Re: So what are you called? Darwinists? Evolutionists? Neo-Darwinists?

r norman wrote:

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:21:10 GMT, John Harshman
<jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


r norman wrote:


On 12 Jun 2006 15:39:23 -0700, "NITRO" <NITRO777@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Jim wrote:



What do you call people who support the theory of gravity? What do you call
people who support atomic theory?

Obviously there is no need to have a term for such adherents, those
theories aren't debated.

Who says the theory of evolution is debated? By scientists, that is.
NITRO is wrong about gravity not being debated. Velikovskians reject
gravity altogether, and think it's just an electromagnetic effect. Of
course they're crackpots, and NITRO didn't mean to include debate by
crackpots, right? Oh.


If they were they would certainly have terms.
Besides, those theories fall under physics, and evolution falls under
so many different disciplines.

There are flat-earthers but there are no round-earthers. That is the
proper parallel with creationists -- people who utterly reject science
and reason.

The reason evolution falls under so many disciplines -- cosmology and
astronomy and physics (using "evolution" in a very broad sense),
geology, geography, environmental science, and every aspect of biology
from molecular biology and biochemistry, cell biology, organismal
biology, to ecology (each of which is commonly a separate "discipline"
with its own university department) because evolution is confirmed by
so many different types of evidence. There is only one scientific
discipline that supports a theory of gravity and that one doesn't do
it very well at all.

I dunno. If you're talking about a meaning of "evolution" that's found
both in cosmology and biology, then it doesn't mean anything more than
"things change". If you're talking about what we usually mean by
"evolution", i.e. biological evolution, then I don't think cosmology has
anything to do with it, and astronomy very little -- lobbing the
occasional dinosaur-killer, pushing tides on us, etc. Physics and
chemistry set conditions. Geology provides a bit of data. But evolution
is really a subdiscipline of biology (which is why we call it
evolutionary biology). Now within biology, we draw from all the fields
there are, because you know what Dobzhansky said.


So I exaggerate a bit -- it's for a good cause!

The cosmology is needed to establish a proper age of the earth, the
solar system, and the earth.

And don't forget the earth. I don't think there's actually any cosmology
involved in the age of the earth. And I don't think the age of the
universe matters to evolution.

That age is necessary to establish the
proper historic sequence of events underlying true biological
evolution.

More seriously, it is part of my strategy to tie evolution intimately
to many aspects of many sciences, not to separate and isolate it as so
many people here do. People are far too willing to abandon evolution
teaching in our schools, but would not be so quick to abandon science
teaching in general. It is not in our interest to insist that the
concept of evolution is isolated as a subdivision of biological
sciences.

Perhaps not. But isn't it true? Are you suggesting that we lie for
tactical advantage? Lying for Darwin, as it were?

All the other sciences contribute to our understanding of biology, but
the theory of evolution is a biological theory, and that's all it is.
The only significant intersection with other sciences is really in
geology, because paleontologists need a good dose of it to understand
their subject.

.

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