ustxtxb_obs_1964_09_04_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

responding adequately to your own devotion to it.” Charles Alan Wright’s lead article in our last issue, “A Republican Makes Up His Mind,” will be reprinted in the October issue of The Progressive, the national political monthly published out of Madison, Wisconsin. R.D. Dialogue The Dobie Issue \(We hold, along with J. Frank Dobie, that substanceless letters of compliment have no place in a letters-to-the-editor feature. Our heavy mail about the Dobie issue, however, has all been complimentary, or else very directsend us extra copies and we print a few of the messages this The Texas Observer which presented my good friend, J. Frank Dobie, is one of the very best special issues of a magazine that I have run across in a great many years. Send me ten copies.C. H. Dykeman, publications manager, Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich. If a more noteworthy Texan has ever portrayed more faithfully our state’s heritage, I’ve not known of it.Mrs. E. 0. Speck, 301 West Carolyne Dr., Garland, Tex. Will be happy to have 20 more if yuu have them. It’s the nicest thing we’ve seen done on our favorite author.The Kendricks, Kendrick Book Store, 2429 Rice Blvd., Houston 5, Tex. 16 The Texas Observer I have just finished the Dobie issue, and found it so exciting. My parents were born and raised in South Texas, Dobie country, and knew the Dobie family. As I am frustrated with the complexities of urban life in Dallas and Houston and long for “the simple life,” the Observer Dobie issue has offered me an opportunity to explore more fully, and possibly to understand more, about my Texas heritage. I am anxious to read and read and read the Dobie books, to absorb the closeness to nature that he feels so strongly, and to find that “sense of values” from tli.at heritage, not with a sentimentality for the past, but with a sense of its importance for the present. Mrs. William D. Arnold, 6428 Brompton Rd., Houston 5, Tex. I have long been an admirer of J. Frank Dobie. We claim him, too, since his Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver is partly a New Mexican book, as are also Coronado’s Children, The Voice of the Coyote, The Mustangs, and several of the others. We think he’s the very heart and spirit of Southwestern literature and share his sturdy independence in the academic world as well. Congratulations on your tributes to him in this year that President Johnson awarded him the Medal of Freedom. No American deserves it more.T. M. Pearce, Albuquerque, N.M. Freedom .. . TEXAS, WAKE UP! Lyndon Baines Johnson has sold you and America out. His regime is a mere continuation of the Kennedy Kingpin Klan. Come November I shall cast my vote for my country, my flag, and my self-respect. . . . I intend to live free! Terence Gates, 645 Leavenworth, San Francisco, Cal. . . . Or Fascism A mushroom cloud could darken the world’s horizons. The foul odor of fascism already spreads across the land. A potential Hitler could swagger into the White House. We must not let him grab the key.Lucia Trent, Box 3047, Austin, Tex. Textbooks: A Sieve of Quackery The latest Neo-Neanderthalian attempt to filter our textbooks through a sieve of quackery is perhaps the most outrageous of all; I refer, of course, to the protest of various members and witch-doctors of the Church of Christ to adoption of three new biology texts for Texas high schools. Their grounds are that evolution is presented in these books as fact, not theory. Their attack shocked me only slightly more than the revelation that evolution has apparently not been presented in any form until now. This sly pretense of objection only to evolution as fact, rather than as theory, will probably at first glance seem reasonable, even worthwhile, to many rational laymen. After all, nothing can be ultimately proved. While my laggard feet have not yet taken me through the portals of the Church of Christ, I am sure that within it these laudably impartial gentlemen are teaching as “theories” the Book of Genesis and the possible resurrection of a peculiar little fanatic carpenter from Nazareth. The innocuous nature of their objector is false. I am perhaps prejudiced as much as they. but at least I am an expert witness. I am a geologist. In scientific fields an idea is classified as “hypothesis” if it is only one of many’ possible solutions to one or more phenomena ; as “theory” if there is some body of supporting evidence, although consider able further testing is necessary; as “law’ great that further testing becomes only a time-consuming redundancy. “Laws” can be used consistently and accurately tc predict phenomena. The usability of an idea for such prediction is the final and most rigorous test of its truth. Evolution is the best-proven of all major biological laws. Millions of outcrops have undergone geological investigation since Darwin wrote Origin of the Species; in not one has the superposition of fossils departed from that to be predicted by the Law of Evolution. Micropaleontology \(the study of microscopic fossils, based on the Law of guide the drilling and completion of tens of thousands of oil wells, representing billions of dollars in investments. I’m sure there must be at least a few oil men in the Church of Christ; if they’ld put their money where their mouths are, they would fire the micropaleontologists they’ve been hiring all these years and replace them with far cheaper preachers, armed with the book of Genesis. All this may seem like nit-picking: Who gives a damn whether the thing is presented as theory or fact? Well, I do, because: These cretins obviously would not be satisfied with the simple insertion at the beginning of a text that all the ideas presented therein are only well-proved theories; that no idea can be absolutely proved. Only a heavy and repeated emphasis on the uncertainty of evolution would be sufficient. The only reason the latter treatment will satisfy these yahoos is that even they have the elementary mentality to realize that no reputable house does or ever will publish such a textbook. Ergo, the only texts available under their strictures would be the old ones in which evolution is politely not mentioned. Concession to their foolishness would establish a precedent for continuing crackpot censorship of textbooks. If these people are seriously concerned only that students be informed of the nonabsolute nature of science, they could easily be accommodated by a universally compulsory high school course in the philosophy of science. I and, I am sure, all other scientists would be delighted with such a requirement. I doubt if the cretins would share our pleasure. Neal Neece, Jr., 1204 1/2 South Davis, Arlington, Texas.