From: Kenneth Van Oost (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Thu 13 Oct 2005 - 19:29:37 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: Robin Faichney <robin@mmmi.org>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 9:14 AM
Subject: Re[2]: The evolution of "evolution"
> Tuesday, October 11, 2005, 1:32:53 PM, Derek wrote:
>
> > At 23:41 02/10/2005, Dace wrote:
>
>
> >> Elsasser wondered if our everyday experience of memory
> >>involves action at a distance over time. To explain ontogenesis, we
need
> >>only posit that newly developing organisms are influenced, via bodily
> >>memory, by past, similar organisms, primarily those belonging to the
same
> >>species.
>
> > I've read this several times, and really tried to see if I can
> > somehow make sense of it, but the only conclusion I can come to is
> > that we must have fundamentally different views on what constitutes
> > "an explanation". If you really believe in the above, then it seems
> > to me that you believe in magic. Given that I'm sure you would say
> > you don't, then it must be a linguistic confusion over the meaning of
> > the word "explain".
>
> > How can you possibly take a term out of psychology, and then propose
> > that it can explain embryology, and furthermore by a mechanism that
> > acts at a distance over both space and time? Was Elsasser really
> > proposing that the embryo of, say, a dinosaur developing in the late
> > Jurassic is currently, as we speak, exerting some
> > space-time-independent effect on a vertebrate embryo developing right
> > this moment?
>
> > You see, when I set that against standard developmental biology, I
> > just can't grasp why a sane reasonable person would choose such a
belief.
>
> Indeed. "Action at a distance" is a profoundly unscientific concept.
> Like "intelligent design" it's an attempt to dignify ignorance and
> make it permanent. Can't see how a particular cellular mechanism could
> have evolved? Then it obviously must have been designed! Can't find a
> link in a supposed causal chain? Well, it must be action at a
> distance! Both appeal to "common sense", both are sheer nonsense.
True, and what if such a thing like a Designer would have existed, why
did he or she ( nobody thinks it could have been female !!!), started out
with something small like an atom !? Why bother at all for the small stuff,
why
not human kind as it is in the present, why history, the sarrow, the Middle
Ages, WO I & II !?
Thank you oh, you great Designer !!!!
Bwaaah !
Kenneth
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