Christopher Michael Langan

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Christopher Michael Langan (born c.1957) is an American autodidact who has taught himself mathematics, physics, cosmology and the cognitive sciences[1]. Various media sources report Langan as having an estimated IQ of 195[2][3][4][5]. According to 20/20, Langan scored "off the charts" when tested by Dr. Robert Novelly. Novelly, a board certified neuropsychologist, commented that Langan was "the highest individual that I have ever measured in 25 years" of testing[6]. Filmmaker Errol Morris directed a short documentary on Langan titled "The Smartest Man in the World" [7].

With only a small amount of college, Langan has held a variety of labor-intensive jobs including construction worker, cowboy, firefighter, farmhand, and perhaps most famously, bar bouncer. Accordingly, he has sometimes been stereotyped as the sort of individual who combines an extremely high IQ with little or no official recognition in the academic "real world" of intellectual commerce.[8][9] Langan, who grew up in Montana, currently owns and operates a horse ranch in northern Missouri. He also serves on the board of the Mega Foundation, a nonprofit foundation for the gifted. Langan has written question and answer columns for New York Newsday,[10] The Improper Hamptonian[11] and Men's Fitness[12] In 2001 Langan was featured in Popular Science magazine, where he discussed a concept he developed and promotes which he calls the "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" (CTMU).[13]

Langan and his wife Dr. Gina Langan (nee LoSasso) are both fellows of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), a think tank of the intelligent design movement.[14] The ISCID's journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design published a paper in 2002 in which Langan explained his "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe".[15] Later that year, Langan presented a lecture on Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe and intelligent design[16] at the ISCID's Research And Progress in Intelligent Design (RAPID) conference.[17] In 2004, Langan contributed a chapter to the book Uncommon Dissent, a collection of essays by fellow intelligent design proponents and ISCID fellows edited by William Dembski.[18] In the chapter, Langan offers his opinion of both intelligent design and the modern evolutionary synthesis and proposes a higher synthesis by means of his signature model.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Biography, Christopher Langan ISCID.
  2. ^ Fowler, D. (2000). Interview with Mega Foundation BBC Outlook. London: British Broadcasting Company.
  3. ^ Sager, Mike. (November, 1999) "The Smartest Man in America." Esquire.
  4. ^ Brabham, Dennis. (August 21, 2001). "The Smart Guy". Newsday.
  5. ^ Wigmore, Barry. (February 7, 2000). "Einstein's brain, King Kong's body". The Times.
  6. ^ McFadden, Cynthia. (December 9, 1999). "The Smart Guy". 20/20
  7. ^ Morris, Errol. (August 14, 2001). "The Smartest Man in the World". First Person
  8. ^ Morris, Errol. (August 14, 2001). "The Smartest Man in the World". First Person
  9. ^ O'Connell, J. (May, 2001) Mister Universe. Muscle & Fitness magazine.
  10. ^ Langan, C M (2001), Chris Langan answers your questions. New York Newsday, September, 2001, Melville, NY
  11. ^ Langan, C M (2000-2001). HiQ. Improper Hamptonian. Westhampton Beach, NY
  12. ^ O'Connell, J., Ed. (2004) World of knowledge: we harness the expertise of the brawny, the brainy, and the bearded to solve your most pressing dilemmas. Mens Fitness.
  13. ^ Quain, John R. (October 14, 2001). "Wise Guy". Popular Science.
  14. ^ ISCID fellows
  15. ^ Langan, Christopher M. (2002). The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory. Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design 1.2-1.3
  16. ^ "The concept of teleology remains alive nonetheless, having recently been granted a scientific reprieve in the form of Intelligent Design theory. "ID theory" holds that the complexity of biological systems implies the involvement of empirically detectable intelligent causes in nature. Although the roots of ID theory can be traced back to theological arguments from design, it is explicitly scientific rather than theological in character, and has thus been presented on the same basis as any other scientific hypothesis awaiting scientific confirmation.
    Rather than confining itself to theological or teleological causation, ID theory technically allows for any kind of intelligent designer – a human being, an artificial intelligence, even sentient aliens. This reflects the idea that intelligence is a generic quality which leaves a signature identifiable by techniques already heavily employed in such fields as cryptography, anthropology, forensics and computer science." CTMU.org Christpher Langan, 2003
  17. ^ RAPID conference schedule
  18. ^ Langan, Christopher M. (2004). Cheating the Millennium: The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism. In Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, Wm. Dembski, Ed., Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

[edit] External links

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