Re: Fastest living thing

"Uriel" <uriel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:h_nTk.88499$XB4.61633@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
"Uriel" <uriel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6w2Tk.65324$rD2.30012@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John Harshman wrote:
Uriel wrote:
rnorman wrote:
OK, this is more than two years old, now, but I just learned about
it. The fastest living thing recorded, measured, and published in
the scientific literature is a tree! The White Mulberry, Morus
alba, can release pollen at greater than Mach 0.5.

High-speed pollen release in the white mulberry tree, Morus
alba L Philip E. Taylor , Gwyneth Card, James House, Michael H.
Dickinson and Richard C. Flagan
Sexual Plant Reproduction 19(1):19-24 March, 2006
http://www.springerlink.com/content/75144776908t3624/

"What has God wrought?"

THAT Was the question as Morse sends the first electric telegraph
message between Baltimore and Washington, D.C..

Science remembers God with the telegraph. And so do you it seems.
Because only God can make a tree that can release pollen at
greater than Mach 0.5. Excellent post!


I'm reminded of the famous Sidney Harris cartoon in which two
scientists stand in front of a blackboard on which is written a
hugely complex mathematical proof, in the middle of which is written
"and then a miracle happens". One scientist says to the other, "I
think you should be more explicit here in step 2."

You need to make some kind of connection between mach .5 pollen and
creationism, because the rest of us don't see it.

http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php

I'm sorry if you are THAT dumb <G>

I suspect that the above response/evasion is somewhat sincere, if
ill-mannered. There are two kinds of people in the world. People
who respond to further evidence that the natural universe is
marvelous by becoming even deeper in awe of the forces shaping
the universe... And people who don't.

Both Uriel and Richard Dawkins seem to be people in the first
category, though they disagree as to the nature of the forces
that merit awe. I, however, am one of the second kind of people.
My response to hearing that there is a tree producing half-Mach
pollen is to wonder why either God OR Natural Selection would
have WANTED pollen to move that fast.

This is a thought that surly merits praise. You are to be commended for
thinking in such a clear manor.Not many do these days.

I for one happen to believe that the earth and all of the complexity working
in harmony on the earth is not a random event. I too would like to
understand why that pollen is moving at mach .5.

The only thing that could explain natural selection, if natural selection
does indeed happen, would be a creator.

Hmmm. I have to disagree. Natural selection happens pretty much
automatically if you have living things that reproduce with some
variation in the heritability. Now, if you are claiming that you need
a creator to get the first living thing - well, I still disagree, but I can
respect your position. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the
DNA double helix and an evangelical atheist, said something like
"There are so may difficulties standing in the way of a natural
origin of life that an honest man would have to admit that it would
almost take a miracle." The key word there is 'almost", I think.

A creator that we have had a mere
few hundred years of serious scientific inquiry to explain. So if this
creator is indeed endless with no beginning and no end (as we are told),
then we simply have not amassed sufficient knowledge to explain anything so
far. How can we claim to explain events in an endless time frame in a few
hundred years? So we guess. And there is nothing wrong with guessing. Until
the guesses are presented as fact. Then there is a problem. Because true
science is not in the guessing business.

The reason why I posted Morse's first electric telegraph message between
Baltimore and Washington, D.C. was to illustrate that science use to have a
more humble approach to what it was discovering. Science had a genuine
interest in furthering mankind and understanding how things have come about.
Like you, they wanted to understand why that pollen was moving at mach .5.
....And I am sure that legitimate science wants the same today.

But we no longer see this humble attitude within some disciplines of science
today. Perhaps because they are not really science but theory hiding behind
the work of real science. That is what evolution is imho.

Evolution is arrogant with it's findings. And evolution's findings are
nothing more then guess work much of the time.

Richard Norman posted an answer to half of my question. The part
about why NS would 'want' pollen to move that fast. It involved the
need to get the pollen far enough out from the tree so that the tree's
wind-shadow is ineffective.

I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't attempt to answer the second
half - the part about God's motives. But then, if you had, you would
have been attacked by all sides for arrogance - claiming to understand
the Mind of the Deity. Someone might even have discribed your
answer as 'guesswork'.

I suppose that you could call rnorman's answer guesswork too. I
suppose that it is. There is a bit of guesswork in every 'explanation'
of the adaptive significance of any feature of living organisms. Gould
wrote a (slightly overwrought) attack on 'adaptationism' and called
such guesswork "just-so stories". Some just-so stories are better
than others - I think rnorman's story is a pretty good one, but you
are right that it is just a guess.

But there is a whole lot of the evolutionary account that is much
more than inspired guessing. That men are closely related by
descent to the other apes; that we are less closely related to
our fellow mammals; that the placental mammals share a common
ancestor somewhere back more than 50 million years ago but less
than 150 million years ago - these things are well evidenced FACTS,
not guesses. Study the evidence and come to accept the facts.
I'll guess that God would want you to use your mind to acquire
truth rather than defend falsehood. But that is just a guess.

.

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