Re: Date limit set on first Americans

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 23:21:54 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Wilkins)
wrote:

  --- snip ---

>> >geology, botany, zoology, medicine, paleontology - these were the
>> >established disciplines in which that set of theories were effective,
>> >and specialists in each or several of them would have been (and were, in
>> >fact) competent to pass judgement on the theses offered in the _Origin_.
>> 
>> But not in the modern sense of 'peer review'.
>
>No, because that system did not yet exist... we are going around. If all
>you are saying is that Darwin did not live in the modern system of
>science, of course that is true, and vacuous. But if you are implying
>Darwin was able to publish because he was free of peer review, then not
>only do you misrepresent the situation of the _Origin_, but of 19thC
>science. The peer review existed, but was mixed up in issues of social
>class and personal alliances. Arguably, things have not changed *that*
>much.

See my other post of today on the subject.



Eric Stevens