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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!
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To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (40244)6/12/1999 10:04:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte  Read Replies (1) of 108807
 
I hope you're using me as a foil here - because I really hope that you know I know these things. And I also expressly sign off on the business of a theory (elevated in status to a "law") is the strongest statement a scientist can make.
The real beauty of science is that one well-placed fact - if it indeed stands the test of fact - can bring an edifice of theory tumbling down.
Sometimes telling fact from extrapolation is a tricky business however. Take evolution for example, a concept we both embrace. What I would LOVE to know is something basic about how speciation takes place. The fossil record is necessarily sparse - becoming a rock print is kind of like winning the lottery in terms of probability - and the event of speciation seems too quick to have been recorded. We'll probably have to go into this question from another angle - we need to learn the genetic machinery well enough to be able to predict its actions under a variety of challenges. Technologically we're a ways off. We need a few more decimal orders of magnitude of reading and computing power just to finish laying out the genome of one human. (Do you know - whose genome is being parsed? I don't, and I'm curious.) Then we'll have to do a lot of humans - get a handle on shared vs. individual traits - figure out if the so-called extraneous DNA really does something important - and on and on.

Cuz once we understand the mechanism of speciation, we will be able to implement it. On ourselves if we choose. I rather doubt that a God would interfere.

Wheeee tangent
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