TheDiddleyMan

An article title at the NCSE says that Michael Denton has become a "teleological" evolutionist. What the heck is a "teleological" evolutionist? Has he abandoned his old arguments against evolution or something?

Kevin

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: TheDiddleyMan ]</p>

Philosoft

To hazard a guess, I'd say he accepts some or all of evolutionary theory, but as an 'artificial' mechanism intended by its designer (God presumably) to reach a certain goal. Whether that alleged goal is homo sapiens or not is his personal opinion.

Lizard

As I understand it, Denton has backed off considerably from his position in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis." Someone said he's more of an anthropic principle guy now.

Quetzal

Denton has really changed his tune between "Theory in Crisis" and "Nature's Destiny". There's a world of difference between the two books.

"Theory in Crisis" is indistinguishable IMO from any other cretinist anti-evolutionary screed. It could have been written by Johnson or Wells. OTOH, "Destiny" thoroughly repudiates 95% of the first book. Here's my favorite quote: Quite a change, n'est-ce pas? He's still very much a theistic evolutionist, of course. His book outlines his take on a "biocentric theory of life" - a restatement of the anthropic principle. Still, it's a nice change of pace - if he keeps "evolving" , in ten more years he might be eligible for membership in the Vast Evilutionist Conspiracy hisownself.

Note: cretinists continue to use Denton's earlier work as "proof" that "scientists" deny evolution. They simply will not accept the fact that Denton grew up. I even had a cretinist deny that anything in "Destiny" refuted Denton's earlier work ! I guess if your entire worldview is dependent on a moldy old book that absolutely must be invariant, by extension any other book ever written must also by definition be invariant.

Valentine Pontifex

Well actually it was Evolution: A Theory in Crisis that got Johnson into whole issue in the first place. It is funny that the book is completely discredited now. I have not read that book, but it is my understanding that Darwin on Trial is largely based on it.

Valentine Pontifex

Actually I don't think he is a theist at all.

He really a hard core Platonist. Nature of all places published an essay of his last year which he advocated finding essences in nature. (My memory is a bit hazy here so don't quote me on it.)

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=112606 91&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Here is the PubMed Citation</a>

Quetzal

LV: I'm probably misusing the term "theistic evolutionist". I tend to lump everybody who has recourse to the supernatural in any shape or form into one camp - admittedly probably erroneously in Denton's case. Still, IMO, without evidence for either the anthropic principle or early lamarckian guided evolution, I can't see the semantic difference. I applaud Denton's major step forward and his evident repudiation of the special cretinist worldview.

I had heard elsewhere that Johnson based most of his book on Denton's earlier work, but haven't seen any actual comparisons. Anybody?

Nic Tamzek

Interesting, I didn't know about that Denton piece. Here's the last paragraphs:

Actually about the only thing that I disagree with is that the observation "physical laws determine biological form" (basically what he's saying) is "radical and far-reaching". There's only so many ways to efficiently move through water, there's certain things anything that wants to fly has to do, legs are good for moving around on land, etc. Yawn. That there's only so many ways to combine 20 amino acids to perform a particular chemicial rection (and every chemical has a specific shape, of course), or even only X many shapes that can be gotten out of amino acid chains, also do not strike me as mind-boggling either.

I like to think about biology as "infinite diversity within constraints". It's not contradictory if you think about it: there are an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1, but this infinite set is still constrained.

And with that, I'm off to bed...

nic

[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: Nic Tamzek ]</p>

Nic Tamzek

It's been awhile since I read "Darwin on Trial", I recall that it was basically YEC minus the flood and the age issue, e.g. he harps about transitional fossils, the bias of hominid evolution specialists, etc. Denton's molecular typology stuff may be in there but I don't recall it particularly.

Denton definitely was a big influence on the real first book of the ID movement, Of Pandas and People. It was published in 1989 and the final chapter referenced and drew heavily from Denton's botched molecular typology argument.

Other evidence that Pandas was the first book of the ID movement include several authors that are still prominent in the movement, the obvious desire to circumvent the 1980's anti-YEC court decisions, and even the repeated mention of "specified complexity" (those words exactly) as an antievolutionary argument. IC is in there also although the exactly term "irreducible complexity" is not used. And of course the focus is put heavily on "design" (and even "intelligent design" IIRC) rather than the buzzwords creation (YEC), typology (Denton 1986), etc.

Pandas also had the bad fortune to make the "there aren't any whale transitional fossils" claim also. Someday I'm going to have to write a review of how Pandas has held up 13 years later...

Also: Funny that the first book of the ID movement was a textbook, and that even the pseudo-research on things like SC and IC followed the textbook, eh?

nic

pangloss

Indeed - on ARN, I think it was JeffM that wrote something like "Just because HE changed his mind, it doesn't mean that his earlier work was wrong."