The most well-known recorded clash between non-biologists and biologists over evolutionary theory was at Wistar 1966 :
a handful of mathematicians and biologists were chattering over a picnic lunch organized by the physicist, Victor Weisskopf, who is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
and one of the original Los Alamos atomic bomb group, at his house in Geneva. `A rather weird discussion’ took place. The subject was evolution by natural selection. The mathematicians were stunned by the optimism of the evolutionists about what could be achieved by chance. So wide was the rift that they decided to organize a conference, which was called Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution. The conference was chaired by Sir Peter Medawar, whose work on graft rejection won him a Noble prize and who, at the time, was director of the Medical Research Council’s laboratories in North London. Not, you will understand, the kind of man to speak wildly or without careful thought. In opening the meeting, he said: `The immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian theory. This dissatisfaction has been expressed from several quarters.”
Some of the most tenacious opponents of Darwinian evolution have been those outside of the discipline of biology, most notably engineers, mathematicians, physicists, and chemists.
I point to the Salem Hypothesis:
An education in the Engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to Creation/Intelligent Design viewpoints.
But what about musicians?
(The topic of music, math, computer science came up in Artificial Intelligence and the Game of Checkers. I sensed a great deal of interest in the topic so I’m opening this thread to air the discussion out. )
I would even be curious to know if there is a correlation between musically oriented people and ID. Seriously! It’s been my experience that at least in regards to people I meet on the internet there is a partial correlation. I’ve yet to meet an evolutionary biologist who had a serious interest in performing instrumental music.
There is a little nuance here however in that many with interest in the disciplines of engineering, math, and physics have interest in music. Here at UD, William Dembski, Gil Dodgen, and myself can play Chopin Etudes on the piano. Several of my math and computer science professors were accomplished musicians. My piano teacher was also a professor of mathematics. Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and Richard Feynman were also accomplished musicians.
To support the correlation of computers, math, and music , consider this article: Society for Neuroscience
Brain imaging research shows that several brain areas are larger in adult musicians than in nonmusicians. For example, the primary motor cortex and the cerebellum, which are involved in movement and coordination, are bigger in adult musicians than in people who don’t play musical instruments. The area that connects the two sides of the brain, the corpus callosum, is also larger in adult musicians.
…
music training can influence brain organization and ability. In fact, researchers actively are studying whether the brain changes observed in musicians enhance mental functions, including many not associated with music. While research is still in its early stages, some studies already suggest that this might be the case. For example, musically-trained adults perform better on word memory tests than other adults.In addition to adults, children who take music lessons may experience advantages with respect to some cognitive skills. Preschoolers who had piano lessons for about six months perform better than other preschoolers on puzzle-solving tests. Researchers are trying to improve this music effect by adding other training components. One recent study found that second-graders who took piano lessons and played special computer math games score higher on math tests than children who played the math games but had English language instruction instead of piano lessons. Scientists now are testing whether the addition of another set of lessons, which incorporates the computer game into a school’s standard math program, will boost the young pianists’ math scores even more. Preliminary findings indicate that second-graders who received this version perform as well as fourth-graders in fractions, ratios, symmetry, graphs, and other pre-algebra problems.
Finally platonic ideals are also the antithesis of Darwinian evolution, but very friendly to mathematics, music, information science and ID.
How “real” are the objects of a mathematician’s world? From one point of view it seems there can be nothing real about them at all.Mathematical objects are just concepts;they are the mental idealizations that mathematicians make,often stimulated by the appearance and seeming order of aspects of the world about us,but mental idealizations nevertheless. Can they be other than mere arbitrary constructions of the human mind? At the same time there often does appear to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts,going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician.It is as though human thought is,instead,being guided towards some external truth – a truth which has a reality of its own,and is revealed only partially to any one of us.
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Such categorizations are not entirely dissimilar from those that one might use in the arts or in engineering. Great works of art are indeed “closer to God” than are lesser ones.It is a feeling not uncommon among artists,that in their greatest works they are revealing eternal truths which have some kind of prior ethereal existence,while their lesser works might be more arbitrary,of the nature of mere mortal constructions.Likewise,an engineering innovation with a beautiful economy,where a great deal is achieved in the scope of the application of some simple,unexpected idea, might appropriately be described as a discovery rather than an invention.
Having made these points,however,I cannot help feeling that,with mathematics,the case for believing in some kind of ethereal,eternal existence,at least for the more profound mathematical concepts,is a good deal stronger than in those other cases.There is a compelling uniqueness and universality in such mathematical ideas which seems to be of quite a different order from that which one could expect in the arts or or engineering.The view that mathematical concepts could exist in such a timeless,ethereal sense was put forward in ancient times (c.360 BC) by the great Greek philosopher Plato.Consequently,this view is frequently referred to as mathematical Platonism [Ref: Davis & Hersh “The Mathematical Experience” {Platonism}].It will have considerable importance for us later.
Roger Penrose
Mathematical Physicst, Emperor’s New Mind
Thus, since music is something of a platonic form, I would presume that there will be a slight correlation between the love of music and the love of intelligent design.