Evolution, science, creativity, and God are among many ideas I would like to share with you. They come from sixty or more years thinking about science, evolution, creativity, and God. Some are new and not yet incorporated in the body of science common to those in my field. For example, a worm that lives for thousands of years provides evidence of the connection of vertebrates to annelid ancestors.
Some important ideas come from my Fulbright research at the University of Tasmania followed by research at Michigan State University. Crustaceans with greatly different life-cycles made me very alert to factors influencing longevity. The Tasmanian ones were in pools on Mount Wellington that Darwin had passed over a century before me when he climbed the mountain as noted in his Voyage of the Beagle. Then I became aware of the ancient worms when I revised an invertebrate zoology text for the second edition (Hegner and Engemann, 1968). They had not been included in the first edition when I had used it as a student in about 1947. Others thought they were an aberrant dead-end from an evolutionary standpoint. But they help answer many important evolutionary questions.
Seeing why others don't know about it led me to understand some of the problems with peer review, scientific journals,and scientific thinking. Along the way I wrote an unpublished manuscript on creativity. I also note the creation/evolution debate does not need to be a conflict. Those who believe in God should realize the creator can make us through or along with the process of natural selection and evolution.
My computer exposure has gone from punch cards in the 1960's through a succession of upgrades. It has bogged down in recent years with the advent of programs that do most anything you want - if you know how to use the software. But I can't even figure out how to get to editing portion of this to put my biography in it. Maybe I will eventually get to it. When I do you will know it because pictures and illustrations will help to make some of things I want to say understandable. Seventeen years of retirement after 36 years of teaching invertebrate zoology and related subjects at Western Michigan University helped me compile some of the things I want to present. I've decided to do it now because my children and grandchildren are busy enough that they are unlikely to do it for me posthumously.
Today, December 23, 2014, over one year and seven months after the above was posted (5/19/13), I was trying to set up a new blog to transfer items on God and Creativity to, as well as to accept new items on those two as well as favorite pictures and comments not related to evolution. As I went through the areas I had hoped to use to accomplish that I was unable to get Blogger or blogspot.com's attention for that purpose. But I did find out my name is Evolution Insights instead of Joseph G. Engemann or my preferred Joe Engemann. My initial thought about a week ago was that I really needed to set up four or more blogs to allow readers to access their area of interest with greater ease. To some extent, it can already be done by clicking on the topics at the top of the blog.
Joe Engemann (my name, missing in the original 5/19/13 post 1) Kalamazoo. MI 12/23/2014
