On Nov 3, 2008, at 8:38 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
A thundering silence was heard throughout the county. But then, it
is a
Republican county, by and large.
The creeping, incipient USA religiou-fication process has gone
largely
unopposed, and not just in our state's smallest county.
But I promised Owen I'd give it a break...
Well, actually I don't want to squash conversation, just be as clear
as possible that its not religion, but a hopefully rare form of it,
fundamentalism, that is so harmful.
Not teaching evolution in school is just stupid.
But, as Nick and I have chatted about a bit, I'd like to see a bit
more formalism in your basic Darwinian evolution. Not because I don't
believe in evolution, it'd be hard not to! But that I think evolution
would be well served by more formal underpinnings. I don't
fundamentalists attacking modern cosmology with the same success as
they do evolution, and I have to assume the solid formal foundation of
cosmology has something to do with that.
I think the reason we don't see more mathematics applied to evolution
is that the advances within genetics have become the primary focus of
evolutionary studies. It certainly brims over with math!
Do you think it might be more successful to just teach genetics in
high school?
-- Owen
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