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SyeraMiktayee — Don't call them Darwinists
Published: 2010-01-29 16:40:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 1047; Favourites: 42; Downloads: 11
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Description
The term "Darwinist" is used to dishonestly create the illusion that biologists look at Darwin as some kind of prophet or infallible authority. This is hardly the case. It just happened that most of Darwin's original ideas have been observed in nature and the fossil record. As with any area of science, new ideas have been discovered that have improved upon and advanced Darwin's original proposals.If you're going to call evolutionary scientists "Darwinists," then you're going to have to start calling astronomers "Gallileoists" (or maybe Copernicists), physicists "Newtonists," and doctors "Pasteurists." Likewise, you're going to have to start calling believers in atomic theory "Daltonists" and taxonomists "Linnaeists."
And remember, gravity is JUST a theory.
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Comments: 12
I don't call quantum mechanics "Heisenbergists"
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For as far back as my memory takes me, I have been bothered by eponymy.
It is perhaps cold of me to say this, but I believe ideas are more important than their bearers.
No one owns ideas. Even should they be monopolized by one or a few - it is only so by universal license.
One may certainly have been blessed as the first to conceive of an idea, but it only makes me respect the idea all the more.
It also deludes an audience into nigh idolatry.
If circumstance blesses me with an idea, for example, I care not whether I am a pioneer or a rediscoverer.
I believe all scientists ought to be offended if their names are adjectivized in so generic a manner.
It distracts one from the beauty of the idea itself.
Good stamp, SyeraMiktayee.
P.S. - You misspelt "physicists" (in the stamp) and "Galileoists" (generically).
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Of course I would call biologists "Darwinists" - because a large number of biologists don't believe in evolution anyway.
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Absolutely true and I say that from the point of view of a physics and astronomy student.Evolution may be a theory but a theory is nothing to look down on. Except perhapswhen it comes to gravity- how many times has that been wrong?
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Awesome stamp, however... each time a new text appears, the previous one becomes transparent and remains there 'till the end of the cycle. Is it my laptop or the stamp?
As a student in biology, I fully support this.
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It's probably your laptop, since I don't have that problem.
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Why am I not surprised? Thanks for clearing that up.
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Good stamp - I never thought of putting it this way.
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