Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Quetzal · 03-05-2002, 09:29 PM

One of the common creationist debating tactics invariably includes massive "argument from authority" quotes from scientists and others. Mostly, these are easy to refute as they are obvious misrepresentations of what the scientist in question said or wrote. Lord V's FAQs and the II archives contain literally hundreds of spurious quotations.

However, every once in while I run across something that is harder to prove. In this case, the reference is to a symposium at the Wistar Institute (U. Penn) in 1966, wherein the cretinists claim a bunch of scientists determined that evilution was mathematically impossible. I haven't found anything on-line to refute the claim, although somehow, based on my knowledge of Wistar (forefront medicine, applications of evolutionary theory, etc), I sensed a "Colin Patterson-ism".

I contacted Frank Hoke, Wistar's director of Public Affairs, who passed my query on to the Wistar archivist. The gist of her reply is below:

Quote:

Dear Mr. [ ... ],

Your inquiry on the monograph "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution" was forwarded to my attention as Archivist of The Institute. This monograph was published by Alan R. Liss, Publ., New York, in 1966 and is a compilation of papers given at a conference held at The Institute April 25-26, 1966. It is edited by Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan. This monograph is listed in OCLC as being owned by more than 280 academic libraries in the U.S. If you are in the Ukraine, however, it might be hard to locate.

The symposium focused on mathematically defining rates of evolutionary change, and exploring variance and mutations in evolutionary change as defined by Darwin's theory, questions which are of key importance to biologists. Participants included professors from the Univ. of Washington, Harvard, Univ. of Durham (England), Univ. of Pennsylvania, Univ. of Rochester and Univ. of California.

I hope this information will be helpful to you.

Nina P. Long
Director of Library Services & Archivist
Curator of The Wistar Museum Collections
The Wistar Institute
(Emphasis added)

Evidently, the symposium focused on trying to mathematically define the rate at which natural selection could occur. Somehow, I doubt that the conclusions were as anti-evolution as the creationists would have us believe.

Anyone have access to a library where the final document might be housed? If for nothing more than historical interest (it is, after all, 35 years old), I'd like to see it. Also, if anyone has the abstract (or the actual papers) on-line, I'd be greatly appreciative.

RufusAtticus · 03-06-2002, 12:34 AM

You should probably post this to talk.origins and sci.bio.evolution. There might be more people there who can help you.

-RvFvS

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03-06-2002, 12:34 AM	#2
RufusAtticus Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: NCSU Posts: 5,853	You should probably post this to talk.origins and sci.bio.evolution. There might be more people there who can help you. -RvFvS

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