Here's an interesting opportunity: Lynn Margulis, the controversial scientist, is going on a 'blog tour' to promote her new imprint of science books called Sciencewriters Books. What does that mean? She's going to hang out for a little while on a few blogs and chat and answer questions. If you've wanted to have a conversation with the author of the endosymbiont theory and critic of neo-Darwinian theory, here's your chance.
The tour will kick off on Monday, 12 March, at Pharyngula. She'll be sending me a short article that I'll post that morning, and we'll collect comments and questions. Later that afternoon or evening, she'll browse through those comments and answer the ones she finds interesting.
In addition, she'll be available in the Pharyngula chat room (channel #pharyngula on irc.zirc.org; if you don't have an IRC client, that link will let you use your browser to join in) from 12:00-1:30pm ET.
So mark it on your calendars: an online conversation with Lynn Margulis, next Monday, 12 March, at Pharyngula.
I’ll second that.
Seems she is no supporter of ID either. She tentatively believes her theory of symbiogenesis will supplant the neo-Darwinian evolutionary mechanism for the explanation for new traits. I personally think that it may well become an important aspect of evolutionary theory in general, like the neo-Darwinian evolutionary mechanism and punctuated equilibrium. My view is similar to Gert Kortof’s, who pointed out. (posted in the same archive)
So you can quit railing against neo-Darwinism realpc, because obviously posters at PT have no problem assimilating new information on evolution. We just have trouble swallowing your misrepresentations of both evolution and ID.
Lynn Margulis is doing on a ‘blog tour’?
She’s welcome to stop by and say hello on my blog: http://normdoering.blogspot.com/
Though, she may want to avoid my site considering it’s more about being snarky and promoting atheism more than science.
I’ll have a Margulis post waiting by the 12th.
Considering the source of your quote, i.e. one Michael Behe, it is hard for me to imagine that what is attributed to Margulis is anything other than a quote mine. What tipped me off to this is the fact that only the latter part of your post is in parenthesis. I would like to the entire quote in order to put it in context.
Apparently its a fairly frequently mined quote of Margulis’.
Those quotes are no credit to Margulis. But that’s the thing about quotes of things scientists say – they aren’t evidence, or science.
Realpc, You said in a previous thread… “Yes Randi has debunked a lot of nonsense. There will never be a shortage of ridiculous paranormal claims. But he goes way beyond the data in saying no paranormal claims can possibly be valid.”
When and where did Randi say this? Either quote your source or admit you just made it up!
This is about the third time I’ve asked you this question, realpc. What’s your problem? Reading comprehension difficulties?
The Wikipedia article is using the same mined quotes.
And rather clumsily, with wrong references: the quote about “the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology” is attributed to the Science article with page or journal number 252, the “complete funk” quote is attributed to the same article with pp 378-381. While your source quote the original reference.
Lack of ethics.
“Lynn Margulis’ symbiosis theory is a proven theory in biology.”
Why, are theories “proven” now?
In the sense of “demonstrated” or “confirmed” – sometimes. It would certainly indicate semantic or epistemological confusion to deny, for instance, that the theory that microorganisms can cause disease has been proven.
I’d like to find out more about Margulis, and my only information about Margulis comes from Dawkins (I forget which book; I think it’s maybe The Extended Phenotype). Why, exactly, does she disagree with neo-Darwinism? Something about not liking economic analysis for biological systems for philosophical reasons?
Anyhow, I’ve found the following link, but I still don’t understand what the issue is. Seems to me that she’s claiming that the variations required to form new species come from symbiotic or parasitic mergers, and not from mutation. Is that about it?
After several paragraphs of ad hominems, she gets to the nub – incredulity: “I’ve been critical of mathematical neo-Darwinism for years; it never made much sense to me.”
Here’s Dawkins on Margulis from that page:
I’d say that, while she was marvelously right about symbiosis, she’s mostly not right, and that’s because of the solipsistic rigidity of her thought processes. Hey, scientists are human too.
According to the wikipedia entry she is on the HIV does not cause AIDS bandwgon. Sorry, that where I get off.
Praise her for her early science. But now, she really has not place being promoted by a reality based science blob.
Sad… and dangerous.
per my note above, this one bugs me.
I am writing again because it occurs to me that this is sort of like those engineers, and alas doctors (mostly surgeons it seems; not surprisingly) who become useful idiots for creationism & DI.
For anybody in biomedical field, there is not reasonable doubt about HIV -> AIDS connection.
Just one example: compounds that are specific to the HIV lifecycle, i.e. AZT or protesase inhibitors, result in the decline of HIV in the body and the arrest of disease and disease progression. For anybody who knows what the disease was like pre-AZT and especially after second line of drugs (attack virus at two points in biochemical lifecycle) such as the protease inhibitors, and now afterwards, the “HIV does not cause AIDS” line amounts to calling for murder.
I have no problem with some of the weaker forms of Gaia-ism, and not really for her apparent 1960s-1970s style academic marxism, and certainly do celebrate her for her real contribution to cellular biology.
But somebody has to ask her about AIDS & HIV!
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