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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 1, 2011 - 12:07am PT
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there is all this bloviating in various other threads regarding science, I'm not unhappy about that, it turns out that science is not irrelevant to the current conditions, and because of that, it matters what science has to say about things consequently, those said things can become political and show up in threads on the STForum (a well known political blog site)
there is also a lot of misconception on how science is done. why wander about apparently aimlessly in an apparently inefficient manner, why not just go right to the answer?
and finally there are those who think that science is nothing more than another elaborate "story" that has no firmer basis than any other story...
so it is refreshing to see a bunch of seemingly random things tie together in an insightful manner, perhaps revealing what some of us find so wonderful about doing science
This morning the NYTimes hadn't been delivered so I picked up some back issues of Science magazine that I hadn't gotten to this year, specifically the January 7, 2011 issue.
A propos of this wonderful web site, a brief report, a belated dental check up, on three Neandertal individuals 35,000 years too late to matter, revealed that the plaque stuck to their teeth contained evidence of plant food, including cooked plants. Why is the relevant? well we've all been reading about the so called "Pleistocene diet" here, the diet where you go out and kill large game animals and gorge yourselves, to the exclusion of all else. It has been touted to be the more "natural" diet for humans... apparently not. While that former impression was based on scientific evidence, we all know that we should be able to test these hypotheses, and so it was that an enterprising physical anthropology graduate student had the idea to scrape the teeth and find out what was there...
"Through a microscope, she saw grains of starch from seeds of cereal-like grasses; grains of cooked starch; legumelike starches; and hard structures, known as phytoliths, from date palms."
it is not a surprise that Neandertals would eat anything they could, starvation has virtually disappeared over this last century, but even the great hunter Nanook-of-the-North (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanook_of_the_north); succumbed to starvation on a hunting expedition in the 1920s after the making of that wonderful movie...
We often hear "well no one was there, so you can't speak with certainty of knowing anything" but here we have quite credible evidence of the diets from 35 millennia ago.... we "know" what they were eating...
...simple. (page 13)
A bit more involved, perhaps, is the study of fossils, and learning their feeding habits... of the Ammonites... just what did the ammonite eat in the late Cretaceous, haven't you ever wondered?
Using a thoroughly high teck x-ray "microscope" the researchers (page 37) where able to make a 3-D reconstruction of the mouth parts of these cephalopodes, which provides information on their specific evolutionary adaptation. In those 3-D reconstructions were found the remains of the "special of the day" maybe 100 million years ago... the remains of isopods and the larval shell of a gastopod...
how wonderful it is that we can "see" what these long ago species ate, amazing, really.
Tying it all together is the review of the book Evolution Since Darwin: The First 150 Years (in the December 24th 2010 issue, page 1747...
...by many popular accounts, evolution is a hotly contested "theory" but reading this review, it all comes into perspective; there is not controversy, evolution is the way things are... to quote:
"Perhaps most impressive in the growth of evolutionary science has been its success in explaining change across scales. This includes extremely different scales of time and geography, hierarchical levels of biological organization, disparate groups of organisms, and even different scientific disciplines. Evolution may be unparalleled among the natural sciences in integrating so comprehensively, touching everything from cells to awe."
I like that last bit "touching everything from cells to awe" and it is awesome to contemplate that this science come from much of the work like scraping the teeth of Neandertals, or checking out the fossil remains in the fossil remains...
"Much of the growth in explanatory power for evolution over the past 150 years stems from growth in the kinds and richness of data."
a statement that warms the heart of an old experimentalist such as myself... it's the details, and one has to sweat those details to gain understanding... and it is not direct or efficient, but it is solid and it does explain.
It is from a huge number or little building blocks that these edifices are constructed, and often the edifice is remodeled but stands on solid foundations, the empirical verification, the rigorous explanation, hand-in-hand.
We don't seek to build these huge structures anymore than the generations of diatoms set of to construct the white cliffs of Dover, yet successive contributions built up over time can yield impressive, monumental, results...
...we don't seek to build those structures because we don't know, when we start off trying to understand some rather little and maybe trivial detail, just where the intellectual adventure will end.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Well, sitting around a campfire with Ed, glass of Cabernet in hand or a cold beer is a marvelous way to constructively spend some time. Science doesn't have to be dead and dried out. For me it's been my way of life...
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Willoughby
Social climber
Truckee, CA
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Plus, any way you slice it, it works (bitches).
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altelis
Mountain climber
DC
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t*r*, one of the best things science can teach you is about being precise. The only other field where I've seen this point driven home as well is in philosophy. One of the many reasons, actually, why I still contend that my training as a philosopher is such an important background for my future as a scientist (of sorts...).
If I remember correctly (which I certainly don't always), good research has shown that positive thinking doesn't "bolster" the immune system, but rather helps to "un-hinder" it from the effects of stress. That distinction make sense?
And to stay a little more ON topic....
Ed, I was just having this discussion with my wife. We are both very much believers in evolution, science etc. But we have slightly divergent views on higher powers. I was commenting how amazing it is to think of how splendidly our bodies work. Just thinking about all the intercommunicating cells, interwoven systems that are so interdependent and constantly doing their thing to keep us alive, all the while responding to very complicated changes by following just a few simple set of "tasks".
She said just thinking about it really made her wonder how you couldn't believe in a higher power of some sort. Not in a creationist sort of way, but to her mind it just "begs the question" of a creator out there somewhere.
And I said that believing that took the BEAUTY out of the whole thing. To ME the real beauty and wonder comes at thinking of how evolution was able to shape the movement of some random atoms through a cruel and difficult path to become us. Truly has brought a tear to my eye just wondering at the majesty of the whole thing. I think there is probably some "higher being" of some form out there, but there is no way it had a shaping or guiding hand in the creation of this planet. Its just too beautiful and cruel at the same time.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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I enjoy your topic Dr. Ed.....but print to me is dry and dry becomes brittle which cracks and falls to the ground before I can put my brain around the information. More fun to meet in the Valley over pizza and wine and hear yo expound. Then, it becomes alive for my brain and I understand.(somewhat.)
I'm sure there's a scientific thesis which explains why science to some of us needs to be explained in terms other than the printed word. :D Truth lynnie
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altelis
Mountain climber
DC
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t*r*- i had not seen that research. however, my question would be if this has been shown to be a good thing. usually high wbc is a sign of infection or chronic inflammatory states. white blood cells release all sorts of chemical mediators that are damaging to the body, things that break down other cells, cause vascular changes, promote atherosclerosis, etc.
not saying its not a good thing for sure, just curious as to how that would be. doesn't make sense to me immediately. but that's the cool thing about science! ;-)
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altelis
Mountain climber
DC
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sweet- i'd love to hear what you've got!
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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What happened to Ed's topic? I didn't think it encompassed mating and hormones.....I could have missed something however. :D
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altelis
Mountain climber
DC
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i think his topic is still here. honestly. i really do get all excited and almost hot-an-bothered about this stuff. its just really COOL. and that's (kinda) what the OP was all about, right?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 1, 2011 - 01:31am PT
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yep, how we build up what we know from the details of work people are engaged in... bit by bit, to a eventually leading to some very interesting ideas that just get us out there thinking and doing again.
For me, it is enough...
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okay,whatever
Trad climber
Charlottesville, VA
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In a slightly different context (but not very different), Loren Eiseley once attributed the presence of the Grand Canyon to "time and raindrops". I think that one of the problems that creationists and so forth have is grasping the enormity of time, and what can happen incrementally over enormous spans of time... for life (and its origin), this planet, and the universe at large.
No disrespect for those who have other views, but I'm in awe of the power of the very small changes (be they evolutionary, geological, or what have you) that end up changing things in a big way... and of course it's still going on.
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Daphne
Trad climber
Mill Valley, CA
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Hey Ed, Thanks for this.
(I have nothing intelligent to add here, I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate you.)
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okay,whatever
Trad climber
Charlottesville, VA
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OK, I'm up way too late on the east coast, but two things that I'm interested in are:
(1) The iron/nickel/sulfur (inorganic) model of the beginning of life (read metabolism). Gunter Wachtershauser (who is/was, oddly, a patent lawyer in Munich, but also a published and respected chemist) and a colleague managed to produce an inorganic Krebs Cycle in the lab with this chemistry, though I don't know of any later work that has taken it much further. By this model, carbon didn't enter the picture until later, when its bond energy storage became "attractive" to the early cell development evolution. And we won't get into the role of phosphorus....
(2) The endosymbiont hypothesis, which posits that the transition from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells happened because a prokaryotic cell (or perhaps many) took in bacteria -- which are of course themselves prokaryotes -- which they for some reason didn't reject and destroy, and then the bacteria ultimately became mitochondria (which have their own limited DNA). How the eukaryotic cell nucleus came to be is not really explained by this model, at least as far as I know.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Ed, right on.
I, too, like the way those elemental "bricks" come together en mass to tell a story - which from the scientific perspective we could call The Scientific Story. Which, by the way, I have for years, probably since Cosmos by Carl Sagan. What's more, over the years, both science and The Scientific Story together have earned my trust (aka faith) through application and results - just as climbing gear has in climbing - as a most excellent foundation for the "practice" of living.
Just wish somehow more of pop culture could (a) pick up on it and (b) enjoy expressing it. Or at least "get around to it" more quickly. Anyways, TFPU.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Very good post, Ed. But I thought Nanook died of TB?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 1, 2011 - 10:27am PT
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probably correct about Nanook...
...the idea of the statement was simply that humans now produce enough food to support the entire global population, an amazing accomplishment that goes unrecognized
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hossjulia
Social climber
Eastside
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Hey Ed, good thoughts to mull over the morning coffee. I often think of you and the work you do, and have wondered about just what you posted in regards to your work, how many little things have been discovered that will lead, hopefully, eventually, to the big moment. Or will it be a big moment? Or just a little something, that is miraculous and revolutionary? Hum.
In the everyday world of human affairs, it is often the little things we do consistently that make the biggest difference to our planet and its occupants. tfpu
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Chuck Pratt harnessed his wyde jones and climbed Twilight Zone.
Ron Kauk proposed that the jamming technique would work in the horizontal and climbed Seperate Reality.
Standing on their shoulders, Johnny Woodward hypothosized of a meld of these techniques and boosted the standard to do Trench warfare.
Incrementally, inch by inch. -I think the professors stooge did something with that one....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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re: it's the little things... that mount up... brick by brick...
For example, the answer to the question: What makes a cheetah go?
The early and medieval view (or pre-scientific view) was that a ghostly spirit possessed the cheetah and directed the cheetah body to go this way or that according to its will.
Now of course many if not most - thanks to science and a science edu - know better:
The scientific view is that the cheetah "goes" by virtue of its inner control system (aka nervous system) -brain circuitry, sensory and motor neurons, nerves, neuromuscular junctions, synapses, actin and myosin filaments, ATP, the works - all the parts and wholes working together in exquisite synergies.
It's all pretty amazing: (a) the basic mechanics of it, that is, behind the actions or behavior of a cheetah; (b) how far our progress in the understanding of how life works has come in the last few centuries; (c) the importance of living up to this understanding (or science education in general) for its obvious bearing on our lives, beliefs and practices, and continued advances.
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Mustang
climber
From the wild, not the ranch
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pssst,,,, just don't let the Christian Fundamentalist movement know these things.
Dr. Ed's perspective, always interesting and engaging, especially from what is commonly regarded as typical left brain thought pattern, illustrates that Ed has the ability to not only see the minueta but also the larger picture and possesses the consideration to want to share such topics with the rest of us.
What is making science even more interesting today is the fact that scientists and researchers are devising new models, theories and equipment on a scale and at a speed never seen before. The influence of the technology boom cannot be understated in the role it plays in the further advent of scientific discovery. As memory and processing speeds increase exponentially, and these processes are now beginning to happen at the molecular level of the carbon atom, not just the silicon wafer, science again will benefit in leaps and bounds. Is it not possible that we will see these advances happening at even a more rapid and volumunous pace than the previous century? Is it not why research scientists are re-discovering the past and beginning to question certain accepted scientific beliefs?
This country is known around the globe for fostering the greatest scientific research and breakthroughs man has known. The committment to continuing this pattern is not only good for our country, but also people around the world.
Think of the greater prosperity the citizens of China and India experience today, all tied to what came out of the little area know as 'silicon valley' many years ago.
The crucial first step in all scientific breakthrough is education. As this country and states amass greater debt which cannot be repaid, legislators and politicians will continue to make budget cuts to the most important area for funding that gives our nation this great ability. This seems quite ludicrious, bizarre and completely illogical, but that is politics. A 'science' onto its' own.
Thanks Ed, 'The devil IS in the details.'
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