Re: god makes hubey

H. M. Hubey (hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu)
21 Nov 1995 00:57:26 -0500

bdiebold@minerva.cis.yale.edu (Benjamin H. Diebold) writes:

>Excuse me, but it was Hubey who asked someone to "Explain neoteny."

Yes, that's what I said.

>Someone did, and accurately, too. Then Hubey criticizes the respondent,
>accusing him of cicularity.

Someone who thinks that giving names to things is explanation might
find things odd; scientists don't.

If you went to a doctor and complained of rapid heart beat and he
wrote down tachycardia, would you be impressed? I wouldn't. He gave
it a latin name and still doesn't know what caused and still hasn't
explained it to me. He might have impressed me if I hadn't checked
the definition of it, and perhaps the idea behind it is to use
the spirit lifting psychological effects of fancy sounding latin names
as a part of the cure when they can do nothing else, but to use
these tricks in science is tantamount to quackery.

-- 

Regards, Mark
http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey