Sandwalk: I retired after 39 years and they gave me an old used book

Thursday, June 22, 2017

I retired after 39 years and they gave me an old used book

... but it was a rather special book ...

18 comments :

Unknown said...: Congratulations on your retirement!; Thursday, June 22, 2017 11:42:00 AM
Jass said...: Congratulation on your new endeavors! (whatever they might be)

Most people at this time in life reflect on their career and their life...

What do you think the highlight of your long career was? If you don't mind sharing it with us...; Thursday, June 22, 2017 4:55:00 PM
John S. Wilkins said...: Which publisher and edition? (BTW congrats); Thursday, June 22, 2017 7:04:00 PM
John Harshman said...: So did this book belong to George Williams?; Thursday, June 22, 2017 10:03:00 PM
Tom Mueller said...: Congrats

I will miss your annual instalments of exam questions you pose to your students

Looking forward to your book...

Best regards; Thursday, June 22, 2017 10:42:00 PM
Robert Byers said...: Congratulations on your retirement or rather on your Professional life.
I hear all the time, preached too, that THE OLD BOOK is not used as much or in its purest form. !!
There is a older book on origins they could also of given as a gift.; Thursday, June 22, 2017 11:48:00 PM
Unknown said...: Book Description: Popular Impression 1902. This popular edition is based on the Sixth edition, with additions & corrections, This edition was the last version that Darwin worked on before he died. Folding chart. Book is very good+ in original green cloth with light rubbing to edges and spine tips. Name to front board top. Contents very good with inscription to endpaper, title page and rear page.; Friday, June 23, 2017 7:29:00 AM
Arek Wittbrodt said...: Congratulations!

(I suppose it is a reason to celebrate?); Friday, June 23, 2017 11:06:00 AM
Joe Felsenstein said...: Congratulations, I look forward to hearing that retirement will free you more to do the things that really interest you. (I hope to find that too).

As for the book, its cpoverage of molecular sequence evolution and genome evolution is unfortunately inadequate.; Friday, June 23, 2017 11:48:00 AM
Larry Moran said...: As for the book, its cpoverage of molecular sequence evolution and genome evolution is unfortunately inadequate.

Please put "spoiler alert" in front of such comments. Now you ruined the ending for me ... :-); Friday, June 23, 2017 12:17:00 PM
John Harshman said...: Is "cpoverage" anything like "covfefe"?; Friday, June 23, 2017 1:30:00 PM
rems said...: Congratulations Professor Moran.; Friday, June 23, 2017 7:37:00 PM
Joe Felsenstein said...: John: Yes, off course, "cpoverage" is a deliberate misspelling intended to get everyone talking about my comment.; Friday, June 23, 2017 7:49:00 PM
Joe Felsenstein said...: and "off course" is another.; Friday, June 23, 2017 7:50:00 PM
Unknown said...: There isn't much to add to its treatment of drift though, clearly emphasizing the role of non-darwinian evolution.; Saturday, June 24, 2017 4:03:00 PM
Lawrence said...: Congratulations on your retirement; Sunday, June 25, 2017 4:00:00 PM
Federico Abascal said...: I didn't see this entry before... Congratulations! Enjoy the extra time to do what you like most (oh, I'm jealous); Monday, June 26, 2017 2:44:00 AM
Rolf Aalberg said...: Congratuations from Norway: I have enjoyed you blog, and especially your style! As for the science, I have done my best to learn what can, but I sorely miss a biological education. My dream was to become a paleontologist but I must confess my fascination with technology got the better of me. Well, what would biology (or any other science) be today without computers?; Saturday, July 01, 2017 2:21:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Thursday, June 22, 2017

I retired after 39 years and they gave me an old used book

18 comments :