LAW PUNDIT Wednesday, January 26, 2005 1/26/2005 09:38:00 AM [Home]
Belief Without Proof : Evidence and the World - #12 - Americas Populated only Recently
LawPundit does not limit itself to the legal field. There are all kinds of laws and beliefs in this world beyond "law" itself and also encompassing the laws of the physical sciences and the humanities. Interestingly, much of what we believe in science is not based on evidence but rather on intuition or guesswork.
The highly acclaimed Edge Foundation has 120 prominent minds commenting on John Brockman's question: "WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"
We comment on these comments by 120 prominent minds: This is #12.
Belief Without Proof : Evidence and the World - #12 - Americas Populated only Recently
JARED DIAMOND, Professor, biologist and geographer at UCLA and author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, believes that:
"[H]umans first reached the continents of North America, South America, and Australia only very recently, at or near the end of the last Ice Age."
We Agree.
Diamond also writes:
Every year, discoveries of many purportedly older sites are announced, then to be forgotten. As the supporting evidence dissolves or remains disputed, we're now in a steady state of new claims and vanishing old claims, like a hydra constantly sprouting new heads."
We agree.
The reason, says Diamond, is:
"It makes better newspaper headlines to report "Wow!! New discovery overturns the established paradigm of American archaeology!!" than to report, "Ho hum, yet another reportedly paradigm-overturning discovery fails to hold up.""
We agree.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 1/26/2005 09:38:00 AM
Belief Without Proof : Evidence and the World - #12 - Americas Populated only Recently
LawPundit does not limit itself to the legal field. There are all kinds of laws and beliefs in this world beyond "law" itself and also encompassing the laws of the physical sciences and the humanities. Interestingly, much of what we believe in science is not based on evidence but rather on intuition or guesswork.
The highly acclaimed Edge Foundation has 120 prominent minds commenting on John Brockman's question: "WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"
We comment on these comments by 120 prominent minds: This is #12.
Belief Without Proof : Evidence and the World - #12 - Americas Populated only Recently
JARED DIAMOND, Professor, biologist and geographer at UCLA and author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, believes that:
"[H]umans first reached the continents of North America, South America, and Australia only very recently, at or near the end of the last Ice Age."
We Agree.
Diamond also writes:
Every year, discoveries of many purportedly older sites are announced, then to be forgotten. As the supporting evidence dissolves or remains disputed, we're now in a steady state of new claims and vanishing old claims, like a hydra constantly sprouting new heads."
We agree.
The reason, says Diamond, is:
"It makes better newspaper headlines to report "Wow!! New discovery overturns the established paradigm of American archaeology!!" than to report, "Ho hum, yet another reportedly paradigm-overturning discovery fails to hold up.""
We agree.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 1/26/2005 09:38:00 AM
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