[ExI] The difference between Discovery and Design.

natasha at natasha.cc natasha at natasha.cc
Wed Jul 27 22:10:21 UTC 2011



   Quoting spike <spike66 at att.net>:

> >natasha at natasha.cc
>>> Quoting spike spike66 at att.net[1]:
>>> . Darwin is god.

>> .And what about Mendel?

> I am a big fan of Mendel too.  {8-]

>> .Bty, if evolution as progress suggests a self-directed evolution, then
> where do you place Darwin. 

   > It would take me a while to list all the reasons why I think so highly of
> Darwin, but I will just touch on a couple points.  We have science
> popularizers who are not professional scientists themselves, but who are
> dedicated enough to learn and understand the state of the art in some
> science, then explain it to the rest of us.  Good examples would be Ed
> Regis,

   Not a good example. Regis does not always peform objective research  
and may have, at least once or twice, sensationalized evidence and/or  
reported inaccurately.

   >James Gleick, our own Damien Broderick.  There are top shelf
> scientists who cannot write their way out of a wet paper sack, such as,
> Murray Gell Mann for instance and plenty of others.  But in this short life,
> we are given a few soaring talents who are both top scientists and excellent
> writers: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, for instance, but Darwin was the best of
> the best.

   Definitely Sagan. (And of course Broderick! :-))

   I still prefer Aristotle, regardless of the teeth comment that also  
the comment that women's brains weigh less than men so they are not as  
brainy as men, and regardless of the fact that he was a different type  
of researcher/investigator than science. And speaking of science,  
let's not make scientists gods for goodness sakes.  That is a throw  
back to human-centric, male dominated science, which may be the  
real meaningful thing that postmodernism spoke out against.



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