Jihad needs scientists
in [Design]
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From: John Larkin on 23 Oct 2006 15:15 On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:42:53 -0500, unsettled <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> wrote: >John Larkin wrote: > >> On Mon, 23 Oct 06 10:55:36 GMT, lparker(a)emory.edu (Lloyd Parker) >> wrote: >> >> >>>In article <8t5nj29md56ugu8pm4epmitj8tgp66v2of(a)4ax.com>, >>> John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >>> >>>>On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:21:12 +0100, "T Wake" >>>><usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>>>>Saying "I believe in evolution" is a valid sentence. >>>>>> >>>>>>No, it is not valid within this context. You do know that >>>>>>the Creed starts out with "I believe...". >>>>> >>>>>It is still valid. I honestly believe in Newtonian Gravity being the best >>>>>description of gravity in the domain in which it applies. This is not >>>>>something which can be "known" as tomorrow some one may come up with a >>>>>better description. >>>>> >>>>>Does this open the floodgates for the Religious Right to send me to hell? >>>> >>>>Can you cite any modern case of the Religious Right denying the >>>>accuracy of Newton's law of gravitation? >>> >>> >>>Well, there was an Onion story... >>> >>> >>>>Strawman indeed. Since the >>>>time of Galileo's house arrest, the western churches have >>>>progressively conceded to science the domain of physical reality. I've >>>>read, and believe, the argument that Christianity is in fact >>>>pro-science, and Islam is not, which is why the West is so far ahead >>>>in technology. The Irish monks kept the wisdom of the Greeks safe >>>>through the dark ages, and the Jesuits were and are great contributors >>>>to math and science. >>>> >>> >>>So your rejection of evolution makes you more Islam than Christian? >> >> >> I don't reject it. I have a long history in s.e.d. of arguing that >> evolution and the operations of DNA will turn out to be far more >> complex than Darwin or the neo-Darwinists ever imagined. The dispute >> is that I believe in evolution more than most other people do. As >> such, evolution is still very poorly understood, hence not very well >> developed science. > >The same statement can be made with great validity about any >of the sciences. Most of the other sciences produce theories that work quantitatively to some goodly number of decimal points, and can be tested experimentally, and that have difficulty quantitatively explaining only extreme situations. Evolution is essentially qualitative, and only connects the dimly-understood functionality of DNA to evolution in a fuzzy, descriptive sort of way. There's all sorts of interesting stuff. Some people are born with six fully functional fingers on each hand. So "finger" must be some sort of parameterized macro, and "mirror image" must be an operation, and there must be some sort of installation crew that hooks everything up so that it all works. Aircraft parts were classicly identified by drawing number and dash number. If a part were, say, 123456-1A (the basic part defined by drawing 123456 rev A), it was automatically assumed that 123456-2A was its mirror image. John
From: John Larkin on 23 Oct 2006 15:20 On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:18:06 +0100, "T Wake" <usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: > >"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message >news:a4ioj2hb7thtg4gl99sh7mas1fnmddbt6i(a)4ax.com... >> On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:27:01 +0100, Eeyore >> <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>>unsettled wrote: >>> >>>> T Wake wrote: >>>> > >>>> > IT and computers are a science field. >>>> >>>> Only as a misnomer. >>> >>>Since when was electronics not a field of science ? >>> >>>Graham >>> >> >> Electronics is a technology. Electrical engineers build things, they >> don't research the workings of nature. Some academic EEs pretend to be >> scientists. >> >> Almost all the sciences use electronics to manage, measure, and record >> experiments. It's remarkable how little science can now be done >> without electronics, the exception being theoretical work, but even >> that is tested and validated - or not - with electronics. Electronics >> has become an indispensable tool of science, like mathematics. >> Strange. > >Not strange. Separating them is (IMHO) strange. Electronics is a practical >implementation of science. Why force them into different categories? > What's strange is how pervasive it is. Hardly any hard science research can be done without a bunch of electronics instrumentation. We have almost no other ways to accurately measure and record physical phenomena. Any physics, chemistry, or even biology lab is usually dominated with electronic gear, optimistically all calibrated, connected, and being used properly. I'm not complaining. John
From: lucasea on 23 Oct 2006 15:31 "John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message news:vb4qj29r3tpr4ctnhbffuumsdgpj704mf8(a)4ax.com... > On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:42:53 -0500, unsettled <unsettled(a)nonsense.com> > wrote: > >>John Larkin wrote: >> >>> On Mon, 23 Oct 06 10:55:36 GMT, lparker(a)emory.edu (Lloyd Parker) >>> wrote: >>> >>> >>>>In article <8t5nj29md56ugu8pm4epmitj8tgp66v2of(a)4ax.com>, >>>> John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>>On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:21:12 +0100, "T Wake" >>>>><usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>>>>Saying "I believe in evolution" is a valid sentence. >>>>>>> >>>>>>>No, it is not valid within this context. You do know that >>>>>>>the Creed starts out with "I believe...". >>>>>> >>>>>>It is still valid. I honestly believe in Newtonian Gravity being the >>>>>>best >>>>>>description of gravity in the domain in which it applies. This is not >>>>>>something which can be "known" as tomorrow some one may come up with a >>>>>>better description. >>>>>> >>>>>>Does this open the floodgates for the Religious Right to send me to >>>>>>hell? >>>>> >>>>>Can you cite any modern case of the Religious Right denying the >>>>>accuracy of Newton's law of gravitation? >>>> >>>> >>>>Well, there was an Onion story... >>>> >>>> >>>>>Strawman indeed. Since the >>>>>time of Galileo's house arrest, the western churches have >>>>>progressively conceded to science the domain of physical reality. I've >>>>>read, and believe, the argument that Christianity is in fact >>>>>pro-science, and Islam is not, which is why the West is so far ahead >>>>>in technology. The Irish monks kept the wisdom of the Greeks safe >>>>>through the dark ages, and the Jesuits were and are great contributors >>>>>to math and science. >>>>> >>>> >>>>So your rejection of evolution makes you more Islam than Christian? >>> >>> >>> I don't reject it. I have a long history in s.e.d. of arguing that >>> evolution and the operations of DNA will turn out to be far more >>> complex than Darwin or the neo-Darwinists ever imagined. The dispute >>> is that I believe in evolution more than most other people do. As >>> such, evolution is still very poorly understood, hence not very well >>> developed science. >> >>The same statement can be made with great validity about any >>of the sciences. > > Most of the other sciences produce theories that work quantitatively > to some goodly number of decimal points, and can be tested > experimentally, and that have difficulty quantitatively explaining > only extreme situations. Evolution is essentially qualitative, and > only connects the dimly-understood functionality of DNA to evolution > in a fuzzy, descriptive sort of way. You're applying standards from one science (physics) to another science (biology) in a way in which it simply doesn't apply. Each science has to have its own standards of what constitutes a good theory, since each science is subject to different limits on the amount and type of hypothesis testing is possible. I would argue that, just because by definition we cannot run a paleontological experiment, doesn't mean that theories of paleontology are necessarily any less useful or complete *in their field* than the theoretical physics. > There's all sorts of interesting stuff. Some people are born with six > fully functional fingers on each hand. So "finger" must be some sort > of parameterized macro, and "mirror image" must be an operation, and > there must be some sort of installation crew that hooks everything up > so that it all works. Yes, but those things are just the details of how it gets done--the mechanism, in chemist-speak. Similarly, chemists generally don't need to understand the physical underpinnings of everything that they do, and to my knowledge, nobody has actually ever solved the time-dependent macroscopic Schroedinger equation for a reaction. Nevertheless, I don't think anybody would seriously say that our understanding of organic chemistry isn't pretty complete (as far as it goes), or that organic chemistry is a "not very well developed science." The fact is that the general underpinnings of evolution are extremely well understood (as far as they go), and have stood the test of a huge amount of archaeological and paleontological data. The rest is just the details of how biology controls phenotype, and those are being filled in. Eric Lucas
From: lucasea on 23 Oct 2006 15:36 "John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message news:e75qj2h3p4vlor2q6425thuf5t0d1h46os(a)4ax.com... > > On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:18:06 +0100, "T Wake" > <usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: > >>"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in >>message >>news:a4ioj2hb7thtg4gl99sh7mas1fnmddbt6i(a)4ax.com... >> >>> Almost all the sciences use electronics to manage, measure, and record >>> experiments. It's remarkable how little science can now be done >>> without electronics, the exception being theoretical work, but even >>> that is tested and validated - or not - with electronics. Electronics >>> has become an indispensable tool of science, like mathematics. >>> Strange. >> >>Not strange. Separating them is (IMHO) strange. Electronics is a practical >>implementation of science. Why force them into different categories? > > What's strange is how pervasive it is. Why? We've been in a situation for almost 60 years, that electronics can do many things much faster and more accurately/precisely than humans. Beyond this, we've gotten to the place that we're interested in measuring things that would be inaccessible to the un-electronic lab. It would only be strange, as TWake points out, if we *didn't* rely on electronics to help us measure thing almost everything in science. Eric Lucas
From: T Wake on 23 Oct 2006 15:37
"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message news:e75qj2h3p4vlor2q6425thuf5t0d1h46os(a)4ax.com... > On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:18:06 +0100, "T Wake" > <usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: > >> >>"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in >>message >>news:a4ioj2hb7thtg4gl99sh7mas1fnmddbt6i(a)4ax.com... >>> On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:27:01 +0100, Eeyore >>> <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>>unsettled wrote: >>>> >>>>> T Wake wrote: >>>>> > >>>>> > IT and computers are a science field. >>>>> >>>>> Only as a misnomer. >>>> >>>>Since when was electronics not a field of science ? >>>> >>>>Graham >>>> >>> >>> Electronics is a technology. Electrical engineers build things, they >>> don't research the workings of nature. Some academic EEs pretend to be >>> scientists. >>> >>> Almost all the sciences use electronics to manage, measure, and record >>> experiments. It's remarkable how little science can now be done >>> without electronics, the exception being theoretical work, but even >>> that is tested and validated - or not - with electronics. Electronics >>> has become an indispensable tool of science, like mathematics. >>> Strange. >> >>Not strange. Separating them is (IMHO) strange. Electronics is a practical >>implementation of science. Why force them into different categories? >> > > What's strange is how pervasive it is. Hardly any hard science > research can be done without a bunch of electronics instrumentation. > We have almost no other ways to accurately measure and record physical > phenomena. Any physics, chemistry, or even biology lab is usually > dominated with electronic gear, optimistically all calibrated, > connected, and being used properly. Yes, and of course the gear and it's calibration relies on the science in the first place. It is all entangled. |