Re: Qilongia and Darwin

[Stephan Pickering <stefanpickering2002@yahoo.com>]

  In actuality, some of Peter Larson's extrapolations
re: sexual identity of theropods are, likely, "on the
mark"...far more so that "Qilongia" who has,
obviously, never read all of Alfred Russel Wallace's
work (I have), nor studied in detail John Langdon
Brooks's devasting analysis re: Darwin's plagiarism of
May 1858: Darwin received ARW's 1858 mss. on either 17
or 18 May 1858, then frantically rewrote over 60 folio
pages of his Natural Selection (not published until
1975) based on the 1858 paper and ARW's earlier 1855
paper on speciation. It was not until 18 June that he
mailed a letter to Lyell (written on 18 May) asking
for help. Since Mr Brooks published his book, not one
scholar (even the late Barbara Beddall) has ever
convincingly refuted the incontrovertible evidence he
discovered vis-a-vis the mail routes and times of mail
arriving in England, as well as his textual analysis
of the two ARW manuscripts and Darwin's 1858 book. 
Michael Shermer, even Stephen Gould, dance around the
evidence -- unwilling (perhaps, unable?) to yield the
deification of Darwin (whose paradigm, but not his
facts, is partially useful). Darwin was a liar. If
Qilongia wants evidence, then I suggest two routes: go
to the University of Wisconsin, whose library has on
deposit a microfilm of the transcript of the 1858
Natural Selection manuscript (it was there almost 20
years ago when I sat and studied). Read it carefully,
Mr "Qilongia",  with copies of the ARW 1855 and 1858
papers for comparison. Then go to Cambridge, and
examine the original Darwin manuscript: the additions
of May 1858 are written on a different paper stock
than the other folio pages, and are, upon analysis,
paraphrases of both Wallace 1855/1858 manuscript. Mr
"Qilongia" does not know what he is talking about, to
be diplomatic. Of course, ARW was deferential to
Darwin upon his return to London: he kept quiet
(although, here and there in his writings, his guard
relaxes, and one senses he knew what Lyell, Hooker,
and Darwin had done) because of the rigidly
class-stratified culture: everyone had a distinct role
from birth, often identifiable physical (and clothing)
characteristics, viz. Conan Doyle's consulting
detective invariably able to "read" these
characteristics from potential clients. If ARW had
spoken out against the plagiarism, his career would
have been destroyed. The evidence speaks for itself.
The "delicate arrangement" was the knowledge that a
scientific felony had been committed against a shy,
honourable, brilliant field naturalist (later, to
assuage his guilt, Darwin arranged for a "pension" to
be made available to ARW from the UK government). Mr
Brooks's 1984 magnum opus  is available in a paperback
edition, incidentally, and if Mr "Qilongia" would
like, I'll personally order a copy and mail it to him
in the interest of scholarly germination.
  As far as the anthropomorphization of the insect
world in Victorian "fairy" art: I was not speaking of
the Cottingley hoax, Mr "Qilongia", but how, using
"fairies" and the fascination of the sexual mating
systems of insects as a "cover", Victorian artists
were able to explore aspects of human sexuality.
Ironically, several Victorian writers admitted that
"natural selection" (never satisfactorily defined) was
correct, but hoped the evolutionists would not talk
about it. It was in this world that dinosaurs were
defined into extinction, and that "birds" were
elevated to poetic symbols of "higher" taxa. A certain
writer denigrates the idea of a pigeon in a "bird
bath" being related to tyrannosaurs; I shudder at the
thought that hominids sometimes have recessive brain
dysfunctionality (and recessive genes are not on sale
at the local mall).

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com