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February 12th, 2008
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Discussion (6)¬

  1. Poor Richard says:
    February 12, 2008 at 6:44 am

    “Offoflogy recapitulates foolology,” as Poor Dick says.

  2. Hobbes says:
    February 12, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    Clever, PR. You took that course, too.

  3. Daniel says:
    February 12, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    God is on my offoflogy.

    True in both senses.

  4. JohnnieCanuck says:
    February 14, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    Did you get the version of the course that showed how Ernst Haeckel’s theory that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” was flawed and that the famous drawings are not accurate? There may still be textbooks with those drawings being used in classes.

    This has been a favorite of creationists looking for a defence from the Theory of Evolution. They find no shame in attacking a discredited 140 year old idea as if it were still considered valid. Perhaps it’s their own adherence to ancient texts that makes it seem worth attacking.

    Curious that Haeckel’s problem was that he thought up the theory and then adjusted his results to conform to it. This is what we see creationists doing all the time and here they are faulting someone known to have gotten it wrong while using their methodology.

  5. Hobbes says:
    February 16, 2008 at 6:48 am

    Yes, JohnnieCanuck, I did take that version. Same thing concerning Piltdown Man. It is science that discovers frauds within its ranks.

    That is the very reason science can be trusted. Fundamentalists always miss that point. Religion doesn’t appreciate critical review. If it did, it would self destruct.

    –The unexamined belief is not worth believing–

  6. Bones'sDog says:
    May 1, 2017 at 8:38 pm

    Hobbes, had Piltdown been done better the hoax could have been credited as real science at least up until the invention of low-copy-number DNA analysis. As it would by then have been “scientific truth” and the skull ensconced in a niche in some museum being revered by millions the thing might never have been tested. Has the archaeopteryx stone been? The first one?
    Many thousands of museum artefacts are never tested with more advanced techniques and technologies, Piltdown could have got lucky for centuries.
    We should consider ourselves fortunate that it was such a poor forgery and so easily debunked.

    Ontology basically boils down to “can I stab you with it?” If you can then it’s real and if not it ain’t. The very best laboratories for the scientific investigations of ontological questions are prisons where anything real can be and often has been converted into a shiv.
    With an efficient freezer, raspberry jelly makes an cool shiv.
    For a short while.
    Most of the rest of ontology is hand-waving and the building of ever more complex and abstract definitions, rules and nomenclatures which, considering that ontology is not supposed to be about “abstract” is amusing.
    Ontology is a subset of philosophy which is a way of keeping unemployables from becoming theologists without quite letting them starve.
    There are studies which have “ontology” or “ontological” in their names but that are nonetheless real, actual, useful science that contributes to the betterment of Mankind. This may be an accidental coincidence of phonemes.
    Most ontologists, as with most philosophers, are elderly males. This is not a coincidence.

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