Well, I read it but I'm not really up for discussing it. I think the whole topic is just beyond me, I'm not sure why. My boyfriend in college was an Evolution, Ecology & Behavior major, just like me, and got about the same grades as I did (sometimes I even helped him with his stats and SAS programs). He went off to grad school and came back for a visit and proudly presented me with a 50 page paper he wrote entitled 'Are Ecosystems Cybernetic?' I dutifully read it, corrected his grammar as he had asked me, but couldn't really discuss the substance with him. I guess I'm just too stuck in that reductionist mindset.
Last I heard he was teaching part-time at Yale. I'm a stay-at-home mommy.
frogsnferns wrote:oh ok frog stuff, this i can deal with a little easier
I called myself an amphibian specialist because that is my actual job title...used to be a herpetologist now i am even nerdier....My expertise comes in central and south american frogs and the dart frogs with all of their spectacular colors and patterns are one of my favorites. I dont 100% agree with the simplistic aposematic coloration hypothesis for many of these animals and farmer picked up on some observations that lead to my questioning. Some of the species you are talking about like the Psuedotritons (brightest red ever) (northern red salamander) are completely fossorial and do not even come to the surface for reproduction, why would they benefit from being bright red?...also with poison dart frogs it is not unuasual to find upwards of 30 different color/patterns of the same species often seperated by no more than 100 yards....if these animals were truly relying on their bright and identifiable coloration to deter predation dont you think this would be a trait that was conserved through generations, especially when most predation occurs by birds that can make the distance between these populations in a matter of a couple flaps, oh and also many of the brightest colored ones really are not that toxic and in fact are less so than some highly cryptic species which are sympatric... and then there is the whole mimacry deal which i dont think is nearly as tidy as people want to assume either....all of these elements i think could be analyzed quite differently with the aid of systems theory
anyway this is getting quite off topic back to the land of naked apes....
hee hee ... we were talking about this on a field trip once and the prof. remarked, and 'oh, yeah, don't eat strawberries, they're red so they must be poisonous' That was Graham Bell. Geez do I miss school.
FNF - don't apologize for thread hijacking. It seriously needs hijacking.
realized that when you click on the link it takes you down to the forward, if you go up a bit you will see all of the chapters that go from chemical origins up through human evolution on to cultural aspects and so on....some other things along these lines that i have geeked out on in the past are the ideas of
"spiral dynamics" which really relates to systems thinking and the evolution of human culture pre and post civilization....mind if i ask what school had the
evolution ecology behavior major? sounds like a really cool program....
frogsnferns wrote:Some of the species you are talking about like the Psuedotritons (brightest red ever) (northern red salamander) are completely fossorial and do not even come to the surface for reproduction, why would they benefit from being bright red?
I'm not sure if you're talking about the Red Eft (Land Phase of the Eastern Newt), but we have thousands of them around here. It's common to find them crawling across the grass in the summer. And I hate to tell you how many of them never make it across roads.
i was talking about a differnt kind of animal that farmer was talking about in his post about salamanders. The red-efts are just like you describe. I once kept a red-eft for 6 years in a terrarium and it never left its juvinile eft stage...in the wild they usually walk around terrestrially as an eft for a year or two and then settle down in a nice pond, lake, or slow stream and change quite drastically and turn into a green newt that is completely aquatic...seems to still retain its poison although it turns dark olive green. Another species that is very poisonous but does not advertise it are the "slimy salamanders"...the sticky mucos they shed is laced with poisons that are really quite powerful and the animal is black with a flecks of white on its back....
frogsnferns wrote:mind if i ask what school had the
evolution ecology behavior major? sounds like a really cool program....
That was McGill. It was really described as a 'major option' - my diploma just says 'biology'. I'm not sure if they still structure the program that way. At the time, McGill was the top ranked university in Canada; it has since fallen way down due to lack of funding and political stuff.
frogsnferns wrote:i was talking about a differnt kind of animal that farmer was talking about in his post about salamanders. The red-efts are just like you describe. I once kept a red-eft for 6 years in a terrarium and it never left its juvinile eft stage...in the wild they usually walk around terrestrially as an eft for a year or two and then settle down in a nice pond, lake, or slow stream and change quite drastically and turn into a green newt that is completely aquatic...seems to still retain its poison although it turns dark olive green. Another species that is very poisonous but does not advertise it are the "slimy salamanders"...the sticky mucos they shed is laced with poisons that are really quite powerful and the animal is black with a flecks of white on its back....
Interesting. How poisonous are the Red Efts? I've handled them and not had a problem (I have not desire to test the poison by licking an Eft or anything
I know that some dart frogs are sufficiently poisonous that even handling them can be dangerous. I guess the Efts aren't quite this potent.
Here's an interesting report on the effect of radiation on DNA.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4113989.stm
What has wanting and knowing, contributed to the relevance, of those who agree/disagree evolution ?
doyouknowhim wrote:What has wanting and knowing, contributed to the relevance, of those who agree/disagree evolution ?
I don't think that sentence makes any sense. How about you give it another try?
Here is a recent QUOTATION that I read regarding the definition of SCIENCE and its association with Evolution:
"Science has to do with careful observations in the present. Unlike true science, evolution is, at best, a historical reconstruction of the unobserved past since no one can empirically observe it. In reality evolution is a complete worldview, one way of interpreting all observations in the present, and a basis for all of life's decisions.
In previous years, "science" was understood to mean "the search for truth," but many now limit that to a search for naturalistic explanations, even if that search leads to hopeless conclusions."
It was then followed by a definition for EVOLUTION...
...........................................................................
Here it is:
"Evolution implies "descent from a common ancestor" with all of life related, consisting of modified forms of very different things, such as a person descending from a fish. Evolution does not mean merely "change," for all things change with time. For clarity we must restrict this term to meaningful change, especially the descent of new types of organisms from earlier, different ones."
Does anyone agree or disagree with this definition?
That definition of biological evolution is as good as any. Evolution can however be deducted from observations in the present, and is as such science.
If bacteria is able to find new strains for survival, is that evolution?
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:Here is a recent QUOTATION that I read regarding the definition of SCIENCE and its association with Evolution:
"Science has to do with careful observations in the present. Unlike true science, evolution is, at best, a historical reconstruction of the unobserved past since no one can empirically observe it. In reality evolution is a complete worldview, one way of interpreting all observations in the present, and a basis for all of life's decisions.
In previous years, "science" was understood to mean "the search for truth," but many now limit that to a search for naturalistic explanations, even if that search leads to hopeless conclusions."
This quote makes evolution look like a worldview rather than a scientific theory. My opinion is that evolution is at least a good working hypothesis that has led to a better understanding of how nature operates.
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:Here is a recent QUOTATION that I read regarding the definition of SCIENCE and its association with Evolution:
"Science has to do with careful observations in the present. Unlike true science, evolution is, at best, a historical reconstruction of the unobserved past since no one can empirically observe it. In reality evolution is a complete worldview, one way of interpreting all observations in the present, and a basis for all of life's decisions.
In previous years, "science" was understood to mean "the search for truth," but many now limit that to a search for naturalistic explanations, even if that search leads to hopeless conclusions."
It was then followed by a definition for EVOLUTION...
...........................................................................
The person who wrote the quote above objects to the philosophy of naturalism, as we can see from the last sentence. But science is based on the assumption of naturalism, there is no escaping it.
Do you share this objection to science Bib?
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:Here it is:
"Evolution implies "descent from a common ancestor" with all of life related, consisting of modified forms of very different things, such as a person descending from a fish. Evolution does not mean merely "change," for all things change with time. For clarity we must restrict this term to meaningful change, especially the descent of new types of organisms from earlier, different ones."
Does anyone agree or disagree with this definition?
Disagree. It's sloppy. Better definitions have been provided already (many pages ago).
Do you agree with it Bib, or is it just an irrelevant quote to you?
Frogsnfernss. Is there a quick test for the chytrid fungus? Im thinking like an immunoassay test? The reason I ask is that the boys in the Chesapeake are convinced about estrogen mimics and polydactyly in some amphibs. I was always wondering, why now? when the detergents have been mostly rformulated tto be quickly undergoing hydrolysis and cleaned out by more rapid degredation in the ecosystem.
Bib, Id accept evoluttion as a change as measured in a morpological cum genomic sense. The grand bookkeeping of the genome between two branched species and can vary by a few ttenths of a percent and thered still be 2 separate species, related by common genomic ancestry on the "bush"
However I dont accept your science definition. Stop the inserts of "true science is"... IItts a veiled attempt to emphaasize a moral tone and also because youll lose that argument quickly.For example, M theory hasnt yet provided any means for speculation ,let alone testing, is that any less a science ?SCience collects data, facts and evidence not truth. Its a bit more dispassionate than you are propounding.
Your quote states thaT IT CANT BE SCIENCE IF WE CANNOT OBSERVE THE UNOBSERVABLE PAST. tHATS SORT OF LIKE, LETS NOT GO TO THE MOON BECAUSE WE HAVENT BEEN THERE yet. your quote seems to be dead set against our ability to reconstruct the past because we cant be there.Thats silly Ever hear of surrogate data, or similitude conditions for modeling? How about solving equations in terms of equations of other systems Its quite common in engineering in everything from wind tunnels to swim tanks and earthquake tables. Magnetics can be soved in terms of electrical field theory, so can gravity, yet nobody seems to pick on those dastardly pursuits.
It all boils down to one thing-evolution interferes with a sectarian view of the role and origins of life. Its interesting that , once all the major religions make peace with science, we shall all look back and say, "what the hell was that all about"
A theory in science is , once more for the recent entries iinto this thread:
"An explanation for a phenomena in which all the evidence supports AND no evidence yet refutes"
TThats why evolution is a theory, not a proposal or hypotthesis.
All the evidence supports it
nothing(datawise) out there refutes it
cicerone imposter wrote:If bacteria is able to find new strains for survival, is that evolution?
No, that is called genetic mutation. Evolution in the bacteria would correspond to the development of pigment, pili for mating, photosythetic capability...etc
