Incidentally, I feel as if I'm supposed to highlight that Patterson's quote also details a crucial argument between cladists and systematists. I'd hate for anyone that doesn't know what they're talking about to take his intuition out of context. *sigh*. Up next, I'll take my aesthetic apprecation of basketball up against heypartner's analytical prowess. That'll go very far. Honestly, do people routinely talk so much on matters in which they know so little? Too strange.
Deviating somewhat, I believe that modern humans are blessed with a soul that survives the physical death of our bodies (in no small part to my desire to keep a good thing going!). However, I am troubled by the question of whether Neandertals were blessed with a similar soul. I understand that burial sites have been discovered for Neandertals, with the bodies carefully placed, sometimes with a male next to a female. Additionally, males have been found with tools and flower petals placed on their body. Obviously, the Neandertals had a belief system and/or a belief in the afterlife. As such, it would not seem fair if God did not give them a soul when they may have believed in him. So if we descended from Australopithecines, et al, which species got the first immortal soul? Was Adam actually the first humanoid given a soul?
This is really a closed issue for me now. I think I’ve shown what I wanted to show, but I just have to correct at least the most claring factual error in Achebe’s post. I think it’s a good news bad news thing for you though Achebe. The good news is that I think you’ve found a quote that was actually taken out of context. The bad news is, it isn’t my quote. The Patterson quote of mine was taken from a 1999 book while yours seems to refer to an event that occurred in 1981? If I’ve got that right, I believe I did actually come across that quote in my research. This was the situation: In August 1993, at a Systematics Association meeting in London, Patterson revisited his 1981 talk; specifically, the bearing of evolution on the practice and philosophy of systematics: ordering the relationships of organisms. In his recollections (published last year; see the notes on p.7), Patterson describes the background to the talk: “In November 1981, after an invitation from Donn Rosen [a fish systematist at the American Museum, now deceased], I gave a talk to the Systematics Discussion Group in the American Museum of Natural History. Donn asked me to talk on 'Evolutionism and Creationism', and it happened that just one week before my talk Ernst Mayr published a paper on systematics in Science (Mayr 1981). Mayr pointed out the deficiencies (in his view) of cladistics and phenetics, and noted that the 'connection with evolutionary principles is exceedingly tenuous in many recent cladistic writings.' For Mayr, classifications should incorporate such things as 'inferences on selection pressures, shifts of adaptive zones, evolutionary rates, and rates of evolutionary divergence.' Fired up by Mayr's paper, I gave a fairly radical talk in New York, comparing the effect of evolutionary theory on systematics with Gillespie's (1979, p. 8) characterization of pre-Darwinian creationism: 'not a research govering theory (since its power to explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to feel, conveyed none.' Unfortunately, and unknown to me, there was a creationist in my audience with a hidden tape recorder. A transcript of my talk was produced and circulated among creationists, and the talk has since been widely, and often inaccurately, quoted in creationist literature. 2” But despite the inaccuracies, Patterson's central question about evolution came through unmistakably: “But one sentence from the talk was accurately reproduced, and was perhaps quoted more than any other. The sentence was a rhetorical question; I quote it from a creationist source (Johnson 1991, p.10): 'Can you tell me anything about evolution, any one thing that is true?'3” The question still matters, Patterson argues, because evolution is still assumed to be the primary determinant of phylogenetic reasoning. But Patterson's agnosticism about evolution--expressed in 1981 as, "I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it"--continues today. Patterson describes that agnosticism by looking at patterns in molecular data. At first, he notes, he thought he had found answers to his own question: “In 1981, I knew of no sensible answer to the question, but in the ensuing decade I came to believe that there were two things I knew about evolution. First, that transitions [purines, adenine (A) and guanine (G), mutating to purines, e.g., A --> G; or pyrimidines, cytosine (C) and thymine (T), mutating to pyrimidines, e.g., T --> C] are more frequently fixed than transversions [where a purine mutates to a pyrimidine, or vice versa] and second, that at the level of DNA, the great majority of substitutions take place despite natural selection rather than because of it. 4” However, as Patterson continues, he came to doubt whether in seeing these patterns he was grasping the process of evolution: “...do transition bias and neutral substitution represent knowledge about evolution, or something else? Further, and more generally, why should I, a morphologist, claim to know something about molecular evolution but nothing of morphological evolution? 5” We must distinguish between patterns to be explained, Patterson urges, and the process theories by which we explain those patterns--a distinction foundational to the "transformed cladistic" perspective on systematics and phylogeny. The molecular patterns he observed, Patterson believes, are thus only data awaiting explanation. "I therefore believe I was mistaken in thinking that I knew something about molecular evolution," he writes. "Instead, I know (or have learned) something about the properties of molecular data, and those properties are amongst the things that must be explained by evolutionary theory." Patterson concludes: “...I mentioned a question ('Can you tell me anything you know about evolution?') that I have put to various biologists, and an answer that had been given: 'I know that evolution generates hierarchy.' In the framework of phylogenetic reconstruction and our current problems with it, another answer comes to mind: 'I know that evolution generates homoplasy' [or "convergence," in the older jargon of systematics]. In both cases, the answer is not quite accurate. It would be truer to say, 'I know that evolution explains hierarchy' or 'I know that evolution explains homoplasy.' We must remember the distinction between the cart--the explanation--and the horse--the data. And where models are introduced in phylogenetic reconstruction, we should prefer models dictated by features of the data to models derived from explanatory theories. 6” http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/colpat171.htm So the creationist was seemingly quoting Patterson’s statement as an endorsement of creation, which it obviously wasn’t. You can’t prove one theory by disproving another anyway. That’s as silly as you trying to support the infallibility of macroevolution theory by continually bashing creation. It’s just not a valid scientific conclusion. But wait! Yes Patterson was taken out of context with respect to creation, but he had and still has major problems with the science of macroevolution, to the point of being a macroevolutionary agnostic. And hey! This is my point exactly! So I guess you’ve provided me with more proof, which makes this a lose lose for you. Gosh, sorry about that. I must add that your determined persistence to bring creationism in to this discussion is starting become a bit bizarre. You are acting like a religious zealot who blames everything on the infidels. If the infidels aren’t in the picture, you bring them in and blame all your ills on them anyway. I keep reminding you that we are talking about macroevolution, not creation, and you keep taking about creation. I hope that your best argument for macroevolution is not that it’s not creation, but if it is I guess that would support my initial supposition in this thread, that many place their faith in macroevolution simply because they don’t believe in creation. Just … one … more … comment … This is an odd position to say the least from someone who is asking me to cede to the authority of his educated (indoctrinated? – see Kuhn) opinion. I guess you would be my crazy obsessive creationist demonising cc.net neighbour who doesn’t have a Ph.D. I take it you’re saying that nobody should pay any attention to you?
Well I'm glad that you got that blurb after you wrote 5 million more lines on Patterson. LOL Grizzled, I think we simply have differences of opinion as to what the nature of knowledge is. You seem to enjoy deferring to authority.... so you quote the hell out of people with PhDs. I tend to be interested in truth, so I actually look at the meat of what someone is saying. Ten years ago I used to take my professors' authority on a matter for granted. Now, because I'm a friggin' dork that doesn't know what he wants to do when I grow up, I have taken farrrrr too many classes. That doesn't grant me authority on any particular topic. I have an incredible amount to learn (and I'm going to fail my test if I stay on this website much longer ), but one thing I have learned is that people with or without their PhDs are incredibly fallible. People are arrogant, and people are verrrry aggressive. All that said, hopefully a lot of that arrogance in science will breed enough hellraisers to knock down any and all untruths. Anyway, if you get the chance... sink yourself into some of the literature. Play in the popular stuff, play in the real literature. No matter what you do though, don't cut yourself short. And don't cut your God short. There's a lot more to life than just circling wagons and drawing lines in the sand b/c of your interpretations of your God. Nighty night.
Well I certainly would disagree with your characterisation of me as the establishment person and you as the rebel, but I do agree with you that this discussion has run it’s course, and that it’s time to get some other work done. No hard feelings, and good luck on your test.
