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Avoiding the Word "Evolution"
jakosc tips us to a disturbing article in PloS Biology on the avoidance of the word "Evolution" in scientific papers and grants. From the paper: "In spite of the importance of antimicrobial resistance, we show that the actual word 'evolution' is rarely used in the papers describing this research. Instead, antimicrobial resistance is said to 'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives... It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy."
This is what happens when you pander to religious fruit loops - it started with the 'In God We Trust' rebrand of the US (in particular, on money) which was the thin end of the wedge and now we have a situation whereby scientists cannot even discuss things properly.
All the major organised religions seem to want is lots of uneducated children who think they are going to go to 'heaven' when they die.
Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives
The role of science is not to manage public perception. It's to find out how things work. Unfortunately, receipt of grant money is often tied to public perception (positive, or negative).
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
When I get in an argument with my creationist friends, no one disputes what they call 'micro evolution'. The idea that single cells can mutate to become resistant to bacteria, and those are the only ones that survive. Where people have trouble is with something they call 'macro evolution', that these mutations can over time create entirely new species, organs, and reproductive behavior (sexual vs asexual). I believe it because I think people don't understand exactly how many years we are considering here in the long haul. If the scientific community is not calling 'evolution' what most people agree actually takes place, how can they expect to be taken seriously on more controversial aspects of science?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
In a related story, President Bush declared today a 'crusade' on the word, saying "we will rid the world of the evo-luters".
Adapt. Kinda like how the borg say it.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Are we still in the middle ages? Can I say something about the Sun being on the center of the solar system without being totured till I accept that the Earth is the center of the whole universe? This is so sad...
The evolutionary biologists use "evolution" more often, the medical scientists use "emergence" more often. Why is it surprising that two different fields of science happen to use somewhat different terminology? This is not evidence of a conspiracy.
Software patents delenda est.
God is an acronym: Guns, oil, and drugs.
boris:falcon:~/projects/hiv/paper:grep -o evolution paper.tex
:).
evolution
evolution
evolution
evolution
evolution
evolution
evolution
evolution
evolution
boris:falcon:~/projects/hiv/paper:wc paper.tex
279 5819 38041 paper.tex
boris:falcon:~/projects/hiv/paper:
I'm doomed.
But it is bloody hard to to avoid the word 'evolution' if you're studying the 'within-host' and 'within-population' evolution of HIV. Maybe there are scientists among slashdot that actually have experience with editors asking them to not mention the word evolution.. (my first paper, so no experience here yet). I'll look forward to reading the comments
Why is this unfortunate? Evolution is a theory. In science, it is better to focus on the known facts (as it seems is beginning to happen).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Editors: "Hey, we've been doing market research in Power Cable, Nebraska, and other centers of culture, and the evolution bit doesn't work for us, it's a bit of a downer, we have a prarm with it, so lose the evolution."
You: "Did you read the paper?"
Editors: "Sure, we LOVE it, it's GREAT, it's HIGH CONCEPT. Just lose the Evolution angle, man"
Sorry to dissapoint... We are a Democracy here in the States and therefore, the majority decides things like what get's printed on our money. America is NOT a country of athiests. Just ask the 90+% that beleive in God. Should everyone else have their freedoms held back because it bothers you? NO. When the founders of this nation came here, they wanted a nation that ensured religious freedom, NOT NON-RELEGION. In other words, the "separation of church and state" is meant to keep the State out of the Church, NOT the opposite as many athiests would like us to beleive.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Could this possibly have something to do with the fact that the latter terms are used when they are more scientifically accurate?
If you're talking about antimicrobial resistance spreading, then it would be absolutely wrong to say that it was evolving: the bacteria has already evolved and the spread is just the increasing domination of that new line. If they have lumped all those words together than that alone could account for their conclusion by itself, although I would also argue that the other harms have certain preferable contexts for description.
The reserachers did not bother to do any actual pyschological research in their psychological study: they only looked at frequency distributions of the terminology. Apparently this is enough to infer the motivations of the medical patois. I don't suppose it's even remotely possible that the simple fact that evolutionary biologists study evolution could explain the increased frequency of 'evolve' in their personal vernacular? Perhaps if medical scientists spent all of their time researching, reading about, and writing about evolution, the word "evolve" might be as much integrated into their writing.
Regardless, it is absurd to suggest that incipient trends in word usage should in any way be a concern of either medical or evolutionary scientists. I might expect some outcry if people were being coerced (perhaps that is why there was no psychological investigation in this--not enough drama) but if you are going to throw a fit because a certain word isn't used as often as synonymns which say the same things but aren't as directly referential to your pet issue, I would say you are as much a culprit in politicizing science as any creationist school board.
Rhetoric == politics. Research results are not changed by the linguistics of the writeups.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
This same issue came up on a recent episode of NPR's Science Friday (look towards the right side of the page for an mp3 download link). Essentially, biologists were being encouraged by well-meaning people at the government agencies who sponsor them to avoid the word "evolution" so that their research remains uncontroversial and doesn't run afoul of any anti-science policy makers.
This latest article raises a good point, though. By trying to cloak discussion of evolution in other terms, anyone with a grasp of basic evolutionary biology is able to understand what is meant and how the process of natural selection applies to the problem at hand. Politicians and non-scientific observers not familiar with biology, however, don't see that evolution is explicitly referenced and so they don't raise a ruckus over it.
The problem is that this can help feed the general lack of understanding about evolution that creationists exploit. On the one hand, because most schools don't teach a rigorous curriculum on evolutionary biology, creationists can argue pseudo-scientific fallacies (e.g. that the second law of thermodynamics rules out evolution of increasingly complex species. Incidentally, this is false because the second law only applies to closed systems, and Earth's ecosystem continuously receives new energy from the Sun's light and heat). Additionally, because the fact that natural selection, as the basic organizing principle which has guided research in biology for over a century, isn't emphasized in new research reports that come out, many people don't realize that the huge advances we've made in our understanding of life on Earth over the past century, and the great medical breakthroughs that have emerged, nay, evolved from that understanding would not have been possible if we didn't understand evolution. Indeed, many things that we know to be true about biology simply couldn't be true if evolution weren't at work. That's not to say that it's a perfect theory, but like many good scientific theories it is revised and its precision is sharpened as new evidence becomes available (for example, we now know about cycles of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record, and about patterns in human and other animal genomes, which Darwin didn't know about), in the same way that Einstein's relativity built on and refined Newton's laws of motion.
As loathe as many scientists are to do anything with public relations, I think that we have to do a better job of emphasizing the basic scientific theories behind today's research. So I encourage researchers out there to not be scared of using the word evolution, as it will hopefully contribute to people understanding that it is pervasively important to biology.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Not to get into specifics but I live in the south eastern part of the US, basically the "bible belt". I myself, am not really religious. Never been to a church, never read more than a couple pages of "the Bible" etc And ironically enough going through grade school, junior high and high school we never had a problem with any teacher actually teaching evolution. At least, I never heard of any complaints from other students or heard of anyone's parents complaining about it. You'd think there'd be more uproar, specially in the south. Gotta love them hypocrites of the south, it's bad to teach evolution rather than the whole god-created-stuff thing but many "Christians" disobey one of the teachings of the bible (as I remember, vaguely); god says it aint good to gamble. Yet where are a lot of Bingo Night's hosted? Your Local Church, usually ran by Church Employees to boot. Evolution = bad, gambling against the bibles wishes inside a church no less = good!
Aw Frell this
I've notified the proper authorities about your question. The Spanish Inquisition will be over shortly to discuse this matter with you. Feel free to inform them of your favorite methode of torture and any allergic reactions to leather whips or red-hot metal you might have.
evolution is driven by the random nature of change and the desirability of that change in the environment.
evolution ...
immigrants (especially pointing out that they do actually commit 10x more murders than non-immigrants, which is no excuse for killing or deporting them, of course, but it IS a problem, and should be studied)
politics in general, and bush specifically in any non-"he's a stupid fuck" article
muhammad (don't miss this one or an effigy of you will be hacked to pieces in 20 countries, and "asians" will kill off your family)
muslims
Lots of work to be done
In the vast majority of cases "emergence" is exactly what happens: fatal (desease-prone) or just plain unnecessary (like eyes of insects in dark underground caves) traits die out in a population, the remaining varieties "spread". Mutation is an ambiguous term, used for regrouping of genes (not causing new traits) as well as "damaging" genes for example by radiation (which do - though very rarely - cause new traits in species). As far as I know, the exact cause of generating major new traits (like organs) is not agreed upon (even among evolutionists).
Oh yes, and I'm not a creationist, just puzzled by just what should constitute "evolution".
A commonly made mistake is saying "evolution" is "adapting" because the only real adaptation taking place is the dying out of "inferior" specimens.
conroversy? what controversy? Its fucking fact for christ sake. when will these weak willed mother fuckers just give up. your god doesnt exist in any way ou think just fucking get over it and move on. Its an outdated concept that has been replaced. Evolution happened. we proved this. Deal with it fuckers. im sick of people constantly changing the way they voice their opinions so that they will "avoid offense or controversy" fuck it say what you mean and stop pussy footing around it. The soner we do that the sooner we can EVOLVE thats right e-fucking-volve, and move on as species.
I'll stand on a leg and not assume you are wanting to get modded +3 funny or +1000 sarcastic and your answer is serious.
First at all you founding father were mostly deist, with some being atheist. So if you place any value in what they produced (constitution and all) or their idea, you should be aware of that little fact.
Furthermore you are NOT living in a democracy but in a republic.
Next, you know where this lead this "we live in a democraty, so the majority decide" ? Aside this litle fact about freedom of speech, Well this lead to stuff like persecution of minority. Do you even remmember why the USA had this "freedom of religion" in the first place ? Religious persecution in Europe anyone? And yes non-religion is one form of belief (or rather non-belief in anything). Suppress the freedom of it, then next the cathos will ask the protestant to be muted, the calvinist will ask the last day adventist to be gagged, and the mormon will ask all other to shut up. And in the end nobody open his big mouth because there is always a branch of christianty which is pissed of at another.
I could add more, like the "in god we trust" coming from the darkest era of Mccartysm, but hey, that is not my country so fuck it up as much as you wish, as long as you keep a sane foreign policy of "hand off"....
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Interesting.. Darwin didn't consider his own theory "true science".
[In a letter to Asa Gray, a Harvard professor of biology, Darwin wrote:] "I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science."--*Charles Darwin, quoted in *N.C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (1979), p. 2 [University of Chicago book].
"Present-day ultra-Darwinism, which is so sure of itself, impresses incompletely informed biologists, misleads them, and inspires fallacious interpretations . . . Through use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root in the very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and biologists, who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has been demonstrated, which is not the case."--*Pierre P. de Grasse, The Evolution of Living Organisms (1977), p. 202.
"The fact is that the evidence was so patchy one hundred years ago that even Darwin himself had increasing doubts as to the validity of his views, and the only aspect of his theory which has received any support over the past century is where it applies to microevolutionary phenomena. His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe."--*Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 77.
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"If we are going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction." -- Judith Hayese
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
many hundred of years afterward they'll recognize they were in error in threatening you until you recant your theory. Epure Si Mueve.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There have been many stories here on Slashdot regarding the precieved decline in American science, and this article points to what may be another observable effect.
If the word "evolution" is avoided, is then also the models and theories that relates to the field also not applied, or discuised?
For me as a European, who is very fond of many things American and has relied uppon the US for protection and trade for a long time, it is scary to hear how much power people who rule by dogmas and simplified world views get over there these days.
Though, from the outside its hard to tell if it just sensationalism in the media, but please, Dear Americans, I beg you, don't let dogma win...
So... could the church discourage use of the word "God" to avoid controversy.
If we already self-censor science, it's about time the religious crackpots shut up about their supernatural power. Oh, and of course not just A supernatural power, but THE (christian) supernatural power. All others are wrong. Why? Everybody knows that.
Porcupine Tree - "Halo"
God is freedom, God is truth
God is power and God is proof...
Read the truth here: -
http://www.darwinism-watch.com/
and
http://www.darwinism-watch.com/focus_12.php
or
http://www.harunyahya.com/
There are many scientists who strongly appose the current evolutionary model. Sadly too many hide their views so as not to be ridiculed by secularists and atheists.
As far as I know, things don't usually evolve right in front of our eyes. Sometimes, the strains that already existed (and which took millons of years to evolve) become dominant for whatever reason. I assume that's where you use "emerge".
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
They still have fear and a fanatical devotion to the Pope! And nice red uniforms.
It's got more to do with conformance of groups. If the study was not flawed and was less myopic, then I'd be interested. As it stands though, I'd not wipe my... ...with it.
It is a conspiracy started by Microsoft !! They want us to use 'Outlook' i.s.o. 'Evolution' !!!
Read the truth here: -
http://www.harunyahya.com/20questions01.php
There are many scientists who strongly appose the current evolutionary model. Sadly too many hide their views so as not to be ridiculed by secularists and atheists.
is far less emotive than "evolution", but it also implies that un-natural selection (ie breeding by selection for particular traits) is man messing with things.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I don't mean crusade/jihad or anything that bad, just that science vs religion won't ever work.
BUT - if we somehow manage to get an islamic movement to try to ban teaching the ideas of evolution as being against the teachings of the prophet Mohammed and thus the word of Allah, then I'm pretty sure we'd see these religious wack jobs get off their pedistals mighty quick.
Can't try to promote something that those "awful muslims" promote, can we?
In fact - next time friends, relatives or people you meet bring up the idea of not teaching evolution in schools, just add in "oh, you mean like the Taleban? They didn't want schools teaching evolution either."
Playing the "terrorism" card for a GOOD cause for once!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
On the other hand, the religious nutters do have a point (if completely unwittingly), since it modern astrophysics contradicts the bible version of creation just has much as modern biology does!
"Evolution" is a big, vague word. It's about big changes through accummulated small changes, selected from genetic diversity caused by mutations, through environmental factors, and spread through reproduction. In the case of this kind of resistance (note that I haven't read TFA, so I could be talking out of my ass here), I get the impression that the resistance is already present, but the non-resistant population gets wiped out and the resiistants thrive because they don't suffer competition from the non-resistants anymore. It's only a small part of evolution.
Ofcourse if scientists explicitly avoid the word "evolution" to avoid controversy, that's just stupid in many different ways. But there are many cases when the word "evolution" is to vague to describe something related to evolution.
Most certainly: You write like an illiterate fool.
Instead of discussing "evolution", we should use a code-phrase to describe the theory and mechanisms of biological adaptation. I propose the phrase "fuck dead baby jesus".
As in the "theory of fuck dead baby jesus", "these organisms have exhibitied change over 30 generations, in an observed case of of fuck dead baby jesus", and "birds fucked dead baby jesus in the Jurassic."
My 2p.
As any fule kno:
- Every singe organism on earth, evolved from sludge of (let's say) random chemicals over the period prescribed by say carbon dating of same.
- This is of the order of 1 billion years.
- Each organism, exhibiting "life", has an overriding "desire" to maintain that life in the best way possible (procreation, simple differentiation, resistance to competing organisms, etc).
- To maintain that life, the organism will do whatever possible to move to what it "thinks" is the best environment for that life.
- In moving it will evolve, either say per Darwin's observations or say will "learn" something that can be passed per plain communication (talking say) to the rest of its local community, in which it has a stake.
- I guess this part could be called "intelligent design", certainly in "higher" life forms - like us - which have a direct obvious impact over a larger community's environment (inc. "lower" life forms look at Bonsai, domestic dogs, etc).
- Major external events occur to the local community - meteor, getting stepped on, discovering E=mc^2, encountering "aliens" - which may affect that community's interpretation and observation of its community and local environment.
- This environment includes what might be called Time.
- If you had no carbon dating, your Time metric *will be different* since carbon dating's existence has in fact affected the communities environment, or its Universe as I like to call it.
- So, say, prior to E=mc^2 there would have been no carbon dating and it would be reasonable to look at geology etc to determine "how long" a community had been present.
- A few million years then.
- If I didn't understand geology, I might go for memes in my environment - like religion - to explain my Universe.
- Making it say 6000 years or 500 years old.
- Now I am in my late thirties. If I lived in a white walled room with just a wall clock and no external communication, I might assume the whole Universe is about 30 years old.
- Extrapolate ad neauseum in both directions (>1 billion, 6000 years). 'cos I'm certainly sick of this.
Back to sleep for me,
-matt
You would be right, except that's precisely what selection takes care of. Yes, most mutations are NOT beneficial, but this does not matter because the non-beneficial mutations die off quickly, and the rare beneficial ones survive to spread expontentially.
Imagine a species has 100 million members, and lets say it is a large-sized species which experiences a generation turnover every 20 years or so. Lets say there is a low mutation rate of perhaps 1% of offspring having some mutation. Let us also say that 99% of mutations are harmful, or perhaps even fatal, and a mere 1% are beneficial. Now we do the math:
If 1% of the population experiences a mutation, that means 1 million will experience a mutation per generation. If 99% of these are harmful, that means 990,000 will die or fail to procreate, or 0.99% of the total population. If 1% of the mutations are beneficial, that means 10,000 will have some superior trait.
At the end of this cycle, there are still around 100 million members, but 10,000 of them, or 0.01%, have a beneficial mutation. Now by definition of a "beneficial" mutation, from an evolutionary perspective, this means that those 10,000 are more likely to survive and procreate than the other 100 million or so.
Lets say each beneficial mutation is only beneficial by a very tiny amount, such that a pair of members without the mutation can have an average of 1.95 children survive to reproduce, while pairs with the mutation can have an average of 2.05 children survive to reproduce. In this case, within 200 generations, or 4,000 years, the members of the species which have received at least one beneficial mutation from the first generation of mutations will outnumber the unmutated members of the species by 2:1.
Feel free to tweak the numbers however you see fit, and you will see that it will still work out, and the only thing you will change by tweaking numbers is how long it takes. Evolution does not require the balance of the numbers to be in its favor, because the process of mutation and selection is intrinsically in favor of improvement, even when the beneficial changes are extremely rare.
Sadly, you can't draw a line and build a Berlin Wall between science and the rest of society. Because:
1. As you've said, it's the rest of society who'll have to fund that research. If science is a self-contained isolated entity like the Amish, then, well, don't expect the rest of society to do much for you. But that's actually the least worry.
2. Much more importantly, because scientists aren't created in a test tube or Frankenstein-style. They're recruited from the larger pool of the population. They're the Joe Nerdyguy who preferred to read a physics/chemistry/whatever book instead of being the cool jock in highschool, and Cecilia Nerdygirl who did the same instead of putting up the ever-popular airhead prom-queen act like everyone else.
And every single one of them who grows up thinking that science is just some self-important clique of clowns, and just a bunch of unproven dogmas no better than ID or creationism, is one you've lost from that pool of available recruits. Then they'll go do something more productive than reading up on that "nonsense". Why would you get a passion for any kind of science, if you grew up on thinking it's just a bunch of nonsense spewed by a bunch of arse-clowns?
So managing perceptions is _vital_ to still have a pool of potential recruits in 10 or 20 years.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
How is this disturbing? This is anything BUT disturbing. Avoiding the term "evolution" is equal to avoiding the term "creation" or any other belief-specific terminology. Contrary to what some comments have said, avoiding belief-specific terms is in fact a better way for scientists to discuss biology effectively because, no matter what they believe, they can objectively agree upon their research and make scientifically valid conclusions. Why do all the comments talk about religion or how bad it is? I realize the populace here at Slashdot is 99% atheist, but I thought even atheists had the decency to understand both sides of a given situation. It looks like instead everyone's chosen to take this as an opportunity to bash any form of religious faith whatsoever, rather than focus on the topic of science and fact rather than belief and doubt. I suppose it's easier to make spiteful, jocular remarks about the unknown.
Oh, and to whoever said that "all religion wants to do is avoid education," that's only if you believe in Islam. That's why they still ride camels over there. Knowledge is power, and when you're brain-washed as a child, all you want to do as soon as you're old enough to carry a gun is kill whomever you were taught to hate (basically the Western civilization). Religion is what got the United States on its feet -- it's the reason the United States developed how it has and exists as it is today -- and it's an important staple in society. Furthermore, religion provides morals and helps to keep the people more in line. If man were naturally good, there'd be no need for religion, or government for that matter, but since anarchy has never worked, we all know that some civil law is required, and religion helps support that law in a very critical way.
Is a meme still a meme if it evolves camouflage?
that things only evolve when someone isn't looking?
The evolution we see tends to be micro evolution, where the result of mutation either dies off (not successful) or is able to interbreed with non-mutated stock.
After decades, butterflies are beginning to speciate while we watch (as in they aren't interfertile).
god says it aint good to gamble. Yet where are a lot of Bingo Night's hosted?
Why does God say its not good to gamble. Why do the Ten Commandments give so many rules in life? What happens to us if we disobey these rules?
It is really nothing new. If you study the Vedas from the Far East, you will discover that much of Western thought and many religions are actually based originally on the Vedas. Once upon a time, India was The superpower in the world, in terms of spiritual knowledge, medicine, science and technical prowess. Ayurveda, the knowledge of life, later evolved to become Chinese medicine. Acupuncture and Fengh Shui has its roots in a type of acupuncture in Ayurveda, and Vastu, which is Feng Shui in the Vedas. The same applies to religious thoughts, which spread out all over Europe and Asia.
The interesting thing is in what primitive state the humans were in when they were receiving the knowledge of Jesus. They were not scholars. They were not learned. They were humble fishermen. Yet, they understood a core in the message. A core of selfless love and service.
Being simple, they turned the knowledge into simple rules, like Moses did for the Israel people. So most people could understand and follow it. However, the original meaning to why it is wise to follow the rules, and wether they always apply, was lost in time.
However, it is important to understand this all comes from a spiritual science, the Vedas. This science only prescribes cause and effect, much like our own science. What you sow, so shall you reap. Karma. The laws of the mind. The so-called "laws" of Thou shall and Thou shallt not, is generally frowned upon in the Vedas. The rules are not there to limit our life, but to guide it to the best result, and may even change based on the circumstances (shock!).
What happens when we gamble? We become agitated. We expect big results, and get devastated, and even addicted to it. It may ruin our lives financially, and it certainly will ruin your peace of mind regardless.
What if we kill someone, ditto.
What if we covet someones wife / husband, ditto. Our mind gets disturbed. Since everything we do / create comes from the mind, our peace of mind is most important, according to the Vedas. Wars come in the mind first, always. All conflict is created by our so-called intellect.
It is all there to save our own minds. When reading the Vedas, it become apparent that these rules are self-imposed, because of their benefits. However, in time, it has evolved into more simple laws, people invented the "angry God" (if God is omni-scient, omni-potent and omni-present, why would God ever be angry and frustrated?).
Go to the roots of the knowledge, and you will discover all these discussions of Creationism and Evolution, is a total waste. Neither camp sees the other arguments clearly, or even their own heritage, and theyre totally invested in their own mode of thought. Broaden your horizon, and you may find that both have good arguments, but are really not arguing about the same thing. This happens in most discussions: People have different definitions and modes of thought, and get irritated when others dont share their own perspective.
A bad discussion is when everybody tries to convince the other. Either everybody wins the truth, or nobody wins. That is true enquiry into the reality. You can never really "win" a true discussion, because truth is owned by all.
Just cause you disagree, doesn't mean he isn't making a valuable contribution.
It is this argument which is at the center of the evolution debate. People who make this argument have little to no actual grasp of the concept of evolution is why we're having this debate. Is this really surprising when evolution is taught so poorly? And no, I'm not talking about Kansas... I'm talking about the teaching of neo-darwinistic evolution as "fact" in secondary schools. Evolution is so much more complicated than random mutation + natural selection = new species, but that's what people are taught.
Slight sidenote, I remember when I first heard the premise of the X-Men series: humans evolving, into superheroes, in only a few generations, and lots and lots of individuals at the same time. Now we have this tv show Heroes (which rocks, BTW) that has the exact same premise.. and I'm starting to wonder if the authors of these works weren't just having a bit of fun with the concept of evolution. Maybe they actually think that's what evolution is all about!
No wonder people are against it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
By impregnating it with a conductive material, maybe?
Feynman in one of his books discussed his experience at a company that tried to plate plastics. I wish I remembered more about the anecdote.
Well, not just in this domain, but generally, I've been for a while getting the impression that people just can't deal with large numbers. The intuition just breaks down. Sure, if you're well educated you can do maths with 10^18, but try imagining a really large interval of time, or distance or whatever. Your intuition fails miserably. You just can't really imagine it.
From the intuition point of view, we're not much better than Terry Prattchett's trolls, whose counting IIRC went something like "one, two, many, lots". We're just like that. Past a certain limit it's just the same "many" or "lots" category. A million years doesn't "feel" intuitively much longer than a thousand years, because both are, basically, "lots."
How long is a day? Ok, you know that. You experience that, literally, daily. A month? Sure, you know that too. A year? No problems. Ten years? No problems. A hundred years? Oops. Chances are you haven't lived that long, so no first hand experience. It gets fuzzy. A thousand years? Now it's even fuzzier. You can put some random historical milestones on it, like, "a thousand years ago, was a bit before Hastings", but basically it's already getting to be "lots". Now try a million years. No, seriously, try really imagining a million years interval. Now try ten million years. It's just "lots". You can use the number in maths, because you're a smart guy, but the intuition fails you miserably.
How big is 1 yard or 1m? You know that. A mile? No problem. [...] Now imagine a million miles. Imagine a million light years, for that matter. Bummer, you can't, can you? It's just "lots".
It's not just about evolution. That's why SF works, for example. Our minds just can't comprehend the distances and scales involved, so travelling across the whole flipping galaxy becomes just as "lots" as going over the Atlantic. Intuitively it doesn't "feel" like much more distance.
Or you have settings like Star Wars where basically not that much happened in the Republic for over 20,000 years. And you accept that all right, don't you? In reality that's a mindbogglingly _huge_ interval. In that interval humans went from hitting rocks together to make a crude tool, to lasers and space shuttles. Whole empires raised and fell and completely disappeared in a fraction of that time. But _because_ it's such a huge interval, you intuition fails you utterly there.
Basically, to get back on topic, that's the effect you're seeing there. You're asking people to understand something that happens over millions of years and over billions of specimens. If they're the non-scientific intuitive kind, like most people are, they just can't. You're asking them to imagine something that human imagination just can't accurately deal with.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well that sounds 'bout as skientifik and bigoted as the rantings of any 3 rate preecher ah ever heerd. U proved it, well ahhll be damned, never saw the paper "proving" anythin in my evolootionary biologee courses.
Evolution is a vague term describing a general collection of more specific processes and subprocess whereby organisms will - amongst other things - reproduce, mutate, adapt over a number of generations, and on occasion branch and form new species. Evolution is a bit too vague.
Indirect democracy with electoral college. Accent is put on "indirect".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The resistance does emerge or arise.
It is the microbe population that evolves. No, it does not.
It changes.
It becomes more resistant to some antibiotic(s).
But it does not "evolve". It may not become better; as a matter of fact, it may become worse. (An example are the Ebola-like killing viruses: if they were less fatal, they would be more effective -- because they would give more time for the carriers to spread them.)
Now, there are two problems here:
1. Religion guys loathe the "evolution" word because it reminds them of Darwin.
2. Real, hardcore, scientific guys will dislike the word because it implies that every changed population is somewhat better than the previous (unchanged) generations, which is absolutely not true.
The writer of TFA (no, I'm not new here, but yes, I've RTFA) is worried about problem #1, but (s)he is forgetting about problem #2: "evolve", "fitness", and even "adapt" are not real relevant terms, at least not all the time: they are used to describe (maybe) a final result (that the bacterial culture is, after all, evolved-more_fit-adapted WRT the specific in casu antimicrobial agent(s)) but not the process (survival rates + reproductive advantage)
my R$ 0,02 -- HTH
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The core problem of the evolution avoidance issue is that they are disregarding their own science in the face of a few very loud people. Science is based on the fact that what we have is the "best answer" at the time and a better one can come along and displace it. There is nothing wrong with believing and talking about evolution as long as it's the best answer out there. But to give in to the extremely vocal opposition who has nothing in the way of evidence to support their side is lunacy.
Informing people about the scams, shams, and bunk that assault them on a daily basis. http://www.jeremyduffy.com
And for completeness sake:
If you're a democracy without being a republic, then you're most likely a constitutional monarchy like Norway, Spain or Denmark.
If you're neither a democracy nor a republic, then you're most likely an absolute monarchy, like Saudi-Arabia.
People seen to overlook it's the basic principles of physics that allows all chemical interaction. These Laws have a prior interaction, with the outcome known in advance assuming we understand the Law being applied. So to say things 'emerge' is perfectly valid as randomness is being sieved through the rules of physic; like flower when cooking.
Evolution & Emergence work off the same process. But some like to think there's a controlling factor in Emergence, meaning ideas like Intelligent Design. The only controlling factor is the Laws of Physic.
So do these Laws work randomly? or constantly? Meaning if we fully understood Physical at all level: Marco, micro, Quantum, etc. Could we predict the actual "mutations" in the process of Evolution; because if we can it would be more accurate to call it Emergence as the Laws predestine all interaction.
An important concept in evolutionary biology is natural selection. Natural selection does not always imply that the correct choice for survival has been made (evidence: all of the species that have become extinct), but rather that some selection has been made that the life form perceives to be beneficial. What you are describing is part of evolution. It may only be a VERY SMALL increment in evolution, but evolution it remains.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Excellent book. Michael Shermer also has one called Why People Believe Weird Things, though it's not as interesting overall. Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works is an entertaining book focusing on building up an understanding of the mind rather than the others' focus on dissecting superstition.
Can someone give a reference for the claim about the popularity of belief in astrology, UFO sightings, etc.?
Revive the Constitution.
searching for 'evolution' in the title of a paper brings back 5,180,000 results...
umm ... "Evolution" by means of natural selection describes the rise of new species. The emergence of antibiotic resistance is not a creation of a new species, just the spread of a single gene. This is the "natural selection" part and personally I would say "evolution" wouldn't be the right word to use when studying it, no anti-science conspiracy needed.
...Read it and mod accordingly down or up.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's time to simply ignore the flat-earthers and continue our scientific and humanistic voyage into the future.
FYI there is no such thing as randomness. Quantum fluctuation you say? Flies spontaneously pop out of uncoverd meat I say.
Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation
Appropriately, on the front-page of that web site, http://biology.plosjournals.org/ , there is an article entitled "Splicing and protein evolution".
It's a Slinky, made from lumpy bits of calcium, interspersed with disks of Play-Doh covered in Saran Wrap. All held together by bits of string made of meat.
Intelligent Design.
"My ENTIRE ass!" © Warren Ellis, AKA "Internet Jesus"
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
... the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy.
Now that's bad. If you are unwilling to accept controversy as a consequence of good science, odds are that you no longer have good science.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
... can you?
Do you have proof / have you seen any example what-so-ever of a mutation being beneficial to any species?
Also, what ever happened to all those hundreds of thousands of (not faked) fossilised transitional species which evolution was supposed to produce?
And yet, you tell me you can't even find one (which hasn't been faked by radical darwinists)?!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I don't have a problem with 'macro evolution'. My question is how on earth did a self replicating cell form by chance in the first place. That's what just seems to boggle my mind; how did all the necessary parts get into the right place at the right time...
Good question! While evolution is typically portrayed as explaining how life got from The First Cell to Modern Man, it doesn't seem to address where life came from in the first place. We could invoke a "God of the gaps" here, maybe justifying Deism. But we probably don't need to.
Already there's been some speculation into ideas such as the "RNA World" hypothesis and microspheres, which give a tentative, partial explanation. The "RNA World" idea is the notion that life started not with DNA -- and the chicken-and-egg problem that DNA codes for protein and protein reads DNA -- but with the simpler structures of RNA. We've found sequences like the "hammerhead RNA" that have at least partial ability to serve as both a data storage method and a system for copying that data. "Microspheres" refer to the fact that some cell-like structures self-assemble without any DNA or other directive force. You know that cells are formed of a two-layered membrane of fat (lipid) molecules around them, yes? As it turns out, because these molecules have one water-seeking and one water-avoiding end, mixing them with water makes them spontaneously arrange themselves into (among other things) two-layered membranes. And the lipids themselves aren't very complex. You can get an impressive and useful structure without any conscious mind involved.
So, one possibility is that out of the stew of various molecules existing on early Earth, there appeared globs of fatty membranes that separated "inside" from "outside," incidentally offering some protection to some very early chemicals that tended to make more of themselves appear. Just as fire releases energy that allows the fire to spread, the blind physical processes of organic chemistry allowed the lucky appearance -- painfully slowly -- of a handful of structures slightly good at copying themselves. And then all hell broke loose.
Maybe. We don't know for certain that that's what happened, especially in the details of the chemistry involved, although in a few decades we should know a lot more. So, if your main problem with evolution is the apparent impossibility of life's ultimate origin, please consider that impersonal physical forces offer a possible explanation for that as well.
As for religion, my own take on this part of the dispute is that scientists mostly (mostly) stick to the facts and claim authority only to the extent that they have evidence or at least a decent hypothesis; while religionists tend to make claims that are not factually well-supported and then demand equal or greater respect for those beliefs. The point here is not to disprove a particular religion, not outright, but to say we shouldn't believe things beyond what the facts justify -- and certainly not base public policy on unjustified beliefs. Science may not be able to answer the question of whether a Deist God exists, but it can say that the miracle stories of particular theistic religions just aren't supported by the facts and that there's no honest basis for believing in them. Or at least science can debate that point! Whether praying for someone can regrow a severed limb is within the realm of science to test. When I and other science types get frustrated in this debate, it's often because a religious believer is claiming we have no right to challenge their beliefs, when we normally consider that kind of challenge a service to those we criticize and even as a necessary part of democracy and capitalism.
Revive the Constitution.
Like someone else said on the comments, evolution is generally associated that there is an advancement, or the "thing" becomes better in our view. The reason scientists use the words they do in scientific papers is because they are speaking directly of a particular experiment. Not the species as a whole. 1. The definition of evolve: to develop something gradually, often into something more complex or advanced, or undergo such development 2. transitive and intransitive verb biology develop via evolutionary change: in evolutionary theory, to develop from an earlier biological form So as you see, evolution can also mean it just changes period. But it doesn't describe what KIND of change other than that it's changed from it's original form. It doesn't describe the method that the change occured or what the change was like. In a scientific study review, using the word evolve is like me saying the program I wrote got better. It doesn't describe what got better about it, it doesn't let the person know that it changed to something better or how I went about doing it. This is why when you say evolve it's generally in a sentence like "He evolved into a better person" or "He evolved into a degenerate RIAA lawyer". I guess in that case it might be devolve...
"[W]here you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was." - Bertrand Russell
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives...
Um, i think it is quite the opposite. Because the public refuses to accept that our being here was just by chance, even the scientific community is taking note and is no longer pushing their beliefs down the publics' throats.
Evolutionism is a belief the public has not accepted.
Have you read my journal today?
... know that ID and creationism is BS.
ID is pure fantasy with no evidence to support it whatsoever, evolution has stood up to many years of research and has many pieces of evidence to support it.
Science is not a democracy, nature is not dictated by popular opinion, so there is no need to be fair and evenhanded about what theories you give credence to.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Once, one of my friends that are biologist (can't really remember who for it was long ago), said that evolution is not a good word to describe the phenomenon. 'Evolution' sounds like something is getting better, but in fact there is no universal "better" for the best for one environment could the worst for another. What matters is that the population survives enough to reproduce and keep the cycle, if this is achieved by a super-fine-tuned processes or by simply using a have thousands and thousands of offspring some might just survive it does not really matter.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Because every single act of reproduction that isn't 100% genetically and structurally identical to the previous generation is evolution! To state it repeatedly would be redundant indeed. What's happening is a natural selection, the strong live while the weak are weeded out. Developing offspring with a strain of resistance is evolution. "Kills 99.9% of germs" is natural selection.
Now, if it can be proven with amicable certainty that the new resistant bacteria did not exist before, it would have needed to evolve to become that way. If it is just a lucky lineage who's day has now come to shine, it would have needed nature(or man) to pave the way by killing all its competitors.
Unfortunately it is tough to determine in the real world, as bacteria are small and come in vast, untrackable numbers.
Evolution gets added to nature, which goes through natural selection, which leaves the remaining as candidates for further evolution.
Similar to how no one in the media can say global warming. They have to use climate change instead.
davecb5620@gmail.com
You might as well encourage more journalist to use the term gay, and I don't mean Homosexual. I mean the gay as in happy, content, pleasant definition.
Evolve does include micro-evolution but what most religious people associate with the word is the "suddenly lizards sprouted feathers and started flying" theories. Remember Darwin was a Christian, a lot of Christians understand that plants and animals 'evolve' in situations where it is necessary, humans right now are 'evolving' their metabolism.
When you say Evolve people think of a lot more than adaptation to environment. They also think Macro-evolution. When you say Gay people think of a lot more than... well there is no possible way of saying this without it sounding gay. Basically they also think of homosexuality. Its a moderately good comparison.
The subject of evolution is so stigmatized that it makes perfect sense to me why people would use the term sparingly. I go to the University of Texas, am in a Christian fraternity, and I am a staunch advocate of evolution, but even my friends who are bio majors that are Christians have trouble with evolution. Just mentioning the word is tiresome, and it comes up frequently in discussion. I guess my point is that evolution is a term that is broad and carries with it the implications a large amount of theory and thought, and in avoiding redundancy itis important to say words like "arise," "adapted," etc.
Irreducible complexity is a myth, which exploits our current ignorance as an argument against rational answers. How can the entire universe have evolved from the Big Bang? Gee, seems irreducibly complex to me. The argument is silly.
A few years ago I read an article on a genetic algorithm connected to a piece of reconfigurable hardware. The algorithm was supposed to develop a simple oscillator circuit and selected for a particular output waveform. It succeeded when in its original environment, but the researchers were baffled when the configured hardware no longer worked after it was moved. Turns out, the genetic algorithm evolved a radio receiver that mixed ambient EM signals and output the desired waveform. Interesting how an "irreducibly complex" piece of hardware like a radio receiver simply evolved even when such a form wasn't anywhere near the original selection criteria.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Your friends are being stupid, deliberately or not. There is no distinction in nature between microevolution and macroevolution. Macroevolution is just larger quantities of macroevolution over much longer times.
...
No, they aren't. They're drawing a distinction between what is experimentally observable and what isn't. Something science used to do, as I recall
Even in science it is often misused. Mix hydrogen and oxygen and you get water, some people say it "evolved" into water. Again, how absurd. It was a chemical reaction. Some people still think humans evolved from apes that are around now. Evolution theory shows that isn't the case, whatever it was that we evolved from is dead, has been dead for a very long time. That creature may look sort of like an ape, however it wasn't an ape. That creature may be common to both species, however.
So it may be that they are not avoiding the word as much as people think, it may be that the word evolution isn't the right word to describe what is going on. If it is then use the word, if it isn't then use the right word.
Why is offending religious people unacceptable?
There's an excellent documentary on the evolution vs. intelligent design wars called "Flock of Dodos" that covers this very issue -- there's actually a scene with a bunch of leading evolutionary scientists sitting around a poker table, lamenting that they have to avoid using the word "evolution" in their NSF grant proposals if they want to keep their grants. If you haven't seen it, and you're interested in this issue, you should definitely track down a screening in your area.
(Full disclosure: I know the guy who made the movie and am a big fan of his work teaching communications skills to scientists. If you want a second opinion on the movie, here's a New York Times article about it.)
Read my blog.
Evolution is a perfectly fine term; in your mind simply substitute "natural selection" or "evolve" for "arise" or "emerge"
Funny thing though:
Natural selection merely filters and refines existing data. There is no data being introduced. I do not see dogs breeding and whelping non-dogs, at least no mutants which can breed.
Evolution takes a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, time indeed; never is a very, very long time.
I want to tell an analogy and then ask a couple questions. All comments welcomed:
If a person wants to construct an impressive building, first of all, he sets the foundations in a intelligent and regular fashion, and plans them in a way suitable to their future purpose and results. Then he expertly divides them into sections and apartments. Next, he orders and arranges the apartments, and decorates them with tapestries, then illuminates them with electric lights. Then, in order to renew his creative works in that magnificent place, he makes fresh creations and new changes and transformations in every point of it.
Now, think of a creature whose life begins in the middle of the last step of this construction, same as his ancestors' lives. This creature observes his surroundings, what is happening around. He realizes that even if everything seems happening by itself, there are some laws ruling inside. For example, according to a formula, he can calculate at what time all lights will turn on/off tomorrow, or twenty days later. In his laboratory, he can even duplicate some of the events/results with conforming to the related formulas/laws.
After his observations, if this creature says that it is the law who does everything in the entire building, is this a right claim? If something happens in accordance to a law, to describe how it happened, is it sufficient to prove the law's existence or event's conformance to the law? Can somebody claim that all people are slaves of traffic rules and traffic rules control everybody to obey themselves? Or, does it mean that there is "some kind of" ruler who firstly sets those rules and then, manages things according to that rules?
As all of us know, there is a relation between DNA and beings' attributes. Let's try to describe this relation:
1) Does it mean that it is the DNA who does these changes?
The US has a constitution which is even written in lots of books. Can we say that this "set of laws" manages every event related with it, penalizes who does not obey to it, rewards who obey to it?
2) Or, is it the proteins or mitochondria or ribosomes who "knows to read" DNA and "understands" it and acts in compliance to what is written?
What do you think?
When will people learn that... -> People are idiots -> You're an idiot -> STFU
Science is the only way -> I'm a Christian and... -> You're an idiot -> Scientology -> STFU
Stupid government -> Iraq -> Iran -> Linux -> I'm a Democrat -> You're an idiot -> STFU
JOKE -> JOKE -> JOKE -> You're an idiot -> STFU
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
"Real, hardcore, scientific guys..."
... laugh at biologists.
Biology is a study, NOT a science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-logy
Biology consists of naming and the then memorising the names of poorly understood natural structures and speculating on their relationship to other poorly understood natural structures. It is the job of a real science to establish the actual function of these natural structures. Biology is an exercise in nomenclature and classification, which is still valuable, it just is not science.
Unfortunately, biology and medicine are usually presented to the public as science, which is often damaging to the reputation of the scientific community as a whole.
Go ahead, mod this as a troll or flamebait, you know you want to, I can guarantee you that there are more biology grads than there are pure science grads moderating on slashdot, so I fully exepect it.
In macroevolution, an organism gains new features, such as wings. In microevolution an organism gets stronger arms.
What does the baby Jesus command you to call it when an organism gets stronger arms with a longer flap of skin on them that permits gradually improved gliding performance from trees? Is it "microevolution" until the mouse accidentally flaps his front legs and looks kind of like a bat, at which point it would be "macroevolution" and smote down as blasphemous by a jealous genocidal war-god?
The whole "micro/macro" evolution bullshit is a rear-guard action by the hate-crazed godtards. But it's crap. There is no distinction; just small gradual steps, and the ones that increase the number of healthy offspring tending to be preserved.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
While I don't think he actually used the word Charles Darwin had this to say:
'Let us now see whether the several facts and rules relating to the geological succession of organic beings, better accord with the common view of the immutability of species, or with that of their slow and gradual modification, through descent and natural selection', Charles Darwin.
'evolution is generally associated that there is an advancement, or the "thing" becomes better in our view'
That's a common misconception, if you don't mind me saying so. Actually evolution refers to species adapting to their environment through natural selection where the less sucessful members die off as they don't get to pass on their genes. The religious object as if you follow it to its logical conclusion evolution can account for the emergence of humanity, consequently there is no need of a man in Rome telling us what God thinks.
'In a scientific study review, using the word evolve is like me saying the program I wrote got better'
In mammals at fertilization, a zygote is formed from the fusion of a sperm and egg. Each contributes half the genetic information required to grow. At the first cell division chromosomes are randomly selected from each parent. This process as well as gradual random movement of the position of certain DNA sequences and mutations are the mechanism by which offsprings change and adapt to environmental pressures. That's why children are not identical, except for twins of course. How the genetic information from those two particular cells got there is decided by the environment. As such the species as a whole is better adapted to a particular environment. Terms like advancement or better are an antromorphism, that is reading into nature human values and intentions.
Finally the scientific method observes specific phenomena, draws up conclusions and then tests it with experiment. An experiment is only successful if it repeatidly gives the same results. As such giving creationism equal time with evolution is nonsensical, as God is a transcendental entity, can't be measured and can do miracles which would void any results.
was Re:Evolution is not a specific scientific term
davecb5620@gmail.com
A bit of time off, for good behaviour.
I could do with a rest. Been working very hard...
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
How the hell do you electroplate a non-conducting surface?
;-)
With difficulty.
Actually, some years ago, I saw a demo by a fellow who was pretty good at such tricks. He had some finished pieces that were gold-plated wood and ceramic. He explained that the material he used were actually (slightly) porous, and had been saturated with salt water. The result still didn't conduct electricity very well, and the plating process was slow. But with gold, you only want a layer that's a few atoms thick. His demo basically consisted in wiring up his pieces of wood and ceramic, which had been coated with wax over most of their surface, and lowering them into his plating solution. You could walk away and come back in half an hour or so, and see that there was already a visible gold layer on the uncoated spots.
It is a lot faster if the core material conducts well. I think his demo was pretty much a display of virtuosity. Gold paint would be a lot faster. And for something like a dome of a building, gold leaf would probably be more practical.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The truth is that the majority of scientists don't believe the theory of evolution so they use other words more consistent with their understanding of science.
sqribbles.blogspot.com/.
Someone should point out to this religious nuts how their own religions have evolved. That should help the put things into perspective.
--
Carpe Deum -- Seize the Carp!
PubMed has 90,000 articles which mention the keyword "evolution" in the last 10 years. Search http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD= search&DB=pubmed for "evolution" with limits of 10 years. There are ~150,000 articles, all told indexed. And PubMed doesn't cover all biological journals.
All I'm saying is `You're nothing but a pack of cards!'. http://www.sabian.org/alicech12.htm
A microbe that survives because of improper doseage is not evolution,
but a poor understanding of how to deal with disease.
All disease can be cured, but we do not yet have the knowledge to do so,
so to say that is evolution is an extension of our ignorance.
Ad Astra Per Asper
It really bugs me when I hear people (usually creationists) use the term "evolutionist" as some kind of slur. And I finally figured out why:
It makes as much sense to describe me as an evolutionist as it does to describe me as a heliocentrist.
Think about it.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The problem with this article is that it makes a faulty assumption that many in the United States do. That assumption is that whatever goes on over there is the same for the rest of the world.
The rest of the world is not hung up in the evolution vs creationism argument that seems to plague the U.S. And yet a quick search of journal articles reveals that those non-U.S. articles also don't use the term "evolution" very much.
It seems that the authors have noticed a trend but joined it to the wrong reason. A more plausible reason might be that the term "evolution" has many different levels of meaning, particularly in the scientific community and depending on which particular school you partake of. Since science tries to be exact, using language in publishing that is less ambiguous seems to be the preferable course.
For example, to say that after the microbial colony was exposed to such and such, it evolved by becoming resistant gives no scientific information as to the process. On the other hand, if the colony developed antigens or secondary structures or the like, then that information is presented. Obviously, the bloody things evolved, but why insult the intelligence of the scientific community by writing for a bloody sixth grade audience? These are journal articles, after all.
It seems like there aren't just fanatics trying to discredit evolution over there, but there are scientist trying to discredit anything religious. Unfortunately, all they do is make the rest of us look bad.
All the major organised religions seem to want is lots of uneducated children who think they are going to go to 'heaven' when they die.
...probably a good thing all those major organised religions don't build any schools or hospitals.
Umm, you clearly haven't read Darwin's 'Origin of Species', have you?
Do you realise what kinds of absurdities he talks about - i.e. larvae coming into form out of _nothingness_ due to a piece of meat left out on the table, for example.
You clearly haven't read 'Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life', either, have you?
Do you realise how much chaos and how many wars and how slavery was justified directly because of the garbage he published (with so-called scientific backing).
i.e. the "white" race being superior to the "pre-formed humans" - black Africans.
I love science. In fact, as Einstein said:
"Science without Religion in lame, and Religion without Science is blind".
He was absolutely right.
The Quran states: -
"Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were joined together as one united piece, then We parted them? And We have made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?"
- Qur'an 21:30
Do they not think deeply (in their ownselves) about themselves (how Allâh created them from nothing, and similarly He will resurrect them)? Allâh has created not the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them, except with truth and for an appointed term. And indeed many of mankind deny the Meeting with their Lord.
- Qur'an 30:8
Were they created by nothing, or were they themselves the creators?
Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Nay, but they have no firm Belief.
- Qur'an 52:35-36
And when it is said to them: "Make not mischief on the earth," they say: "We are only peacemakers."
Verily! They are the ones who make mischief, but they perceive not.
And when it is said to them (hypocrites): "Believe as the people (followers of Muhammad Peace be upon him) have believed," they say: "Shall we believe as the fools have believed?" Verily, they are the fools, but they know not.
- Qur'an 2:11-13
Their likeness is as the likeness of one who kindled a fire; then, when it lighted all around him, Allâh took away their light and left them in darkness. (So) they could not see.
They are deaf, dumb, and blind, so they return not (to the Right Path).
- Qur'an 2:17-18
And if you are in doubt concerning that which We have sent down (i.e. the Qur'ân) to Our slave (Muhammad Peace be upon him ), then produce a Sûrah (chapter) of the like thereof and call your witnesses (supporters and helpers) besides Allâh, if you are truthful.
But if you do it not, and you can never do it, then fear the Fire (Hell) whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers.
- Qur'an 2:23-24
Bacteria can evolve AND they can laterally transmit DNA changes through the current living population. So it is accurate to say that changes can "emerge" in bacteria. More complicated organisms have to reproduce, but bacteria can go either way.
Lamark was actually right, with regards to bacteria. They can transmit acquired traits.
You realize that the theory of evolution has undergone changes since "Origin of Species"? And that spontaneous generation has nothing at all to do with it? And that it was Louis Pasteur that ultimately proved that spontaneous generation did not exist - a fact that anyone who considers themselves a scientist readily accepts?
Are you really trying to discredit the current state of the theory of evolution by attacking the character of a guy who lived over 120 years ago?
What's with all of the Koran passages? What does the Koran have to do with evolution? Since you brought up slavery, I feel compelled to mention that the Koran contains no prohibition on slavery, and in fact has many passages dealing with slaves as property.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
To believe in evolution actually takes more faith than believing in something like Christianity. At least in the case of Judaism and Christianity we have
1) eye witnesses (in the case of jesus' ascension, hundreds. In the case of the red sea, millions)
2) advanced scientific knowledge (quarantining, knowledge of animal behaviour, etc)
3) hard historical evidence that certain events actually happened
With evolution we have theories that are more far-fetched than the creation account - completely counter-intuitive.
We have no eye-witnesses. Scanty hard historical linking evidence.
The Judo-Christian religions are very much also like the evolutionists. Both are ultimately founded on faith with some evidence and both sides are just a vehemently insane about arguing their side. I just wish some of the evolutionist would realise that in the end, they really are no different.
" 'Evolution' is a fine word for the masses, but when someone learned is supposed to be specific, a vague word isn't the best choice."
Evolution as used in Biology is hereditable change of gene frequencies through time (from one generation to the next). Consequently, it is technically the scientifically correct term to use when referring to microbial resistance or any other form of genetic change being of compared across generations. It has a precise meaning in Biology, and there is really nothing "vague" about it. Rather, it is your understanding that is vague.
Your assertion that is a "general term" is factually inaccurate when the term is used in a scientific context, although I will certainly admit and as the article points out, it has other more "general meanings". Unfortunately, the general level of scientific understanding of evolutionary theory and use of the term is woefully deficient, even among broad swaths of the scientific community that is in a position to know better. Among the general public, at least the American public, it is practically non-existent. One could only use other scientific terms to describe the change of microbial resistance through time, if one means to imply that it changes through some mechanism other than by evolution (by means of natural selection). It is a well known scientific fact that microbial resistance is genetically based, and consequently, the contemporary consesus view is that changes in microbial resistance should be viewed as evolving in the correct, technical sense of the term.
I fully agree with the thrust of the article. Scientists need to use the term evolution, when it is appropriate. We also need to educate the population about science.
Signs that science education is slipping in America are all around us. Mathematics test scores are dropping because we are largely replacing the educational philosophy of the teaching of understanding of concepts for a policy of "no child left untested". Just note that all the major news feeds lump "science" and "technology", with the writers and editors largely unable to distinguish the difference between the two. Typically, what amounts to an on line advertisement for a new gaming technology or the psychological state of NASA astronauts is more likely to pass as a "SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY" story than is a story of a science issue. Even, when one looks at stories that should attempt to explain the science behind such topics, they tend to be covered more as if they were gossip columns or curiosity vignettes instead. Just take a look at GoggleNews feeds today, for a mindcheck.
Yes, it is time for scientists to begin to educate with regard to the pervasive evidence for evolution in our lives. A good place to start is at the molecular level, such as microbial genetics, where the public may hopefully be better able to understand the concepts involved and upon which they can build a greater level of understanding to address much more complicated issues, such issues as the evolution of human behavior. The world needs a better understaning of the latter, if we, Homo sapiens Linnaeus 1758, are collectively to evolove in directions other than leading to our own extinction, as the vast majority (>90% of all species) have done.
"evolution", "plutocracy", "quotes about 'deism' by America's founding fathers", ...
What are topics that are avoided by public schools in America.
Money IS God!
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
As long as the message gets through, the words used matter not. Sometimes a spade is just an entrenching tool, right?
Sometimes, to get the message out, the message has to be obfuscated just a little, so it slips right past those opposed to said message.
This is why I think the most important tool we have in the quest to rid civilization of blind faith in supernatural entities is the arts.
Art is the only place where a spade can be a entrenching tool, or where all of humanity can be represented as a single ship. It is the only place where one can place deeply controversial ideas and present them in a manner which will sail right past those with closed minds.. and sometimes, just sometimes, it'll stick a wedge in a closed mind, and pry it open.
So no, I don't mind if evolution is also expressed as 'adapt and overcome.' A rose, by any name...
Support the arts, folks. Encourage your kids to not only write, draw, paint, sing and play, but also to deeply listen, to deeply look into the work to see or hear the other, cloaked meaning.. when a pro-arts organization needs money, be generous.. when an artist is censored, sanctioned or punished for expressing something un-popular.. support them and their freedom of expression.
The Arts have already started cracks in the facade.. all we need to do is drive those wedges deeper. It will take time and effort. That facade is strong, and well-built, over thousands of years, by skilled craftsmen, experts at manipulating people's fear, and using that fear as a lever to raise the blocks forming the facade. But as usual, that which has been built, can be taken down -- even if it has to be stone by stone.
The antidote to Religion is Art.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Most monarchies are de facto democratic, but not de jure such. The UK, for example, runs as a democracy on a day to day basis, but officially the Queen has fairly extensive powers she can exercise as her personal prerogative, which she by custom exercises only on the advice of Her Majesty's Government. Thus the Queen acts as the figurehead carrying out decisions made democratically... but this is entirely a conventional arrangement. If the Queen refused to follow her Government's advice on a particular subject for which Parliament has not been given (by a previous Monarch) binding authority, then there is nothing within the legal order that can be done about it, especially since Parliament is not even permitted to debate a measure to remove any of the Monarch's reserve powers without the Monarch's assenting to such debate. Of course, this would provoke a constitutional crisis.
Whether that counts as a "democracy" depends on whether you define democracy mainly by the constitutional order that ultimately holds de jure authority, or by the de facto manner in which events normally play out.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You know, it might just be that these magazines have good editors. Bacteria don't evolve; they're naturally selected for. Evolution is a process that applies to weather, to crystals and to political debates. Evolution does not apply to living creatures; it is a simple mathematical process.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between evolution and natural selection is not in a position to complain about the politics of word selection in scientific papers. This is a simple issue of correctness.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Of course they want to put sentiments on the money about how "We" trust God - never mind that it's using God's name for profane purposes, it's there to give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling. The question at the time was whether you could trust the US Treasury to give you the gold or silver that the banknotes represented, or whether the coins were real gold or silver at full weight. During the War Between the States, the Confederacy printed banknotes at a vastly inflationary rate; I'm not sure how fast the US was doing the same. Later on, FDR confiscated Americans' gold, but soon after that the banknotes were telling you to trust God. When US banknotes were silver certificates, they said you should trust God, and could exchange the banknote for the silver it represented, but after a few years they stopped paying off in silver either. Now the nickel/copper/zinc coins still say it, but the Feds are complaining that it's costing them too much to make those either...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The counter-evolutionistas love to huff and puff until they find a person who so soundly refutes them that they have no possible comeback. Then they ignore that person and go on making their ridiculous claims elsewhere as if they have not just been shown to be absurd.
It's frustrating. You make the same point over and over. You refute the same idiocy over and over. Nothing changes. It's like a sick game to them. They're like the baby that keeps throwing its strained peas on the floor, and we keep picking them up.
It doesn't matter how much evidence we have. It doesn't matter how many times their objections to the theory are answered. It's not about truth to them, its about belief. Specifically, control of belief, which is religion's bread and butter. It's sophistry, plain and simple. They don't argue to arrive at the truth through a dialectic process. They argue to protect their untenable belief system from anything that might threaten it.
I would say that "Deliberate and venal ignorance" is about the best working definition of "Evil" that I can come up with. Counter-evolutionistas are evil.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
OK it seems that the crowd is going for the religion-science scheme.
Thats completely nonsense, I'm working in the field, practically no scientist would publish
'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' just because he has an religous agendo or fear thereof.
It is quite easy,
1) there are resistant genes around that spread (so, normally no new genes are formed, just taken up)
2) A lot of resistance mechanisms are single point mutations, and since there is a fitness cost, they will loose that mutation again
Quite sensible, that is not "evolution", that is just normal genetics at play, nothing new here,...
And then there are, for examples, the papers where a scientist looks at additional mutations compensating the first resistance-bearing one, thereby enabling the bug to be resistant without a fitness cost, and these then rightfully speak about "evolution"
So what the author is more or les complaining about is, that scientist do their job right and differentiate between things they speculate and cannot prove in their current setting (and are more careful in what they write) and things they can prove (like compensating)...
When used in a sentence, the word "evolution" asserts a cause (just as the word "creation" does, for those who are looking for flamebait). An assertion of cause in a scientific paper destroys its value unless the cause is the actual conclusion of the paper. Due to the over-generality of the word "evolution", using it would obscure past usability the exact tendencies of the findings (Did the findings spread apart? Did they diverge? Did they change uniformly?). The scientists researching antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance are probably more aware of these facts than most people, and so would obviously not use a word like "evolution" unless it was both precisely the word they meant and unlikely to be viewed as an unwarranted assertion of cause. The article assumes that these scientists are submitting to the desires of the public, although they are most probably just being good scientists.
-proidiot
As I understand it, the eye of the needle was a small back door to a walled city. Once the main Gates were closed at night one would "pass through the eye of the needle". In order to get a camel through the eye of the needle the camel would need to be unloaded of its cargo, in order to squeeze through. This refers to the rich man not being able to let go of his earthly possesions in order to gain entrance to heaven. Since you can't take it with you.
Eschewing the word "evolution" is itself unscientific. Science is a method of establishing accurate models of reality. Evolution is a scientific theory. For the scientifically ignorant, in science, a theory is both supported by and ranks above "facts". I see no logical reason why science should even consider pandering to ignorance; it's time science stood up for itself.
That's what I always took "In God We Trust" to mean.
So I looked it up, and they may have been referring to Yahweh (sorry, he doesn't seem to even have his own webpage).
For the uninitiated: Yahweh is pretty much like a Flying Spaghetti Monster from the ancient middle east, but vengeful, and without marinara.
Yes, it seems a rather odd thing to want to proclaim on a coin, but there it is.
While I am unfamiliar with the arguments that most scientific theories are unfalsifiable, I don't have any problem imagining reasonable tests of evolution that are quite falsifiable (but perhaps I am missing the point).
Part of the problem, of course is that "evolution" means many things to evolutionary theorists, so one needs to be a bit more specific talking about what part of the "theory of evolution" might be tested.
Here is widely agreed upon tenet of evolution that I think is easily falsifiable: "all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor".
There is considerable evidence supporting this hypothesis today - all organisms use essentially the same genetic code; all organisms appear to share at hundreds of proteins with most others, and every organism shares more than half of its proteins with some other organisms, no matter how "weird" the organism is. IF one found an organism (in Nature) that used a different genetic code, or that used a completely novel set of proteins, that organism could not reasonably be said to have evolved from the organisms we know. Since it is hard to argue that alternative genetic codes would be dramatically less efficient than the one that is used, and it seems clear that many organisms use different proteins for common tasks, so that an organism with completely novel proteins is certainly imaginable (there is an enormous number of possible proteins), there seems no inherent reason why organisms with different codes and different proteins might exist. None have been found.
And, I have no doubt that we could DESIGN an organism that used a different genetic code (though I think it would have to be used to encode proteins used in other organisms.
So, I think the hypothesis "all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor" is testable and falsifiable. It will be interesting to see how life on other planets looks.
Have people noticed that the word "evolution" never appears in "The Origin of Species"? Darwin talked about transmutation, but never about evolution. The word "evolved" turns up as the last word of the book, and I believe only there.
If evolution by natural selection could be developed as a theory without using the word "evolution" at all, perhaps taking a break from the word doesn't really hurt us that badly?
I'm not sure my first worry in life is that other people are choosing not to use a word that Darwin, too, chose not to use.
I don't know, I currently study Biology and over the years I've seen a propensity for people to jump to throwing-in the word "evolution" to describe everything: when, in fact, the word is often used in contexts which aren't connected to the neo-darwinian concept at all though the way it's used is suggestive despite this: especially in microbial resistances since very often the resistance doesn't develop from new materials but rather the bugs either absorb genetic material from other bugs or they lose the ability to metabolize something that's harmful to them through damage. The damage cases are interesting because they rarely really "benefit" the organism since they typically end-up less efficient and easily out-competed by their intact counterparts: however when you kill those off, these guys take [whatever they're resistant to] without a sweat. Nowadays sensationalists would call this evolution: I'd prefer to be intellectually honest, however: religious fervor to convince the public of something doesn't belong in science, it creates dogma. Scientists are out for the glory and willing to be sensationalistic rather than objective. I think that those initiated recognize how mainstream this is and we're more than a little tired of it: guys like Dawkins, for instance, are great at spreading "consumer science", but his debates are often laughable: if the audiences knew enough to really engage the guy they'd find he's more evasive than knowledgable, and just going to his website the ego is clearly discernable. Perhaps his only relevant book was "The Selfish Gene" but it's little science and lots of philosophy. That the NSF etc. encourages the avoidance of a loaded term is preferable so that when the case for evolution in the neo-darwinian sense is to be made the scientist must be specific and intentional. Otherwise it's often the case that data gets twisted to support the theory and this is not only abnormal and undesirable, but from my point of view it could be dangerous: we use research to develop treatments and direct more research: which will effect lives. It's getting ridiculous to have to sift-through date and try to figure-out if a scientist fudged data to support his conclusions or not. For example, I'm working-out a research project involving nerves and __________ (can't give details) whereby ____ does ______ to them and I'll need to review the research on the cells to get a full grasp at their functions and etc.: if some enthusiast decided to carelessly attribute similarities between process in nerves to another organism I'll end-up wasting time and money (that's hard to obtain) investigating said other organism to use it in research...only to find out it's a waste. : ( That said, I'm not too sorrow that figures like creationists are around: they all too happily point-out mishandling of data and results, (just as evolutionary biologists point-out creationist fall-shorts). They might annoy people, but they do have usefulness: The dichotomy between the groups gets them both looking at one another's work with a weary eye, though it also happens that someone too zealous will accuse without substance to the accusations: thus are rivalries. Oh yeah, the above is convoluted: I avoided using all the med-speak so that everyone could understand it. I think slashdot has a lot of readers who'd understand it all, but some might not. ; )
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Where people have trouble is with something they call 'macro evolution', that these mutations can over time create entirely new species, organs, and reproductive behavior (sexual vs asexual). I believe it because I think people don't understand exactly how many years we are considering here in the long haul.
...? Constantly changeing (getting bigger even), but will it ever add up to 3? The series 1, 2, 1, 2, ... is constantly changing by a large amount, but will never get to 3 either. Please note that both those series are infinate. If I fall, I accelerate at 9.81 m/s, so if I am falling for 30000000 seconds I will get near the speed of light, right? I look outside, and the world *looks* flat, I can even assume that it is unless I am involving large distances. Just because something works on a small scale does not mean that it will on the larger scale.
I think that it is a valid objection and should be looked at rather than dismissed as frivolous.
What about the series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16
Is there actual evidence out there that microevolution becomes macroevolution given enough time? (I am not sure I can trust the analysis of the scientific community, because of the fervor with which some people are looking for missing links and for ET and ostracizing of those who disagree with evolution, kind of reminds one of religion, no? The best thing I can think of would be genetic analysis, which could demonstrate common descent in a completely objective mathematical way.)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Ave Maria
...many nonprofessional evolutionary biologists consider "evolution" to be a rather nonspecific word meaning "gradual change," and that "emergence" more explicitly incorporates the component aspects of the evolutionary process, namely, mutation, recombination, and/or horizontal transfer of resistance. The word "spread" may, similarly, appear to incorporate the component processes of transmission, horizontal transfer, and increase in allele frequency.
Buried in the paper is a rational explantation of the nomenclature used. The connotation (and denotation) of evolution is that of a gradual, generational change. It does not convey the horizontal nature of the adaptation being discussed in antibiotic resistance research.
From the same paragraph:
While these processes are recognized by professional evolutionary biologists as important aspects of evolutionary change, biomedical researchers may have the sense that the word "evolution" is itself too imprecise.
Scientific research papers are about precision. Evolution is too broad a term.
A critical question is whether avoidance of the word "evolution" has had an impact on the public perception of science.
No, it is not. I am sorry, but scientific papers are not for the unwashed masses. They are for publishing and interchange of technical information between professionals working in a specific field of research. Research papers, antibiotic or otherwise, are not the correct vector for delivering evolution to the general public.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Ave Maria
The guy who's views this AC is pushing is a famous Islamic creationist and Holocaust denier. His real name is Adnan Oktar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Oktar
Ave Maria
I am not well versed in medical literature, but my impression was that "adaptation" was the usual term. Some colourful terms like "learning" also appear. It's looks like medical researchers are focused on the *effects* of natural/artificial selection; possibly "evolution" is simply not the precise meaning they're interested in.
The article unfortunately does not provide a proper word frequency distribution, and relies heavily on subjective measures of similarity or dissimilarity between words. I'm not out to criticize the article - I see a lot of value in raising the question - but I'm not convinced it shows anything specific. It's kind of obvious that if you work in evolutionary biology, then you will give "evolution" a technical meaning, and you will probably use the word more than average.
Maybe scientists are coming to a sad realisation.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
in their approach to publishing in this anti-science ecosystem.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
This would really not be an issue if the government weren't so heavily involved in science. End all government funding and interference in science, and the good stuff will rise to the top. The alternative is to make science subject to politics, just like everything else the government controls.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
"All the major organized religions seem to want is lots of uneducated children who think they are going to go to 'heaven' when they die."
Actually this kind of 'blind faith' you say that "ALL" major religions advocate is self-defeating. Though I would not be one to underestimate stupid people in mass, it is easy to convince someone who relies on such blind faith... so to keep people from 'defecting' it is important to educate them against your opponents. After all, MOST religion is another form of business, but that characterization is just as unfair as your stereotype in the above quote. This controversy is damaging to science as it takes time and attention away from the real issue. Evolution shouldn't be the debated taboo word that it now is.
Yes, I know I will be modded down, flamed, and socially banned from 'intelligent' debate, but perhaps you will actually read the rest of this to see what I mean.
Intelligent design, whatever your feelings on the matter, is actually more logically viable than anyone would like to admit and is possibly the reason why this particular move to be 'politically correct' has arisen in the scientific world. (After all they have to deal with people too, and that's politics.) Society has changed the debate from what it really is to what they want it to be, because of the stronger position. Natural Selection is the new evolution and Intelligent Design is the new 'opiate of the masses' and the mark of the ignorant.
I think this is a shame for two reasons: first; evolution is a good scientific observation. It is testable, provable, and seems to work. Second, this entire debate has arisen out of and perpetuates a misconception of history; Charles Darwin did not 'discover' evolution. His grandfather did. (Erasmus Darwin; also notable is Jean-Baptiste Lamarck) Evolution was an accepted, working theory decades before Darwin was born. What Darwin is credited with is the 'discovery' of natural selection. Before natural selection, it was assumed God directed the evolution of species, essentially it was Intelligent Design.
Yup, Natural Selection supplanted Intelligent Design initially, and that should be the only avoided words, if any are to be avoided.
The problem is that Natural Selection and Intelligent Design both have the same 'evidence' and are subject to the same problem; they are logically circular. That doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they currently preclude any effort to both prove and disprove them.
You see, we can't observe natural selection in a way that differentiates it from intelligent design. This actual article is 'evidence' of both at the same time. Intelligent design, (or unintelligent as it may turn out to be), because we, presumably intelligent beings, are applying the pressure that causes the microbes to evolve. At the same time, the microbes are reacting to their environment... Natural Selection. Neither theory cancels the other, and both lead to each other. The problem is these theories are logic puzzles, like Schrödinger's cat, which fit the current need. No more, no less. That's why they are still theories after more than a hundred years.
Logically, if you also ascribe to the Heisenberg Principle (another logical puzzle) you also realize that the act of observing changes the environment, determining a certain outcome. How in the world can you then prove Natural Selection other than putting microbes in a closed system box and claiming that they are evolving only according to Natural Selection, as long as no one ever looks, or tries to document, or prove that it is as you say. ID has the same problem.
Kind of makes 'blind faith' take on a new meaning entirely, doesn't it?
This is the reason why you have intelligent people on both sides of this is
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
Why is it that the American view of history includes their invention of everything in the modern world. Try some research, you may be surprised...
:)
The motor car was a German invention, as was the engine to drive it. Going furter back, we see that the steam engine, in itself capable of replacing the horstand carriage, was a British creation.
Has it ever occurred to you to ask why the unit of power is the Watt? Why don't you go find out what he did sometime. Pay specific attention to his nationality
Greece, 600BC, Thales of Miletus notices static electricity
Rome, AD 70, Pliny the Elder writes about electric shocks
England, 1600, William Gilbert comes up with an almost complete physics of magnetism
Germany, 1672, Otto von Guericke generates electricity and creates sparks
Germany, 1745, charge stored in a primitive cell at the University of Leiden (hence Leiden Jar)
England, 1746, William Watson improves the Leiden Jar to store enough charge to explode gunpowder. He also carries charge along a two mile wire
England,1753, John Canton discovers electrostatic induction
England, 1753, Henry Cavendish discovers inverse square law for electrostatic charge
Italy, 1780, Luigi Galvani discovers electricity can cause muscle response
Italy, 1782, Alessandro Volta invents the battery
England, 1807, Humphry Davy discovers electrolysis
Germany, 1826, Georg Simon Ohm works out the relationship between current, voltage and resistance.
Denmark, 1820, Oersted discovers electromagetism
England, 1831, Michael Faraday has build motors and generators
Scotland, 1873, James Clerk Maxwell's theories on electromagnetic waves lay thefoundation for modern quantum theory.
England, 1897, Joseph Thomson discovers the electron
Canada, 1911, Ernest Rutherford discovers the structure of the atom
Oh yeah, at some point, Benjamin Franklin, who is under the impression that electricity is a fluid, flies a kite in a thunderstorm. Bright move.
(Saved from an earlier discussion here on Slashdot
The funny thing is that I started reading his web site, and the arguments being put forth were exactly like those of the Christian intelligent design crowd... basically they know that they can't make any sort of a scientific argument. What do they do? Blame the theory for everything bad that has happened since, try to assault the theory by finding character flaws in the originators, and make claims like "scientists agree that such-and-such is too complex to have arisen naturally" without backing up these claims. They treat it like a political smear campaign instead of participating in the scientific process. Some of the better ones actually do a point-by-point dissection of the "Origin of Species". Great work, if they happened to live 150 years ago! They should try such a dissection of modern work - then they'd be helping advance science instead of having a pointless argument about what some guy said in the 19th century.
I wonder if the Christian intelligent design crew and the Islamic creationist/holocaust denier crew know that they have so much in common?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...these studies.
Evolution represents increases in complexity and general improvements in abilities and survivability over a timescale of tens of thousands of years. Small changes in a species due to external stimuli isn't really evolution. Change does not imply evolution.
If I have a culture of viruses, and I expose them to a toxin, after several generations the viruses that I have may be resistant to this toxin. We have observed the process of (artificial) selection, not evolution.
The difference here is the time scale. Implying evolution can be observed in the lab is like looking at the temperature fluctuations throughout a week and claiming to be observing global warming.
Both capitalism and scarcity are a product of human psychology.
Deleted
I've been reading that most foreign countries do not use the word "evolution" in their biology texts at all! Can you believe it? Instead, they've been substituting words native to their own languages!!
THIS HAS TO STOP. The entire idea that a concept can be accurately represented by terms not used by the original author of a theory is dangerous, ludicrous, and dangerous. It has to be some sort of religious conspiracy!
It's a good thing we're scientists, or issues such as this might cause ordinary citizens to think we're reactionary and close-minded - just as we accuse those "religious" fanatics of being. Not that we would stereotype several hundred million people into a convenient caricature. We're scientists, after all. Our name has the word SCIENCE in it.
Mod down - this is a troll.
The op clearly said: "And yet you have the Church, still sending the same message it has always sent, since the 70's - AD 70 - that there is a way to eternal life. And it doesn't change every decade"
That doesn't say the church doesn't change it's views and opinions every decade as was commented on witch burnings, sexual relations and unforgivable sins. The OP pointed out the way to eternal life but you stepped out of bounds to smack this guy down to move your agenda, to which you clearly have every right to do, but that was anything BUT insightful.
Nope not a right-wing bible thumper just tired of seeing the bullies get the +mod when clearly way off topic.
Actually, I believe Franklin was attempting to prove that lightning was electricity in a poorly thought out experiment.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Uhm.... about 18 of those questions are totally bunk.
Name calling, blatant oversight, willful ignorance.... some other phrases I can't haven't thought of yet.
the other two... well those are lingering questions rather than "proof positive". As for creationism.... aside from one ancient, poorly translated text, it is all a "lingering question".
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
If you believe in passing down features such as eye color, skin tone or any other physical features.......
you believe in evolution.
You can mock me or whatever but that doesn't change the fact that Jesus made you. You will find someday that he did. You have a choice, to accept him as Lord and Savior or not. Yes I'm talking about the man who died 2000 years ago who every so flippantly mocks and curses. One day you will reap what you sow. For those who are pierced by the truth let this be a reminder that tomorrow is not promised, choose to repent and turn today. Blessings to you all, kevikev
>>?"Of course proving the non-existence of God is equally impossible."
Not exactly a point for God. Proving the non-existence of gruphhalumph is equally impossible too.
Which is, of course, why the onus of proof falls on the person making an assertion (eg the existence of God), rather than denying that assertion.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Religion guys loathe the "evolution" word because it reminds them of Darwin.
To really piss them off, use the term "Darwinatize" instead of "evolve".
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe they don't always use the word evolution because it is not always evolution?
t ml [Wired 2004]
Bacteria are known to send messages to each other, and we don't know the full extent of what they can tell each other yet.
"More recently, scientists have begun to understand that the importance of cell-to-cell communication goes far beyond mere head counting. Many things that bacteria do, it turns out, are orchestrated by cascades of molecular signals. One such behavior is the formation of spores that make bacteria more resistant to antibiotics." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/quorum.h
What if bacteria have genes for living in certain extreme situations (heat, vacuum, cold, radiation, human white blood cells) but those genes are currently turned off. Say one bacterium has that turned on, and it is surviving OK, it transmits that info to other bacteria that are doing poorly. But say that message has the effect of turning on the inactive gene that they needed to survive. They start transmitting protein/peptide/whatever messages too and before you know it all the suriving bacteria have turned on the needed gene. They of course pass it on to their offspring when they divide.
Is what just happened evolution? Or is it communication? Maybe the gene the bacteria needed evolved in the past, but now it is not evolution, it is rather epigenetic change brought on by messages from other bacteria.
Maybe these medical researches don't say "evolution" because they know there are other possible processes, but they don't know specifically what process is at work. In that case it is better to be vague (emerge) than to be wrong (evolve).
If microbial existence exists it is due to changes in its genome. The important scientific question relate to what specific changes have occurred and to what extent have such changes affected microbial resistance. Unless you are attempting to argue that there are other kinds of "objects" other than the well known (typically 4) purine or pyrimidine bases that constitute the "genetic alphabet" your arguments are of dubius scientific utility.
The grammar of the language you use to describe these "physical" objects is irrelevant. One could use English, Russian, or Japanese, all of which have different grammars and "objects" in this sense. However, whatever the grammar of the language you chose to make the description, the measurable correlations between a specific level of resistance that results from a specific genome will be the same.
Sophistry is an ancient artform, but its lack of value in scientirfic discussions greatly limits its usefulness. Such arguments are better suited to discussions of religion. Rather than being specific and accurate, you have managed to miss the point of the original article entirely.
Good luck in your "alternate universe".
Microcosmic? Macrocosmic? Time for you to admit you don't really know what you are talking about. And time for a moderator to mod down the GGGGP.
Dean
Thank you for the biochemistry lesson, but it is beside my point. I am not arguing that there are more bases than what are known, but rather that there are different processes of "evolution." When describing the thing from a telescopic standpoint (which is fine for non-academic blurbs as well as academic overviews), using "evolution" is fine. When describing things from a microscopic point of view, however, "evolution" is inappropriate because there is (generally) a more specific word or phrase that describes the exact process in question. I have no idea how you got from my analogy with the grammatical constructs of noun cases to biochemical bases.
A fair point. To really get a handle on the consequence of evolution one really needs knowledge of both the genetic mechanism (specifically its state and mode of self-assembly) and the nature of the selective regime (just exactly what selective mechanism has caused (or is causing) the evolution to have occurred (continue to occur if directed). Asteroid impacts, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other large scale phenomena extreme selective regimes are likely to be too infrequent and when they do occur result in nearly complete local extinct to permit much hereditable change, relative to the great many of life's events, each sometimes seemingly mundane, but occurring so repeatedly over the life of an organism that the selection is very "fine tuned". It is not surprising that Darwin was drawn to sexual selection in studying evolution, because of its uquiquity, its regularity, and its very large phenotypic effects. Those seeking to find how animals "predict" eatherquakes have, not surprisingly, been generally disappointed to discover that there is very little evidence, if any to suggest than ANY organism can actually do so.
The future of evolutionary research will continue to be directed toward understanding the repeated regularity within the genome, especially where this regularity results from genetic similarity across organisms that share a relatively close common ancestry. The HOX gene story is probably a good example of how a better understanding of molecular events associated with specific genetic configurations are related to larger phenotypic expression and hence evolution in body plan in vertebrates. However, Pauling's discovery of the difference of a single amino acid substitution in Hemoglobin is responsible for sickle-cell trait (and as subsquently shown related to malarial resistance) demonstates that a seemingly insignificant amount of genomic change (one or a few base pairs at a wobble position) can have a profound effect on the surviability of the phenotype and on evolution in humans.
If one models evolutionary change as a Markovian process, the latter makes clear that there the values of elements of transition matrices that can be extremely unstable, and that at the mappings between genotype and phenotype can be highly ill-conditioned. Nonetheless, even though much of evolution may take place "at the edge of chaos", this does not mean that the mechanisms involved are either haphazard or truly chaotic. In any event it is certain that they are not due to "intelligent design", since they are so demonstrably directed and often redirected by changes in the selective regime. This has been conclusively demonstrated in the ecent work of Peter Grant on evolution in Darwin's finches. Grant and coworkers clearly show that beak dimensions are selected from year to year, largely as a result of rainfall patterns and differential seed availability, moving back and forth in a clearly channeled directions, but without any particular stable direction (toward any particular "more intelligent design") aside from that imposed on the system by a limited number of parameters in the environment.
You hit this nail right on the head. Its just a shame that nails have more sense than the apostles of anti-evolution.
They do not to respond to reason. Thus, I always like to point out that because science does permit reality to be objectively assessed. Hence, it allows us to understand how the natural world is organized and how evolution has actually worked to produce all the life around us. Fro them to prove this to themselves, they can easily conduct an experiment. The experiment will prove to them that if God did create life on earth, then he used evolution to do it.
The experimeent is fairly simple. Let them place their right hand on a Bible and then swear that they will not bear false witness under penalty of eternal damnation to what they see during the course of the experiment. With their left hand, let them hold up a high resolution color picture of chimpanzee as they stand in front of a mirror, positioned so that they can observe both their own reflection and that in the photograph of the chimp. It is easy to use science (reason) to demonstrate that both are 99% identical at the genomic level and that all known fossil and physical evidence establishes that the common ancestor of both images in the mirror diverged between 4.5 - 7 million years ago. Now let them deny before their own God that is no similarity and let them disagree with God as to the evolutionary source of that similarity.
I like to smile when I think about the fact henceforth, they they are destined to live a life trapped by the contradictions of their own righteousness and stupidity. Although one might at first feel the inclination to feel sorry for them, it would be entirely inappropriate to extend pitty. Their's is a fate they deserve.
This is contrary to most of the god(s)/goddess based religions I am familiar with, including those that worship Abraham's god. In the Bible there are many stories of their god doing all kinds of things that were observed and could be measured had the tools existed at the time. Booming voices from the sky, open (two-way) communication, lots of interaction, cities being leveled as promised, first born children killed following discussions and instructions on how to avoid that, etc.
How people got from the good old days of gods/goddesses running around in plain sight on a daily basis to the assumption that an all-powerful entity just CANNOT be observed is a question worth asking, IMO.
Maybe we observe god everyday, we are simply incapable of noticing.
As for how we got from god of myth to god that we can't see I think the explanation is pretty simple. The mythical gods are embellishments. Maybe something real happened, maybe individuals can communicate with god, but I think the fantastic stories are supposed to be fantastic. Besides even the mythic gods rarely communicate with more than a few people. In the OT for example god talks to Abraham and Moses and Isaac and a few others who act as intermediates and spread the word to the masses. I personally don't think that the ten commandments happened Charlton Heston, or even Exodus style.
How often have mythic gods communicated to large groups of people in a way that left no doubt that god was speaking? The closest case I can think of is the Israelites following a pillar of smoke and fire, but even then it wasn't as if a voice cried out - turn left in 500 feet.
As for destruction, devastation etc. I can think of plenty of examples. The holocaust, the tsunami in Indonesia, AIDs in Africa etc. Of course there is no flaming sword, but neither was there when the walls of Jericho collapsed. Who is to say that that wasn't an earthquake while the soldiers were en route or camping out, and all the marching around the city was a dramatic detail added later?
Gold leaf is a lot simpler than electroplating things. It's also very low tech--all you need are hammers, and perhaps some lacquer to keep it from rubbing off.
I'm guessing that GP has been listening to the kook "historians" who have a lot of wild ideas that aren't very well supported by history. Like Achyra S, or one of those nuts who appear to get their "history" from the Akashic record (the "Let's learn history from crystal balls!" historical method).
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm
There is no insight here. If I sat on top of a mountain and looked around I might very well describe what I see as the "circle of earth". Circles can be flat and circles are not spheres and it is not due to a lack of terminology, there are words for sphere in Hebrew.
The bible also tells us that the earth is immovable...
Chronicles 16:30: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable."
Psalm 93:1: "Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm
Psalm 96:10: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable
Psalm 104:5: "Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken."
Isaiah 45:18: "...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast..."
None eh? Start with the immovable earth. Then explain how the sun can stand still and even move backwards, explain how stars can fall to earth (meteorites != stars), genetics altered due the proximity of peeled branches, winds stored in store houses, global flood with evidence contradicting, trees seen from all over the earth, towers to heaven, yada, yada and yada...
That is willful ignorance. The bible if full of inconsistencies and scientific fallacies.
How many scientific discoveries of the natural world have originated by a literal or *inspired* reading of the Bible?
Whooa there cowboy. Do I believe that God is as described from a bronze age viewpoint? Absolutely not! Do I believe that the creator of universe commands genocide and rape such as in...
Numbers 31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
Numbers 31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
No. To believe so would be blasphemy!
Denmark, Spain, and Norway have broadly similar arrangements, in which the monarch has fairly extensive reserve powers which they by custom only exercise on the advice of the elected government. Spain's are the most extensive, perhaps because it's the most recent of the transitions to democratic rule, but Denmark and Norway also officially give the monarch veto power.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Perhaps, it is that you haven't made yourself clear and I have misunderstood what it is you are saying. You seem to be suggesting that use of the term "evolution" is inappropriate and there is a more appropriate word to describe the process discussed in the article. I could only conclude that you were suggesting that some other mechanism was involved.
I still fail to see what specific word you would substitute for evolution to talk about changes in gene frequency that would result in a change in microbial resistance?
You keep asserting that there is a more appropriate term, but what term would it be?
I find it difficult to understand how the word you want to use is both (generally) more specific. I admit that there may in fact that there may be multiple evolutionary mechanisms that one could discuss, although ultimately there would be one genetic expression (genetic combination) of the typically four bases over the relevant region of the DNA/RNA and a spectrum of selective regimes depending upon the specific mechanisms of selection operating on the particlar combination being expressed as the phenotype. I think one would need to call it evolution and then speak of the subcomponent or subgroup of evolutionary processes that might best fit the particular circumstance. In my mind it would be inappropriate to choose a term that does not describe the general set of potential descriptors, to all of which evolution would apply. To me that was the point of the article. It demonstrated that biomedical papers were being written using general terms that were overgeneralized to the point that the use of the term was most inappropriately not appearing in discussion of the causal mechanisms at all.
Yes, one certainly could overgeneralize, but then the "telescopic view" would be to at least some degree incorrect and inaccurate and could lead the reader to misunderstand the actual processes involved, perhaps even concluding that evolution has not occurred, when in fact it has. I think that is the point the author was trying to convey. Hence, I read your comments as missing the point of the article. If I understand your current comment, it is that the word you seek is actually and adjective that could be used that provides a greater clarification and refinement of what specific type of evolutionary mechnism is being discussed (ie "saltational evolution" or "gradual evolution" etc.).
Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but I live in a state where there are active efforts to ban science from Biology classroom and, as a scientist, am very concerned over this regressive and appaling trend. The price of freedom to do science and use reason, comes at a cost of constant vigilence.
.... but to remember a bumper sticker from my youth. "Gas,Cash,Grass or Ass, nobody rides for free!" That caused me almost as much grief as the "Clean Up America, Shoot A Redneck! front plate." Both led to instances like the following scene that did really happen.
Deputy: "Religious preference?"
Me: "Agnostic"
Deputy: "Can you spell that?"
Me: "N-O-N-E"
Deputy: looks confused then glares at me with pugnacious contempt
Me: Trying to look innocent and contain a case of the snickers while my cohorts were ROTFF
Remember the great American Red States of the Midwest and South can be a dangerous place for a free mind! Sorry gotta be an AC on this one, I am getting a little bit smarter these days.
AC
oh Papa I am so 'shamed.....
"The guy who's views this AC is pushing is a famous Islamic creationist and Holocaust denier."
Sounds only as if he is simply an idiot as far as I can tell.