Footnote Physicist

by Steven Gussman           Despite all of the posturing about, “interactionist,” models of phenotype (to say nothing of pure, “environmentalis,”) all of the theories of biology (and much of the controversial hypotheses still being argued over) are integrally genetic. You wouldn't know it from most discussions of behavioral genetics, but there are indeed reports of, “vacuum behaviors,” in the animal kingdom (let alone the obvious cases of vacuum morphology). i Richard Dawkins writes:           The urge to feel 'grateful' in a vacuum, when there's nobody there to thank, is very strong. Animals sometimes perform complicated patterns of behavior in a vacuum – they are even called 'vacuum activities'. The most spectacular example I know is from a German film I once saw of a beaver... Beavers probably don't understand why they do it. They just do it without thinking, because they have a mechanism in the brain that goes off ...

Dedicated To Mr. Callinan for giving me computer science Mr. Thompson for giving me physical law Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson, Steven Pinker, and Neil deGrasse Tyson for giving me the philosophy of science and to my mother, Lillian for giving me life Return to the Table Of Contents

          “How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?  Four.  Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't           make it a leg.”           – President Abraham Lincoln I           “Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact .           – Thomas Huxley II           “Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless           to fallacy in logic.”           – Thomas Huxley III           “Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a           veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from t...