by Greg Mayer
Jerry gave a talk yesterday at the MCZ which most WEIT readers couldn’t attend (although you can get a general idea of it by watching this video of an earlier talk by Jerry), so I thought I’d give folks the opportunity see another evolution talk, “Why Study Fossils?” by Chris Noto. (The audio is a bit faint, so turn up the volume.)
Chris is a paleontologist specializing in Mesozoic reptiles who has recently joined my department. His talk was given last month as part of our Science Night series, which Jerry has also spoken in.
Point of clarification: Prof Coyne’s lecture last night was held at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (which represents, among others, the MCZ).
The lecture, attended by 400 people, will soon be posted on the HMNH website at http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu
Readers here might be interested to see how Noto’s work has recently been bastardized by Brian Thomas at the ICR:
http://www.icr.org/article/6765/
Apparently in creationist land chewed up dinosaurs and charred branches are evidence of a global flood.
I did go to Dr. Coyne’s lecture at HMNH last night and was pleased I did. Here’s a piece I wrote about it for the Ethical Society Without Walls – http://www.eswow.org/content/dr-jerry-coyne-why-evolution-true
Your Ethical society looks thoroughly interesting. (Although I was left scratching my head over the need to highlight abortion rights after 20 weeks with no life-threatening reason. Surely there’s not much demand for that? I hope not.)
Anyway, what I was going to say; you are right, ‘Natural Selection’ and ‘Laws of physics’ are both potentially misleading terms. At first glance, Selection involves a decision, and so does Law-making. Especially so for people with a vested interest in believing that. The limitations of language, I guess.
Reblogged this on emmageraln.
For some reason I keep getting “An error occurred so please try again later” when I try to play the video.
Not sure why. Try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqp_cUIPlGg&list=UU461PvPyrr5UEIETTc00p2A&index=5&feature=plpp_video
GCM
Thanks for the link!