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From: kissell@flairvax.UUCP (Kevin Kissell)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Cataclysmic Evolution, etc.
Message-ID: <655@flairvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Jul-84 14:31:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: flairvax.655
Posted: Mon Jul 16 14:31:53 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Jul-84 06:31:33 EDT
Organization: Fairchild AI Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 32

(ahem)

While the recent "cataclysmic evolution and Black history" posting can
be fairly critcized on a large number of counts, I'd like to stir the ashes 
a bit with regard to two of the items that several folks have jumped on:
cataclysmic evolution and Velikovsky.

There *does* seem to be some evidence in the fossil record to indicate that
evolution is not a gradual, continuous, random process, but happens instead
in spurts.  These spurts may well be, in some instances, associated with
catastrophes (from the point of view of the species in question) that
reduce the breeding population and gene pool to a point where new
characteristics have a chance to predominate.  Unproven, but hardly
a fairy-tale.

Immanuel Velikovsky was a passable historical scholar but a ghastly
physicist and astronomer.  He may have made a real contribution to 
science in his attempts to correlate the flood myths of many cultures and
find physical evidence and explanation for a word-wide catastrophic event early
in recorded history.  Unfortunately, he hit upon a detailed and physically 
impossible theory (involving a near-miss of the comet-er-planet Venus, etc.) 
that he refused to back down from.

Kevin D. Kissell
Fairchild Research Center
Advanced Processor Development
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"Any closing epigram, regardless of truth or wit, grows galling
 after a number of repetitions"