The Undesigned Universe - Pt 1

A 3-part lecture series by Peter Ward, Professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington

Part 1: "Designs on Life."
Beginning with various definitions of life and a brief history of how life arose and evolved on Earth, the first lecture will consider the diversity of possible life, basic precepts of Darwin's theory of evolution and the theory's battles with creationism, and finally how life is a series of biological compromises superimposed on historical contingencies and structural constraints.

(Jan 9, 2007 at Princeton University)

Category:

News & Politics

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• princeton

[quarkmuffin37]

intelligent design, is so unintelligent.

[sbergman27]

During the Q&A session, one gets an idea why Steven Meyer might have "kicked his butt" in a debate. Peter Ward is really bad at answering questions. He looks nervous. He provides non-answers to perfectly valid questions. I'm not saying that I could do better. But I'm not labeled as a Professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences. And I'm not certain that, with some preparation and practice, I might not do better.

[sbergman27]

There is a way out. Not for Homo sapiens, but for intelligence. Evolution spent 3.5 billion years developing these brains of ours. And in just the 63 years since ENIAC, only < 0.000002% of the time evolution required, we're a substantial portion of the way there, despite the fact that progress in AI has not been as fast as we predicted. Homo sapiens designs its successor, and then the successor designs its successor. And the non soft & squishy successors don't care about hard cold planets.