Posted on 08/15/2005 7:01:06 PM PDT by gobucks
Project begins amid arguing over teaching evolution. Harvard University is launching a broad initiative to discover how life began, joining an ambitious scientific assault on age-old questions that are central to the debate over the theory of evolution.
The Harvard project, which is likely to start with about $1 million annually from the university, will bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets.
Known as the "Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative," the project is still in its early stages, and fundraising has not begun, the scientists said.
But the university has promised the researchers several years of seed money and has asked the team to make much grander plans, including new faculty and a collection of multimillion-dollar facilities.
The initiative begins amid increasing controversy over the teaching of evolution, prompted by proponents of "intelligent design," who argue that even the most modest cell is too complex, too finely tuned, to have come about without unseen intelligence.
President Bush recently said intelligent design should be discussed in schools, along with evolution. Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution in the Origin of Species, scientists cannot explain how the process began.
Now, encouraged by a confluence of scientific advances — such as the discovery of water on Mars and an increased understanding of the chemistry of early Earth — the Harvard scientists hope to help change that.
"We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity of living systems," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. But "my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."
The theory of evolution has been both fascinating and religiously charged since its very beginnings, because it speaks directly to the place of people in the natural order. In another era, the idea that humans are the close cousins of apes was seen as preposterous.
Today's research of origins focuses on questions that seem as strange as the study of "ape men" once did: How can life arise from nonlife? How easy is it for this to happen? And does the universe teem with life, or is Earth a solitary island?
At Harvard, the origins of life initiative is part of a dramatic rethinking of how to conduct scientific research.
Many of science's most interesting questions are emerging in the boundaries between traditional disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology, yet universities are largely organized by those disciplines. Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, is a proponent of the view that universities must develop new structures to encourage interdisciplinary science. And new science laboratories based on this are at the center of the plans for a sprawling new campus.
The Harvard origins initiative is on a short list of projects being considered for this campus, along with the widely discussed Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which aspires to bring together biologists, chemists, doctors, and others.
I know more about the the subject than you think. Your assumption to the contrary shows your prejudice that anyone who does not share your naturalistic conclusions must be ignorant.
Bull puckey you can't. What do you think the genome projects are all about? They solidified the evolutionary relationships first determined through morphology.
The genome project can only tell you what the genes do today. It cannot tell you how they became so arranged.
Morphology only show similarity in design, not how that similarity came about. I can use the same technique to discuss car design but no one would argue that is was proof of natural evolution in the auto industry.
I stand by my statement that natural evolution is untestable until you can demonstrate a test that will repoduce the creation of a new species.
And, as for your "science != natural science" crapola, science follows the scientific method.
But natural evolution does not follow the scientific method because it is untestable and unrepeatable.
Praying for Divine revelation , regardless of whether or not it actually imparts knowledge, is not science, natural or not.
But science = knowledge. The natural sciences err when they claim that they are the only true science.
Problem with this is that you (not the folks at Harvard) irretrievably set science against religion. After all any scientific research "presupposes that a naturalistic explanation can be found." If this is anti-God then so is science in it's very nature.
You are affirming the core logic (even if rejecting the conclusions) of hard-core scientific atheism: that God is implicitly eliminated from any phenomena with a natural explanation. You are thereby affirming a doctrine that is denied repeatedly by the Bible, which asserts that God commands and governs nature even in it's normal and mundane aspects.
You of course are trying to be clever and show how religious belief is absurd. You are instead showing your own prejudice. The natural sciences are not the sum total of human knowledge. While it cannot bring you to the Christian revelation, human reason (you do believe in reason, don't you?) can bring you to certain truths about God. Additionally, reason can be used to verify the claims of Christian revelation. Contrary to what you might think, faith does not equal fideism. Christian faith is compatible with reason.
Uhhh...this is a fatuous statement. If I have a revelation that I can fly, I may become fatally aware of the conflicts with science. And if I have a revelation that a guy with a long beard on a throne got bored one week long ago and created the universe, it don't make it true...
Nor burden me with the claim of other alleged revelations. That fact that some money has been proven to be counterfeited does not invalidate money.
How about the revelation that the universe was created in 7 days? Not a shred of supporting evidence after 2000 years...
Any science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C. Clarke.
Just because YOU or other scientists think it's a "magical" step does not necessarily make it so.
How about the revelation that the earth was created in 7 days? Not a shred of supporting evidence after 2000 years...
It's not "assuming the conclusion", it's a working assumption to facilitate investigation - if you don't assume there's a material cause for material events, then there's no point in looking, because science is not equipped to investigate the nonmaterial. If it turns out that no material cause can be found, so be it, but if you don't start with that assumption, you can't start looking at all. As a matter of science, of course - theological or philosophical investigations are another matter entirely.
If observations can be made, how does a supernatural explanation fall outside the realm of the scientific method?
In other words, if a supernatual explanation leaves an observable footprint, then it can be tested via the scientific method.
Not necessarily. True enough that non-natural causes currently are considered outside the possible limits of scientific examination (and have been since long before Darwin). IOW they violate the "nature of science". However the nature of science is subject to change.
For instance it was once a presumption of science that force could only be transmitted by physical contact between particles of matter. Any force that might have been proposed to act a distance or propagate through space would be considered "occult" and unscientific (or "unphilosophical" as they would have said back then). Indeed when Isaac Newton proposed a force of gravitation with exactly such qualities it was, initially, widely rejected as an "occult" force.
The thing was, though, that Newton's law of gravity actually worked, and was extremely useful in furthering scientific research. The lesson here is that a good (objectively useful) theory or law will never be rejected because it violates the "nature of science." Instead our understanding of the "nature of science" will be modified or expanded to accommodate the successful theory.
Now I can't imagine how a scientific theory incorporating supernatural forces could possibly work, nor have I ever known anyone else to describe how it might. Maybe in can work, somehow, but someone needs to SHOW us how it would work. IOW what is needed is a genuinely useful scientific theory that incorporates non-natural causes. Only with something like that in hand can you enter a successful plea for a fundamental change in the understanding of science.
Or you can simply demand that the entire scientific community radically modify it's understanding of science and it's boundaries without offering any reason they should do so. You can do that till you're blue in the face and fall over.
Flawed analogy. DNA is an information system that is being replicated. The accurate comparison would be computer software, which most certainly can propagate itself (they're called worms and viruses).
Then prove it by not uttering such stupid comments.
The genome project can only tell you what the genes do today. It cannot tell you how they became so arranged.
Bull Puckey again. And you said you knew about this subject. Genes contain fossilized retroviral insertions. What this means is that, sometime in the past, a virus got its genetic material tangled up in a gene at a particular location. To make a long story short, critters with the same insertion will be related (the odds of it happening exactly the same way twice are astronomical). Using these retroviral insertions, researchers have been able to clarify some aspects of the tree of life and to confirm others.
Now, what were you saying about "knowing more about this subject than I think?"
fossilized = fossil. D'oh!
LOL. You hold to much reverence in what comes out of modern day universities.
The problem is that the observations used to test a theory must be compared against valid deductions from the theory. IOW we're saying something to the effect of, "if this theory is true then it follows that certain facts A, B and C should be observed to obtain, and other facts X, Y and Z would be prohibited from occuring."
Once you have a supernatural element as a causal factor in a theory it would be impossible to deduce anything from the theory because by it's very natural the supernatural cause can effect any chosen factual result whatsoever.
It's also important to recognize that scientific theories can never be tested in isolation. They can only be tested in the context of other theories, assumptions and laws. Even in making the simplest observation with a microscope I assume the laws of optics (but many other things besides). One of the most important things assumed in any test is that all well confirmed scientific laws apply, especially the laws of physics and chemistry. In short a theory or a valid test of a theory can not entail that anything "impossible" occur. Yet is in the very nature of a supernatural force that it can effect the naturally impossible. Suddenly then our theory is being tested in effective isolation from the background laws of physics and chemsitry. It's difficult enough to test theories as is, but when you obviate these severe constraints it's effectively impossible.
Hello? If something is supernatural, it isn't constrained to natural laws. Are you not thinking??? It doesn't matter at all what the conclusion is.
"In other words, if a supernatual explanation leaves an observable footprint, then it can be tested via the scientific method."
Total BS. You don't have a clue what science even is. You can't apply science when natural laws are indefinite.
Like rebellious little children doing things their way.
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