates intuition for reasons Hoyle made clear a long time ago to consider that randomness will produce complexity. There ought to be some teleological component to evolution (a dangerous statement open to misunderstanding).
Surely the discovery of the fine-tuning data should confirm this intuition. If the universe is just right for life, then it is but a lemma in a short derivation that the universe is just right for the non-random emergence of life.
Note: the idea of teleology carries a lot of antique baggage and always ends up confusing people. We don’t have any knowledge in advance of what it even means, and Aristotle won’t help.
It is useful to look at the eonic effect where alternating directionality is the form that we presume teleology takes. The term ‘teleology’ is almost disallowed until after the analysis is complete.
What alternating directionality means is that a system is acting on two levels.
This point is always forgotten as discussions of teleology nosedive into contradictions.
A causal or other type of level is one thing, a directional level is another.
The interaction of the two ends up looking like an alternation sequence. It is not more mysterious in principle that a feedback device: a unit (actually inside the system) is on the fringes of a heat system and alternates in feedback.
Finding such a thing for evolution is a tall order, however. But the eonic effect shows such a system at work in history.
Another problem, related to this, is the question of the limits of space-time. But one has to wonder at this point if what we mean by nature disincludes action beyond space and time. Space-time could well be a subset of a greater nature of which we are as yet unaware (something the many dimensions of M-theory are beginning to suggest as possible). The point is that teleology requires two levels of action. Whether teleology is beyond the level of physical cause, or not, depends on resolving such an issue. (A feedback device shows temporal ‘natural teleology’, and is inside the system it controls)
The point is that the point beyond ‘beyond space and time’ has little to do with god.
We should note that ‘beyond space and time’ is not defined, and cannot be resolved by the human mind (any more than a tesseract).
It is worth remembering that Lamarck, his notorious probably fallacious ideas of adaptation apart, had the idea of evolution on two levels. We can see the dilemma arising in Darwinism as the two levels are collapsed into one.
Space Shuttle Science Shows How 1908 Tunguska Explosion Was Caused By A Comet
ScienceDaily (June 25, 2009) — The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth’s atmosphere, says new Cornell University research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.
West of Eden
By Peter M. J. Hess, Ph.D.
Faith Project Director, National Center for Science Education
John West recently asked, “Is evolution compatible with God?” West, a senior fellow at the creationist Discovery Institute, concluded that religious belief and scientific inquiry are mutually exclusive. He is wrong.
West sets up a simplistic dichotomy–either you believe in God or you believe in evolution. This black or white view ignores the fact that for many scientists, science deepens their religious faith, and for many people of faith, scientific insight complements their belief. West’s goal here is not to examine the shared history and complex interconnections between science and faith, but rather, to promote a creationist agenda.
This may be a misinterpretation of West, who hardly rejects evolution.
In general, what is remarkable is the way all parties are wrong here. Darwinism doesn’t work, ID doesn’t work, theistic darwinism doesn’t work….
A clear sign that the issues contain Kantian-style antinomies.
Evolution’s Repeat Performances
Would you believe that the blind, unguided process of evolution repeats itself? Would you believe that evolution somehow repeats striking patterns of change? Evolutionists do. They must because the evidence reveals such patterns in the history of life.
from Dawkins site
What should science do? Sam Harris v. Philip Ball
by The Reason Project, Sam Harris, Philip Ball
Sam Harris and Philip Ball discuss the conflict between religion and science. They do not agree… Read the rest of this entry »
New Radio Drama Release Disproves Popular Darwinist Myths
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, June 24 /Christian Newswire/ — Vision Forum Ministries has announced the release of “Jonathan Park and The Journey Never Taken”, 12 new half-hour episodes that disprove popular Darwinist myths in a family radio drama format. This new release of the Jonathan Park Creation Adventure Series — which is being rolled out as the world is celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of Origin of the Species this year — is the latest installment in the internationally-broadcast audio drama that airs on more than 650 radio outlets worldwide.