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Topic: A Different Sort of Brainstorm...
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Moderator
Administrator
Member # 1
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posted 18. December 2002 17:47
I'm looking for lists...
We all know that internet discussions can cause a great deal of confusion. It is often the case that people are using the same terminology with vastly different meanings.
So here's the brainstorm: Pick ten words or phrases or concepts that are essential to a particular discipline (e.g. cell biology, artificial intelligence, evo-devo) but which are often misunderstood, misapplied, or ignored by nonexperts.
As a bonus, you can throw in a link to an authoritive source.
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Irving
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Member # 535
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posted 01. January 2003 22:26
Okay, I'll try and byte on this one...
In Software Engineering there is a development cycle known as Spiral Development. It is a risk-reduction process, but is commonly mis-understood by management, and misapplied by short-cut interested developers in order to skip full requirements definition.
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charlie d.
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Member # 159
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posted 02. January 2003 08:59
Random wrt fitness
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Frances
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Member # 169
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posted 02. January 2003 12:02
Information and complexity
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nobody
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Member # 145
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posted 02. January 2003 13:19
Would you guys mind including the precise definition along with the term you find being misused or misunderstood? To help out the rest of us.
Thanks.
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Noel Rude
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Member # 516
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posted 02. January 2003 15:16
One term that I think needs constant clarification (till it's clear in all our thinking) is evolution. As has been emphasized by others (esp. in earlier works of Phil Johnson), evolution cannot be used as evidence for its own materialist explanation (usually called Darwinism). If Darwinism is a scientific theory meant to account for evolution, then evolution cannot be evidence for the theory.
Does it have a history of development? OK, but this is not evidence that variation and natural selection produced it. The things that we know are designed also have a history of development.
Therefore our project should focus on the kinds of evolution predicted by (or required by) materialist theory versus design theory. ID doesn't start out with some narrow theological definition of Design (with a capital D). And ID from the beginning has seen a clear distinction between evolution and materialistic Darwinism. I hope we keep that focus.
Also many theistic types have trouble with any design theory that develops out of a scientific study of the human capacity for design (and sidesteps their vision of Deity). We have to ignore their concern because -- whereas the materialists must extrapolate from the fossil record and microbiological fact and eons of unobserved time -- human design can be scientifically observed in action and analyzed accordingly, and therefore what it teaches us should be applied to the world around. Any deity of the theologians that is compatible with methodological materialism will suggest no rival theory of origins, and therefore should not be allowed to squelch ID on that basis.
Two other terms we constantly see confused are function and selection. The former (function) is a descriptive term, the latter (selection) has to do with the materialistic theory as to how that form-function fit came about in the first place. It is one thing to discover that something is functional -- this should not be automatic evidence of the power of natural selection.
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Noel Rude
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Member # 516
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posted 02. January 2003 15:27
Francis mentions information ... good choice. I'm interested in cross disciplinary understandings, and so for what it's worth here is the definition of information that some of us in linguistics work with: Information is an event ("Speech Act") that has truth value (is true or false) over against some context. It is by definition complex, since words of themselves possess meaning but no information -- thus linguists find it advantageous to distinguish meaning from information.
Also maybe I should add that we linguists see language as a code, which might help us distinguish information from design, information that is coded (language, DNA) from information as design (i.e., as impressed in matter for immediate function or art). The distinction is not absolute but I think important.
[ 02. January 2003, 15:35: Message edited by: Noel Rude ]
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Irving
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Member # 535
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posted 02. January 2003 15:28
I didn't think the Moderator was restricting the list to just Evolution or ID (people's sarcasm aside). As far a Spiral Development, the situation has become so confused that the Secretary of Defense has had to issue an official declaration defining what the terms mean.
Authoritative Link: http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2002/08/easd.html
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William Brookfield
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Member # 565
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posted 02. January 2003 22:35
I think this is in keeping with the spirit, if not the letter of this thread.
IMO the word "Evolution" as it is presently used, is *way* too general for scientific use. I have seen professors use it to refer to any of the three different "volutions" below...
..volution = Change Over Time
#1. "Evolution"(+) - Order increase over time (in any given system, say, the biosphere, species, organism etc.)
#2. "Avolution"(=) - Order neutral (reshuffling of order over time, but no net increase or decrease of order content over time)
#3. "Devolution"(-) - Order decrease over time.
The word "micro-evolution" seems to be similarly shrouded in myth...
On the Dawkinian side "micro-evolution" seems to refer to "a small amount of Evolution (#1) "or "a small amount of macro-evolution." On the more theistic side, however, the word "micro-evolution" seems to refer to #2 "Avolution." Unfortunately "Avolution" is just a word had to invent in order to explain what I see as a problem. In "Avolutionary change" organisms draw upon previously existing genetic material (in response to environmental pressure).
Of course it is always possible to use other words to clarify the words “evolution” and “micro-evolution” for any given debate (just as I am doing here) but it is a lot of work.
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Daniel Gustaf Swedlund
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Member # 633
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posted 16. January 2003 23:18
As always when seeking definitions of words in english, and most other western European languages, the roots are to be found in latin and greek.
The word Volution springs from the latin word: Volutere= Folding,covering,velop
and the prefix of ”E” in evolution is an abbreviation of the latin word Ex=out,from,un(do something), de(something)
So, from Volution= Folding,velop and E(x)=Un,de(something) we get the word Evolution=Unfoldment,development.
When we are still brainstorming, I might add that the correct saying should be Evolution of Civilization= Development of Civilization.
Of course in everyday language shortening of long phrases are timesparing, and therefore the original sayings die out.
Lots of misunderstandings occur when the ”r” in the word Latrine is leftout. As a consequence several peasants of the english countryside
take the word Latin for...you know what.
/Rutherford
[ 17. January 2003, 07:23: Message edited by: Rutherford ]
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