Reflectorites
On Mon, 23 Oct 2000 13:33:38 EDT, Huxter4441@aol.com wrote:
[...]
>HX>Or maybe Steve will not post snippets of books he doesn't have either
SJ>Sorry to disappoint Huxter but I will continue to post what *I* think is
>interesting in the creation/evolution - ID/Darwinism debate, whether
>Huxter likes it or not!
[...]
HX>Cute, but that was not the point. *You* post things that you might find
>interesting but are admittedly unable to discuss in depth.
It depends what Huxter means "in depth". I am a layman, and so is every
scientists outside his/her field, including Huxter. I post things that are out
of my "depth" in order to *learn* from scientists like Huxter.
If Huxter wants a *really* "in depth" scientific discussions he should try
elsewhere.
HX>It doesn't matter whether or not I or anyone else likes it.
That's what *I* said!
HX>But it should matter to the
>participants that you are in effect acting as an ad-man, and not much else.
Actually "the participants" of this List have (with a few exceptions)
appreciated my posting excerpts of scientific articles. Even Chris Cogan the
other day said he liked them.
Huxter seems to be working on the self-centred assumption that this List
exists for him and because he already knows something, other people do
not need to know it.
SJ>Most " snippets of books" that I post, I do have the books. But in the case
>of Well's new book, "Icons of Evolution", there is no way I could have it
>yet in Australia, and I made it clear I got the excerpt from another List>>
[...]
HX>So why post 'snippets' then?
See above: 1) I *like* to (and others have said they like it too); 2) I *learn*
by discussing "snippets" scientific books and articles, especially those that
are outside my current "depth" as a layman.
BTW Huxter might have the qualifications and occupation of a scientist but
IMHO he does not have the *attitude* of a true scientist.
A true scientist in my book is someone like Feynman who urged his
graduating students to not use their superior scientific knowledge to try to
intimidate laypeople:
"I would like to add something that's not essential to the science,
but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool
the layman when you're talking as a scientist. ... I'm talking about
a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, out bending
over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought t
o have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as
scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."
(Feynman R.P., "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!", 1990,
p.343)
Steve
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"A record of pre-Cambrian animal life, it appears, simply does not exist.
Why this lamentable blank? Various theories have been proposed; none is
too satisfactory. It has been suggested, for example, that all the Pre-
Cambrian sediments were deposited on continental areas, and the absence
of fossils in them is due to the fact that all the older animals were sea-
dwellers. But that all these older sediments were continental is a theory
which opposes, without proof, everything we know of deposition in later
times. Again, it is suggested that the Pre-Cambrian seas were poor in
calcium carbonate, necessary for the production of preservable skeletons;
but this is not supported by geochemical evidence. Yet again, it is argued
that even though conditions were amenable to the formation of fossilizable
skeletal parts, the various phyla only began to use these possibilities at the
dawn of the Cambrian. But it is, a priori, hard to believe that the varied
types present in the early Cambrian would all have, so to speak, decided to
put on armour simultaneously. And, once again, it has been argued that the
whole evolution of multicellular animals took place with great rapidity in
late Pre-Cambrian times, so that a relatively short gap in rock deposition
would account for the absence of any record of their rise. Perhaps; but the
known evolutionary rate in most groups from the Cambrian on is a
relatively leisurely one, and it is hard to convince oneself that a sudden
major burst of evolutionary advance would be so promptly followed by a
marked 'slowdown'. All in all, there is no satisfactory answer to the Pre-
Cambrian riddle." (Romer A.S., "The Procession of Life," The World
Publishing Co: Cleveland OH, 1968, pp.19-20)
Stephen E. Jones | Ph. +61 8 9448 7439 | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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