Saturday, November 14, 2009

Anaximander's Ancient Hypothesis of Evolution



"He [Anaximander] said that mankind was at the beginning very like another animal, to wit, a fish." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century

It was wrong 3 million years ago, it was wrong then, it was wrong in the Victorian Age, and it's wrong now.

And to set the historical record straight, Anaximander was aware of Atomic Theory a century before Leucippus.

"He [Anaximander] said ... that winds come from the separation and condensation of the subtler atoms of air ...." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century

21 comments:

Fungus the Photo! said...

A human foetus has gills at a certain period. These are eventually enfolded into tissue as lungs.

Not proof of fish to human but provocative. You have also posted figures depicted as fish men.

Any thoughts?

KV said...

OIM,

By proclaiming --It was wrong 3 million years ago, it was wrong then, it was wrong in the Victorian Age, and it's wrong now.-- does not make the reality of evolution go away! Such proclamations are indication of need for Lilly time.

OilIsMastery said...

Fungus,

If humans have anything to do with fish, perhaps it's because we were genetically engineered by mermen from the star Sirius.

As far as the hypothesis of evolution, it's hypothesized that whales started off on land and migrated to the sea, not the other way around.

Quantum_Flux said...

absurd

OilIsMastery said...

QF,

What's absurd?

Quantum_Flux said...

What atomic theory?

OilIsMastery said...

The atomic theory of atoms.

imode said...

KV, JK

Brian is clearly suffering from some form of paranoid schizophrenia and is thus not responsible for his statements.

Brian/Oils

You really need to get help...

Jeffery Keown said...

Whales did start off on land, as a little artiodactyl called Indohyus.

Whale evolution is one of the more exciting proofs of the theory.

And yeah, tetrapods (lizards, snakes, dinosaurs (including modern ones like birds) and all mammals (including whales) are descended from fish via Tiktaalik who came ashore in Laurasia hundreds of millions of years ago.

We are all related to the lobe-finned fishes like the coelecanths, not so much the ray-finned and cartilginous fish. Though if you go back far enough, you find we are also more related to them than, say, worms and the invertebrates.

You'd have to be an idiot not to believe it.

Jeffery Keown said...

Don't ya just love how Oils refers to Greek atomic theory as if they knew what we know?

They thought atoms were little bitty things, the indivisible tiniest bits of matter possible.

They were wrong, but Oils is crediting them with reactors and hadron colliders.

It's so ignorant, it's almost funny.

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

You don't believe in atoms either?

Jeffery Keown said...

Of course I believe in atoms. I just don't believe in the atoms as the Greeks "knew" them.

Which is to say, not at all.

OilIsMastery said...

How can you say that the ancients didn't know about atoms? The word atom is an ancient word!

Jeffery Keown said...

The word is ancient, but they didn't know the true nature of the things.

Ask Democritus about protons, the charge of an electron or the characteristics of Rydberg orbits.

There's nothing there, as they didn't know more than we do now. There is no evidence to support it.

Modern atomic theory is a vibrant, expanding, experimental science, as is evolutionary development and genetics.

There was a time when I held the Greeks in a kind of awe. You've shown that they did have some pretty advanced thinking, and we did have some catching up to do. Now that the Church's dominance of science is dead for good, we can get some real work done.

We can separate speculation from fact and superstition from theory and uncover the real workings of the Universe. We've been doing it for 150 so far, and look at the changes that have been wrought.

We've overturned Genesis to discover that humans have a natural origin in Africa, we've been to the moon and back, tiny probes have visited nearly every major body in the system, aided by a modern, mature fusion of Newton and Einstein. Ion drives function for years on end, placing probes within a few feet of where the math tells them to be.

Two little robots have strutted around Mars far, far longer than planned, showing us a Mars no one expected.

Mainstream Science is awesome, it gets results and has changed the world in only a few generations.

Many thanks to your Greeks, but we'll take it from here.

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

The ancients knew more about atoms than contemporary science ever will.

Jeffery Keown said...

Oils,
I don't see any proof to that effect. Seriously, show a shred of positive evidence of this.

I'm about 2.5 miles from Lilly's world headquarters, I can stop and pick up any samples you might need to fix this little problem of yours.

Raymond wants to know, specifically, what the Greeks knew about quarks?

OilIsMastery said...

What do we know about quarks? Practically nothing.

"An Elementary Particle is something so simple that one knows nothing whatever about it." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist, date unknown

Jeffery Keown said...

Practically nothing.

Bullshit, Brian...

We know vast quantities of the properties, interactions, behaviors, charges, mass, spin, and general characteristics of quarks.

Quoting a man half a century in his grave is laughable, he didn't know dick about quarks.

The Greeks had not a clue about them. They thought matter stopped at atoms. They were wrong.

OilIsMastery said...

They knew all about it.

"Krishna showed him all the worlds within his body." -- Mahabharata, Book I, 8th century B.C.

"Man is a microcosm." -- Democritus, philosopher, 4th century B.C.

Jeffery Keown said...

Wow.

Just wow.

You overlay your weirdness onto EVERYTHING.

If they really knew, and could really do something with all this knowledge, the literature would have been more specific. All you have is your wild-ass guesses as to what they meant.

Fortunately science doesn't work like that.

Anonymous said...

Though I disagree with your statement on Darwin's theory being false, but I'm glad you're challenging traditional thinking. :) I do not believe you are insane as these people claim, yet you are eccentric. :)

Jeffery- Are you a leader or a follower? I don't see you coming up with your own unique ideas and theories? Those who don't think for themselves, don't get anywhere in life.

Your problem is you don't think for yourself and it's why we don't listen to you.

In fact, as "smart," as you claim, you COMPLETELY MISSED OiM's POINT!! He is encouraging unique thinking and is not "Insane." You are the angry idiot who seems to think you are better then anyone else because we don't blindly follow mainstream research! So, unless you have something intelligent to say, SHUT UP!!