failure

I read in sci.electronics.design that snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Thu, 15 Sep 2005:

He gets pretty rough treatment from others in the field in 'New Scientist' from time to time.

A quick google came up with

reports the demolition of Chomsky's speculation that understanding syntax might be essential for processing mathematical statements, and the related proposition that theory that the evolution of language provided the portal to all higher thought.

Linguists are naturally inclined to see language as the essential congnitive competence ....

Rosemary Varley's three brain-damaged subjects represent enough evidence to knock down this particular periperal speculation. Their residual mathematical competence does not in any way falsify the basic idea that we possess an abstract and essentially innate system of unconcious knowledge about language -

Chomsky being who is he, even this minor bit of nit-picking got headline treatment in New Scientist, which is written by reporters. As I''ve said elsewhere in this thread, journalists do love controversy.

Any time now you'll be telling me that Intelligent Design has knocked Darwin off his perch ....

------------ Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I read in sci.electronics.design that snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Thu, 15 Sep 2005:

'New Scientist' reported not all that long ago that strong evidence to the contrary had been obtained by respected researchers. I can't find the article in the archives, though I'm sure it's there somewhere.

You mean to say that there are Dems in the Bushes???

I read in sci.electronics.design that snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Thu, 15 Sep 2005:

If any intelligent designer was involved, it designed evolution by natural selection as a self-sustaining, self-advancing system.

Only their cigars.

That's certainly the intelligent thing to do.

John

Anybody remember the GHW Bush/Gary Hart ticket? THe gag was, "What's the difference between democratic women and republican women? A: The republican women give their heart to Bush...

Cheers! Rich

Well, divine intervention is an extremely delicate operation in a Universe where every entity has Free Will. :-)

Cheers! Rich

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Fri,

Of course. The 'six days' in Genesis correspond to about 600 million years, so Beardie is now enjoying a 100 million-year Sunday. I hope he's got some good magazines to read.(;-)

And they claim they're funny, excuse me, what a joke. I'll take the New Yorker "liberal" cartoons any day.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Rich The Philosopher wrote (in ) about 'failure', on Fri,

No, you missed the point (and so do all the theists). The whole thing is set up so that it DOESN'T NEED any intervention. It was set going 14 billion years ago and doesn't even need a billion-year service.

Evolution, free will (Pace, Kevin; 'apparent free will', if you like.), Gaia (planetary homeostasis) are all unmistakable evidence of a self-sustaining and self-regulating system.

I'm almost beginning to believe it. (;-)

"Playgod"

"Home and Galaxy"

"Eternity Engineering Times"

"Life, the Universe, and Everything Weekly"

John

Look around: water in all its states; an atmosphere clear enough to see the stars and dense enough to support airliners; far enough from the galactic center to avoid being crisped, but close-in enough to have heavy elements; safe and stable long enough for you and me to have evolved into intelligent life (at least me; I'm not sure about anybody else). Elements nicely separated into mineable lumps of gold, iron, copper, uranium.

Too good to be accidental.

John

Darwinists are their own proof.

It is interesting to watch the continued evolution of the anti-evoltionists.

If we had a dense atmosphere, we'd have no ideas of celestial mechanics, spectroscopy, optics, satellites and suns. If we lived in molten iron, nearly all elements would be in uniform solution, like the featureless basalt on the moon and, likely, mars. The concepts of vacuum, semiconductors, maybe even chemistry would be unheard of.

And carbon is soluble in iron, so we probably wouldn't have evolved anyhow.

I don't think this is an ordinary place.

John

Smart-aleck crack: Will they eventually become intelligent?

"A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself." - Neils Bohr