This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Arthur Rubin (talk | contribs) at 22:29, 28 November 2006 ((1) Let's leave his wife out of this... (2) The identity and affiliation of the authors of UD is not relevant to Langan; the identity and affiliation of the editor is.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 22:29, 28 November 2006 by Arthur Rubin (talk | contribs) ((1) Let's leave his wife out of this... (2) The identity and affiliation of the authors of UD is not relevant to Langan; the identity and affiliation of the editor is.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Christopher Michael Langan (born c.1957) is a American autodidact in the fields of mathematics, physics, cosmology and the cognitive sciences. He has no or little formal education in these fields, and no diplomas or certificates.
Various media sources report Langan as having an estimated IQ of 195. 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.
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. 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, The Improper Hamptonian and Men's Fitness
Langan is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), a think tank of the intelligent design movement. In 2002 Langan presented a lecture on intelligent design at the ISCID's Research And Progress in Intelligent Design (RAPID) conference. In 2004, Langan contributed a chapter to the book Uncommon Dissent, a collection of essays edited by intelligent design proponent William Dembski. In the chapter, Langan offers his opinion of both intelligent design and the modern evolutionary synthesis and proposes a higher synthesis by means of the CTMU.
References
- Biography, Christopher Langan ISCID.
- Fowler, D. (2000). Interview with Mega Foundation BBC Outlook. London: British Broadcasting Company.
- Sager, Mike. (November, 1999) "The Smartest Man in America." Esquire.
- Brabham, Dennis. (August 21, 2001). "The Smart Guy". Newsday.
- Wigmore, Barry. (February 7, 2000). "Einstein's brain, King Kong's body". The Times.
- McFadden, Cynthia. (December 9, 1999). "The Smart Guy". 20/20
- Morris, Errol. (August 14, 2001). "The Smartest Man in the World". First Person
- O'Connell, J. (May, 2001) Mister Universe. Muscle & Fitness magazine.
- Langan, C M (2001), Chris Langan answers your questions. New York Newsday, September, 2001, Melville, NY
- Langan, C M (2000-2001). HiQ. Improper Hamptonian. Westhampton Beach, NY
- 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.
- ISCID fellows
- [http://www.ctmu.org/ 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. Christpher Langan, 2003 - RAPID conference schedule
- 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.
