The Proceedings of the Natural History Society of South Burlington (Vermont) / John A. Davison (1928-2012)

Welcome to my Weblog February 6, 2008

*PLEASE READ All OF THIS BEFORE GOING FURTHER.*

I will present my views on a variety of subjects. Chief among them is my Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis and my paper published in Rivista di Biologia is now available here for further discussion.

You will notice that I do not use the usual format of constantly introducing new threads. I find that six threads serve to satisfy both my interests and my purposes. This format serves to be a sort of Journal, continuing to record what I hope will be my legacy as a scientist and citizen. Like Frank Sinatra –

“I did it my way.”

By scanning down this page you will find the topics with which I am most concerned. To see what is currently going on, go to Recent Comments which will direct you to which of the six threads are currently active. Enjoy and participate if the spirit moves you! My current policy requires registration which I have found useful in preventing undue harassment and meaningless spam.

I occasionally edit earlier messages to bring them up to date so it is a good idea to review recent messages for information about how they are being received.

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Miscellany including politics February 2, 2008

This site is for comments that do not fit in one of the six primary subjects (threads) which have always characterized this weblog. I realize that many do not approve of my methods, but I regard them as vastly superior to those weblogs which constantly bury earlier threads into what amounts to oblivion. This new Post also invites vitriol and insult just as all the others always have. The comments will remain even though the commenter may force me to banish him. Everyone knows the rules here.

I intend to do some house cleaning and will delete comments that did not belong in one of the six threads.

I hope everyone understands. Thank you for your patience.

Why banishment? January 23, 2008

Since I have not yet had to banish anyone from participation here, I have been thinking about why so many blogs and forum heads insist on banishing their adversaries. Pharyngula, Uncommon Descent, Panda’s Thumb and many other blogs and forums ban comments from adversaries and often erect barriers making it very difficult to register. P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula periodically complains about how his “security has been penetrated,” sounding more and more like Captain Queeg of the Caine Mutiny. He has another revealing tactic. He will allow comments to be sent from anyone but only he decides which will ever appear. None of mine have. I had to resort to subterfuge to comment on his blog only to see my comments disappear within minutes.

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Predictions January 6, 2008

I thought it might be fun to have a thread where I and others can make predictions. After all, isn’t that what scientists often do? They examine the data, produce an hypothesis and as part of the verification procedure they make predictions. If the predictions prove to be accurate, the hypothesis receives support, and with enough support it will be elevated to the status of a true theory. That is precisely how all scientific hypotheses are verified. Actually I feel the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis has already reached the status of theory, but that is just me!

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Evolution is finished! December 25, 2007

In 2004 I published a paper “Is Evolution Finished?” Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 97: 111-116. I now rearrange the words and offer it as a challenge to those who claim otherwise. 

It is my conviction that creative evolution is a phenomenon of the distant past. Just as ontogeny is a self-limiting process terminating in the adult organism and its subsequent death,  phylogeny has had a similar history resulting in the current biota. I see no evidence for the emergence of any new life forms, only trivial variations in existing species. In the distant past creative evolution and extinction were occurring simultaneously.  That is no longer evident. This idea is not original with me and has been suggested by such distinguished scientists as Robert Broom, Julian Huxley and Pierre Grasse. I have simply extended their conclusions to include true speciation. Stated another way, there is no longer a balance between creative evolution and extinction. Related to this sequence is the evidence that Homo sapiens seems to be the youngest mammal ever to appear which suggests a goal directed process, now complete. Extinction is rampant as fragile habitats are being destroyed by human activity and with them all those species restricted to those habitats. The exact number of known species is unknown with estimates ranging from one to ten million, but that tens of thousands of them have become and are becoming extinct cannot be denied. I know of not a single  replacement. If others think they do, please use this opportunity to identify it along with its immediate ancestor and the cytogenetic mechansim by which it was produced.

I realize this perspective is in marked contrast to the Darwinian model. I present it confident that the Darwinians will ignore this opportunity to defend their paradigm in open discussion. The atheist Darwinian establishment has traditionally pretended that they had no critics and I offer this challenge primarily to demonstrate to the scientific community that little has changed in the century and a half since the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” a book which offers, in my opinion, absolutely nothing of substance relating to its title. 

The reason that this challenge will not be met is because the “establishment” now realizes that their model is a dismal failure. Rather than admit that they have dedicated their professional lives to a phantom, they have chosen to lash out blindly at all who recognize that chance could never have had anything to do with the origin or the susequent history of either ontogeny or phylogeny.

“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134.

A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Global Warming December 19, 2007

I regard the future of our civilization to be in great jeopardy.

As a physiologist I regard man as a chemical machine obtaining energy through the oxidation of fuel just as other chemical machines do. Machines are rated in horse power; one horsepower is 746 watts. A 70 kilogram human at rest is producing heat, CO2, and H2O through the oxidation of  food stuffs at a rate of about a tenth of a horsepower (80 watts). Accordingly,  a human, when driving a typical automobile rated at 200 horsepower, is producing CO2 and H2O at a rate 2000 times greater than himself. (more…)

The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis December 16, 2007

The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis (PDF download requires Adobe or similar viewer)