July 2011

Starting in 1973, Herbert Terrace led an ambitious project to examine the capability of chimps to develop sign language. The chimp participant was born at the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma and was taken from his mother after about a week and handed to Stephanie LaFarge who acted as a surrogate parent. The chimp was effectively adopted. In a recent piece in Nature, Terrace explains why he initiated the project: “After serving as a graduate assistant at Harvard University with behavioural psychologist B. F. Skinner, I heard that Allen and Beatrix Gardner at the University of Nevada, Reno, were teaching sign language to a chimpanzee named Washoe. But when I looked at their data, I wasn’t sure that the Read More ›

At ScienceDaily (July 17, 2011), we learn, “Non-Africans Are Part Neanderthal, Genetic Research Shows”: Dr. Labuda and his team almost a decade ago had identified a piece of DNA (called a haplotype) in the human X chromosome that seemed different and whose origins they questioned. When the Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, they quickly compared 6000 chromosomes from all parts of the world to the Neanderthal haplotype. The Neanderthal sequence was present in peoples across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia. “There is little doubt that this haplotype is present because of mating with our ancestors and Neanderthals. This is a very nice result, and further analysis may help determine more details,” says Dr. Nick Patterson, Read More ›

Here, in “Computational and Biological Analogies for Understanding Fine-Tuned Parameters In Physics” (2010) Clement Vidal of the Evolution, Complexity and Cognition research group in Brussels proposes a simulated Darwinverse, to get around the fact of our universe’s fine-tuning for life on Earth, glorying in his concoction’s utterly speculative nature:

A consequence of this speculative theory is that intelligent life, unravelling the universe through scientific understanding, generates a “cosmic blueprint” (a term used by Paul Davies (1989)). The cosmic blueprint can be seen as the set of physical constants; or just initial conditions of a cosmological model, if our previous reasoning holds. One can now throw a new light on the fact that cosmic evolution gave rise to scientific activity. In this view, the increasing modelling abilities of intelligent beings is not an accident, but an indispensable feature of our universe, to produce a new offspring universe. I have argued that fine-tuning of this cosmic blueprint would take place in “virtual universes”, that is in simulated universes (Vidal 2008). Read More ›

by the Smithsonian. Here. It might not be quite as bad as you think. It’s hard to wreck the Cambrian explosion. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here. At the Council for Secular Humanism.

I’d like to reach out to the new atheists and say that even if you don’t care to be friendly toward religion, I think we ought to be friendly toward one another. We’ve had a lot of differences, and yet as I mentioned, we share all that intellectual DNA. We should be able to find common ground.

To that end, perhaps we can shift the focus away from science and religion and occasionally start talking about science and spirituality, where I think we might find something that divides us less.
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Science Daily reports “A three-year international research project, directed by two academics at the University of Oxford, finds that humans have natural tendencies to believe in gods and an afterlife.” As my friend added, “This research was quite costly – they could have saved money by reading the Bible!” Link here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm I wonder how the New Atheists will take this research. There are two possible logical spins on it I can see, if you take the research’s conclusions at face value. You could say, “Belief is hard-wired – that’s why it’s so hard to reprogram people to think rationally!” But this avoids the key issue of why it would be hard-wired. That leads to the second possible response: “Belief Read More ›

In his new book, In Defence of Dogs, John Bradshaw aims full tilt against the Darwin bore who knows everything there is to know about the “alpha wolf” and his selfish genes, not that he has usually ever seen a wolf in its native state. As Chris Cox reviews the book for the The Guardian (July 08, 2011):

He starts by demolishing the notion that dogs are essentially aggressive creatures seeking dominance, which is based on discredited research into wolf packs. It is now known that wolves – the direct ancestors of dogs – actually live in harmonious family groups. Packs are not dominated by “alpha wolves”, but are fundamentally cooperative. Bradshaw is determined that the “dominance theory” be banished. But while enlightened trainers and owners have got the message, many more still subscribe to techniques aimed at ingraining fear and subservience into dogs. For Bradshaw, these are not only misguided and cruel, but joyless. Read More ›

Here. Oh goodness, Church is okay!

Except for the fact that Jerry Why Evolution Is True Coyne is mad at him. Can the man hope to live under those circumstances?

Church said in response to a question, Is there evidence of God in science?

Some people feel that science and faith have nothing in common. But a considerable amount of faith drives everyday science — and frequently religion addresses scientific topics (e.g. the physics/biology of miracles, ancient gods, Galileo). If faith had no impact on our physical brain, then by what mechanisms does it impact our spoken conversations. Billions of humans (in a very real scientific sense) have faith. The overlap is vast and fertile. As we learn more about nature, for many of us, this greatly strengthens rather than lessens our awe.

From Coyne: Read More ›

According to John Horgan, who hates ID types:

In A Dubitable Darwin? Why Some Smart, Nonreligious People Doubt the Theory of Evolution, John Horgan writes (Jul 6, 2010),

The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called the theory of evolution by natural selection “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” I’m inclined to agree. But Darwinism sticks in the craw of some really smart people I don’t mean intelligent-designers (aka IDiots) and other religious ignorami but knowledgeable scientists and scholars.

Horgan goes on to trash knowledgeable scientists and scholars, then notes Read More ›

From ScienceDaily, we learn: “Enzymes for Cell Wall Synthesis Conserved Across Species Barriers” (July 14, 2011):

Due to its short lifecycle and biological simplicity, Arabidopsis is extremely useful for research, but lacks economic potential. Persson and his colleagues would therefore like to apply the knowledge gained from the research on this plant to other more economically important plant species. Read More ›

… give a chimp a gun: