The Proceedings of the Natural History Society of South Burlington (Vermont)

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.

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.”

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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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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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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. (more…)

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 (PDF download requires Adobe or similar viewer)