Re: [asa] Education, Medicine, and Evolution

Dick,

> Evolution is like that. It doesn't have a direction.

Oh, but a good number of evolutions consider it "directional".
They still maintain an optimism and a mathematical certainty.
Of course, not all do, but many do.

However, when we move to the species level, the analogous driving phenomenon of directional speciation suffers no constraint or suppression ? and may represent one of the most common modes of macroevolution. Two major reasons underlie the high potential frequency for directional speciation as opposed to the rarity of its analog in the organismal level ? see line III2a on the chart). First, as noted in several other context, the species-individual does not maintain integrity (as the organism doe so by suppressing differential proliferation of some parts over others. ? Second, since new species-individuals must arise with sufficient heritable novelty to win reproductive isolation from their parent ? all species births include genetic change as an automatic consequence. Any statistical directionality in such changes among species in a clade will produce a trend by drive.
-- Gould, The Sturcture of Evolutionary Theory, p. 725

Rosenouse works out his positivism in terms of a "lawlike" mathematical process.
-- How Anti-Evolutionists Abuse Mathematics,The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 2001, pp. 3-8.

PvM,
Brayton doesn't always represent the situation accurately.
The teacher in Mt. Vernon, OH (not far from me), as best I can gather, never burned a cross on anyone.
But you can't keep a bad story down.

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124&ct=1&SESSID=e1663e3e9fce780dc2be7faa81863347
As I read the news item about the "creationist" teachers, my impression first was that they first believed
in special creation (YEC). No separate number was given as to how many of these actually taught it in the classroom.
It seem that, like much of what is called "news", the info was conflated and as such was incoherent.
This type of demand for "orthodoxy" might well hint of a coming Inquiry. That's exactly what he is asking for.

***

Then again, the science and the social implicaitons are to different subjects, though certainly closely-related.
It's difficult to talk about one without talking about the other.

Collin

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Received on Sun Jun 1 16:54:53 2008