Re: Darwinism
William T Goodall wrote: > > With the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of > _The Origin of Species_ this year there's been a lot of news > coverage lately on 'Darwinism', and with the politicisation of the > subject by religionists and the misdirection favoured by those > trying to confound the matter the agenda of some of these stories > is hard to parse. > Here in Brazil, creationism is _only_ mentioned in support to USA bashing. We will miss Bush and his endless source of jokes. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Darwinism
On 11/02/2009, at 12:14 PM, Max Battcher wrote: > William T Goodall wrote: >> in _The New York Times_ 'Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May >> Live' is an example. >> >> Scientists don't talk about "Darwinism", creationists do. > > I can't think of a recent example by just about anyone of the term > "darwinism" that was outside of the phrase "social darwinism" or in > reference to the "darwin awards". Then you don't deal with creationists much - "Darwinist" is how they frame evolutionary scientists. But I don't necessarily disagree with the spirit of spending less emphasis on the scientists and more on the science. But still, Happy 200th Birthday Charles Darwin (tomorrow in Americaland). I'm sorry you didn't get to see genetics, you'd have been delighted. Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Darwinism
William T Goodall wrote: > in _The New York Times_ 'Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May > Live' is an example. > > Scientists don't talk about "Darwinism", creationists do. I can't think of a recent example by just about anyone of the term "darwinism" that was outside of the phrase "social darwinism" or in reference to the "darwin awards". If there is a word that "must die" because it has too much emotional baggage among creationists the word is "evolution" and unfortunately we have no better replacement and would probably lose more in changing words than we would gain... > This seems to be an attempt at 'framing' the science by altering the > terms of the debate. I can understand how frustrated rational people > get at the rhetorical antics of the superstitious religionists but > fighting truth-mangling with more truth-mangling seems wrong to me. Well, 'framing' uses the connotation of a word against its denotation, and so those most susceptible to issues of framing are those that don't bother to seek the actual definitions of a word and actual contexts of its usage. Science using framing is akin to fighting ignorance with a slightly different aerosol form of ignorance. It won't solve any real issues. But who knows how to solve the real issues here? -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net We haven't evolved past the need for words Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
