Talk:Huxley Memorial Debate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Philosophy Portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.
Additional information: Related task forces (major fields): Philosophy of religion

Native British, US, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and South African speakers of English can vary enormously in their pronunciation of vowels, and somewhat in their pronunciation of consonants, but they exhibit virtually no difference in syllable stress, regardless of what accent they may have. This does not apply to Indian English and some other varieties of English, which do involve different syllable stresses.

In a two syllable English word, generally only one syllable is stressed. In the word "fifteen" there is a stress on the second syllable. In contrast, the word "fifty" has a stress on the first syllable.

Listening to the audio of the teller announcing the debate results, she puts a stress on the syllable "fif" when reading the 'ayes' result. This stress is consistent with saying "fifty", but would not be expected if saying "fifteen". This is significant, because from her accent the teller sounds British, and an incorrect syllable stress from a native British English speaker would be highly incongruous. Also, there is no distinct 'n' sound at the end of the second syllable. Missing or indistinct sounds can be common in unstressed sylables, but the "teen" in "fifteen" is not an unstressed syllable.

I think most linguists would conclude that it is much more likely that the teller said "one hundred and fifty" than "one hundred and fifteen".

Also, a complete transcript of this debate exists, on the CD "The Huxley Memorial Debate of the Oxford University Union 14 February 1986" published by Creation Ministries International, June 2007.

Lambo4000 03:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Might be original research to amend the text with your analysis. But a footnote might be okay. But note that Wilder-Smith reports 114, which is closer to 115 (even though 12 years of time lapse between the event and his book). Also he mentions a total number of votes of around 300. If the ayes were 150, the total votes would be significantly more than 300. Do you have a complete reference for the transcript? Northfox 07:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Northfox. I'm not sure what other information is needed for the debate transcript CD reference to be complete. The address of the publisher (CMI) is PO Box 4545, Eight Mile Plains, Qld 4113, Australia. The web address for the CD is https://store.creationontheweb.com/intl/product_info.php?sku=20-5-502. Lambo4000 05:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

what does the transcript say? 115 or 150? Northfox 13:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The transcript says 150, but has a note. Here are the last few paragraphs of the debate transcript:

Chairperson: … Now the close of the debate having arrived, and the honourable mover having waived his right of reply, the house will proceed to a division. Honourable members who have not yet voted and who wish to vote in favour of the motion will occupy the benches on my right — those who haven’t already voted. Honourable members voting against the motion and who have not already voted will occupy the benches on my left. Those who have already voted or do not wish to be counted will be kindly seated on the cross benches. I now call on the tellers to withdraw.

VOTE TALLY

President: The motion that the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution.

For the Ayes: 150 votes*

For the Nos: 198.

The motion is therefore defeated and I close this house at 12:36pm [correction] am.

_________________________________________________________

• The audio file is not 100% clear on this. The overwhelming majority of listeners consider it to be 150. However, there is some controversy over this, and some evidence suggests that it may have been 115. The actual figure (without reference to the original records from Oxford — which appear to have been lost) is impossible to determine.

Lambo4000 05:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 15?

made it clear that the AAAS site contains ambiguous (to say the least) information. The actual vote was definitely not 15. Northfox (talk) 08:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)