Fatheaded Ed wages quote mining war
Of course, I cannot respond to Fatheaded Ed Brayton on his Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog because I am banned there -- I can only respond here.
An article on Ed's blog contains a quote mining war against Uncommon Descent's Sal Cordova over interpretation of an editorial on the PLoS Biology website. Well, here is my own quote-mined gem from this editorial:
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If evolution is not "essential" in medicine, then why include it in the medical curriculum? Medical students certainly have plenty of much more important things to learn. This whole editorial is just too wishy-washy about whether evolution should be included in the medical curriculum.
Actually, Darwinism hardly tells us anything that is of practical use. For something that Darwinists regard as a stroke of genius, Darwinism is surprisingly mickey mouse. Basically, all that Darwinism tells us about evolutionary mechanisms is that natural genetic variations occur (duh) and that fitter organisms are more likely to survive than less fit organisms (duh again). Biologists have an inferiority complex because biology is often treated as less scientific than the physical sciences -- for example, Lord Rutherford once said, "all science is either physics or stamp collecting." Because of this inferiority complex, biologists are waging a prestige war against other branches of science by trying to show that biology has something that other branches of science don't have, a grand overarching unifying "theory of everything," Darwinism. As for Darwinian macroevolution having "mechanisms," I don't see the advantage of having mechanisms if they are implausible and unproven.
An article on Ed's blog contains a quote mining war against Uncommon Descent's Sal Cordova over interpretation of an editorial on the PLoS Biology website. Well, here is my own quote-mined gem from this editorial:
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One reason that evolution doesn't figure prominently in the medical community is that although it makes sense to have evolution taught as part of medicine, that doesn't make it essential. As explained at a meeting on evolution and medicine I recently attended in York, United Kingdom (the Society for the Study of Human Biology and the Biosocial Society's 2006 symposium, “Medicine and Evolution”), medicine is primarily focused on problem-solving and proximate causation . . . .
If evolution is not "essential" in medicine, then why include it in the medical curriculum? Medical students certainly have plenty of much more important things to learn. This whole editorial is just too wishy-washy about whether evolution should be included in the medical curriculum.
Actually, Darwinism hardly tells us anything that is of practical use. For something that Darwinists regard as a stroke of genius, Darwinism is surprisingly mickey mouse. Basically, all that Darwinism tells us about evolutionary mechanisms is that natural genetic variations occur (duh) and that fitter organisms are more likely to survive than less fit organisms (duh again). Biologists have an inferiority complex because biology is often treated as less scientific than the physical sciences -- for example, Lord Rutherford once said, "all science is either physics or stamp collecting." Because of this inferiority complex, biologists are waging a prestige war against other branches of science by trying to show that biology has something that other branches of science don't have, a grand overarching unifying "theory of everything," Darwinism. As for Darwinian macroevolution having "mechanisms," I don't see the advantage of having mechanisms if they are implausible and unproven.
posted by Larry Fafarman | 5/03/2007 07:35:00 AM
6 Comments:
Ooh, that sounds like a fun game! Let's play it with Larry's putative field:
Clausism hardly tells us anything that is of practical use. For something that Clausists regard as a stroke of genius, Clausism is surprisingly mickey mouse. Basically, all that Clausism tells us about thermodynamic mechanisms is that hot and cold objects occur (duh) and that hot objects tend to heat up cold objects and vice versa (duh again).
Anyone else have a parody of Larry's ludicrous oversimplification?
Remarkably, Real Dave's Brother Larry actually worked on cooling towers and had to know something about thermodynamics at the time.
I don't know about Fake Larry though.
Cyberbully Kevin Vicklund says,
>>>>>> Clausism hardly tells us anything that is of practical use. For something that Clausists regard as a stroke of genius, Clausism is surprisingly mickey mouse. Basically, all that Clausism tells us about thermodynamic mechanisms is that hot and cold objects occur (duh) and that hot objects tend to heat up cold objects and vice versa (duh again). <<<<<
"Vice-versa"? How can heat flow spontaneously from a colder body to a hotter one?
Actually, the Clausius statement is not the most popular statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. IMO the most popular SLOT statement is the Kelvin-Planck statement: "It is impossible to construct an engine, operating in a cycle, whose sole effect is drawing heat from a single reservoir and performing an equivalent amount of work."
The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics sounds especially trivial: " Two bodies that are in thermal equilibrium with a third body will be in thermal equilibrium with each other." Yet it was considered so fundamental that it was called the Zeroth Law because number one was already taken.
Also, in Newton's Laws of Motion, the First Law, which says that the motion of a body will not change unless the body is acted upon by a net force, is really a corollary of the Second Law, F=ma. If there is no net force, then the Second Law says that there is no acceleration, and hence there is no change in motion.
Anyway, it is obvious that Darwinism is the most ballyhooed and overrated scientific concept in history.
As usual, ViW shows that he is incapable of makng any real contribution to the discussion.
>>>"Vice-versa"? How can heat flow spontaneously from a colder body to a hotter one?<<<
Your depiction of evolution is equally absurd, you rotten Clausist, you.
And why don't you Clausists have anything to say about the problem of black-body radiation?
Hey, this is fun.
Kevin's intelligent statement:
>> Basically, all that Clausism tells us about thermodynamic mechanisms is that hot and cold objects occur (duh) and that hot objects tend to heat up cold objects and vice versa (duh again). <<
To which Fake Larry blathers:
> "Vice-versa"? How can heat flow spontaneously from a colder body to a hotter one? <
Do you not understand a simple statement? In Kevin's statement vice versa requires only heat flow from a hotter body to a colder one.
No wonder you lost your engineering registration!
> "Vice-versa"? How can heat flow spontaneously from a colder body to a hotter one? <
You owe Kevin and VIW an explanation here. Both a hot object heating a cold one and vice versa only involve heat flow from a warmer body to a hotter one.
(Of course with quantum effects, heat can flow from a colder body to a hotter one but the probability of such actions is extremely low. Classical thermodynamics breaks down with a small number of particles.)
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