“ Nothing in palaeobotany makes sense except in the light of evolution.” 古植物学是白色的（提纲及部分内容） (1) 古植物学是纯粹的自然历史 世界上搞古植物学的基本上是社会上的草根阶层 这个世界似乎不需要太多的古植物学家，但需要拔尖的古植物学家。 (2)古植物学具有思想性和技术性。 古植物学主要是“生物学”内容，离不开“演化”意义。 “ Nothing in palaeobotany makes sense except in the light of evolution.” 中国古植物学的从业人员（及青年学生）太需要专业精神了。 (3) 用生物学思想研究古植物学的最有力的方法或法宝是什么？ 严谨的古植物学研究既可以被证实，也可以被证伪。 古植物学之关键词：“生物学” “演化” Two key words of palaeobotany: biology and evolution ---- “ Nothingin palaeobotany makes sense except in the light of evolution” http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-225931-864496.html （ 4）古植物学是细活，而不是粗活 古植物学是细活，而不是粗活 Meticulous work is welcome for palaeobotany http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-225931-864498.html （ 5 ）古植物学是白色的，原因是世界上的古植物学主要是白人在做，做的好主要是白人。 (6) 犹太人与古植物学 古植物学历史上和现在有哪些犹太人？犹太人如何看待古植物学？需要什么样的智慧？有多大名利？世界古植物学的繁荣需要犹太人的智慧和参与吗？这些都是很重要的问题。 Valentin A.Krassilov （ 1937--- ） http://evolution.haifa.ac.il/index.php/people/209-valentin-a-krassilov-ph-d 古植物学的故事 （ 58 ）： 介 绍俄罗斯科学院的古植物学院士 ---- Valentin A. Krassilov （ 1937--- ） Storyof Palaeobotany Series (No.58): Valentin A. Krassilov （ 1937--- ） --- Famouspalaeobotanist as Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Short introduction in Chinese and Professor Krassilov’sCV in English) Valentin A. Krassilov （ 1937--- ） http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-225931-341731.html （ 7 ） 非洲古植物学的问题 （ 8 ） 在西方，华裔家庭的孩子几乎不学古植物学。 （ 9 ） 在中国，几乎没有官二代，也没有富二代学习古植物学。 （ 10 ） 亚裔与古植物学 到目前为止，中国还没有国家自然历史博物馆。 （ 11）中国古植物学的人马去哪里了？ (12)我注意到，中国古植物学家斯行健和周志炎两位院士都是出生在上海的。在过去的 100 年里，专门研究古植物学的上海人很少。最近 20多年，上海地区的学生学习古植物的很少。现在，振兴中国的古植物学也许特别需要很精明、很能干的上海人出力。 古植物学的故事 212 期 Story of Palaeobotany Series (No.212) How to promote the rapid rise of Chinese palaeobotanyin the round? (Part XXI) 对上海自然博物馆的古植物学奢望 ---- 写给 2400 万上海人民心中的上海自然博物馆 My wild palaeobotany wish to Shanghai Natural History Museum http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-225931-789595.html 2014-4-2903:36 （ 13 ） 学习古植物学需要缘分。 （ 14 ）在古植物学这个行当，学生的命运对老师依赖特别大，老师对学生的命运有生杀大权。 Qigao Sun ================== 本期编目 古植物学的故事 300 期 Story of Palaeobotany Series (No. 3 00 ) 古 植物 学 是 白色 的 （ 提纲 及 部分 内容 ） Palaeobotany is rooted in occidental culture and civilization . http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-225931-865342.html 2015-2-4 01:27 ================ Bilingual Catalogue of Story of Palaeotoany Series (Issues 0 to 100) by SUNQG.pdf Bilingual Catalogue of Story of Palaeotoany Series (Issues 101 to 200) by SUNQG.pdf Bilingual Catalogue of Story of Palaeotoany Series (Issues 201 to 300) by SUNQG .pdf
杜布 赞斯基 (1900 － 1975) 的著名演讲和名言 ---- “ Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky（1900—1975，中文名通常译为“杜布赞斯基”）是20世纪著名的遗传学家和进化生物学者。杜布赞斯基1900年生于乌克兰，1927年移民到美国。 1937年，杜布赞斯基出版 了 他的代表作 -- Genetics and the Origin of Species （《遗传学和物种起源》）。 1943年，杜布赞斯基当选为美国科学院院士；1965年4月8日当选为英国皇家学会外籍会员（院士）。 1972年，杜布赞斯基在美国生物学教师全国联合会 发表著名演讲；1973年演讲词正式发表： Dobzhansky, T. 1973. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Am.Biol. Teach., 35:125-29. “ Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”是杜布赞斯基的名言！ (孙启高 2014年8月8日整理) ================ Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution. By Theodosius G. Dobzhansky National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT)--1972 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/2/text_pop/l_102_01.html As recently as 1966, sheik Abd el Aziz bin Baz asked the king of Saudi Arabia to suppress a heresy that was spreading in his land. Wrote the sheik: The Holy Koran, the Prophet's teachings, the majority of Islamic scientists, and the actual facts all prove that the sun is running in its orbit... and that the earth is fixed and stable, spread out by God for his mankind.... Anyone who professed otherwise would utter a charge of falsehood toward God, the Koran,and the Prophet. ----- QGSun 注 -- 关于 Abdul Aziz binAbdullah bin Baz (1910---1999) ，请参见 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Aziz_ibn_Baz ---- The good sheik evidently holds the Copernican theory to be a mere theory, not a fact. In this he is technically correct. A theory can be verified by a mass of facts, but it becomes a proven theory, not a fact. The sheik was perhaps unaware that the Space Age had begun before he asked the king to suppress the Copernican heresy. The sphericity of the earth has been seen by astronauts, and even by many earth-bound people on their television screens. Perhaps the sheik could retort that those who venture beyond the confines of God's earth suffer hallucinations, and that the earth is really flat. Parts of the Copernican world model, such as the contention that the earth rotates around the sun, and not vice versa, have not been verified by direct observations even to the extent the sphericity of the earth has been. Yet scientists accept the model as an accurate representation of reality. Why?Because it makes sense of a multitude of facts which are otherwise meaningless or extravagant. To non-specialists most of these facts are unfamiliar. Why then do we accept the mere theory that the earth is a sphere revolving around a spherical sun? Are we simply submitting to authority? Not quite: we know that those who took the time to study the evidence found it convincing. The good sheik is probably ignorant of the evidence. Even more likely, he is so hopelessly biased that no amount of evidence would impress him. Anyway, it would be sheer waste of time to attempt to convince him. The Koran and the Bible do not contradict Copernicus, nor does Copernicus contradict them. It is ludicrous to mistake the Bible and the Koran for primers of natural science.They treat of matters even more important: the meaning of man and his relations to God. They are written in poetic symbols that were understandable to peopleof the age when they were written, as well as to peoples of all other ages. The king of Arabia did not comply with the sheik's demand. He knew that some people fear enlightenment, because enlightenment threatens their vested interests.Education is not to be used to promote obscurantism. The earth is not the geometric center of the universe, although it may be its spiritual center. It is a mere speck of dust in the cosmic spaces. Contrary to Bishop Ussher's calculations, the world did not appear in approximately its present state in 4004 BC. The estimates of the age of the universe given by modern cosmologists are still only rough approximations, which are revised(usually upward) as the methods of estimation are refined. Some cosmologiststake the universe to be about 10 billion years old; others suppose that it may have existed, and will continue to exist, eternally. The origin of life on earth is dated tentatively between 3 and 5 billion years ago; manlike beingsappeared relatively quite recently, between 2 and 4 million years ago. The estimates of the age of the earth, of the duration of the geologic and paleontologic eras, and of the antiquity of man's ancestors are now based mainly on radiometric evidence the proportions of isotopes of certain chemicalelements in rocks suitable for such studies. Shiek bin Baz and his like refuse to accept the radiometric evidence, because it is amere theory. What is the alternative? One can suppose that the Creator saw fit to play deceitful tricks on geologists and biologists. He carefully arranged to have various rocks provided with isotope ratios justright to mislead us into thinking that certain rocks are 2 billion years old, others 2 million, which in fact they are only some 6,000 years old. This kind of pseudo-explanation is not very new. One of the early anti-evolutionists, P.H. Gosse, published a book entitled Omphalos (the Navel).The gist of this amazing book is that Adam, though he had no mother, was created with a navel, and that fossils were placed by the Creator where we find them now -- a deliberate act on His part, to give the appearance of great antiquity and geologic upheavals. It is easy to see the fatal flaw in all such notions. They are blasphemies, accusing God of absurd deceitfulness. This is as revolting as it is uncalled for. ------------------- QGSun 注 -- 关于“ P. H. Gosse ”，请参考： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Henry_Gosse Philip Henry Gosse (6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888) was an English naturalist and popularizer of natural science,virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium , and a painstaking innovator in the study of marinebiology . Gosse was also the author of Omphalos ,an attempt to reconcile the geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell with the biblical account of creation .After his death, Gosse was portrayed as a despotic father of uncompromising religious views in Father and Son (1907), a memoir written by his son, the poet and critic Edmund Gosse . ---------------------- Diversity of Living Beings The diversity and the unity of life are equally striking and meaningful aspects of the living world. Between 1.5 and 2 million species of animals and plants have been described and studied; the number yet to be described is probably as great. The diversity of sizes, structures, and ways of life is staggering but fascinating. Here are just a few examples. The foot-and-mouth disease virus is a sphere 8-12 mm in diameter. The blue whale reaches 30 m in length and 135 t in weight. The simplest viruses are parasites in cells of other organisms, reduced to barest essentials minute amounts of DNA or RNA, which subvert the biochemical machinery of the host cells to replicate their genetic information, rather than that of the host. It is a matter of opinion, or of definition, whether viruses are considered living organisms or peculiar chemical substances. The fact that such differences ofopinion can exist is in itself highly significant. It means that the border line between living and inanimate matter is obliterated. At the opposite end of the simplicity complexity spectrum you have vertebrate animals, including man. The human brain has some 12 billion neurons; the synapses between the neurons areperhaps a thousand times numerous. Some organisms live in a great variety of environments. Man is at the top of the scale in this respect. He is not only a truly cosmopolitan species but, owing to his technologic achievements, can survive for at least a limited time on the surface of the moon and in cosmic spaces. By contrast, some organisms are amazingly specialized. Perhaps the narrowest ecologic niche of all is that of aspecies of the fungus family Laboulbeniaceae, which grows exclusively on the rear portion of the elytra of the beetle Aphenops cronei , which is found only in some limestone caves in southern France. Larvae of the fly Psilopapetrolei develop in seepages of crude oil in California oilfields; as far as is known they occur nowhere else. This is the only insect able to live and feed in oil, and its adult can walk on the surface of the oil only as long asno body part other than the tarsi are in contact with the oil. Larvae of the fly Drosophila carciniphila develop only in the nephric grooves beneath the flaps of the third maxilliped of the land crab Geocarcinus ruricola ,which is restricted to certain islands in the Caribbean. Is there an explanation, to make intelligible to reason this colossal diversity of living beings? Whence came these extraordinary, seemingly whimsical and superfluous creatures, like the fungus Laboulbenia , the beetle Aphenopscronei , the flies Psilopa petrolei and Drosophila carciniphila ,and many, many more apparent biologic curiosities? The only explanation that makes sense is that the organic diversity has evolved in response to the diversity of environment on the planet earth. No single species, however perfect and however versatile, could exploit all the opportunities for living. Every one of the millions of species has its own way of living and of getting sustenance from the environment. There are doubtless many other possible ways of living as yet unexploited by any existing species; but one thing is clear:with less organic diversity, some opportunities for living would remain unexploited. The evolutionary process tends to fill up the available ecologic niches. It does not do so consciously or deliberately; the relations betweenevolution and environment are more subtle and more interesting than that. The environment does not impose evolutionary changes on its inhabitants, as postulated by the now abandoned neo-Lamarckian theories. The best way to envisage the situation is as follows: the environment presents challenges toliving species, to which the later may respond by adaptive genetic changes. An unoccupied ecologic niche, an unexploited opportunity for living, is a challenge. So is an environmental change, such as the Ice Age climate giving place to a warmer climate. Natural selection may cause a living species to respond to the challenge by adaptive genetic changes. These changes may enablethe species to occupy the formerly empty ecologic niche as a new opportunity for living, or to resist the environmental change if it is unfavorable. But the response may or may not be successful. This depends on many factors, the chief of which is the genetic composition of the responding species at the time the response is called for. Lack of successful response may cause the species tobecome extinct. The evidence of fossils shows clearly that the eventual end of most evolutionary lines is extinction. Organisms now living are successful descendants of only a minority of the species that lived in the past and of smaller and smaller minorities the farther back you look. Nevertheless, the number of living species has not dwindled; indeed, it has probably grown with time. All this is understandable in the light of evolution theory ; but what a senseless operation it would have been, on God's part, to fabricate a multitude of species ex nihilo and then let most of them die out! There is, of course, nothing conscious or intentional in the action of natural selection. A biologic species does not say to itself, Let me try tomorrow (or a million years from now) to grow in a different soil, or use a different food, or subsist on a different body part of a different crab. Only a human being could make such conscious decisions. This is why the species Homos apiens is the apex of evolution. Natural selection is at one and the same time a blind and creative process. Only a creative and blind process could produce, on the one hand, the tremendous biologic success that is the human species and, on the other, forms of adaptedness as narrow and as constrainingas those of the over specialized fungus, beetle, and flies mentioned above. Anti-evolutionists fail to understand how natural selection operates. They fancy that all existing species were generated by supernatural fiat a few thousand years ago, prettymuch as we find them today. But what is the sense of having as many as 2 or 3 million species living on earth? If natural selection is the main factor that brings evolution about, any number of species is understandable: natural selection does not work according to a foreordained plan, and species are produced not because they are needed for some purpose but simply because there is an environmental opportunity and genetic wherewithal to make them possible. Was the Creator in a jocular mood when he made Psilopa petrolei for California oil fields and species of Drosophila to live exclusively on somebody-parts of certain land crabs on only certain islands in the Caribbean? The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world not by caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection. It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutuallyexclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution isGod's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way. The unity of life is no less remarkable than its diversity. Most forms of life are similar in many respects. The universal biologic similarities are particularly striking in the biochemical dimension. From viruses to man, heredity is codedin just two, chemically related substances: DNA and RNA. The genetic code is a ssimple as it is universal. There are only four genetic letters in DNA: adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine. Uracil replaces thymine in RNA. The entire evolutionary development of the living world has taken place not by invention of new letters in the genetic alphabet but by elaboration of ever-new combinations of these letters. Unity of Life Not only is the DNA-RNA genetic code universal, but so is the method of translation of the sequences of the letters in DNA-RNA into sequences of aminoacids in proteins. The same 20 amino acids compose countless different proteinsin all, or at least in most, organisms. Different amino acids are coded by one to six nucleotide triplets in DNA and RNA. And the biochemical universals extend beyond the genetic code and its translation into proteins: striking uniformities prevail in the cellular metabolism of the most diverse living beings. Adenosine triphosphate, biotin, riboflavin, hemes, pyridoxin, vitamins K and B12, and folic acid implement metabolic processes everywhere. What do these biochemical or biologic universals mean? They suggest that life arose from inanimate matter only once and that all organisms, no matter now diverse,in other respects, conserve the basic features of the primordial life. (It is also possible that there were several, or even many, origins of life; if so,the progeny of only one of them has survived and inherited the earth.) But what if there was no evolution and every one of the millions of species were created by separate fiat? However offensive the notion may be to religious feeling and to reason, the anti-evolutionists must again accuse the Creator of cheating. They must insist that He deliberately arranged things exactly as if his method of creation was evolution, intentionally to mislead sincere seekers of truth. The remarkable advances of molecular biology in recent years have made it possibleto understand how it is that diverse organisms are constructed from such monotonously similar materials: proteins composed of only 20 kinds of aminoacids and coded only by DNA and RNA, each with only four kinds of nucleotides. The method is astonishingly simple. All English words, sentences, chapters, and books are made up of sequences of 26 letters of the alphabet. (They can be represented also by only three signs of the Morse code: dot, dash, and gap.) The meaning of a word or a sentence is defined not so much by what letters it contains as by the sequences of these letters. It is the same with heredity: it is coded by the sequences of the genetic letters the nucleotides in the DNA. They are translated into the sequences of amino acids in the proteins. Molecular studies have made possible an approach to exact measurements of degrees of biochemical similarities and differences among organisms. Some kinds of enzymes and other proteins are quasi-universal, or at any rate widespread, in the living world. They are functionally similar in different living beings, in that they catalyze similar chemical reactions. But when such proteins are isolated and their structures determined chemically, they are often found to contain more or less different sequences of amino acids in different organisms. For example, the so-called alpha chains of hemoglobin have identical sequences of amino acids in man and the chimpanzee, but they differ in a single amino acid(out of 141) in the gorilla. Alpha chains of human hemoglobin differ from cattle hemoglobin in 17 amino acid substitutions, 18 from horse, 20 from donkey, 25 from rabbit, and 71 from fish (carp). Cytochrome C is anenzyme that plays an important role in the metabolism of aerobic cells. It is found in the most diverse organisms, from man to molds. E. Margoliash, W. M.Fitch, and others have compared the amino acid sequences in cytochrome C in different branches of the living world. Most significant similarities as well as differences have been brought to light . The cytochrome C of different orders of mammals and birds differ in 2 to 17 amino acids, classes of vertebrates in 7 to 38, and vertebrates and insects in 23 to 41; and animals differ from yeasts and molds in 56 to 72 amino acids. Fitch and Margoliash prefer to express their findings in what are called minimal mutational distances. It has been mentioned above that different amino acids are coded by different triplets of nucleotides in DNA of the genes; this code is now known. Most mutations involve substitutions of single nucleotides somewhere in the DNA chain coding for a given protein. Therefore, one can calculate the minimum numbers of single mutations needed to change the cytochrome C of one organism into that of another. Minimal mutational distances between human cytochrome C and the cytochrome C of other living beings are as follows: Monkey 1 Chicken 18 Dog 13 Penguin 18 Horse 17 Turtle 19 Donkey 16 Rattlesnake 20 Pig 13 Fish (tuna) 31 Rabbit 12 Fly 33 Kangaroo 12 Moth 36 Duck 17 Mold 63 Pigeon 16 Yeast 56 It is important to note that amino acid sequences in a given kind of protein vary within a species as well as from species to species. It is evident that the differences amongproteins at the level of species, genus, family, order, class, and phylum are compounded of elements that vary also among individuals within a species.In dividual and group differences are only quantitatively, not qualitatively, different. Evidence supporting the above propositions is ample and is growing rapidly. Much work has been done in recent years on individual variations inamino acid sequences of hemoglobin of human blood. More than 100 variants have been detected. Most of them involve substitutions of single amino acids -substitutions that have arisen by genetic mutations in the persons in whom theyare discovered or in their ancestors. As expected, some of these mutations are deleterious to their carriers, but others apparently are neutral or even favorable in certain environments. Some mutant hemoglobins have been found only in one person or in one family; others are discovered repeatedly among inhabitants of different parts of the world. I submit that all these remarkable findings make sense in the light of evolution: they are nonsense otherwise. Comparative Anatomy and Embryology The biochemical universals are the most impressive and the most recently discovered, but certainly they are not the only vestiges of creation by means of evolution. Comparative anatomy and embryology proclaim the evolutionary origins of the present inhabitants of the world. In 1555 Pierre Belon established the presence of homologous bones in the superficially very different skeletons of man and bird. Later anatomists traced the homologies in the skeletons, as well as in other organs, of all vertebrates. Homologies are also traceable in the external skeletons of arthropods as seemingly unlike as a lobster, a fly, and a butterfly. Examples of homologies can be multiplied indefinitely. ------------------- QGSun 注 — 关于 Pierre Belon ，请参考： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Belon Pierre Belon (1517–1564) was a French explorer, naturalist ,writer and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology,ornithology, botany, comparative anatomy, architecture and Egyptology. He is sometimes known as Pierre Belon du Mans ,or, in the Latin in which his works appeared, as Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus . Ivan Pavlov called him the prophet of comparative anatomy. ---------------------- Embryos of apparently quite diverse animals often exhibit striking similarities. A century ago these similarities led some biologists (notably the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel) to be carried by their enthusiasm as far as to interpret the embryonic similarities as meaning that the embryo repeats in its development the evolutionary history of its species: it was said to pass through stages in which it resembles its remote ancestors. In other words,early-day biologists supposed that by studying embryonic development one can,as it were, read off the stages through which the evolutionary development had passed. This so-called biogenetic law is no longer credited in its original form. And yet embryonic similarities are undeniable impressive and significant. ------------------ QGSun 注 — 关于 Ernst Haeckel ，请参考： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16,1834 – August 9, 1919 ) was a German biologist , naturalist ,philosopher, physician, professor and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species , mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology ,including anthropogeny , ecology , phylum , phylogeny , stem cell ,and the kingdom Protista . Haeckel promoted and popularized Charles Darwin 's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny , parallels and summarizes its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny . The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur , Art Forms ofNature). As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Weltrtsel (1895–1899, in English, The Riddle of the Universe , 1901), the genesis for the term world riddle ( Weltrtsel ); and Freedomin Science and Teaching to support teaching evolution. ------------------ Probably everybody knows the sedentary barnacles which seem to have no similarity to free-swimming crustaceans, such as the copepods. How remarkable that barnacles pass through a free-swimming larval stage, the nauplius! At that stage of its development a barnacle and a Cyclops look unmistakably similar. They are evidently relatives. The presence of gill slits in human embryos and in embryos of other terrestrial vertebrates is another famous example. Of course, at nostage of its development is a human embryo a fish, nor does it ever have functioning gills. But why should it have unmistakable gill slits unless itsremote ancestors did respire with the aid of gills? It is the Creator again playing practical jokes? Adaptive radiation: Hawaii's Flies There are about 2,000 species of drosophilid flies in the world as a whole. About a quarter of them occur in Hawaii, although the total area of the archipelago is only about that of the state of New Jersey. All but 17 of the species in Hawaii are endemic (found nowhere else). Furthermore, a great majority of the Hawaiian endemics do not occur throughout the archipelago: they are restricted to single islands or even to a part of an island. What is the explanation of this extraordinary proliferation of drosophilid species in so small a territory? Recent work of H. L. Carson, H. T. Spieth, D. E. Hardy, and others makes thesituation understandable. The Hawaiian Islands are of volcanic origin; they were never parts of any continent. Their ages are between 5.6 and 0.7 million years. Before man camethere inhabitants were descendants of immigrants that had been transported across the ocean by air currents and other accidental means. A single drosophilid species, which arrived in Hawaii first, before there were numerous competitors, faced the challenge of an abundance of many unoccupied ecologicniches. Its descendants responded to this challenge by evolutionary adaptiveradiation, the products of which are the remarkable Hawaiian drosophilids oftoday. To forestall a possible misunderstanding, let it be made clear that the Hawaiian endemics are by no means so similar to each other that they could be mistaken for variants of the same species; if anything, they are more diversified than are drosophilids elsewhere. The largest and the smallest drosophilid species are both Hawaiian. They exhibit an astonishing variety of behavior patterns. Some of them have become adapted to ways of life quite extraordinary for a drosophilid fly, such as being parasites in egg cocoons of spiders. Oceanic islands other than Hawaii, scattered over the wide Pacific Ocean, are not conspicuous lyrich in endemic species of drosophilids. The most probable explanation of this fact is that these other islands were colonized by drosophilid after most ecologic niches had already been filled by earlier arrivals. This surely is a hypothesis, but it is a reasonable one. Anti-evolutionists might perhaps suggest an alternative hypothesis: in a fit of absentmindedness, the Creatorwent on manufacturing more and more drosophilid species for Hawaii, until there was an extravagant surfeit of them in this archipelago. I leave it up to you to decide which hypothesis makes sense. Strength and Acceptance of the Theory Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningfulp icture as a whole. This is not to imply that we know everything that can and should be known about biology and about evolution. Any competent biologist is aware of a multitude of problems yet unresolved and of questions yet unanswered. After all, biologicresearch shows no sign of approaching completion; quite the opposite is true. Disagreements and clashes of opinion are rife among biologists, as they should be in a living and growing science. Anti-evolutionists mistake, or pretend to mistake, these disagreements as indications of dubiousness of the entire doctrine of evolution. Their favorite sport is stringing together quotations,carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some of my colleaguesand myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really anti-evolutionists under the skin. Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms. It is remarkable that more than a century ago Darwin was able to discern so much about evolution without having available to him the key facts discovered since. The development of genetics after 1900 especially of molecular genetics, in the last two decades has provided information essential to the understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. But much is in doubt and much remains to be learned.This is heartening and inspiring for any scientist worth his salt. Imagine that everything is completely known and that science has nothing more to discover:what a nightmare! Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy,geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts.As pointed out above, the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness. One of the great thinkers of our age, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , wrote the following: Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems much henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of though must follow this is what evolution is. Of course,some scientists, as well as some philosophers and theologians, disagree with some parts of Teilhard's teachings; the acceptance of his worldview falls short of universal. But there is no doubt at all that Teilhard was a truly and deeply religious man and that Christianity was the cornerstone of his worldview. Moreover, in his worldview science and faith were not segregated in watertight compartments, as they are with so many people. They were harmoniously fitting parts of his worldview. Teilhard was a creationist, but one who understood that the Creation is realized in this world by means of evolution. ========================== QGSun 注 — 关于 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ，请参考： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ ( French: ; May 1, 1881 – April 10, 1955) was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man .He conceived the idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir Vernadsky 's concept of noosphere . Pierre Teilhard de Chardin （德日进）在中国工作生活了 20 多年，是中国地区的地层古生物学研究的先驱之一： http://baike.baidu.com/view/324827.htm 德日进（ 1881 ～ 1955 ） Teilhard de Chardin ， Pierre 德日进 一位在中国生活了二十余载的法国人，从 1923 至 1946 年先后八次来中国，在中国地层、古生物、区域地质研究中作出过重要贡献。曾与中国政府合作绘制 中国地图 ，参与了对 史前文明 的研究，参与了 周口店 著名的 “ 北京人 ” 的发掘工作，还参与了法国雪铁龙公司组织的往返北京、阿克苏的 “ 黄色远征 ” 汽车探险，也经历了日本侵华战争的考验，在沦陷的北平和天津，参加了一个多国研究小组，与他一手培养起来的中国年轻学子合作 。 -------------------------------
This time, it is really about common sense. I stayed home on Monday, though I went to work briefly after 4 pm (so I could park near my office) to refine a model parameter . I took the Election Day off on Tuesday, and stayed home on Wednesday again. When I finally went to work at lunch time today, I found a strange "welcome." I showed up at my office after lunch, and said hello to my "office mates." Then, I went to my computer, to get some work done. M y mind was on something, my research, but distractions came again and again. I had to deal with one a fte r another truly stupid question, about office space or luncheon , and I was getting irritated . Oh, Lord. Wher e is the common sense? Didn't your mother ever t e ll you to say nothing IF you can't say something nice???
No, this is actually NOT about common sense , to th ink about it again. A NEW client came to me, with a manuscript coauthored by two people, WHO and HU. I knew HU very well, since he is a good friend of mine, and also an old client of mine. So, I did my editing, and told the new client that another round of editing is needed before the paper is submitted. WHO said ok. I waited, and did others things while waiting. FIVE more new clients came (yeah, I guess I must be good at editing), which kept me busy, not to mention that I have my own paper to write (which gives me many real headaches). This morning, I received an invitation from JGR to review a paper. I thought the topic was familiar but the authors we re NOT; in particular, I knew the second author and I did not edit his paper on this topic. So, I clicked "accept" to review, and thinking that I could get this review done today, because voting in Kahala should not take much time. As soon as I saw the first author's affiliation, I knew I was IN BIG TROUBLE. I went back to my log and saw I did edit this paper a month ago! Shxt, I was pissed! I had to search for the editor's real email, and explained to him why I messed up... This Blog will not be open for long, since I don't think WHO will read it soon but might if I kept it open. It bothers me a great deal why WHO did what WHO did, such as changing the second author's name, and naming me as one of the potential reviewers. Does WHO know what honesty is, or what conflict of interest means??? T he tough question for me is whether or not I should blacklist WHO ...
I never had to worry about finding my way in Beijing before. It's not because I knew Beijing well, but because I had a local guide. This time, I am on my own (though I can email and call for help). So, how can I NOT get lost? I had no sense of directions until I had to drive. A friend majored in geology taught me this trick: Put yourself on the map, so you always know which direction you are going. It worked like a charm when I was in South Florida, in D.C., and in Seattle. After we have moved to Honolulu, I had to learn one more thing: toward the ocean or toward the mountain. Yes, when you are in Hawaii, that's how the locals will give you the direction. ps. LH, this Blog is for you.
标签: sense
