200th Birth Anniversary today of Charles Darwin.
here's a clip of the famous naturalist Stephen Jay Gould talking of Darwin's theories, statistics systems analysis--drawing parallels between evolutionary theory and some baseball statistics. Then a visit with him, his son, and his childhood hero Joe DiMaggio.
Gould then takes swipes at religion and folks who foolishly try to find moral values in nature and science.
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This segment is from a portrait/interview of Stephen Jay Gould I uploaded to YouTube a while back. Link here to a playlist of all 6 parts of the 1984 "Nova" show it is from.
Darwin quotes:
With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
--from a letter to Asa Gray
I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.
-- private letter
It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
-- "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex"
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
-- "On the Origin of Species "
here's a clip of the famous naturalist Stephen Jay Gould talking of Darwin's theories, statistics systems analysis--drawing parallels between evolutionary theory and some baseball statistics. Then a visit with him, his son, and his childhood hero Joe DiMaggio.
Gould then takes swipes at religion and folks who foolishly try to find moral values in nature and science.
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This segment is from a portrait/interview of Stephen Jay Gould I uploaded to YouTube a while back. Link here to a playlist of all 6 parts of the 1984 "Nova" show it is from.
Darwin quotes:
With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
--from a letter to Asa Gray
I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.
-- private letter
It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
-- "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex"
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
-- "On the Origin of Species "
