Evolution and Beauty

Posted by Paul Decelles May 30, 2008 at 4:05 p.m.

All this stuff about sexy tornadoes leads me to a consideration of beauty from an evolutionary perspective...I am never away from thinking about evolution. Being at Disney last week taking lots of pictures of flowers, got my thinking about evolution and beauty. Take this shot of a flower from Disney:Actually this structure is called a spathe and it really a group of fused flowers wrapt around by a leaf. Think of Jack in the Pulpit and you have idea.At first glance, not a traditionally beautiful picture and yet if you really look at it I suspect you will see a certain sensuousness to this image. I am reminded of Georgia O'Keeffe who allegedly said she painted flowers because she couldn't afford models. The traditional explanation for why flowers are beautiful is that that this is a by product of the coevolution between flowers and pollinators. But that really doesn't explain why they are beautiful for us. Part of the answer maybe that flowers also coevolved with us and breeders selected for beauty. But why beauty in the first place?In terms of sexual beauty and attractiveness, it appears that humans and other animals have innate neurological biases that operate in conjunction with Darwinian sexual selection leading to elaboration of certain characteristics. But why these biases? Why not just respond to the narrow signs required for our reproduction and not feel rewarded emotionally by flowers and other things that we see as beautiful be it a flower, a poem or a butterfly?Of course, I would want an evolutionary explanation because of my (innate perhaps?) desire for explanation. How do things come about? How do they work? But just because scientists are interested in these sorts of questions no way diminishes the emotional response and appreciation of beauty in all its forms.Nor does beauty exist in a vacuum. Our innate neurological biases may be enhanced or over ridden by our experience or cultural preconceptions. For instance for me the beauty of the Rhododendron in the picture above is enhanced by the presence of these little bug nymphs:There is a richness of connection that the nymphs add that for me is itself part of beauty and would be missing if I had taken a shot of the flower alone.By the way Georgia O'Keeffe's interpretation of a Jack in the Pulpit is in the National Gallery of Art and online at:http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?68975+0+0+20centpa.

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RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

Bug nymphs... it's difficult for me to think of insects that are creepier than bug nymphs. I'm not a huge fan of the Hemiptera order, anyway. Many of them smell horrible and some can even inflict a painful bite (or more appropriately, an injection).Anyhow, Paul, I'm glad you hinted at the notion that maybe flowers--just like anything--are inherently neutral; it takes a human to assign aesthetic qualities or notions of good an bad. Although they have had some effect on some species, I really doubt that breeders have created what we conceive of as beautiful flowers. Consider orchids. The orchid family is one of the largest plant families known, and most of them are what humans would consider beautiful. Most orchids have evolved to look the way they do due to selective pressures of their native environments.Of course, if you hold an ultraviolet light up to various flowers, you might see something different. Or, if you can sense the infrared portion of the spectrum, you might also see something different. I have a feeling that flowers probably coevolved with insects, and the ones that attracted the insects the most and had a good way to get the insects dirty with their pollen were the ones that were selectively more fit.One can also look at the flowers of trees such as the Paw-paw (Asimina triloba), which are small and not very spectacular at all. But paw-paw flowers, just like many other infloresences, give off a fetid sort of odor, much like rotting meat. Thus, it appears as though such flowers have coevolved with such insects as flies and carrion insects.To wrap up my response, as an anthropologist, I'll say that I'm happy you included possible cultural factors as determinants of the perception of beauty. Humans tend to look at many flowers as floral representations of female genitalia. Some folks might find this very intrigueing, while other might find it quite vulgar. Also, something like a cow might not think the same way about a field of wildflowers as you and me or insects might. Cows might see a tasty meal without assigning any sort of aesthetics to the flowers. Sexual selection certain operates in animals, but in stationary organisms like plants that can't choose who they reproduce with, it would seem that other factors are involved in the selection of plant morphology, pigmentation, and scent.
May 30, 2008 at 6:39 p.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

By the way, have you read Michael Pollan's 'The Botany of Desire?' The content is right in line with this blog posting.
May 30, 2008 at 6:42 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Ubermine,You are right..Katydid nymph...so wrong order entirely. I should have checked out the mouth parts. As for spandrels, funny you should mention that since I was thinking about spandrels with regards to the spathe. Here is this remarkable structure whose form- is probably- in part the result of some sort of developmental constraint. For other readers a spandrel in biology is a structure that is the result of a developmental constraint rather than an adaptation arising from natural selection.See:http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/wescourses/2004s/ees227/01/spandrels.htmlPoetry may be a spandrel but that certainly does not make it any less rewarding. As for female genitalia and flowers, from what I understand, O'Keeffe didn't buy one at all. Redwood, I have not had a chance to read Pollan's book but it has been on my-it keeps getting longer and longer- list of books to read.
May 30, 2008 at 8:20 p.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

Ubermime, I'd like to see that guppie study. I would be very, very careful when dealing with animals and human behaviors. Humans tend to anthropomorphize (the baby-talking to the animals by the veternary assistants at my vet yesterday was a good reminder), and the line between actually perceiving things in the same manner that humans do and perceiving things the way other animlas do could be a really gray one. Obviously, some animals, especially birds, do use visual cues and displays to be more evolutionarily successful, but do they see the same things we do? Perhaps a more colorful and larger display simply means that the lucky male bird is more capable of providing for itself, thus increasing the Darwinian fitness of the female's offspring.The evolutionary niche of humans is culture. There really isn't a good definition of culture, but it allows us to use our environment to survive. A culture not only stores vital information about survival, but it also tends to satisfy that ubiquitous human desire to know what life is all about. Humans, alone, show an unequivocal ability to express symbolically, which is what I was getting at with the vaginal flower comment. It's just a flower, but one's sociocultural mileu predisposes certain reactions upon seeing the flower. Language often encodes a culture's framework, which can be ovserved with Berlin and Kay's ethnographic study of color-naming systems. Some cultures have no words for any quantity above 4, except for an equivalent word meaning 'many.' So while you saw seven fish in the pool, your friend from the other culture might just have seen 'many' fish in the pool.I guess what I'm trying to say is that beauty as we conceive the concept, very likely could be a spandrel. But is the evolutionary adaptation that causes us to possess such capacities the same in nonhumans? I guess that is what I was trying to get at with my first post. For whatever reason, we perceive what we call 'beauty' in things, but how can we know for sure that nonhumans perceive the same things through that same manner of perception?
May 30, 2008 at 11:34 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Redwood,You raise some good issues. Presumably our notions of beauty are somehow connected to our neurological biases and these can be examined. One could design choice experiments to see what shapes and colors infants are attracted to..I suspect this has been done but it is outside my area. Analogous sorts of things have been done with other organisms.The current evolutionary niche may be culture, but it seems likely that the direction cultures take is influenced by the characteristics of our nervous system. As for beauty, I have this half baked notion that the concept is pegged to a series of emotional rewards that promote adaptive engagement with our environment. Other animals may not have the abstract concept of beauty but I bet our closest relatives experience the emotional rewards associated with beauty.This is kind of like my argument in the sexy tornado thread here:http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/at-random/2008/may/26/are-tornadoes-sexy/#comment_601537
May 31, 2008 at 12:14 a.m.
jonas (anonymous) says…

Haha. I expected an LTE and a flamewar, instead I get lovely pictures. Much better. Paul, you have an amazing eye.
May 31, 2008 at 12:46 a.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

Paul: (yes, I'm up this late) I, too, commend you for having a great eye. These are the types of thoughts I think a lot of us have but never have a chance to catch in some form of communicative medium, for whatever reason. Anyhow, I am an anthropologist by training (well, I'm still being trained), so I certainly have read much more about humans that relates to culture, language, and biology as mitigating factors in human behavior. That being said, I certainly think that neurology plays a role in it, and if you're an anthropologist, you look at it as part of biological anthropology. Man, this is just getting down to theoretical viewpoints and semantics, but the conception of the entire picture that I currently am working with has two primary components. The first component, of course, is the individual. Currently, it is widely believed that a combination of both environmental factors and genetics are at play when dealing with phenotypic variation. Let's say that we are operating under the premise that culture is what we use to survive; it is sort of a cumulation of knowledge and tradition that allows us to survive in our everyday existence. So, if we continue keeping phenotypic variation and its causes in regard, then how much of culture is the result of neurology? Certainly, we can't agree on everything, and we know that cerain psychological pathology such as depression seems to show high heritability. So we come back to E.O. Wilson's 'Sociobiology' and how much of behavior is controlled by biology. Of course, as humans, we all share certain neurophysical things in common, as do most animals. Certainly, this determines some of what humans are capable of, but as human evolution occurred, culture as an adaptive mechanism continued to become more and more robust and malleable in response to different environments and circumstances. It is my belief that culture is a combination of the individual and extant cultural repertoire. After all, if it were not for the initiative of individuals, culture would remain static; evolution is a process, and as an adaptive mechanism, so is culture. Since we all have to agree on something, culture, then, must be a combination of subjective perception (this is where neurology plays its primary role) and an 'extrasomatic' body of accumulated knowledge and tradition.
May 31, 2008 at 2:47 a.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

Sorry to be a pixel-hog. It would almost work better verbally, but I'll continue...I'm not sure if you've heard the term before, but one thing I find fascinating is the concept of 'biocultural evolution.' The sickle cell trait is a prime example. Sickle cell anemia is usually the result of a homozygous-recessive genotype, typicall represented as 'ss.' Heterozygous folks, with a genotype typicall represented by 'Ss,' are adaptively more fit, since they have an increased resistance to falciparum malaria. This is a very recent trait resulting from different selective pressures encurred as a result of culture. When agriculture first came to south and central Africa, much of the land was forest. As human populations expanded due to increased food from agriculture, more land for crops was needed. As a 'solution,' people began what is typically referred to as 'slash-and-burn' agriculture. When they began chopping down what was originally rainforest, the moisture began accumulating in large pools, which was a perfect breeding environment for the Anopheles (genus name) mosquito. The Anopheles mosquito is the carrier of falciparum malaria.So, when humans began cutting down the forests for agricultural land, this brought them in contact with this mosquito. Over time, this mutant recessive hemoglobin type began proliferating due to a concomitant increase in both the frequency of malaria and the frequency of the survival rate due to the fitness of those with the heterozygous (Ss) or homozygous-dominant (SS) genotypes. People with the 'Ss' genotype can still experience anemia in high-altitude situations, such as if an airplane's cabin loses pressure. Some say that human evolution has reversed with the advent of modern medicine, but a recent PNAS article makes a very convincing argument that human evolution has, in fact, accelerated since the inception of agriculture.Hopefully, I haven't driven this thing into the ground, but the case I am making is for culture as an equal component of human variation as neurology (biology). I personally feel that to denegrate culture to biological determinism is to neglect the primary feature of humanity--that which distances us the most from other organisms--culture.But again, Paul, you seem to have more of a purely biological background. When studying human evolution, one simply cannot rule out the role of an accumulating repertoire of mitigating strategies for selective forces. At least, in my chosen profession, I can't.
May 31, 2008 at 3:05 a.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

On third, though, I think that the 'SS' genotype might be at an increased suceptibility to malaria. In any case, I'm not trying to sound like the 'end all and be all.' Sorry if it sounds like it. I've just read a great deal of literature within a particular theoretical framework. A good general book to have a look at is titled 'Human Variation: Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups,' by Stephen Molnar. I have the 6th edition. The first edition was published in 1983, and the 6th was published in 2006. It should be pretty up-to-date. I gets pretty biological, so those with a biology background will probably find it quite accessible. One thing they've impressed upon me in grad school is that human existence as we know it is a result of a melange of nature and nurture.
May 31, 2008 at 3:30 a.m.
devobrun (anonymous) says…

RedwoodCoast, As a budding scholar, I might give you some advice:1) The joy of learning is magical, but it doesn't put tomatoes on the vine. While you are naming and correlating, and comparing, and explaining, and investigating, you might include some study of Edison as well.2) Most people don't appreciate esoterica like you do. Application, however, will win you friends.....yes even lovers. As Red Green says:" If the women don't find you handsome, at least they can find you handy."3) Nothing is sweeter than truly testing your conjectures. Mental gymnastics at 3 am are fun. However, setting up a definitive test of your ideas is a grownup thing to do. When things work, you have a feeling that surpasses the euphoria of multiple trips to the coffee pot.4) In this day of diminishing energy resources, many esoteric endeavors might find their funding diverted to studies of efficiency. Good luck with that. Oh, nice pictures Paul.
May 31, 2008 at 2:01 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Thank you Devo,I agree with you that testing ideas is critical..but mental gymnastics are part of science. As for Edison, that is a good point. Recently there has been a bunch of attention paid to a French inventor who allegedly predated Edison in terms of recording sound. But those recordings were not meant to be heard but were instead meant to find a way of visually interpreting human speech. It took Edison to conceive that playback would be useful.That said, I suspect Einstein was considered pretty esoteric as well and yet look at the impact his ideas have had. So perhaps one should study both Einstein AND Edison to get a complete view of the scientific and technological imagination at work.
May 31, 2008 at 2:28 p.m.
devobrun (anonymous) says…

When I look at Einstein's work and its application, I find that much of what he proposed is of no current use to engineers.I just watched the shuttle launch (STS-124). The physics of the launch is Newtonian. The communications systems are Maxwell. Special and General Relativity is not even a tertiary concern.The materials science is certainly founded on quantum mechanical insights, but Neils Bohr, Schrdinger, and others are far more important here.Einstein is an odd duck in the history of science. The fact that he has subsequently influenced so many thinkers is, to me, a strange situation. Its wild-hair thinking that may be quite true, but it is odd that its application is so limited. He gives rules that create a world that is strange indeed. Great for the narrative crowd. Engineers don't spend much time with him at all.I prefer Claude Shannon as a role model for the esoteric scientist who influenced our lives markedly. He's much more interesting and intelligent and creative than Einstein. He could apply himself to genetics and evolution as well as Las Vegas. He transformed Ma Bell and telecommunications in general. He and his direct followers are responsible for computers, the internet, and virtually all storage and dissemination of information that we have today.Nobody has heard of Claude Shannon! You and Redwood should poke around the net for Shannon stuff. This is a true hero of modern thought, and deed. Einstein was a savant who mastered about three tricks. His mind worked in a bizarre way, and he defined the character of the mad scientist. Stuff of cartoons.
May 31, 2008 at 5:07 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Interesting choice. Actually I suspect most biologists do know who Shannon is; in fact as a grad student I even took a course essentially about application of Shannon's ideas to biology.What I was trying to do was attempt to very different sorts of scientific imagination. As for Einstein remember that Einstein did a lot more than relativity. Maybe he had about 3 tricks...ah but what tricks they were!Remember that his Nobel was at least in part for the photovoltaic effect; in biology and chemistry we know him not for relativity but for his explanation of Brownian motion which is of course related to diffusion theory; his name crops up in statistics and in all sorts of other odd places and I suspect places that certain types of engineers spend lots of time with. ;-)
May 31, 2008 at 9:55 p.m.
boltzmann (anonymous) says…

Devobrun, Actually relativity does have a very important role in modern technology and engineering because of its role in GPS technology - in order to compute position on Earth to within 5 or 10 meters - GPS calculations have to take into account relativity - Newtonian mechanics is not sufficient to achieve the current level of accuracy. Also, in order for chemists to understand the properties of heavy elements - such as gold or mercury, quantum calculations have to take into account special relativity, because the inner electrons in heavy elements are traveling at a speed that is not small relative to the speed of light - in fact, the "gold" color of gold and the fact that mercury is a liquid are both consequences of relativity - use of non-relativistic quantum mechanics would predict that gold is silver in color - like most metals.
May 31, 2008 at 10:20 p.m.
boltzmann (anonymous) says…

Oh, and I forgot - all atomic power and weapons technology is a direct result of relativity theory. Any nuclear engineer would have to have more than a passing knowledge of it. Another technological device that depends upon relativity is the PET scan (Positron Emission Tomography). The positron was predicted by Dirac in 1928 by applying the mathematics of relativity to the Schoedinger equation. It was discovered 4 years later in 1932 by Carl Anderson. Basically, the existence of antimatter in general is a consequence of relativity.
May 31, 2008 at 10:27 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Interesting,Also might relativity considerations be important sending probes to the immediate region of the Sun, say to Mercury?
May 31, 2008 at 11:22 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

So that explains why they run away. And I thought is was my excessively good looks.
June 1, 2008 at 8:43 a.m.
justbegintowrite (Ronda Miller) says…

Paul, beautiful pictures as usual, even the tiny bugs! But, I have to say that in my book while flowers may be sensual, they are never sexy! :) Sexy is defined as stimulating, exciting, takes your breath away, makes your pulse pound. Sensual is relaxing, calming, soothing. Tornado = Sexy === Flower = Sensual.
June 1, 2008 at 12:53 p.m.
devobrun (anonymous) says…

My original assertion is that engineers spend little time with Einstein. An example is relativity as applied to GPS. The effect of special (velocities relative to light) and general (masses) relativity on GPS is on the order of microseconds per year. Since a nanosecond is a foot, these are important time considerations in the operation of GPS (km per year). They are factored into the clocks on the spacecraft......empirically.If these corrections are because of Einstein, engineers say "so what".If these corrections are explained by relativity and this relativity thing can be used to anticipate new solutions to peoples problems, then relativity is fecund. Otherwise it is just a narrative. So far relativity is mostly a beautiful narrative. Ah, but the scientists view any little advance in knowledge just as important as the rest. Whether the new model is or isn't useful is not important. I first ran into this in the math department, 35 years ago. Application was a dirty word. Not mathematical. I now know that the math guys avoided application because the applications might intrude into their philosophy. One might actually suggest that there is an error in the math because measurements and applications show that the math doesn't work quite right. This is a blasphemous situation since math doesn't require a test. Secretly, they would look back at their derivations and use any damn thing to check their work. They are human, too.So, this linkage of truth to beauty is apparently a long and important aspect of science that doesn't exist in engineering. Hence we have these beautiful pictures and Redwood's long musings about that which is science and truth and beauty. But there is a problem. When the philosophy of science is applied to the real world , it often doesn't quite make it. A current example is corn-based ethanol energy production. Bad idea. Not properly engineered. But there is a beauty to the notion of renewable, plant-based energy. The philosophy of scientists and businessmen trumped the engineers. It appears that it is better to feel good about the science of a problem than to just find a solution.Oh, the philosophy of business is make $. Truth, beauty, usefulness, are all outside the realm of business.The present energy and food problems of the world are a direct result of this misplaced scientific philosophy of environmentalism.
June 1, 2008 at 1:21 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Ironically I agree with you about corn based ethanol production and in my classes have questioned the wisdom of this approach nor do I buy into the feel good approach to science. Recognition of beauty and its appreciation does not imply that beauty is truth. Did I say that any where? eh?You are absolutely right about there being a divide between the math guys and engineering application, and that is unfortunate. I know this from my own experience. I suspect some business people might take umbrage at your generalization about business philosophy as well but I will leave it to them to defend themselves.I happen, among other things to invest from time to time, and when I evaluate a stock you can be sure that I am interested in usefulness and truth with respect to what the company says it does and the products it makes. As for beauty in business I suspect good product designers would quibble with you about that one!
June 1, 2008 at 2:24 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Rhonda,Actually flowers can be sexy. There are orchids for example in which the flowers mimic female bees and when the males attempt to mate with the flowers, pollen gets deposited on the bee and then transfered when the bees visit the next flower.So were you a male bee, you might find these orchids, well, sexy.
June 1, 2008 at 2:37 p.m.
justbegintowrite (Ronda Miller) says…

I concede you are correct, Paul. Sexy is as sexy does - sexy is in the eye of the beholder. :) At least thats the buzzzzzzzz on sexy!
June 1, 2008 at 3:53 p.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

Ubermime, I respectfully disagree with your commentary. You seem very confident of your counter-arguments, but I would hate to believe that I read 2000+ pages of material on these subjects in the past two semester just to be completely misinformed (and it's all info I'm going have to regurgitate this fall during my oral exams). The anopheles mosquito is the primary carrier of falciparum malaria and originally lived in deep forests. When agriculture began to spread and more land was needed for agricultural production, people began cutting down the forest, bringing them into contact with the mosquito and falciparum malaria. Yes, there are several other hemoglobin variants that confer a resistance to malaria, notably, the G6PD variant, which occurs most frequently in the circum-Mediterranean area. Strangely enough, this is where most of the world's fava beans are eaten, and people with the G6PD variant also develop a fatal condition known as favism if they eat fava beans.There are also different types of malaria, but the falciparum strain, which is carried by the anopheles mosquito, seems to be the one that the recessive sickle-cell allele confers the most resistance to. And, yes, this is a very recent genetic variant in human history. Grasslands have been spreading in Africa for probably at least 6 million years. In fact, many of the dominant theories of the evolution of bipedalism and hominids involves the spread of grasslands. Some believe that our ancestors began walking bipedally on the limbs of trees, which was then very convenient when needing to cross stretches of grassland to get to other patches of trees... If you would like, I could put together a fairly extensive reading list for you on that malaria and biocultural evolution thing. You know generally what you're talking about, but I have to respectfully disagree with your understanding of the facts. Also, see my previous post about Stephen Molnar's book; it is one of the most comprehensive and most accessible, yet technical works I've read so far.
June 1, 2008 at 4:23 p.m.
RedwoodCoast (anonymous) says…

Devo: I appreciate your civil comment on my posts. Yes, I am a budding scholar, and no, I haven't personally been able to test any of these ideas on my own. There is still a long series of hoops to jump through before I can start off doing my own things. I know I often jump on you for certain things, but I'm just comparing your thoughts to my own and then stating the incongruencies. They're just ideas, but they are the basis of many of our own daily thought structure. I like to think that my professors (who have impressive pedigrees) are not leading me astray. Heck, even within my field, there are serious theoretical disagreements, some of which I harbor in relation to the ideas of my professors.An lastly, to all, I hope I don't sound too hegemonic in my ideas. I tend to be passionate about my beliefs, as I feel that I've put a lot of thought into them. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and they are entitled to disagree with me.
June 1, 2008 at 4:24 p.m.
bondmen (anonymous) says…

Evolution is ugly. It requires death, destruction, disease, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the fit vanquishing the weak over eons and eons and eons of time. It requires chance, accidents and being in the right place at the right time over eons and eons and eons of time. Above all it is a faith in the unobserved and the untestable and lacks the evidence necessary to prove itself. It is a world without God or a world where man imagines himself as a god. Evolution is failure fantastic and above all, fanciful fantasy.
June 1, 2008 at 5:43 p.m.
devobrun (anonymous) says…

No Paul, beauty was not implied as truth. Science is the search for truth. According to my Popper view of things, truth can only be approached asymptotically. Putting beauty in the same discussion as the search for truth (science) raises my warning flags. That's all I meant.Regarding business philosophy, businessmen can have feelings, too. Scientists and engineers as well. Its just that beauty spawns emotion and emotion is not science or engineering or business. Beautiful designs sell more, so the businessman is happy. He may also love his product, but that isn't business, that's personal. Pure business is pure $. That's all I meant.Redwood, I too listened to my professors and learned from them. The reason you are at the university, however, is not to simply learn. You must synthesize.One day in graduate school, the prof was lecturing on the calibration of radars. Near the end of the discussion I said, "hey, what about a pair of antennas with an amplifier in between. The antenna could be made small and easy to aim, and the reduced reflection to the radar receiver due to the small antennas could be compensated by an active (amplifier) device."The prof looked at me for about 30 seconds in silence. It was uncomfortable. He and I started my first business as a result. I had some other eurekas after that. I found that I could think tangentially and make $. PhD was accomplished with the help of an editor after that.So, look for a hook (as the musicians say). Learn one area that you love very well and then respectfully question the authority of the field. Teaching and learning is usually a process of analysis, analysis, analysis. The hope is that creative juices will allow you to synthesize.This takes time and discipline. Not all eureka moments are worth much, but as a young mind, I encourage you to go for it. Good luck to you.
June 1, 2008 at 6:35 p.m.
situveux1 (anonymous) says…

Proofread before you post.
June 1, 2008 at 6:58 p.m.
supertrampofkansas (anonymous) says…

Some quotes from Einstein for Devobrun:"Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.""Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.""Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."And from Plato:"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."Always have to say something don't you Devobrun.
June 3, 2008 at 10:47 a.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Now be nice supertramp- Devobrun has a legitimate and widespread point of view even though I don't share it completely.I have my own aphorism about imagination:"Imagination is the enemy of blind belief."
June 3, 2008 at 4:10 p.m.
supertrampofkansas (anonymous) says…

Sorry Paul,I find it hard to respect a person (apparently must be some kind of engineering teacher) who calls Einstein "a savant who mastered about three tricks" or "a mad scientist who was bizarre" or "someone who lacks imagination" needs to have his head examined and/or lacks a basic understanding of physics. I also find it hard to believe that this is a legitimate and widespread point of view among most scientists especially physicists. Einstein proposed some fairly radical solutions including the special theory of relativity which has been called one of the most elegant imaginative steps in the history of physics. I also think it is silly, pointless, and stupid (I could keep going here) comparing scientists or saying one is better than the other. Shannon, Maxwell, Einstein, Newton, Edison, Popper, Darwin among many others have all made significant contributions. To make such comparisons is short-sighted and demonstrates itself a lack of imagination.
June 3, 2008 at 4:49 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Hi Super,Maybe not among physicists but more among engineers and among certain segments of the society at large. Think about the difficulty of getting funding for basic research today.And yes, it is silly to compare Newton, Darwin etc in terms of "who is better"- my intent in bring up Einstein vs Edison was to point out that perhaps there are different sorts of scientific and technological imagination. I did think the Einstein issue was laid to rest by Boltzmann and myself.Given the sort of strident ad hominem rhetoric that passes for argumentation today, I believe it is incumbent to try for at least the appearance of respect for the person. Granted, there are situations where that is hard to do. ;-)
June 3, 2008 at 9:01 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Bondman,You wrote:"Evolution is ugly. It requires death, destruction, disease, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the fit vanquishing the weak over eons and eons and eons of time. It requires chance, accidents and being in the right place at the right time over eons and eons and eons of time."Pretty scary seen from your vantage point as a creationist. Of course from my perspective I also see the vast diversity of organisms that result from the creative aspect of evolution. And yes evolution is creative in spite of the claims of the creation safari web site you constantly cite.By the way there is a common misconception that organisms that are more fit are somehow stronger than other organisms. That indeed might be the case in certain instances of direct competition but need not be at all.Also scientists studying social behavior-by the way taking a tip from Darwin-have learned that evolution can lead to cooperation among individuals-even individuals of different species. Think of all the cooperative relationships that are found in nature!Now I am not trying to sugar coat evolution but to me it is wonderful that all the natural beauty in the biological would can emerge from the blind impersonal processes that we call evolution.Evolution is success fantastic, not failure, Bondman. You only have to look with your own eyes.
June 4, 2008 at 9:11 a.m.
bondmen (anonymous) says…

pdecell, you have described your god as a natural, mechanical, impersonal, replacement for the Creator God, just as I would expect. Your worship of the creation is as obvious as your lack of knowledge is of the Creator.Get the confusion all straightened out atwww.creationsafaris.com/news
June 18, 2008 at 8:38 a.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Bondman,Curiously my God is not impersonal at all but I don't need to reject science and common sense. You might look up some of the writings of Keith Miller from the geology department at KSU or read Ken Miller's (no relation to Keith) Finding Darwin's God to get another perspective. Regards,Paul
June 22, 2008 at 11:32 p.m.
pdecell (Paul Decelles) says…

Marion,Shall we gather at the river? Is that the Mark Twain version?
June 24, 2008 at 7:03 p.m.