Evolution Research - Personal Posts

In amongst the 'General Evo News' category being re-blacklisted and then whitelisted again by Blogger.com, ongoing forum discussions about the mysterious properties of blogger templates and css (cascading style sheets), a system crash involving the dreaded "Blue Screen Of Death" and sundry software re-installations, I managed to find the time yesterday to post Info wanted on two intriguing 'Lamarckian' experiments in the Main Blog!

The experiments referred to are taken from Gordon Rattray Taylor's "The Great Evolution Mystery" - one of the first books I read on becoming interested in how evolutionary changes may (or may not) occur. In the next few days I hope to post both here and in the Main Blog a brief description of how that interest came into being and why I'm researching such an 'unpopular' subject as the possibility of a testable internal evolutionary mechanism.

John Latter

Related terms: Lamarck and Evolution

technorati tags: gordon+rattray+taylor, great+evolutionary+mystery, evolution, internal+evolutionary+mechanism, lamarckian, lamarck, experiments, john+latter

On Saturday (see here) I wrote about my concerns over the future of this blog because of:

a) The rumour that Blogger.com frowns upon configurations such as this one.

b) Their bots identifing the 'evomech posts' category as a possible spam blog ('splog'). This is also certainly due to entries being auto-added from the 'Evolution - Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' discussion forum.

Well yesterday I received an email telling me that 'evomech posts' had been reviewed by a 'human' and had been given the all clear - yay! (although it wasn't specifically mentioned the human could hardly have failed to notice the configuration so I'm presuming that's ok too).

I've made more progress with setting the blog up but there's still quite a lot to do - this css stuff ('cascading style sheets') is completely new to me!

John Latter

technorati tags: evolution, darwin, lamarck, forum, john+latter

[This post also appears here in the Main Blog]

['Point of Inquiry' Radio Show, 10th Feb '06]

"...In this interview with DJ Grothe, he [Dawkins] discusses his newest work, a two-part documentary series for British television entitled The Root of All Evil?, in which he challenges what he calls 'the process of non-thinking called faith'..."

While disagreeing with Dawkins' perception of how evolutionary changes occur I do feel he has something to say regarding 'faith'. Not least because belief in a theory can have similar origins to belief in a God - I'm reminded of this every time someone says "Evolution does this.." or "Natural Selection does that.."!

And for anyone arguing alternative or new explanations contrary to perceived wisdom it can be useful to understand the nature of the resistance encountered:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

(The Art of War, Chapter 3:14, Sun Tzu Wu, 536-496 BC)

Some of the issues Dawkins raises also have a particular topical relevance:

Evolution: The Horse Whisperer, Richard Dawkins, and Danish Cartoons

John Latter

technorati tags: richard+dawkins, evolution, faith, natural+selection, Sun-Tzu-Wu, theory, john+latter