This a traditional letter column.
You are encouraged to write a letter of comment on anything that you
find worthy of comment. It will (may) be published in this column along
with my reply. As editor I reserve the right to delete material;
however I will not alter the undeleted material. E-mail to me that solely
references the contents of this site will be assumed to be publishable
mail. All other e-mail is assumed to be private. And, of course, anything
marked not for publication is not for publication. Oh yes, letters of
appreciation for the scholarly resources provided by this site will be
handled very discreetly. This page contains the correspondence for
January 2006.
From: Murray Goulden
I’m currently writing my PhD on a sociological study of scientific investigations of human origins (the final title will be snappier..). As part of my work, I’m interested in Piltdown’s treatment in scientific and media publications prior to its uncovering as a hoax. Your site is an excellent resource on post-1953 events, but I was wondering whether anyone had attempted to build a bibliography of coverage from 1912 onwards? Any help you could offer would be greatfully received.
yours
From: D. James Royer
I came across your webpage,
http://richardhartersworld.com/~cri/poetry/poetry1.html,
and enjoyed your poetry very much, especially the commentary. Myself, I am a 27 year old graduate from Chapman University’s School of Music and when I’m not teaching 9th grade special education, I write choral music for my old high school choir and sometimes for my college choirs.
There are two particualr poems of yours that I would like to set to music, if you would be willing to grant me permission to use them. I do not have a publisher or anything; my music is enjoyed and spread casually by my alma matters and friends/church contacts involved with music. What do you think?
I write tonal music, by the way, somewhat impressionism/romantism by genre you could say. I’ve attached a sample from a John Donne poem and a MIDI recording to give you an idea (you’ll have to use your imagination a bit!).
I appreciate your time and consideration, and look forward to your response.
These are the two poems:
From: Anthony R. Lewis, PhD, FN
Line 10 should read:
“This Tech Coed was Wise to the Tech and Harvard guys”
You left out the word “wise”.
From: Otraveller
I need to know if you know when will The Cold Equation play next?
From: Ivana
I was searching around the net for info on C.S. Lewis, after
reading reviews of the latest ‘narnia’ movie, when I found your
essay on Lewis. Since a number of the reviews I’ve found focus
on Lewis’ spiritual concerns, it also interested me which church
he belonged to. In your essay on Lewis, I was interested to read
that you thought:
You can check the following FAQ:
http://members.aol.com/thompsonja/faq115.html
Or this interesting book on literary converts to Christianity in
the 20th century:
I wondered, did it just seem to you that he might have been a
catholic, or did some other source cite this? I’d be really
interested to learn….thanks!
I hadn’t thought about Lewis being relatively unknown in continental
theological circles but it seems likely. Lewis was so very English.
From: Henry Norman
Dear Mr. Harter,
Thanks for your prompt response! As I’ve had some unpleasant
situations in the past, exchanging messages with some stranger, I
did some googling and quickly realized that you are a VIP (valid
internet person!). I have read quite a lot of the stuff on your
website–you have authored some rather interesting essays! I
also found that you are my senior be a few years (I was born
1944), and that you appear to have a very balanced view of
evolution. Our backgrounds are eerie similar (but I have no
marines background: instead, I served in the Swedish Navy, as
SEAL/UDT (back in the early sixties)).
One of the benefits of the modern internet is that one meets
(electronically of course) people from all parts of the world with
all sorts of backgrounds.
Would it be fair to say that you don’t know much about the structure
of genomes but you are certain that scientists are just making it all
up? Probably not, but you are skirting near the edge of that precipice.
The important thing about many of these mechanisms is that they
make more copies of valid genes, i.e., stretches of DNA that code
for useful biochemicals.
Your graph is mostly fudge. By picking points approximately 50 million
years apart you give the illusion of linear progress. However (a)
the choice of events is somewhat arbitrary, and (b) the dates chosen
aren’t particularly accurate.
Am I correct in my conclusion that you also may be leaning
towards some other Life mechanism being involved, than the
“scientific” view that Life is a completely random process, void
of all meaning, being mindlessly driven by natural selection upon
a set of genes that are assembled by chance alone?
From: Larry Wright
Hi, Richard!
Secondly, there is a lot of pure propaganda going on in this
country right now, put out by the administration and other
powerful vested interests. Was this part of it? I couldn’t know
the source, and since it appears to either disparage Washington,
D.C., ( the seat of the national government, which by the way has
a large Black population and NO representation in the national
government: their license plates read, “Taxation Without
Representation.”) or make it appear that Iraq isn’t the chaotic
death-trap that is now is.
I’ll grant you this: I’m probably a little short on humor where
these issues are concerned. I did notice that the suggestion to
pull out of Washington seemed a little inconsistent with the
implications of the statistics, and I’d be delighted to see W and
company ‘pull out’ of Washington! But I happen to believe that
the currrent regime has done more to endanger the American people
as a whole than any since the South began the Civil War. I
believe that the President & Vice President deserve to be
impeached, and their cabinet replaced, not to mention the vast
number of unqualified cronies that have been placed in unelected
government posts for the express purpose of debilitating the
stated aims of those positions. Add to that the broad attack on
the very civil rights that separate this country from most
others, and you can see how some of us have rather strained
senses of humor.
From: Christine Hainsworth
Hi. just wanted to write to say that that I think the cryptograph in
The Lost World is fairly clear. It says, I think, ” my name monkey “.
It`s just so like one of those puzzles so popular back in children`s
books in the fifties where you could only read the words when they
were held up at eye level at 90 degrees ie the marks are just letters
which have been distorted by elongation:
From: David M Fisher
Richard, … continued on next rock …
Muscles Are Required Intelligence Not Essential
From: Patrick A
Hi,
From: Jack Atkins
total bullshit
Index of contributors
Other Correspondence Pages
Date: 1/4/2006
Subj: Piltdown man
I don’t have an immediate answer. I don’t know of a pre-1953 bibliography
although Wiener’s book has some material, and there is a scattering of
papers at the Clark University pagers. I am doing some checking and will
see what I can come up with.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 1/6/2006
Subj: Your Poetry
The old gray god is past his time.
The land he ruled has changed its clime.
His city’s streets are choked with grime,
And the dust blows.
The old priests chant is heard no more.
The temple gate is an unused door.
The old true faith is gone of yore,
And the dust blows.
The old gray god sits on his throne.
His wise old eyes were only stone.
Brooding still, he sits alone,
And the dust blows.
A moment.
That’s all I ask,
A moment.
To see your face,
To touch your hand,
For a moment.
How much happiness,
How much love
In a moment?
All that one can bear,
All that
In a moment.
By all means, you have my permission. I’m flattered.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 1/4/2006
Subj: Tech Coeds
Gracias. A correction will be made forthwith or at
worst, fifthwith.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 1/3/2006
Subj: I have to ask you about The Cold Equation
I’m sorry, I have no idea. You might check google, although the links
I saw didn’t mention a date.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/28/2005
Subj: C.S. Lewis essay
“C.S. Lewis was a Anglican convert and it quite definitely shows
in his writing. One way that it shows is in his dogmatic
presumption that Catholic moral dogma is, ipso facto, absolutely
true and correct.”
Since not one of the continental European catholic scholars I’ve
asked seems to know much or anything about Lewis (his influence
is greater in the English speaking world than anywhere else it
seems), I searched again, hoping to find proof of his conversion
to one church or another. It turns out that most sources claim
he remained an Anglican until his death.
Thank you for writing. The answer to your question lies in the footnotes,
in particular, footnote 4. The simple fact is that when I wrote the
original essay in 1973 I mistakenly thought that Lewis was a Catholic.
When I put the essay up on the web I left the original essay as is
and put the correction in the footnotes. Oddly enough I made him
an Anglican in the main section and talked about him as though
he were a Catholic. There is no good explanation for this.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/15/2005
Subj: Mutation Rates
I never quite thought of myself as a valid internet person. It’s
taken me quite a few years but I’m a VIP now. Come to think on it
I was on the internet before some of my readers were born. Now that
is a scary thought.
Well, by “card carrying” atheist I simply mean to underscore that
I do not believe in a benevolent personal creator God (as
pictured by the Judeo/Christian tradition). The truth is that I
am probably more of an agnostic–in the true sense of the word.
Okay. I just raised a flag because there are many creationists
and fundamentalists who pretend to be no such thing.
Your answer to my query actually confused me more… First off,
until someone gives me more real information and a scientifically
sound argument about the so called “junk” DNA, I refuse to accept
it: this is to me just another aspect of the incredible hubris so
many scientists has expressed over the years (similar to Teller’s
words just after Bravo was detonated in the fifties: “Physics is
a dead subject, we now know all there is to know, with a few
loose ends remaining to tidy up”). We don’t understand what
this DNA stuff does, and since we’re so gosh darn clever, if we
don’t understand it, it’s got to be just junk–yeah, right!
My apologies, but I’m skeptical about that supposed quote from Teller.
It doesn’t show up on Google and it sounds like a pseudo quotation.
But if one should accept “junk” as being just that, it becomes
even more difficult to understand how the genome alone can
possibly gestate a human body, including brain, eyes, and
built-in knowledge. I have a hard time understanding how this
can be done using 3.15Gb worth of data (counting each base pair
as one bit of information, which I think is too generous), never
mind pulling this trick off with just under 95Mb… To
paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “When I hear geneticists mentioning
‘junk’ DNA, I want to reach for my gun…”
Actually one base pair is two bits of information so the effective
genome is closer to 190 Mbits or a little over 20 Mbytes. This is
a quite shocking number, particularly to people who are used to
Microsoft bloat.
The problem that I have with the genome is that it is,
essentially, information: DNA appears to be a highly
sophisticated code. There are, to my understanding anyway,
simply too much stuff that has to be encoded, including
substantial amounts of “inherited knowledge” (our capacity for
language, all the autonomic functions, to just mention a few),
and 3.15Gb worth of code is simply way too small a code to
possibly be responsible for such an immensely complex organ as
the human brain. (I have been programming computers, especially
operating systems code, since 1968, so I do understand some of
the problems involved.)
The fundamental point where you go wrong (a natural error for those
of us working with computers) is to think of the genome as a program
specifying the structure of the phenotype. It is not. Nor is it
like a recipe, another fallacious analogy. The best analogy I’ve
come up with is that it is a library of shop descriptions. The
vast bulk of information specifying the development of the phenotype
is in the phenotype itself, in the processes going on in the
differentiated cells.
Please, don’t get me wrong: I am not a “creationist,” these
people are simply nuts (especially the “young Earth” crowd). And
my impression may be wrong, but I get a distinct feeling (when
reading some of your essays) that you are leaning towards
intelligent design of some form. Incidentally, so am I, and I
do not think that it is fair to — as some die-hard Darwinists do — to
equate ID with creationism. But that’s a different argument.
Oh, I would say that it is quite fair. In principle ID is not
the same thing as creationism. However the ID advocates, e.g., Behe,
Dembski, and the Discovery Institute are fairly upfront about their
motives and objectives.
I have the same problem (not being capable of embracing it, that
is) with “big bang” cosmology, and for similar reasons: I can’t
see how a measly 15,000,000,000 years is anywhere near enough
time for a human brain to be produced by the Universe, by
mindless random chance alone. Not enough, by far!
I dunno, fifteen billion years is a very long time. It literally
is an uncomprehensible span of time. Be that as it may, the evidence
is fairly clear cut that the universe started out with a “big bang”
about thirteen billion years ago (plus or minus a few billion).
My conclusion, given what appears to be “current scientific
knowledge”: I can’t see how Life could have popped up and
progressed virtually straight to humans, in a mere 3,600,000,000
years. Some other mechanism, somehow, must be involved. Not
“divine interference,” that’s got to be bunkum. But, as the
Universe is obviously capable of producing intelligent brains (we
are here!), is it not correct to infer that, somehow, some kind
of intelligence has to be involved?
The trouble here is that your “can’t see” is just an unfounded
argument from incredulity. One could just as well ask, “Why did
it take so long, why was it so slow?”
Mutations, sure. But how? Somehow, more base pairs has been
added to the genome over the eons, all of them due to random
chance mutations in the germ line cells. How in heaven’s name
(pardon the expression!) could this have happened?
I believe I already answered that question. There are a number
of mechanisms that increase the size of the genome. There is
duplication which can be duplication of sections of chromosomes,
entire chromosomes, or even entire genomes. There are certain
sequences that are sometimes transcribed into more than one copy
during DNA replication. There is viral insertion. There are
transposons.
And with
Stephen J. Gould’s “punctuated equilibrium,” it looks to me as
if things get a lot worse: long periods of evolutionary stasis,
followed by intense bursts of change/growth, what could possibly
be driving that? Sudden bursts of major and beneficial
mutations, “saltating” the genome to a higher level, I just don’t
see it. My numbers look so much different when I present them as
in the following graphs:
Well, no, there aren’t “intense bursts of major and beneficial
mutations.” Major mutations, mutations that impact the potential
for extensive change, are quite rare. The question of consequence
about “punctuated equilibrium” is “why stasis”? Evolution can move
quite fast given the chance. Eldredge argues that stasis is an
ecological phenomenon, that ecologies naturally enter steady states
with the consequence that individual species have to in effect toe
the line. I am a tad skeptical about this, but he claims to have
supporting evidence.
Do you have any thought on what might be going on?
Not really, although there are matters of definition to consider.
I am inclined to the view that there are structural determinants
that are not yet well understood that dictate the shape of the
evolution of life.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/13/2005
Subj: Get it right!
In answer to your question, first, I did not receive this as part
of a larger document, but as part of an email sent by someone who
seemed to take it seriously. It was obvious that the math was
wrong, so I chose to corrrect it. The only thing worse than
ignorance is being certain that something is true when it isn’t.
I do thank you for writing. There is much in what you say; what
that may be I shall leave for posterity to determine.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/19/2005
Subj: Piltdown man and conan doyle cryptograph
“we have come across a primitive practical joker”.
You are probably right. However I don’t have a copy of the
The Lost World at hand so I can’t immediately confirm
your reading.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/17/2005
Subj: M.A.R.I.N.E.
I’m an army puke, did my twenty (actually 20-9-12) and retired in 83.
Was reading your pages about the Corp, and while I have no delusions of
grandeur, I thought you might be interested in the meaning of the acronym
in the title. If you already know….well, then. If not drop me an
e-mail and I’ll let you know.
By all means, illuminate my mind.
Cute, cute, cute, but probably not to be found on
the official Marine Corps web site.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/22/2005
Subj: Question
I have a debate going with my friend. heres the question: Are shoes
clothing? Any help is appreciated.
Now that is a good question. I have no authoritative answer, but
it seems to me that clothing is made of cloth whereas shoes usually
aren’t. Beyond that, one is clothed and shod, implying that clothing
and shoes are separate categories. However I will pose the question
to my readers. Perhaps one of them has a definitive answer.
Return to index of contributors
Date: 12/24/2005
Subj: adtmn
It has been a pleasure to hear from you;
however you needn’t tell me the details
of your life and thought.
Return to index of contributors
This page was last updated January 4, 2006.
It was moved January 9, 2008