Questions about Dinosaurs and Evolutionary Biology Scientists are people. William Blake wrote, "He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars." The nature of the work done by scientists, more often than not, prevents the vast majority of lay persons, ostensibly the intended beneficiaries, for whom the work has been done, from comprehending its value and meaning. The volume of knowledge is vast and expanding and therefore intimidating. The interrelatedness of the filelds of knowledge is another obstacle. Scientists have been rewarded more for being specialists rather than generalists. Notable exceptions would include James Watson, Carl Sagan and Isaac Azimov, who have tried to put it all together for us and present science for the masses, as it were. The "Big Picture" of science is not appreciated because the simple components, the fundamentals of chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology and scientific princple itself have not been learned. Science is seen as esoteric and this leads to a trivialization of its importance and marginalization of its popular acceptance. But for a majority of people to have scientific understanding is neither irrelevant nor unimportant. Nor is it undesirable or unnecessary or unachievable. By not understanding science, and in particular the scientific principle, people do not understand what science is and what science isn't; what science says and what it doesn't say; what is possible and what isn't possible; what is dangerous and what isn't dangerous; what is probable and what isn't probable; what can be done and what can't be done or how difficult a thing is to do. Scientists are people who use scientific principle to answer questions. In general, scientists believe that their efforts to objectively and dispassionately employ scientific principle to find answers to questions benefit, not just a circle of colleagues, or a stratum of the population that is somehow scientifically "in the know", but everyone of us. In general, scientists are not misanthropic icons in ivory towers or dusty relics in museums. They should like to be thought of as approachable, down to earth people who have attained knowledge not for mere self aggrandisement nor to horde knowledge as a miser might squirrel away gold coins in a vault. Quite the opposite is true, scientists are people whose very raison d'etre is the giving of their knowledge. Buddycom has obtained provisional permission to seek responses to specific questions offered by our members concerning the biological sciences and in particular, the science of evolutionary biology, from some authoritative sources, for example, the University of California at Irvine. We will post questions from buddycom members here on this page. Alternatively, if more space to present material is required, we will give you as many pages as you need. Please notify us by email. The library of the campus is available for UCI students and has lots of information about the science of biology.   University of California, Irvine main number : 714-824-5011   Also you may recieve assistance from the department of biology. UC Irvine Biology Dept. number : 714-824-6006   Evolutionary Biology Dept. : Dr. Harold Koopowitz.....714-824-8511......hkoopowi@uci.edu
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