=id11a
Continuation of =id10b
Edit of =id8a < =idtc
Intelligent Design / Article 4 / Save 1
This doc is notes an an article in National Georgraphic, November
'04, 'Was Darwin Wrong'
See the Caveat's and especially the notes on reconstituting my
block_indent's, at the top of =id10b
Very briefly, all these #L1 ,,, #L7 symbols you see must be
global_replaced with .L1 ... .L7 , each of which must be both
preceeded and followed by a CR ('Carriage return', ie required
line_end),
The article must then beput back in EinseinWriter
That's because my train of thought is in places almost impossible
to follow without those block_idents.
Somewhere along he line you most likely want to knock out all
those non_significant CR's that are put it -- at 65 chars from the
left_margin, as far as I can tell -- in the EinsteinWriter T.EXE
convert from EinsteinWriter (W.EXE) format to ASCII
To knock out those superfluous CR's , you use EinsteinWriter's
ETRANS.EXE , with syntax:
ETRANS /E /R inputfile outputfile
Now I'll have to stick to T.EXE for converts, and not use ETRANS,
because ETRANS puts everything in double_space, somehow seems to
not merely double but increase by 2.5 the filesize
ETRANS as an unconvert works ok, it retrains the required CR's,
deleting only the optional ones.
But it doesn't retain a CR before the Layout command. I'm not
clear if it retains the Layout command after it.
So one will to put allthose back with a WORD macro, or manually.
And also to the global replace of #L with .L , but that should be
easy. What you really need is a global_replace of #L with:
CR
.L
and then you still maybe have to do a set of 7 global_replaces, to
replace .L1 ... .L7 with .L1CR ... .L7CR
You'll find all those programs in =tools4.zip , which will be
posted to this Website, www.geocities.com/sa73122c
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Me, the King of Orient are
trying to smoke a rubber cigar .... "
----------------------------------------------------------------
I start with a bit of overlap from the end of =id10b:
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The author continues::
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 9):
"So much for one part of the eveolutinary process, known as
anagenesis, during which a single species is tranformed."
#L2
[ So much? How much.
I've so far read nothing here approaching a detailed
explanation of how a species changes, except for the the
vague statement that the cause is "small random heritable
differences among individuals result in different chances of
survival and reproduction"
[ as if those two parameters were preportional ]
The author continues (loc cit supra):
"But there's also a second part, known as speciation. Genetic
changes sometimes acumulate within an isolated segment of a
species, but not through the whole, as that iolated population
#L2
[ slow down Charlie. Except for a few South Sea islands,
there have been few completely isolated populations of any
species ]
#L1
"adapts to its local comditons."
#L2
[ But in general, adaptation is merely bahvioral, not
genetic. ]
#L1
"Gradually it goes its own way, seizing a new ecological niche."
#L2
[ But there me be an infinite number of unseized ecological
niches --
#L3
I mean, we do not yet have a dung beetle that lives on
carbon monoxide with a dash of vinegar when the moon is
full.
And in general, a variant of a viable species ain't
going to find an ecologic niche to seize. I mean, how
often can a newlywed bettle find vinegar in a traffic
gridlock.
So for every viable new species, probability would seem
to be that there were thousands of unviable new speices.
And we have no evidence of that. ]
#L1
======================================================= ==== ===
CONTINUATION AS =id11*.*
Resume at =id7ar page 15, first full sentence
Well, it's off to Honest George's for a 3_ming lunch -- down to
1_franc coins today.
=================================================================
The quotation continues:
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 8, Column
1, paragiraffe 1:)
"At a certain point it becomes irreversibly" (!)
[ 'irreversibly' -- now there's a lucky blunder --
lucky for us anti_Darwiners, that is --
I just noticed that Darwininan evolution is assumed to be
uni_directional --
wheraeas, if mutations were truly random, we would expect to
find evolution going not merely forwards, but backwards,
sideways, and all the way round the mulburry bush.
#L3
So that to this day some my neighbors would be giving
birth to little apes,not that I mean to get personal
about it.
#L1
[ the quotation continues:]
"distinct -- that is, so different that its meembers can't
interbreed with the rest."
#L2
[ Now first of all 'can't interbreed' is rather a problematic
notion, and in general may only be meantngful in a
statistical sense.
On the individual level, it would in general seem to be
merely a matter of 'infertility'.
But more important: in general, variant adaptation to variant
ecologies is not associated with genetic incompatibility. ]
#L1
[ the quotation contiunes:]
"Darwin called that splitting_and_specializing phenomenon the
'principle of divergence'. It was an important part of his
theory, explaining [!] the overall diversity of life as well as
the adaptation of individual species."
#L2
[ But 'adaptation' is most simply explained as purposive
behavior, not as causally constrained by random variation.
I mean, most of us, confronted with a problem we cannot
solve, try to think it out rather than trying every possible
course of action at random, until one works.
And even then, pure random variation would not explain how ,
when a species chances upon a variation that is viable, the
species then ceases further variation and procreates that
variation.
#L3
Like, we'd been starving to death because we kept eating
raw potatoes with all sorts of different spices, until
one day a potatoe fell in the fire.
And so the next day we ate raw potatoes with hot coals,
but that didn't work either,
but fortunately a thousand years later another potatoe
fell in the fire, and so it was that over a few million
years we found ourselves a comfortable ecological niche
eating Freedom Fries.
#L4
Mazaltov.
#L5
Some days you can't shovel away the bullshit
with a front_loader.
But I'd not blame Darwin for Darwinism.
I think Darwin was an honest amateur
naturalist -- barely a scientist, and surely
not theoretic genius -- who made a few
reasonably accurate ohservations of a few
scattered phenomena.
Offhand, I would say that the atheists
invented Darwinism -- in Israel we would call
them the militant secularists -- what Shinui
would be if its membets could think.
So they seized on poor old Darwin, an obscure
amateur naturalist, and imputed to him a sort
of universal theory of atheism, in which he
would not recognize himself.
#L6
As the Christians took that
well_intentioned young fellow, Jesus the
Nazir, and turned him into some sort of
Orphic or Bachante or Egyptian Mystery
cult which they then knelt down and
worshipped,
#L7
Most pagan and idolotrous they were,
So no wonder Christianty became so
popula; it had everything but the
origies,
for which it made up with Crusades.
So again, what is opposed to
'intelligent design'
-- which is an 'explanatory
cocneptual schema' , not the
'[pseudo]_scientific theory' that
its opponents take it for -- i
s not Darwin's theoretical writings,
but another pseudo_scientific
schema, 'Darwinism',
which is a branch of 'scientism',
which is the 'pop_intellecutal'
movement of the last few centuries,
which over_generalizes various
recent scientific theories,
to make them into quaisi_religious
philosophical schema.
Such schema are useful --
that is, they do 'explain' various
observed phenonmena --
-- that is, they offer a general
conceptual schema which those
phenomena may --
-- though not 'must' --
be said to exemplify.
But such schema are also what I have
elsewehere termed 'cult_like'
('Sects and drugs and
cult_like__organizations', ca. 1988,
not now available) --
--that is, they are closed s
conceptual schema such that any
observation can be said to exemplify
them,
-- albeit most often in an
attenuated sense.
('Cult_like__organizations' are
groups such that any question which
can be asked can reeive an answer,
however far_fetched, within the
conceptual schema of that
organization.
Eg:
Marxist_Leninism ('Communism') -- .
(the quaisi_religious nature of
which is suggested by Koestler's
title, The G_d that failed)'
Freudism,
and I now suggest, Darwinism,
born_again__Christianiy,
and of course rebbe_centered
baal_tchuva__Judaism --eg Chabad --
are of this nature.)
#L1
OK, let us slog on.
The author remarks
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 9, Column
1, last paragiraffe:)
that Darwin disbelieved in "a personal G_d who had chosen humanity
as a specially favored species".
#L2
But ironically, that is just what the 'Darwinism_istic'
#L3
(a more literary_ily clumsy but more conceptually
precise term than 'Darwinistic',
#L4
for it has less to do with Darwin than with those
militantly anti_religous intellectual lightweights
who over_generalize, over_simlify, and
philosophically exploit his work
#L5
and poop in the shuk too I don't doubt.
#L2
notion of what I term 'survival of the fittest'
amd which the author terms 'natural selection'
'insinuates', if not precisely 'entails'.
#L3
So from the standpoint of what is politely termed
'intellectual history' --
#L4
Carl Shorske at UC Berkeley exemplified and I
think created that field in the 1960's --
#L3
'Darwinism' is just one more instance of the notion,
introduced in the 18th century
#L4
and still popular amongst the lesser lights who
comprise the neo_con movement
#L5
(and a neo_con__job it is ) --
#L4
that unrestrained competition will produce the
optimal result.
We find this in Hegel's dialectic,
which Marx picked up as the basis of his
'dialectical materialism', termed 'Marxism'.
We find it in the notion, attributed to Adam Smith
in 'Wealth of Nations', that unrestrained and
unlimited economic competiton will optimize the
wealth --
#L5
of whom I'm not quite sure --
#L6
maybe nations,
maybe the elite 'Establishment''s that
run the nation,
surely not the common people.
#L4
That notion is the barely_declared rationale for
'globalism' --
#L5
exemplified by JFK's quotation, "a rising tide
lifts all boats" --
#L6
to which I reply, 'except those stuck in
the mud' --
which will be, of course, swamped.
#L4
We find it in the notion --
#L5
from Leibniz, if I recall whatever I happened
to have read from anyone but him --
#L4
satirized by Voltaire in Candide that "everything
is for the best in this best of all possible
worlds".
#L5
And expressed in the bromide, popular in the
late 19th century:
"Every day in every way I am getting better
and better."
#L3
This is the gambler's principle -- that anything can
happen.
#L4
For any honest gambling machine, from dice to
roulette to the slot machine, is designed as a
completely random system, with a declared house
percentage.
So the principle of gambling is statistical --
anything can always happen --
#L5
that is what gives gambling its addictive
character --
#L4
but also, "the house always wins" --
that is, that in the long run,
#L5
albeit always with the possibility of
extraordinary and most probably disasterous
flukes of luck,
#L4
the house will win the declared percentage of
moneys bet -- 2 chances out of 38 in Roulette,
since 0 and double_zero pay the house.
#L5
(In fact, dice is considered, albeit maybe
superstitiously, to involve a certain measure
of skill in how one banks the dice off the
cushion.
Poker is largely a matter of bluff --
#L6
my uncle, Peter O. Steiner, who is rather
a bully but bold, has written a book or
so on it,
and made his first fortune --
enough to buy an army surplus jeep and
see himself through Harvaard college on
the G.I. bill of Rights --
by exposing a crooked poker game --
and I suppose more or less blackmailing
the crooks, or at least taking his share
of their starting stake --
-- on the long boat_ride back from the
Pacific theatre on the aircraft carrier
U.S.S. Independence,
on which he was a navigator -- maybe even
the senior navigator, I don't know
#L7
He once told me, when you gamble,
bet enough so that it will hurt if
you loose --
I suppose he meant, bet that much,
but not more.
I had supposed this was a profound
bit of gambling strategy, but now my
guess is that it's just the key to
feeling the thrill of addiction to
gambling.
"Cheap thrills" to use the title of
Janis Joplin's great LP with that
extraordinary cover by Robert Crumb.
#L4
Now I do think that one could put rather a crimp in
this notion -- that all our presently_existing
species are the result of random variation --
with a bit of statistical analysis, coupled to some
current genetics.
That is, it should be possible to run a simulation
of the length of time required by completely random
variation of the proteins found in the various
genomes, to calculate how long it would most
probably take to evolve the present species that we
now observe.
Amd also to calculate how many failed species would
probably have evolved.
And even to make a rough estimate of the number of
fossils of such failed species, missing links, and
the like that would probably have survived,
and from that even a very rough estimate of the
number of such fossils we should be now have
expected to have discovered.
And my guess is that we would find that the
probable time_frame for the evolution of the
species we now observe on earth, is much longer
than known geologic ages in which such species --
or at least the more or most advanced of such
species -- are known to have existed.
And we might also find that if Darwinism were true,
we should have found far more fossil remains of
failed and intermediate species than we have.
All of which would tend to disconfirm Darwinism.
So in a sense, Darwinism has had a free ride for
the last century and a half, but now probability
theory and genetics and computer simulation have
developed enough to disconfirm it as a sufficient,
that is to say as a causally determinative, theory.
Note that above I use 'probable' in the statisic
sense.
Incidentally, this same notion of probability seems
to underlie present atomic theory -- that any atom
may always be anywhere, but that probably the chair
I'm sitting on will stay there,
#L5
if I don't hit the gin before sunrise too many
more times,
#L6
if I can find the bottlle --
#L7
assuming of course that the bottle
does not come to me and tip itself
neatly into my shotglass,
(which also is possible, but not
highly probable.)
#L4
Now probability theory does presuppose that our
logical_atoms
#L5
('logical atoms' is a term from 'logical
atomism', whatever that was -- some
philosophic offshoot of logical positivism I
think -- it's a philosophic notion, not a
notion from atomic physics -- you don't make
chocolate bombes from logical atoms -- )
#L4
are discrete entities.
So atomic theory and the uncertainty principle
entail that what we take for simple probability is
really a double or triple order probability.
Because of an atom, you never know where it is, and
of the uncertainty principle, whenever you do
observe it, your observation changes what it was
that you observed --
#L5
a bit like telephoning the chick you were so
pleasantly thinking about as you watched her
in the shower of the apartment building across
the alleyway -- things are not quite the same
thereafter --
#L4
That is, the dice have six sides, each one keeping
its place,
but in reality the atoms that comprise each dice
have only a probable, not an actual location.
And further --
#L5
or maybe this is just merely the underlying
meaning of what I just said --
#L4
we cannot observe the location of the 'quanta' that
are the real logical atoms behind what we took for,
in (what PVK calls) 'middle range ghinking'
-- for logical atoms --
without changing that position.
#L5
A familiar problem, (needless to say
#L6
so why say it
3L7
because I just did
#L5
to anyone who has ever tried to pick up one of
those ridiculous Swiss half_franc coins from a
table_top on a cold winter day in order to use
the potty in a Swiss railroad privy.)
#L7
But I digress.
------------------------------------
Zowie for Howie,
that finishes my copy of =id7ar
So now on to copying down =id8b
---------------------------------
#L1
Well, let's see what else the intrepid Mr. Quammen has to say
here.
I'm up to the right column on page 9 of the November '04 National
Geographic article by David Quammen,
#L2
who is probably shoveling up horeshit from the streets of
Zermatt by now, if survival of the fittest really works,
because the fittest to hold the intellectual bulwarks against
us religious fanatics he sure as shit isn't.
Or else pass the Collection Plate if it ain't Shabbos.
The Protestants say, 'He who sups with the devil needs a long
spoon.'
So there's the long spoon.
Oy, goyim.
#L3
Ok, I confess.
I can't compartmentalize my writing.
I try to , but the boundaries keep overlapping.
So no more excuses, I'll just keep on doing it.
My personal remarks, and political remarks, and off_mark
remarks should stay in my Journal docs, but they keep
getting into eg these 'Intelligent Design' docs.
#L1
so in the last analysis, 'natural selection' -- the notion that
random variation of genetic material has produced all the
varieitesis of species, and further has resulted in only the
fittest species surivving -- drops oout of Darwinsims as
statistically inadequte, and as a truism -- if a species or
sub_species urvives, it's the fittest, if it didn't survive, it
wasn't --
-- and we're left with only the petulant asssrtion: G_d didn't do
it.
And that is just an expession of the attitude -- there is no G_d.
And no gods neither.
Not even a few smart extra_terrestrials who like to tinker around
on someone else's planet.
But that is not a hypothesis, it's an 'attitude' -- in rather the
Afro_Americna sense of 'attitude' -- a chosen pose of
self_asssertion in the social competiton for 'survval of the
hip_est'.
For atheism is not an intelligible position. What atheists say
does not exist, is nothing like what religious people affirm --and
affirm by the nature of their lives more than by any credo
#L2
(for most religions have no credo, except Catholicism
#L3
with a theology so intricate it could only have been
written by a support group of workaholic lawyers on
their days off).
#L4
I mean, let us face it SportsFans
#L5
("Moe Juste -- Just plain Moe" (sa))
#L6
(That's a ripoff from somebody, maybe
Heller: "Word Smith -- a Smith named
Word" -- a Radio Baseball Game announcer,
if memory serves --
#L7
and "It's so hard to get good
servants nowadays"
(USA, often as parody )
#L4
What atheism rejects is a notion of G_d that most
of us outgrew by age 8, when we "put away"
#L7
(St. Paul's riff, I bet he only
became holy because he caught the
clap and couldn't cure it -- "about
your tax bill, Ma'am --"
I do not like St. Paul )
#L4
our great big Little Golden Bible Tales book.
#L2
One of the first manifestations of scientism was empiricist
epistemology.
Optics was then the newest scientific breakthrough.
First Locke, and then Hume, via Berkeley, took the model of
visual perception --
light is reflected off on object,
enters the pupil of the eye,
and travels along nerves to the brain,
where it is --
#L3
there's a sudden and undeclared switch here from
physiology to psychology --
#L2
recognized as an image --
#L3
there's a quick and undeclared switch_back here from
psychology to physiology -- in the notion that what is
perceived is not the object, but an image of the object
#L4
-- and that engenders all the philosophic ---
epistemologic, rather -- dilemmas of 'inner
objects' 'other minds' and 'solipsism' --
#L3
and then that image is identified by the person as the
object
#L4
(the switch is back to psychology).
#L2
A muddle of methodologies is all that was --
Ryle, that self_styled Philistine,
#L3
no offense intended to the Philistines --
#L4
I think C.D.Rollins told this story, but maybe I
read it somewhere --
Professor Isaiah Berlin is leaving a concert of
maybe the Bach Magnificat, crossing the quad "on
Cloud 9"
#L5
(USA expression for being in what might more
Platonically be termed "seventh heaven"
#L6
(also a USA expression, apparently for
what PVK et al. refer to by the Hindu
term 'samadhi' --
#L4
and Ryle shouts out,
"Hey, Isiah [Berlin, erstwhile bar Ilan I reckon --
#L5
he was Jewish of course;
#L6
a WASP's idea of culture is afternoon at
the Boston Pops followed by a luncheon at
the Club of several highballs followed by
sandwiches of thinly sliced cucumber
slivers with nicely cut boiled pieces of
a pig's ass
#L7
You see, I'm trying to crash your
party now,
-- and playing nigger to do it --
you can see it in all those
Hollywood films about that manic
chutzpadike Negro detective,
'Beverly Hills Cop'
-- that is, I am rather forcibly
interjecting contemporary Jewish
expressions -- as crafted by those
of us USA expats who have done our
best to combine the worst of USA and
Israeli culture -- into what might
hitherto have been unduly WASPy
academic style --
"I am tempted to say that -- "
-- "I am not quite clear what one
might mean by saying that -- "
"Bull_SHIT" as we say in the USA.
Well, Morgenbesser
(Abendspater -- that was the pattern
of one my breakdowns, I'd be
clear_minded when I awoke from
sleep, but gone down during the day)
did it all with much more grace --
l'havdil; he was brilliant, if not
precisely a genius -- a genius is
some dude like Mozart or Einstein
who can shape hold a whole new
gestalt in his mind -- I often say,
Marilyn Strauss (Lidov), zl'b, once
said to me, Mozart once said, 'My
one gift is that I can see an entire
symphony in my mind before I write
it' (I'm trying to quote her remark,
from memory) -- brilliant, like
Morgenbesser, is someone who can
hold an entire field of thought in
mind, and starting interconnecting
anything he wants to -- and also
there is the brilliance of one who
can tease out the details of an
idea, like a Swiss watchmaker --
Arthur Danto, also at Columbia --
and he was also a lithographer, and
I think a musician -- had a craft
something like there -- where
Randall, like a proper English
baron, merely command a large field
-- and as for Hofstader, from whom I
took a boring course in aesthetics,
he was merely a
natural_born__metaphyician -- as I
am, it just means you can in --
errelate abstractions, if not
interrelate with people --
all Hotstader did was interrelate
and iterate and re_iterate in other
terms the obvious -- like that
crashing bore Kierkegaard --
#L4
"[ have you ] been listening to some tunes again?"
#L2
So that proves that Ryle was an imittion Philistine -- a
mediocre mind hidden behind the carefully crafted facade of a
boor --
but what I started to say was, in his notion of
'category_mistake' or
#L3
(pejoratively, of course, for when did any good
arriviste English don miss the chance for a put_down)
#L2
"howler"
crudely articulates what I wish somewhat more refinement --
#L3
you give us WASP, we'll give you back WASP in the face,
Ace --
#L2
term, above
#L3
if you don't starve to death walking back (against the
dialectic wind --
#L4
and then there's this lawyer who builds -- or buys,
rather, lawyers can't build anything but applied
tsoris -- a vacation home on a fog_shrouded Maine
seacost promentory, and calls it 'Moot Point' --
that was from a New Yorker story that may mother
told me in the late '40's or maybe the '50's --
#L3
to find it,
#L2
"a muddle of methodlogies."
OK, let's go on, it's past 5 AM,
#L3
if it was me wrestling with that angel we'd all still be
sitting in the mud on the east side of Jabok, wondering
about possible missed opportunities, and the promised
land of Israel would be run by the USA and filled with
Golden Arches by MacDonald's, and we would be at peace
with all the Arabs because there was no more holiness to
fight over, because it would all be paved over with
concrete -- as we damned near have done anyhow, so no
wonder all good holy or anyhow cultured if not precisely
civilized people want the Arabs to throw us out of there
but I digress --
#L4
P.S., and PVK once said, I think I heard that at an
Abode talk or Abode Camp mid_70s:
PVK remarked, Fairies will put if with a lot, but
if you start paving over the land, they're going to
leave --
#L1
So we were talking about 'scientism', as pop_culture appropriation
of selected scientific observation and/or theories --
I am trying to argue that it is not Darwin's theories, but rather
merely their 'scientistic' simplification into
pop__intellectual_culture as 'Darwinism', that is behind this
kulturkampf attack on the notion of 'intelligent design' --
And I was trying to suggest that we first see scientism, in
moderntimes anyhow, in Hume's appropriation of then__cutting_edge
theories of optics, especially as applied to perception -- the eye
as a lense -- into what I term his 'empiricist epistemology'
So ok, to go back to my first_draft notes:
But many, even Hume, took it for some new quaisi_discovery,
rendering the existence of the world, not to mention its nature,
rather questionable.
zowie for howie,
it's getting chilly here, and not even a rubber croissane until
Honest George opens the Restorante in 2_and_a_half hours, by 8:00
-- I stole all the bread I could yeterday, with my 20_franc bowl
of pata with a dollup of canned totatoe sauce and a sprinkling of
cheese -- they graciously offer to put it on for me, because they
know darned well that if they leave me to help myself I'd just
upend the bowl of it onto my overpriced platter -- so anyhow, I
try to get it back to my shack before I trip on the icicles that
form on the tagliatelli, and then I add natural olive oil and
garlic power and Italian herbs and a dash of the plastic bottle of
reconsituted lime juice that I keep by the Tequilla -- I hope to
learn to squirt it at arm's length -- and then it's almost edible,
with a glass of cheap Italian wine, which is a heck of a lot more
honest if not quite better than the Swisspiss moderately_priced
Merlot you know --
OK so I lied about shooting up on lime juice at arm's length, it's
all I can do to keep from dribbling at point_blank range.
Maybe I getter buy a plasticstraw and call it a dry Lime Rickey.
With luck my generation, we senior citizens, may make it to
senility without ever growing up --
Hunter Thompson shot himself just in time.
Him (Hume, I presume) and Prince Hamlet.
Hume hesitated to commit himself to an assumtion that the sun
would rise tomorrow,
and Hamlet stayed awake worrying that if it did, he would have to
again decide whether or not to skewer his Uncle that day,
or just have a few more stout dark beers with the two Jews -- "her
privates , we" --
I mean, a few more lines like that and I'll vote for Shimeon &
Levy -- the guys who castrated all the Caananites after Prince
Hamor did a number with their sister, even if she did really want
to marry him -- and him her, for all that he started off by rather
forcing the matter -- I mean, this titty_bopper comes out to see
the orgy, what should she expect -- but then when it happens, she
really does go from being a brash cock_teaser -- you can't touch
me, my Daddy is the King of our Popel, even if we do live on
theoutskirs of town -- to a sad girl who has just entered
womanhood, and he is moved with love and compasison for her --
this is story of Dinah in the Book of Genesis, and I've told it
true --
Don't take too much salt with a shot of tequilla before sunrise,
it darned near made me barf -- the salt, not the tequilla.
the only kind word Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern get is from
Horatio, who, like any good goy, offers manly sympathy but won't
do a damn thing to save them -- "So Rosenkranz and Guildenstern go
to it" -- Hamlet thinks he's been so cute, with all his secret
little double_crossing letters, and Horatio sees right through
that crap -- I mean, if I was Horatio, not that I'd have gotten
past the Recruiting Sergeant with my backside intact, bit if the
Good Fairy picked up and plopped me down at the armoury shop, and
so I was Horatio, I'd have bugged out then and there to try to get
to Fortinbras in time for lunch before the mutton's gone --
but back to Hume:
The ladies he dated must have had rather a dull time, as he tried
to make up his mind what, if anything, lay beneath him. One hopes
he was not callled out too often to deliver babies, who do tend to
do their thing in realtime, regardless of all the epistemologic
dilemmas that poses to our noses.
What is odd, as I think I already said below, is that the only
sense_perception considered by empiricist epistemology is visual.
That's bound to have had some heavy_duty philosophic implications,
but I can't yet guess what they were. Maybe somebody else did so,
I'm too darned visual myself to get much perspective eon it.
Back to my first_draft text:
--------
Well, Moore said all that first, in his humorless way.
Again, Wittgenstein said,
#L2
or so I was told, by C.D. Rollins it must have been,
but no, more likely Cavell in his lectures at UC Berkeley
1962 --
#L1
"Moore doing philosophy is like an elephant trying to dance" --
#L2
as I say, an image Wittgenstien no doubt took from
Beethoven's Fifth, 2nd movement, that preposterous
double_bass passage.
#L3
If poor old Ludwig had only lightened up he might have
written some great opera buffo,
instead of all that Sturm und Drang und Dreck mit Sahne.
OK Jose, so on we go, Joe.
-------------------------------------------------------
#L1
The authors notes
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 9, Column
2)
that Darwin considered 'The Origion of Species' as an abstracdt of
a larger work, and that "he'd wanted it title it, "An Abstract of
an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties through Natual
Selection"
The author remarks:
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 9, Column
2, paragiraffe 2:)
"The evidence, as he presented it, mostly fell within four
categories: bio_geography, paleontolgy, embryology and
morphology."
#L2
Not to mention
Three Quick Tips for Practical Pussybumping, by One Who
Knows.
#L3
(OK, ok, sorry Rabelais)
#L4
Good thing I didn't mention it.
#L5
New moon, which really means No Moon, not New
Moon, was 31 December, that means after dark
31 Dec.
Saw the moon last night, over the ridge_line,
which means we see it late in this valley even
if there are clear skies.
#L1
The author continutes:
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), starting page
9, Column 2 paragiraffe 2)
"Bio_geogrpahy is the study of the geogrpahical distribution of
living creatures -- that is which species inhabit which parts of
the planet and why."
#L2
[ Because the Vikings didn't take VISA card from quadrapeds,
that's why.
#L3
I mean, most polar bears would have been perfectly glad
to go to Florida --
#L3
I know I would ,
#L4
for a week anyhow, before I got too many mosquitos
up my nose and jumped into the swamp for a dip in
the damp and become one or two's alligator's shoes,
I suppose (as you knows) ]
#L1
The author continues:
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), Column 2,
paragiraffe 2:)
"Paleontology investigates extinct life-forms, as revealed in the
fossil record."
#L2
[ Duh now. If you want to do a taxonomy of species, you
better not leave out all the ones that didn't make it, Jakob.
]
#L3
(There was this lovely, poignant cartoon in The New
Yorker, maybe 30 years ago, of Noah's Ark setting out to
sea, and two unicorns standing side by side on the
shore, looking after it sadly. )
#L4
Those with simplistic view of 'cretionism', not to
mention 'intelligent design', might ask themselves
why all those jihadist creationsts --
#L5
I mean, if the Crusaders could rightously wipe
out the Jews on their way to cleanse the
HolyLand of the MusselMan Infidel, why can't
us Enlightened Secularists knock off all those
Bored_Again__Christians --
#L6
Georgia Crackers the lot of them, I don't
doubt -- we should never have let
Jimmy_the_Grin onto the floor of the
Democratic Convention --
#L5
on our way to make the World Safe from Al
Quaeeda,
:L6
#L6
(may Osama ben Lden never be blown into your
nostrils in a Pakistani sandstorm)
#L2
The author continues (loc. cit.):
"Embryology examines the revealing stages of development (echoing
earlier stages of evolutionary history)"
#L2
[ But the notion that in its 9 months of gestation the embryo
of a single species recapitulates hundred_millions of years
of the evolution of all species, is dazzlingly problematic.
I mean,for starters, why should the embryo of one species
exemplify the characteristic of other species -- maybe this
is merely a coincidental similarity.
#L3
Though I admit that would have to be one hell of an
improbable coincidence -- especially if the shared DNA
or whatever you call it is non_functional, and hence
presumably residual.]
#L1
The author continues (loc. cit. is where it's at):
"Morphology is the science of anatomical shape and design."
#L2
Comment Number 1, Plumber:
Duh now number too:
If you're going to study a field, you do have to say what it
looks like.
Comment Number 2, Schmoo:
#L3
(The Schmoo was Al Capp's vision of a beneficent if not
precisely Supreme being -- whatever you wanted, the
Schmoo gave it to you.
#L4
Thank heaven this was in the 1940's--1950's, so we
were spared the X_rated variants --
#L5
though I did once see an interesting little
comic book at the American Friends Service
Committee Workcamp in Matewan West Virginia
#L6
(of which -- Matewan West Virginia, that
is -- I was named and proudly remain am
"Honorary Citizen and [an] Admiral in the
Tug River Navy "-- the Tug River having
during Prohibition been a major
commerical waterway
#L2
So here is Comment Number 2, Schmoo:
By George we've got it -- he used the word 'design'.
So now we can at least hypothesize the existence of
'intelligent design', because nobody can say
#L3
(oh pace Wittgenstein, you never meant to work such woes
upon us,
#L4
though many of the little Wittgensteinians maybe
did , those 'sly biters'
#L5
A 'sly biter' is a little dog that runs behind
you and nips at your ankles.
#L6
I was told that by Roy Lapidus, Baron of
Doberdane Mansion on Doberdane Estates,
aka Temporary Enhanced Caravan #101 on
Moshav Mevo Modi'in, which I eventually
inherited, or rather, out_hustled the
Vaad haGanovim for --
#L7
by tradition, whoever lives therein
sooner or later makes lots of
problems for the Vaad
#L2
I mean it's either that or 'stupid design' --
#L3
which might better describe mankind, as any woman with a
backache will tell you.
#L4
I mean, this whole reproductive arrangement could
certainly do with a bit of improvement.
Here are a few simple suggestions, in case anyone's
listening:
#L5
I put a counter on my Website, now I have to
find the software to fix it. Apparently it
got stuck at the number 2.
#L5
Here are a few simple suggestions for a
somewhat more intelligent design of the human
reproductive system, in case anyone's
listening:
Making a safe place to keep one's balls when
then not in use, for starters.
And a cock less prone to undeclared temper
tantrums -- some say, the sulks -- would be
rather a kind gesture.
And perhaps a womb designed more along the
lines of good laptop, so that rather than
being relegated to the status of a sacred cow
for a number of months, a young woman could
set it down for a few hours and go out to the
disco without getting sneered at by all those
career girls.
#L6
You know, a bit of rechargeable umbilical
cord or some such. I'm a philosopher,
not some sort of lab rat
test_tube__magician.
#L2
And for that matter, if this is Divine Creation by a
Supremely Benificient Deity, would it have been too much
trouble to provide a comment period for a bit of end_user
input before finalizing that supposedly intelligent design.
#L3
I mean, what we get instead is, 'Hey Adam, take a little
nap, we'll tell you all about it in the morning.
#L4
No, don't worry about it, you look fine, she won't
notice a thing.
And anyhow all the stores are closed now, it's erev
Shabat.
Pick a fig_leaf if you really mind.
Yes yes, a fig_leaf, look in the pond some time,
and then learn to count --
on anything you want; try your toes -- oh, sorry,
they tell me we evolved you from the monkey.
can't quite see why, now you'll have to sit around
all day waiting for the coconuts to fall. D
arned good thing banannas don't grow on trees
otherwise you really would have wait for Shosh to
open the Pizza_Pot_Parlour
-- ok ok, do your fingers still work -- they're
even enhanced? -- great, so we hold up the left
hand, and then we take the pinky of the right hand
-- oh SnakeTakeIt, just pick the fig leaf aand put
it where it's fittess --
-------------------------------------------------
sa, Campra, 5 Jan '06 -- 5(?) teveT -- overcast,
might get a dusting of snow
-------------------------------------------------
#L1
And now we got us a two_page spread of a really ugly little pile
of bones with one paragraph of commentary that is pure jive.
We learn that Darwin examined the skeletons of varous breeds of
birds, trying to find "similarities that might show their descent
from a single wild species, the rock dove."
Well, that seems like a harmless enough way for a rich boy to
play, but don't expect us to stop going to the Kotel if you find
it.
#L2
[ The Kotel is the 'Western Wall Plaza', at the base of the
retaining wall that Herod the Great Monster had built so he
could put up that pseudo_Greek archistrocity on Temple Mount
#L3
-- with all that gold and marble, about as smart as
asking your daughter to get a bit of exercise by running
home from the mikveh past the Legionaires Rec Hall.
#L2
There are rock doves there, and they are very lovely.
Alev said, they are flying around in circles because this is
a very holy place. Well, that's a nice gentle perception,
though it does not come as a total surprise. ]
#L1
'Bio_geography' seems to boil down to the observed fact that
"''closely allied' species inhabit neighboring patches of habitat"
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 12, Column
2)
Which does suggest common ancestry. But that does seem obvious.
And as for paleontology, successive species do seem to resemble
each other. So "closely allied species succeed one another in
time, as as lviing nergy in space, because they're related through
evolutionary descent."
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 12_13 ).
But that does not seem surprising either.
Amd anyhow. so do the Hatfields and the McCoys, in West Virgnia.
"Embryology too involved patters that couldn't be explained by
co_incidence. Why does the embryo of a mammal pass thrugh states
resembling stages of the embryo of a reptile."
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 13, Column
1)
#L2
[ Because we're keeping our options open until we get a good
report on the Delivery Room. Some places, if the climate's
hot and dry most of the time, the fittest might have a better
chance of survival by starting out as a lizard, esecially if
there's a kibutz with lots of date_palms near by -- enhances
the survival of the fruit_flies, and we do like fruit_flies.
Or used to anyhow; I mean this pablum is pretty bland in
comparison. ] �
#l1
Well, there is a certain functional parallelism -- from nuture by
the mother in gestation, to physical independence after birth.
I'm not clear what these observations from embryology add to a
'theory of evolution'. But this article is not very clear.
The author continues:
(National Geogrpahic November '04 (David Quammen), page 13, Column
1, paragiraffe 2):
"Morphology, [ Darwin's ] fourth category of evfidence, was the
'very soul' of natural history, according to Darwin.' ....
#L2
[ This is the first occurrence in this article of the term
'natural history'. If not clear how it relates to 'natural
selection' and to 'evolution'. This is not a conceptually
rigorous article. Nor even a conceptually clear one. ]
--------------------------
Resume at start of page 5 of =id8b
RESUME AS =id12*.
-------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================
sa, Campra, 9 Jan '06 -- 9(?) teveT --
clear and cold, nice moon on the snow last night -- just past the
first quarter -- about 12 below this morning, and pretty much
holding there --
================================================================