Posted on 06/23/2007 12:21:46 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Pro-Darwin Biology Professor Laments Academia's "Intolerance" and Supports Teaching Intelligent Design
Charles Darwin famously said, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." According to a recent article by J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, modern Neo-Darwinists are failing to heed Darwin's advice. (We blogged about a similar article by Turner in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, 2007.) Turner is up front with his skepticism of intelligent design (ID), which will hopefully allow his criticisms to strike a chord with other Darwinists.
Turner starts by observing that the real threat to education today is not ID itself, but the attitude of scientists towards ID: "Unlike most of my colleagues, however, I don't see ID as a threat to biology, public education or the ideals of the republic. To the contrary, what worries me more is the way that many of my colleagues have responded to the challenge." He describes the "modern academy" as "a tedious intellectual monoculture where conformity and not contention is the norm." Turner explains that the "[r]eflexive hostility to ID is largely cut from that cloth: some ID critics are not so much worried about a hurtful climate as they are about a climate in which people are free to disagree with them." He then recounts and laments the hostility faced by Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian:
It would be comforting if one could dismiss such incidents as the actions of a misguided few. But the intolerance that gave rise to the Sternberg debacle is all too common: you can see it in its unfiltered glory by taking a look at Web sites like pandasthumb.org or recursed.blogspot.com [Jeffry Shallit's blog] and following a few of the threads on ID. The attitudes on display there, which at the extreme verge on antireligious hysteria, can hardly be squared with the relatively innocuous (even if wrong-headed) ideas that sit at ID's core.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner on the Kitzmiller v. Dover Case
Turner sees the Kitzmiller v. Dover case as the dangerous real-world expression of the intolerance common in the academy: "My blood chills ... when these essentially harmless hypocrisies are joined with the all-American tradition of litigiousness, for it is in the hand of courts and lawyers that real damage to cherished academic ideas is likely to be done." He laments the fact that "courts are where many of my colleagues seem determined to go with the ID issue” and predicts, “I believe we will ultimately come to regret this."
Turner justifies his reasonable foresight by explaining that Kitzmiller only provided a pyrrhic victory for the pro-Darwin lobby:
Although there was general jubilation at the ruling, I think the joy will be short-lived, for we have affirmed the principle that a federal judge, not scientists or teachers, can dictate what is and what is not science, and what may or may not be taught in the classroom. Forgive me if I do not feel more free.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner on Education
Turner explains, quite accurately, that ID remains popular not because of some vast conspiracy or religious fanaticism, but because it deals with an evidentiary fact that resonates with many people, and Darwinian scientists do not respond to ID's arguments effectively:
[I]ntelligent design … is one of multiple emerging critiques of materialism in science and evolution. Unfortunately, many scientists fail to see this, preferring the gross caricature that ID is simply "stealth creationism." But this strategy fails to meet the challenge. Rather than simply lament that so many people take ID seriously, scientists would do better to ask why so many take it seriously. The answer would be hard for us to bear: ID is not popular because the stupid or ignorant like it, but because neo-Darwinism's principled banishment of purpose seems less defensible each passing day.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner asks, “What, then, is the harm in allowing teachers to deal with the subject as each sees fit?” ID can't be taught, he explains, because most scientists believe that "normal standards of tolerance and academic freedom should not apply in the case of ID." He says that the mere suggestion that ID could be taught brings out "all manner of evasions and prevarications that are quite out of character for otherwise balanced, intelligent and reasonable people."
As we noted earlier, hopefully Turner’s criticisms will strike a chord with Darwinists who might otherwise close their ears to the argument for academic freedom for ID-proponents. Given the intolerance towards ID-sympathy that Turner describes, let us also hope that the chord is heard but the strummer is not harmed.
Tacticalogic asks, "What is 'real' time?"
LOL! Einstein -- the father of spacetime -- defined time as "that which we measure with clocks." He's pointing to what you're pointing to, A-G: That time is a "measurement" in science and, as such, does not represent the underlying "real" situation. Science "abstracts" from Nature; but Nature generally is unaffected by such abstractions.
Thanks ever so much for your excellent essay/post!
Yes, thinking is sequential. Consciousness cannot be conflated with thinking.
Okay, so the system clock doesn’t measure “real” time. For that, you need a clock.
Okay, so it isn't about thinking anymore, now it's about "consciousness".
You want to speak about "tomorrow" -- which kinda misses my point. Which is: Today's thought can be the progenitor of the future. On the basis of our present thoughts, which draw upon our past thoughts and experiences, we are inclined to act. And that act "may seal our doom" at some future time. We are not speaking of the tic-toc of a clock, as measuring instrument, here....
As against the "brain mechanists" out there, I prefer William James:
...the whole feeling of reality, the whole string and excitement of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago. This appearance, which makes life and history tingle with such a tragic zest, may not be an illusion. As we grant to the advocate of the mechanical theory that it may be one, so he must grant to us that it may not. And the result is two conceptions of possibility face to face with no facts definitely enough known to stand as an arbiter between them. [italics in the original.]
I should hope not.
Excellent point, Alamo-Girl! Thank you so very much for making it!
The possibility of AI:
Impossible in a device since nothing is going on inside. If the device is built of organic components, then it already has intelligence.
The discussion earlier as to what analogy to the nervous system might be appropriate usually comes down to ‘digital computer.’ It might as well be weaving loom. The more appropriate model remains ‘radio.’
When did that happen?
I agree with MHGinTN's interpretation that we mortals are bound to a brane (or membrane) moving through space/time: my post 538 on another thread.
And whereas our physical sensory perceptions are past - the mind or consciousness or soul (i.e. software in the motherboard metaphor we've been using) is not.
So while we are yet in the flesh, bound to the brane, moving through space/time, we may also be affecting the whole, i.e. the hypercube - and conversely, the whole may be affecting our brane.
You have a way with words! I seldom refer to the hypercube because so few are familiar with it in the circles I travel.
There are two synthetic a priori concepts. Space is seen as external and is one, two, three, or any number of dimensions depending on the level of your mathematical imagination. Time is internal. Running time and space together is only for the analogy of relativity, and that time and that space are not the two synthetic a priori concepts but analytic a posteriori concepts, not to be confused at the peril of collapse of your metaphysics.
Hi Coyoteman!
That wasn't "metaphysics." That was William James, the great American psychologist and medical doctor who for most of his professional life was a professor and researcher at Harvard. In 1982, the Harvard Board of Trustees reissued his magisterial Principles of Psychology under its own copyright. The book seems no longer in print; I got my copy "on the aftermarket."
Anyhoot, there are two endorsements on the cover of this edition which I'd like to share with you.
The first is from the journal, Psychology Today:
William James' Principles of Psychology has just been reissued in a triumphal new edition. Why reread a 1,300-page book that was written in the 19th century? Because it remains the single greatest work in American psychology.Just think of it -- 1,300 pages devoted to the human mind! Still, that seems far from excessive....
The second cover blurb is from Jacques Barzun:
The Principles of Psychology is an American masterpiece which ... ought to be read from beginning to end at least once by every person professing to be educated. It is a masterpiece in the classic and total sense -- no need of a descriptive or limiting word before or after: not "of observation," or "of prose wrting," not more "scientific" than "humanistic." One can point to these and other merits if one is so minded, but the fused substance defies reduction to a list of epithets. No matter how many unexpected qualities are found in it -- wit, pathos, imaginative understanding, polemical skill, moral passion, cosmic vision, and sheer learning -- the work remains always greater than their sum.Anyhoot, James in this text is scrupulous in drawing the line between science and metaphysics. In this work, his analysis eschews the latter.
Also anyhoot, if you want to "pour cold water" on William James, you've got a ton of homework to do first. Start by reading his magnificent book.
Thank you ever so much, dear YHAOS, for sharing your perceptive and penetrating observations on this issue! What a beautiful essay/post! (Need I mention that I agree with your observations?)
Why would I wade through 54+ pages of what looks like worthless apologetics? I'll only spend time reading something if comes from a reputable source, and I see no case that this is such. A brief skim of the source didn't reveal anything resembling science. Are there any important parts one can skip to? You might want to try real physics books - much more real information.
Again, I didn't say that it doesn't exist.
All right then, what is it, and how do you determine it? Again, a heliocentric model is the only inertial system containing the earth, sun and planets. Nothing you have stated here has refuted that simple fact. Nothing. (Not unless you 'believe' in an earth-centered universe with 'real' Coriolis and other forces that Just So Happen to be EXACTLY identical to the forces exhibited in the reference frame of ANY rotating body!!) It's fun to watch you dodge that point and contort the truth to fit a long-discredited worldview, but hey, it's your time!
You do realize that for earth-orbiting satellites, the world does use a geocentric system.
Right. You do realize that moon-orbiting satellites use a moon-centered coordinate system. Does that mean that the moon-centered coordinate system is the "absolute truth" coordinate system? Hardly. Both an earth-centered and moon-centered system become useless as one considers larger scales.
It works great and shows that your heliocentric coordinate system is not uniquely utilitarian. The only time it is used is for interplanetary trajectories and that is for convenience only. As I said earlier, convenience is not reality.
Then, the question still stands, which you keep dodging: How does one determine the "Real" coordinate system? If that question can't be answered, the jury has no option but to include that there's no reason to believe such a thing exists. (Funny how the indeterminable and non-existent resemble one another so well.) Do you have another reason to suggest such a thing exists? Have at it!
Unless you think earth orbital mechanics (or interplanetary orbital mechanics for that matter) uses the assumed universe expansion plus the assumed speed of the Milky Way throught the universe, plus the assumed speed of the galactic arm we are in, plus the assumed speed of the sun through that arm, plus the assumed speed of the earth around the sun... well you get the idea.
No, but celestial mechanics on the scale of the galaxy certainly accounts for these things. At that point a heliocentric system is worthless, too - you get the idea.
But then again, probably not.
I have a pretty decent grasp of celestial mechanics. Do you? How about sharing the secret of the "real" coordinate system you claim exists? Or does it only exist in "Gourmet Dan Space"™?
Yes, indeed. His work still holds up and is in the direct line of development of modern psychology.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.