Word is just in from a fellow doing some interesting work that the Royal Society lecture by Steve Jones, “Why Creationism is wrong and Evolution is right” is available for your viewing pleasure.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I think the first link is broken, PZ.
The first link should be http://www.evolutioninmaterio.com , like this .
Anyone have a link to the text or to video than I can download?
You can also find the link at the Royal Society site (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/). Available in Real Player or Media Player, but I don’t know whether text or downloadable video are available. I watched it earlier this week. Seemed a bit disjointed to me in parts, but then I was a bit drowsy.
Sorry. I see now I was responding to the wrong link. It’s late. I’m drowsy again.
Here’s the direct URL for downloading: mms://193.63.75.9/onDemand/LFP2006_jones_hi.wmv
It’s about 106 MB big.
The guy’s name is Steve, so of course he’s an evil satanic athiest (sic) Evilutionist.
Downloading the video will only be of limited use to you without the accompanying Powerpoint slides – we’re going to work on an Enhanced Podcast version next week when the UK is back at work after its Easter vacation.
Ah HA!
Mr Fenwick- given that you appear to connected to the Royal Society, I wonder if you would mind answering a question or two. Given that Prof Jones says that creationism is being taught in some UK schools (At least according to the media reports, and I dont have broadband to find out) yet the Gvt says that it isnt, according to communications recieved by some acqaintances of mine, there would seem to be some mistake somewhere. The Dispatches program on Channel 4 apparently interviewed some ex-pupils of a Vardy school, who confirmed that Creationism was being taught, so my question is, how is the Royal Society going to try and stop this situation? Merely railing about it in a lecture isnt good enough, theoretically the Royal Society should have some clout….
The Royal Society is beginning to move on this; they’ve even issued a statement:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?id=4298
However, I suspect that most of their influence will be behind the scenes directly to members of the government.
In the meantime I think we should start a campaign to have creationism-teaching schools officially labeled as “Centres of Ignorance”. This should entitle pupils at these schools to remedial science teaching.
I watched the talk. Pretty good, and the linguistic analogy is rather interesting. But I do have three complaints. One is that I can see someone watching that and saying “where’s the rest of the details?” not realizing that there are a mound of them. Transferrence is always difficult, for that matter. Second, I agree that not everything in life is science, but Jones’ attempt to say that made it sound like our nonscientific activities should not themselves be investigated scientifically, and that seems to me to be mistaken. Finally, the blurb describing the talk mentions how creationism is not just bad science but bad religion as well. I do not recall much on that theme. I am, of course, of two minds on that latter issue anyway – I’ve never been convinced that telling people “oh, yes, you can be religious but only if you adopt the viewpoint of (say) Miller” is the way to go. Better to let people draw their own conclusions in the long run, I think. (After all, isn’t increasing knowledge of a specific subject like evolutionary biology partially a means to make people more reflective and intellectually aware generally?)
Agree that the linguistic analogy was decent, but the use of glottochronology (the idea that linguistic change occurs at a regular rate) is unfortunate. That theory has been disproven for decades.