#newton darwin

[ray-wattson]

Now, time to introduce characters from other dimensions, such as this scientist fella, Newton.

Instead of Alterra, in Nova's universe, this guy comes from a different dimension the others call "Floating Islands Dimension", due to how the world he comes from consists of, you guessed it, floating islands, connected by highways and bridges, in a modern setting.

In that world, he used to live in a big city called Praimouth, in an apartment where he worked on a special formula in order to give himself inhuman strength by each regular dose, making him capable of breaking bones with a single punch. However, one side effect involves his skin, eyes and hair turning pink (at least that's his favorite color). Some people may say this is cheating, as if using steroids, but he doesn't care, he made that to defend himself and withstand a few bullets if any are fired at him in a combat, not to show off.

Newton, the scientist and chemistry expert, is seemingly well composed, not taking bad-mouthing about him easily, often responding to others with sarcasm or getting straight to the point. Due to living alone for 13 years, he doesn't smile as often and had sometimes behaved aggressively to anyone, only until he got to meet some friends out of Alterra, especially Emily, who became his girlfriend later on and made the aggressive part slowly fade out of his personalities.

He decided to move to Alterra after Emily's first quest was over, because of the lush and peaceful ambience compared to the noisy and corrupt environment Praimouth has. After moving to the same world Emily lives in, he became the first scientist who started to develop some technology for that world that doesn't have any (at least those that don't involve magic.)

Even after that, he still can be a jerk to those being dumb or annoying, but likes to banter with his friends and girlfriend, who don't take him in the wrong way.

[lascitasdelashoras]

American Humanist Association

[ki-wwi]

[chidonomics]

La Navaja de Ockham: La Virtud de la Simplicidad en la Ciencia

En un mundo lleno de complejidades, la Navaja de Ockham nos invita a buscar la claridad. Este principio, atribuido al fraile franciscano Guillermo de Ockham (1285-1347), sugiere que, ante varias explicaciones para un mismo fenómeno, debemos preferir la más simple, siempre que explique los hechos de manera adecuada. No es una ley rígida, sino una guía filosófica que ha moldeado el pensamiento…

[katelovessewing]

[kstarlitchaotics]

Scientist believing in God

[in-sightjournal]

Ask A Genius 1125: Life and Decline

Rick Rosner: I want to talk about crystallized versus fluid intelligence, which is part of the same broad theories related to IQ. Fluid intelligence is raw problem-solving ability at its peak in young adults. The trade-off is that, as you acquire wisdom—knowledge-based expertise—this becomes crystallized intelligence. As you learn more and your brain ages, fluid intelligence is replaced by…

[togglesbloggle]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme, Lamarckism!

(This is an excellent ask.)

Lamarck got done a bit dirty by the textbooks, as one so often is. He's billed as the guy who articulated an evolutionary theory of inherited characteristics, inevitably set up as an opponent made of straw for Darwin to knock down. The example I recall my own teachers using in grade school was the idea that a giraffe would strain to reach the highest branches of a tree, and as a result, its offspring would be born with slightly longer necks. Ha-ha-ha, isn't-that-silly, isn't natural selection so much more sensible?

But the thing is, this wasn't his idea, not even close. People have been running with ideas like that since antiquity at least. What Lamarck did was to systematize that claim, in the context of a wider and much more interesting theory.

Lamarck was born in to an era where natural philosophy was slowly giving way to Baconian science in the modern sense- that strange, eighteenth century, the one caught in an uneasy tension between Newton the alchemist and Darwin the naturalist. This is the century of Ben Franklin and his key and his kite, and the awed discovery that this "electricity" business was somehow involved in living organisms- the discovery that paved the way for Shelley's Frankenstein. This was the era when alchemy was fighting its last desperate battles with chemistry, when the division between 'organic' and 'inorganic' chemistry was fundamental- the first synthesis of organic molecules in the laboratory wouldn't occur until 1828, the year before Lamarck's death. We do not have atoms, not yet. Mendel and genetics are still more than a century away; we won't even have cells for another half-century or more.

Lamarck stepped in to that strange moment. I don't think he was a bold revolutionary, really, or had much interest in being one. He was profoundly interested in the structure and relationships between species, and when we're not using him as a punching bag in grade schools, some people manage to remember that he was a banging good taxonomist, and made real progress in the classification of invertebrates. He started life believing in the total immutability of species, but later was convinced that evolution really was occurring- not because somebody taught him in the classroom, or because it was the accepted wisdom of the time, but through deep, continued exposure to nature itself. He was convinced by the evidence of his senses.

(Mostly snails.)

His problem was complexity. When he'd been working as a botanist, he had this neat little idea to order organisms by complexity, starting with the grubbiest, saddest little seaweed or fern, up through lovely flowering plants. This was not an evolutionary theory, just an organizing structure; essentially, just a sort of museum display. But when he was asked to do the same thing with invertebrates, he realized rather quickly that this task had problems. A linear sorting from simple to complex seemed embarrassingly artificial, because it elided too many different kinds of complexity, and ignored obvious similarities and shared characteristics.

When he went back to the drawing board, he found better organizing schema; you'd recognize them today. There were hierarchies, nested identities. Simple forms with only basic, shared anatomical patterns, each functioning as a sort of superset implying more complex groups within it, defined additively by the addition of new organs or structures in the body. He'd made a taxonomic tree.

Even more shockingly, he realized something deep and true in what he was looking at: this wasn't just an abstract mapping of invertebrates to a conceptual diagram of their structures. This was a map in time. Complexities in invertebrates- in all organisms!- must have been accumulating in simpler forms, such that the most complicated organisms were also the youngest.

This is the essential revolution of Lamarckian evolution, not the inherited characteristics thing. His theory, in its full accounting, is actually quite elaborate. Summarized slightly less badly than it is in your grade school classroom (though still pretty badly, I'm by no means an expert on this stuff), it looks something like this:

As we all know, animals and plants are sometimes generated ex nihilo in different places, like maggots spontaneously appearing in middens. However, the spontaneous generation of life is much weaker than we have supposed; it can only result in the most basic, simple organisms (e.g. polyps). All the dizzying complexity we see in the world around us must have happened iteratively, in a sequence over time that operated on inheritance between one organism and its descendants.

As we all know, living things are dynamic in relation to inorganic matter, and this vital power includes an occasional tendency to gain in complexity. However, this tendency is not a spiritual or supernatural effect; it's a function of natural, material processes working over time. Probably this has something to do with fluids such as 'heat' and 'electricity' which are known to concentrate in living tissues. When features appear spontaneously in an organism, that should be understood as an intrinsic propensity of the organism itself, rather than being caused by the environment or by a divine entity. There is a specific, definite, and historically contingent pattern in which new features can appear in existing organisms.

As we all know, using different tissue groups more causes them to be expressed more in your descendants, and disuse weakens them in the same way. However, this is not a major feature in the development of new organic complexity, since it could only move 'laterally' on the complexity ladder and will never create new organs or tissue groups. At most, you might see lineages move from ape-like to human-like or vice versa, or between different types of birds or something; it's an adaptive tendency that helps organisms thrive in different environments. In species will less sophisticated neural systems, this will be even less flexible, because they can't supplement it with willpower the way that complex vertebrates can.

Lamarck isn't messing around here; this is a real, genuinely interesting model of the world. And what I think I'm prepared to argue here is that Lamarck's biggest errors aren't his. He has his own blind spots and mistakes, certainly. The focus on complexity is... fraught, at a minimum. But again and again, what really bites him in the ass is just his failure to break with his inherited assumptions enough. The parts of this that are actually Lamarckian, that is, are the ideas of Lamarck, are very clearly groping towards a recognizable kind of proto-evolutionary theory.

What makes Lamarck a punching bag in grade-school classes today is the same thing that made it interesting; it's that it was the best and most scientific explanation of biological complexity available at the time. It was the theory to beat, the one that had edged out all the other competitors and emerged as the most useful framework of the era. And precisely none of that complexity makes it in to our textbooks; they use "Lamarckianism" to refer to arguments made by freaking Aristotle, and which Lamarck himself accepted but de-emphasized as subordinate processes. What's even worse, Darwin didn't reject this mechanism either. Darwin was totally on board with the idea as a possible adaptive tendency; he just didn't particularly need it for his theory.

Lamarck had nothing. Not genetics, not chromosomes, not cells, not atomic theory. Geology was a hot new thing! Heat was a liquid! What Lamarck had was snails. And on the basis of snails, Lamarck deduced a profound theory of complexity emerging over time, of the biosphere as a(n al)chemical process rather than a divine pageant, of gradual adaptation punctuated by rapid innovation. That's incredible.

There's a lot of falsehood in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, and it never managed to entirely throw off the sloppy magical thinking of what came before. But his achievement was to approach biology and taxonomy with a profound scientific curiosity, and to improve and clarify our thinking about those subjects so dramatically that a theory of biology could finally, triumphantly, be proven wrong. Lamarck is falsifiable. That is a victory of the highest order.

[ray-wattson]

On The Cliff At Night

Just an old (From 2021 lol) piece featuring all the main 10 characters of Emily's Tale and even though the anatomy was much wonkier back there, I'm still proud of how it turned out, especially with the background. From left to right we've got: Tracy, Ukore, Ezor, Ifeus, Elune, Emily, Newton, Eli, Mike and Rashi.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Scientific Theory & Law

Theory - a description of the natural world that scientists have proven through rigorous testing.

As understood within the scientific community, a theory explains how nature behaves under specific conditions.

Theories tend to be as broad as their supporting scientific evidence will permit.

They seek to serve as a definitive explanation of some aspect of the natural world.

A theory begins as a hypothesis: a proposed explanation for a natural phenomenon.

In order to turn a hypothesis into a proven theory, researchers design science experiments to challenge their ideas under the conditions of the natural world.

By adhering to the scientific method and working with careful attention to detail, scientists can eventually accumulate enough evidence to prove their hypothesis, thus making it a theory with predictive power.

Like theories, scientific laws describe phenomena that the scientific community has found to be provably true.

Generally, laws describe what will happen in a given situation as demonstrable by a mathematical equation, whereas theories describe how the phenomenon happens.

Scientific laws develop from scientific discoveries and rigorously tested hypotheses, and new theories generally uphold and expand laws—though neither is ever held to be unimpeachably true.

Examples of Scientific Theories

Many famous scientific theories have shaped our understanding of the natural world as we know it.

The Big Bang Theory: The Big Bang Theory claims that the universe started as a small singularity 13.8 billion years ago and expanded suddenly.

The Heliocentric Theory: Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory demonstrates that Earth travels around the Sun in our solar system.

The Theory of General Relativity: Albert Einstein's theory claims that massive objects (like the Earth) cause a distortion in space-time, which is experienced as gravity. This theory actually supplanted one of the most famous scientific laws, Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation.

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection: Charles Darwin's theory—most succinctly summarized as “survival of the fittest”—explains how gradual changes in populations of organisms over time leads to the emergence of traits that allow those organisms to survive.

Examples of Scientific Laws

The laws that anchor the world's scientific knowledge include:

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation: Sir Isaac Newton's 1687 law of gravity describes the attractive forces between all forms of matter. This theory of gravity establishes a bedrock for many subsequent theories, as the force of gravity impacts nearly all physical relationships in the universe.

Newton’s Laws of Motion: First published in 1687, this set of three laws describes the role that competing forces play on an object at motion or at rest.

Boyle's Law: Alternately known as Boyle-Mariotte Law or Mariotte's Law, this describes the relationship between gas volume and gas pressure. Physicists Robert Boyle and Edme Mariotte discovered the law independently in 1662 and 1676, respectively.

The Laws of Thermodynamics: This set of four laws concerns thermodynamic work, entropy, heat, temperature, and other forces pertaining to the transfer of energy.

Scientific Theory vs. Law

Scientific laws differ from theories in that they tend to describe a narrower set of conditions.

A scientific law might explain the relationship between two specific forces or between two changing substances in a chemical reaction.

Theories are typically more expansive, and they focus on the how and why of natural phenomena.

Both scientific laws and theories are considered scientific fact.

However, theories and laws can be disproven when new evidence emerges.

Certain accepted truths of Newtonian physics were partially disproven by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

The work of Louis Pasteur disproved prior theories of disease in animals.

If thorough scientific research upends a previously held belief, scientists must find new hypotheses that better describe how nature works.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[rabidbatboy]

MAD SCIENTIST ID PACK

NAMES ; victor , newton , darwin , raymond , doc , dex , gizmo , herbert , data , edison , jekyll , edward , gibson , egbert , julius , irvin , henry , atlas , atom , radia , otto , argon , ester , zinc , helix , venus , thomas , charles , zeke

PRNS ; chem / chems , vial / vials , lab / labs , danger / dangers , scien / sciens , tox / toxic , bub / bubble , bio / bios , experi / experis , goggle / goggles , mad / mads , haz / hazard , test / tests , subject / subjects , mal / mals , electro / electros , atom / atoms , geni / genius , beaker / beakers , spark / sparks

TITLES ; the evil scientist , he who makes monstrosities , he who is close to a breakthrough , his unethical practices , the one searching for the answers , the one driven mad , he who mixes chemicals , the human experimenter , the scientific genius , the ego-driven one, he who dissects

(replace he/him/his with any pronouns)

IDENTITIES ; chemigender , testlexic , madscientistcostumic , gendermutation , weirdsciencegender , geniusscientist , genderscientist , genderexperiment , scieulovia , experithing , vilegender , 🧪emogic, chemistrygender , ⚗️emojic , 🧫emogic , toxiclabrat , deadlabrat , plasmagender , scichaoacacoric , scienchemician , scilabotix

🧼 ——— REQUESTED BY ; self indulgent

[pupsmailbox]

SCIENCE ID PACK

NAMES ︰ acid.　ada.　alkali.　amadeo.　archaea.　argon.　atlas.　atom.　atomielle.　atomiene.　beryl.　beryllium.　billy.　bon.　boron.　cadmium.　caesium.　cal.　carson.　catalyst.　cecile.　cell.　celle.　celline.　charles.　chem.　chemesse.　chemise.　chemisette.　chemist.　chemistrine.　chrome.　claude.　clumselle.　cobalt.　comet.　copper.　cosmic.　curt.　cypher.　darwin.　data.　decora.　dex.　dexter.　doc.　doppler.　edison.　edward.　egbert.　elara.　electra.　element.　ellie.　enoxaparin.　entropy.　ester.　ether.　euclid.　evo.　evoliene.　evoliette.　evolune.　experi.　experielle.　experiette.　experimae.　foggy.　galileo.　gamma.　gibson.　gizmo.　gorgon.　graham.　graviette.　gravitae.　gravitine.　halogen.　hatchet.　hazard.　helix.　henry.　herbert.　hypatia.　ion.　irvin.　jekyll.　julius.　jupiter.　kelvin.　lab.　lavoisier.　lobotelle.　logy.　lumen.　lymphoid.　magnesium.　magnus.　mandi.　mandible.　marina.　marrow.　matter.　medusa.　mercury.　millie.　molly.　monoxide.　moon.　neon.　neuralgia.　newton.　nightingale．abacus.　opaque.　organelle.　osmos.　otto.　ox.　patchy.　pathogenica.　pearl.　phosphorous.　plasma.　plasticulla.　positron.　posy.　psych.　psyche.　psychielle.　psychiette.　quark.　radia.　radiatien.　radiette.　raymond.　rocket.　sagan.　saturn.　sci.　science.　sciencia.　scieniette.　scientist.　selenium.　silicona.　solar.　spectra.　spore.　staurozoa.　tech.　tesla.　theorie.　thomas.　toxin.　trojan.　troubleshoot.　valence.　venus.　victor.　violet.　volt.　xen.　zeke.　zinc.

PRONOUNS︰ abyss/abyss.　acid/acid.　actin/actinide.　ae/atom.　atom/atom.　atomic/atomical.　base/base.　bea/beaker.　beaker/beaker.　beam/beam.　bi/bio.　bio/bio.　bio/biochem.　bio/biology.　biology/biology.　bone/bone.　bub/bubble.　bubs/bubble.　catalyst/catalyst.　ce/cell.　cell/cell.　che/chemistry.　chem/chem.　chem/chemical.　chem/chemistry.　chemical/chemical.　chromosome/chromosome.　da/data.　danger/danger.　data/data.　decay/decay.　dna/dna.　e/evo.　ele/element.　elec/electric.　elec/electron.　electro/electro.　electron/electron.　entropy/entropy.　enzyme.　evo/evolve.　evolution/evolution.　evolve/evolve.　ex/expert.　exa/examine.　exp/experiment.　expe/experiment.　experi/experi.　explode/explode.　fe/iron.　fizz/fizz.　flask/flask.　geni/genius.　glass/glass.　goggle/goggle.　gra/gravity.　grav/gravity.　halo/halogens.　haz/hazard.　hyp/sin.　hypo/hypothesis.　ion/ion.　ion/ionization.　iso/isotopic.　isotope/isotope.　kinetic/kinetic.　know/knowledge.　la/lab.　lab/lab.　mad/mad.　magnet/magnet.　mal/mal.　mars/mar.　mask/mask.　merc/mercurys.　met/metal.　metal/metaloide.　method/method.　mi/microbe.　min/mind.　mol/molecule.　mutant/mutant.　mutate/mutate.　needle/needle.　neu/neucleus.　neu/neutron.　neuron/neuron.　neutron/neutron.　nu/nuclear.　nucle/nucleus.　nuclear/nuclear.　nucleus/nuclei.　orbit/orbit.　organism/organism.　pa/paradox.　para/paradox.　patch/patch.　photon/photon.　planet/planet.　plant/plant.　plat/platinum.　poi/poison.　pro/proton.　pro/protron.　psy/psycho.　rad/radiation.　radio/radiograph.　rae/radiation.　ribo/ribosome.　rna/dna.　sci/sci.　sci/science.　scien/scien.　script/script.　sick/sickness.　spark/spark.　spill/spill.　star/star.　study/study.　subject/subject.　tech/technician.　test/test.　theo/theory.　theory/theory.　tissue/tissue.　tox/toxic.　tri/trial.　value/value.　vi/viru.　vial/vial.　volt/volt.　wave/wave.　x-ray/x-ray.　xyr/xyr.　zip/zap.　⚗️/⚗️.　🔬/🔬.　🥼/🥼.　🧪/🧪.　🧫/🧫.　🧬/🧬.　🧮/🧮.

[katelovessewing]

[thoughtfulfoxllama]

I recently got the Oxford "Annotated Book of Mormon" from the Library, and I love it

Reading "Come, Follow Me" this week, I found an interesting polarity "Faith-Skepticism"

In Alma 30, we read about Korihor, in 31, the Zoramites. And, in the original chapters, 30 & 31 were in the same chapter, indicating a connection between them

Korihor represents Extreme Skepticism (yes, I know, he never disbelieved, but that was his philosophy), while the Zoramites exhibit Blind Faith

This may be controversial, but Skepticism isn't a bad thing. God created us as rational beings, to think about things. He didn't create rationality so we could ignore it. Science is rooted in skepticism (I'm not sure if this is right, so I'll test it vigorously)

Skepticism is only negative when it prevents one from actually applying Faith. The Lectures on Faith make it very clear that Faith is an Action, not merely a belief. Next Week, we read one of the most important sermons in the Book of Mormon (Alma's Parable of the Seed). He makes it clear that we can only see the affects of the seed if we nurture it, and let it grow

Many Scientists were also Men of Faith (such as Heisenberg, or Newton). Even those who weren't religious didn't outright deny the possibility. For example, Darwin was active in his Church while writing "On the Origin of Species," said until his death he didn't know if God was real or not, but wasn't going to assume he's not there (and he once told a group of atheists that it was folly to say God didn't exist, because you can't know)

The idea of Science being anti-god is only so popular nowadays because of people such as Dawkins, who (like all too many people, religious & atheistic) don't understand what Faith actually is

On the other hand, there is Blind Faith. The Zoramites had faith, that is for sure. The Zoramite Prayer only consists of Thanks, and no requests. But what did that Faith lead them to? It led them to Pride (we're unconditionally saved, you're unconditionally damned). It led them to neglect & even condemn the poor (similar to the "Seed Faith" we see, especially with Televangelists). It eventually led them to War, because of their blind hatred for an "other" they had created (which is sadly too common in the Modern Church, be it with the LGBT Community, Liberals, or even Beards (yes, there is a story behind that. And yes, I do have a glorious beard))

So, what did Mormon want us to learn? We have 1% of the records he had, and even then, they're abridged. Everything in the Book of Mormon has a reason to be there.

I think he wanted us to acknowledge that humans have Polarity inherent in us. We have to learn how to balance that polarity if we are going to be healthy & happy. We can't let either Skepticism or Faith lead us. We need to test the "Seed of Faith," and see if it is good. We can't let Faith overrule us (and inadvertently let Wicked Seeds infest us), and we can't let Skepticism overrule us (refusing to test any seeds)

If we see a beggar on the street, Skepticism can lead us to help him ("what's God going to do for him"). If we are that beggar, Faith can allow us to accept the charity they need ("God sent that person to help, so I'll accept their help"). These are two opposing forces, but they both lead to God's Will being done (charity being given). We need to learn how to balance, and when to express each attribute

[tanadrin]

Regarding your comment on scientific socialism, I've never understood how people can entertain that opinion. When you study STEM at a university they literally tell you to read the original publications because that actually makes you a better scientist!

You do not learn about physics from reading Newton’s Principia. You don’t learn about evolution from reading Darwin. You might read those texts from historical interest, but they’re no longer at the cutting edge of their field. They’ve been surpassed by newer theories based on better data.