Woodward Norm Civ WRALC/TIEDM wrote:
> Ever since our environment became our "ecology," the pertinent language has
> "evolved": jungles have become "rain forests"; swamps, "wetlands." And why
> not?
>
> Who would want to propose tax money to preserve a swamp?
>
> Therefore, teaching "applied evolution," must seem a lot more sexy, no pun
> intended, than calling it husbandry, or genetics, or immunology, or
> bacteriology, etc, etc. I mean, with the wrong terminology, most of this
> stuff would be some state Ag School or school of forestry, rather than in a
> top-rated university research center. And that, of course, could lead to
> serious "misallocation" of important research grants.
>
> But I would like to bring up some points...
>
> 1. In the quote..."These examples
> present opportunities for education of the public and for
> nontraditional career paths in evolutionary biology..." what is the
> alternative to "evolutionary biology?" "Creationist biology?" Do the
> Fundies really have a gripe against the basic tenets of immunology? Of
> hybridization? Of computer viruses? (That last one was a stretch, but it
> was inferred in the authors' previous sentence.)
>
> 2. The authors (I assume) chose "artificial selection" as the first group of
> key words to this proposal. If find this ironic, since the remainder of the
> paper would indicate that there isn't any such process. 8^)
>
> All in all, as good as expected.
1. You have missed the point. The point of the article is that a number of
branches of applied science make use of evolutionary theories and data,
regardless of what you call them. Of course that doesn't mean that animal
husbandry, e.g., is nothing but applied evolution.
2. I don't think Aristotle listed "proof by ridicule" as a logical fallacy but
he could have.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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