Haeckel in Biology Textbooks

Sorry Percy,The movie played for a last time here across the street but I decided against going to it since I had heard on Friday that it was a year old. I assume it is the same one. I learned much more on Friday than I will ever get out of seeing "how" evos are not responding to the creationist challenge of ID. Allman had a question and answer session after the showing but I already had heard what he had to say( he was still on the “science” vs “not science” )issue. Neither Will nor David Wilson had read Kitcher's book so the "professionals" are still "behind" the internet curve. They were not ready to brand Genesis Creationism (Young Earth Creationism) as “dead” even though I gave the “book report.” As long as they are not reading first what their own put out there is no way that even the NYTimes is going to help them out. Having spent some time in Providence, RI this is not "across the street" either.

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NY TIMES Feb, 12, 2007

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I fully expected them to be behind Kitcher's message, especially as he was quick to get "Abusing Science" out earlier. But what I could read “between the lines” is that the heterodoxy of evolutionary research will continue to thwart attempts to circle the wagons on Biblical Creationism for my life-time at least. Perhaps the NY time article needs to be read in that sense? I had expected that post-Phil Johnson this would not be the case but it is and it continues for even any extension of Gould’s conceptual exaptations but I may have to explain that in a different thread than one on Haeckel. It is possible they are related if cell death is what is responsible for Haeckel continuing on where Gould’s “Darwin-Nietzche” quirky functional shift of post-Williams added generations’ advantage taking, but for myself after Friday I have left that purely biological thought in the dust. I think Gould would better try the word without the “aptation” 'ex' or no 'ex' for he only narrated the difference of Ptersaour and Bird wings not virus vs bacteria programmed cell death. If protobird wings are not prethermoregulatory causality but cell death structural constraints on somatic tissue formation my own position using “preadaptation” would be vindicatable easily. I have not done the leg work for this branch of thought yet. Regardless if Eugine Scott thinks that MY creationist thoughts are not assisting me in working out my difference of opinions in pure biogeography she would be wrong.

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First, though, let's simplify the debate. The Discovery Institute position is that any text that shows Ernst Haeckel's ancient diagram of various embryos is guilty of fraudulently distorting the evidence for evolution. They have accused scientists of a conspiracy of lies, of using this known false diagram to buttress evolutionary theory.

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I hate it when I know something.If IT IS the Discovery Institute's "position" that *any* text showing Haeckel's diagram is "guilty", then I DO think that what I elliptically said stands on topic.The link went on at:

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I would agree, except that the textbooks Wells is damning in Icons often do exactly the same thing! Those that do mention Haeckel and his biogenetic law do so as an example of a historically significant error

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It seems the evolutionist SHOULD NOT AGREE!!There is "error" in science all the time it works.My feeling is that if that was the Institute's position then this "agreement" MUST be leveled against Ernst Mayr's use of Haeckel in his book "One Long Argument".Amazon.comSomehow because of the position of Weismann (motion to sex organs vs motion within the "nucleus") Mayr refused to rid his argument of Haeckel alltogether. So if the Discovery Institute wishes to excoricate a portrayal in "the movie" then I can see how this tactic may be directed deep within the establishment of biology and NOT be a simple window dressing as the NY Times article said. I brought the Times in to show that we have an inverted understanding of what counts for weapons in the cultural war. It is not peace. Phl Johnson made this clear to Will Provine. Will doubted it. If "the Flock" was supposed to galvanize evolutionists to do better Public Relations and the TIMES can do no better then I still maintain that it is evolutionists who need to be up on creation/evolution as much as may be a razor edge from being put on " a few hours off" on EvC. As long as they are not a few hours off the target they will never understand why something fleshy may NOT be so. I think the problem with Haeckel is about the biology of proto-wings. Perhaps I should have started with the science but it takes a lot longer to write from that direction.To resolve the issue of wings or "bellies" goes back to the "Gill arch" but in Gould's version of "a long argument" he relates this in the first narrative to bird wings being exaptations and then aptly suggests IN ONE PARAGRAPH that this goes back to GILLS (or bellies as Mayr had it in his "argument.") (and now perhaps to stay with time I should have started with Mayr's book, where do we have this time on the internet??) but I AM aware in the difference of Allman's presentation AGAINST Creationism that "internal pathways of structure" are not touched if one takes the functional shift that Gould remained with the difference of the words "adapatation" and aptation"" back to the bacterial origin of programmed cell death as written by the Frenchman Ameisan and can be THE WORD "preadaptation" in the tone of English spekaing biogeograpers.So short of me having my way (and this is not happening anytime soon) (which includes "creationism") The use of even the
heavy weight NYTIMES will not assist as a media battle.I was trying to say that no matter how much ID or antiID the movie had as long as Evos continue to BE the WING of the DODO, and this Friday's events here in Ithaca showed me THEY CONTINUE TO BE, they might as well be Haeckel himself even if THE BEST PAPER in the US backed them. They were not behind it and neither was the times.The argument has to go against Mayr, in my opinion. Where do we see that-- no where, instead we could get banned from EVC for a few hours- this would be wrong.If one reads Kant closely there are clear uses of the term "embryo" and that is probably why Discovery and every one else remains in this "error" of knowing too much. Haeckel was using asthetic taste rather than empricical restraints to judge and I think evolutonary theory would be better if it got rid of "artistic" references alltogether. This is not possible for the creationist nor the biogeographer who's view of distributions are mapped and remapped. The actual and possible are curious indeed. I am sorry if it seemed off topic as I tried to spatialize my position before fully adapting it to the topic. With the argument at the level of watching movies or videos rather than looking at words there is little one can do to bring the full argument. If evolutionists wanted to "respond" better than THE TIMES they need to "grow" biological thought so that denotation of Kant's words are OK in secular universities. My speaking after DS Wilson was recorded and "worked" and yet I take the words in a different understanding than Allman etc. and earlier I could be seen on local Channel 10 at this event. They will not do this if they NOW follow Scott's ideas cited at the end of the Times piece.Now if Paul has a problem with bringing Haeckel back in,yet again, does anyone have any genetic idea about a different kind of commotion that IS available by walking across the street but can not be captured by either Mayr's or Gould's views nor the better view of Provine over Wilson and others this week? I know not. It will not happen soon at least.I pray this is not a "time out" but I really needed to say this. I was not trying to be "sloppy" but I have no idea if people really try to read me for the science in my posts or not.

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Haeckel's theory is encapsulated in his memorable aphorism, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," also called the biogenetic law. What that means is that development (ontogeny) repeats the evolutionary history (phylogeny) of the organism - that if we evolved from a fish that evolved into a reptile that evolved into us, our embryos physically echo that history, passing through a fish-like stage and then into a reptile-like stage.

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My Grandfather (Willard F. Stanley)(Stan in Z's lab )must have "believed" in "the law" if not merely the 'aphorism' as I repeatedly heard him state it as a child. In truth it was out of the "silence" in my own mind on trying to repeat the saying (in my brain) that I differentiated a thought of evolution made visual within an ability to describe reptiles and amphibians that this teacher of evolution from SUNY Fredonia could not do. I tried to imagine "'phylogeny' recapitulates ontogeny" instead. From this thought-process I was able to develop my own unique take on the history of biological thought that differs from those of Provine, Gould, Lewontin, and Mayr. In fact I find that I am technically yoked to the word "synthesis" as to the pair of terms 'synthesis-analysis' in this regard.As best I was able to trace where Willard may have gained his own understanding of the phrase, it seems that Charles Zeleny had circulated an internal essay in his lab that described a possible growth of biological thought by focusing on the young stages of development of all creatures. Both my Granddad AND Sewall Wright studied with Charles. The only difference between my view and “Stan’s” is that I am fully aware of the need to come first from cladistic rather than a phenetic or simple minded phylogenetic perspective. It is not clear to me that W. Francis Stanley thought that embryos “physically echo” all the past historical steps as his focus on biology was for a better economic future rather than a specific structural constant. His own position on creation and evolution was more closely associated with being able to socially “adapt” his life to day to day realities as he saw them in the period that birding went from the shot gun to the camera.The notion of

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What really scuttled the whole theory was that its foundation was removed, which makes the claim by Wells that biologists are trying to "resurrect recapitulation" rather peculiar

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is actually interpreted by me in a slightly disingenuous spectral color to this author as I easily see the project of historical interpretation of “the Modern Synthesis” by Gould and Provine (as a constriction or restriction from reading books and then a “hardening”) as CAUSING Stan’s view of evolution (and also failure to graduate me a student of such) to be ”foundationally removed’ and the cross purposes to which the structural notion of developmental constraints are is being led by different biologists seems to NOT discount the “resurrection” oddly enough however “development” then becomes weirdly and uselessly ”polyvocal.’It is now obvious to me that Gould’s attempt to enlist “Nietchze” is probably as to keep the likes of his training of Wise at bay but to say so would require me to elaborate on all of the points brought down in this article. The notion of “faking” has to be understood as possible EVEN when there is calculus of smooth differentials connecting data points. Gould was very crafty to say that life is NOT fractal. He has a biological point here but if the biologist had to discuss the phlyogenetic continuum at the level that mathematicians discuss the equipollence of the number line then this reservation would be obviated by the technical terms being discussed. I have never seen this discussion and instead I either find disagreements creation/evolution wise or else particular attempts at placing biology in an historical context without being able to show the content I keep on trying to be a discontinuous (phenetic vs cladogenic when not anagenetic) student of.Edited by Brad McFall, : letter e not o