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This page is a group project to present the full context of quotes used by conservatives, creationists and wingnuts as arguments from authority.

Please use the following formats when including quotes mined:

Each author gets an initial section (two ='s on either side of name) with the usage "Last Name, First and Middle Name(s)" by the most common name the author uses. For example, Charles Darwin would be Darwin, Charles. Please keep all sections in alphabetical order.

If the quote comes from a source, the source is a subsection under the main author's section (if more than one author, the first author who appears in the credits). Please use the full name of the work. Some works have had their titles shortened, so use the author's last title of the work. For example, The Origin of Species would be under Darwin, Charles, as The Origin of Species (the title since the sixth edition) with three ='s surrounding it. Please retail chronology of works when possible (please include date of first publication and full credits of any other authors directly under the section header, if possible).

If the quote is not from a physical source, comes from an interview, etc., please include it in a section at the end of the author's works as "Miscellaneous." Include three ='s around Miscellaneous.

For each quote, place it into another subsection under the source (or miscellaneous) using a short, unique phrase commonly referenced from the quote mine. For example, the popular quote mine from The Origin of Species, "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree" could be included as a section "The Eye and Natural Selection" with four ='s surrounding it.

Each quote should have a table for the common forms of quote mines (copy/paste the mine directly and -ref- the place where the quote was seen) in a left column, then in a right column include the FULL context of the work, with the first quote-mined reference's words included bolded so readers can easily see what's not included in the quote mine. If possible, include page numbers or chapter titles/numbers, and a link to a public domain resource of the work (or a publicly available version of the source).

With luck, and enough people linking to this page or its quotes, search engines will start matching popular quote mines to RW, and thus allowing people to see the full quote easily.


Contents

[edit] Darwin, Charles

Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882).

[edit] The Origin of Species

November, 1859. Gutenberg version

[edit] The Eye and Natural Selection

Chapter 6.

"to suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree."[1]

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility."

Quote Mining Index (QMI) - 5.3

[edit] The Fossil Record and Transitional Forms

Chapter 6.

"So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon the earth."[2]

"By the theory of natural selection all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the present day; and these parent-species, now generally extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient forms; and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of each great class. So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon the earth.

"ON THE LAPSE OF TIME, AS INFERRED FROM THE RATE OF DEPOSITION AND EXTENT OF DENUDATION.

"Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely numerous connecting links, it may be objected that time cannot have sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having been effected slowly. It is hardly possible for me to recall to the reader who is not a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell's grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, and yet does not admit how vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume. Not that it suffices to study the Principles of Geology, or to read special treatises by different observers on separate formations, and to mark how each author attempts to give an inadequate idea of the duration of each formation, or even of each stratum. We can best gain some idea of past time by knowing the agencies at work; and learning how deeply the surface of the land has been denuded, and how much sediment has been deposited. As Lyell has well remarked, the extent and thickness of our sedimentary formations are the result and the measure of the denudation which the earth's crust has elsewhere undergone. Therefore a man should examine for himself the great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the rivulets bringing down mud, and the waves wearing away the sea-cliffs, in order to comprehend something about the duration of past time, the monuments of which we see all around us."

QMI - 2.7

[edit] Popper, Karl

Karl Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994)

[edit] Unended Quest

1976, ISBN 0-415-28590-9

[edit] Falsifiability of natural selection

"Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme"[3]


  "I intend to argue that the theory of natural selection is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program; and although it is no doubt the best at present available, it can perhaps be slightly improved."

And later in the same book: "And yet, the theory is invaluable. I do not see how, without it, our knowledge could have grown as it has done since Darwin. In trying to explain experiments with bacteria which become adapted to, say, penicillin, it is quite clear that we are greatly helped by the theory of natural selection. Although it is metaphysical, it sheds much light upon very concrete and very practical researches. It allows us to study adaptation to a new environment (such as a penicillin-infested environment) in a rational way: it suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation, and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that."

And later in life: "I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation."

QMI - 645

[edit] Ridley, Mark

Mark Ridley (8 September, 1956-)

[edit] Who Doubts Evolution?

New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831

[edit] Fossil Record

"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation."   "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation. This does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven."

And later in the article: "So what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the "fossil evidence", that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy."

And in his 1993 book Evolution: "In other respects, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter … , the fossil record provides important evidence for evolution. Against alternatives other than separate creation and transformism, the fossil record is valuable because it shows that the living world has not always been like it is now. The existence alone of fossils shows that there has been some kind of change, though it does not have to have been change in the sense of descent with modification.”

QMI - 4.3

[edit] Twidale, Charles Rowland

Charles Rowland Twidale, Australian geologist

[edit] On the survival of paleoforms

American Journal of Science, vol. 276, 1 January 1976, pp. 77–95 [1]

[edit] Paleoforms as embarrassment to science

"The survival of these paleoforms is in some degree an embarrassment to all the commonly accepted models of landscape development."   The section containing this passage discusses existing theories of landscape development to contrast them with the author's alternative model, presented later in the paper, which explains how paleoforms can survive for long periods of time.

Later in the article: "Even if the conclusions reached by many workers over the years are only partly correct, it is clear that remnants of paleoforms are an integral part of the modern land surface ... The hills are not everlasting as Jacob implied (Genesis, 49, 26), but they persist for much longer periods than has been generally conceded."

[edit] Footnotes

  1. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n3/seeing-eye
  2. http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_Evolution#Lack_of_Any_Clear_Transitional_Forms
  3. Question Evolution
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