Further to Build your own worm (and bring your own dirt too), from Ann Gauger at Evolution News & Views: offers, The white space in evolutionary thinking. When certain biologists discuss the early stages of life there is a tendency to think too vaguely. They see a biological wonder before them and they tell a story about how it might have come to be. They may even draw a picture to explain what they mean. Indeed, the story seems plausible enough, until you zoom in to look at the details. I don’t mean to demean the intelligence of these biologists. It’s just that it appears they haven’t considered things as completely as they should. Like a cartoon drawing, the basic Read More ›

We didn’t think so, but just for the record: From the Edge: One of the things that I’ve always done is not make a clear separation between books that are aimed at popularizing, books that are aimed at explaining things to other people, and books that explain things to myself, or explain things to my scientific colleagues. I think the separation between doing science and popularizing science has been overdone. And I have found that the exercise of explaining to other people, which I suppose I’ve been fairly successful at, is greatly helped by the fact that I first have to explain it to myself. And explaining it to myself … the biomorph program, which I originally wrote to explain Read More ›

A reader thinks so, and submits the YouTube below as evidence, noting: The man is not as compelling a speaker as he is a writer, nevertheless he as a materialist is questioning an aspect of materialism. And as thoughtful materialists question aspects of materialism, I think it good that we take note and understand what they are saying. Thomas Nagel‘s (2012) Mind & Cosmos : Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False was well worth reading, as also was Rupert Sheldrake‘s (2013) Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery. Lee Smolin, like Sheldrake, proposes a kind of cosmic natural selection whereby the laws of physics evolve, and thus he eschews what he calls “timeless truths.” Read More ›

A current rhetorical tack of objections to the design inference has two facets: (a) suggesting or implying that by moving research focus to Active Information needle in haystack search-challenge linked Specified Complexity has been “dispensed with” [thus,too, related concepts such as FSCO/I]; and (b) setting out to dismiss Active Information, now considered in isolation. Both of these rhetorical gambits are in error. However, just because a rhetorical assertion or strategy is erroneous does not mean that it is unpersuasive; especially for those inclined that way in the first place. So, there is a necessity for a corrective. First, let us observe how Marks and Dembski began their 2010 paper, in its abstract: Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large Read More ›

So we are told at ScienceDaily: According to this new model developed by researchers DB Krupp (Psychology) and Peter Taylor (Mathematics and Statistics, Biology) at Queen’s and the One Earth Future Foundation, individuals who appear very different from most others in a group will evolve to be altruistic towards similar partners, and only slightly spiteful to those who are dissimilar to them. However, individuals who appear very similar to the rest of a group will evolve to be only slightly altruistic to similar partners but very spiteful to dissimilar individuals, often going to extreme lengths to hurt them. Taken together, individuals with ‘common’ and ‘rare’ appearances may treat each other very differently. This finding is a new twist on established Read More ›

Just in: Through the months of May, June, and July of 2015, TheBestSchools.org is hosting an intensive dialogue on the nature of science between Rupert Sheldrake and Michael Shermer. This first month, the focus is on materialism in science. Dr. Sheldrake will defend that science needs to free itself from materialist dogma; indeed, science misunderstands nature by being wedded to purely materialist explanations. By contrast, Dr. Shermer will defend that science, properly conceived, is a materialistic enterprise; for science to look beyond materialist explanations is to betray science and engage in superstition. Animal behaviourist and former Darwinian Rupert Sheldrake vs. self-described skeptic and Darwin fan Michael Shermer. Opening statements: Rupert Sheldrake: I think the interests of the sciences are best served Read More ›

Here: For much of our existence on Earth, we humans thought of ourselves as a pretty big deal. Then along came science and taught us how utterly insignificant we are. We aren’t the centre of the universe. We aren’t special. We are just a species of ape living on a smallish planet orbiting an unremarkable star in one galaxy among billions in a universe that had been around for 13.8 billion years without us. … Science also teaches us that the laws of physics are ridiculously, almost unbelievably, “fine-tuned” for you and me. One must log in or subscribe to find out how they straighten it out. Huh? Isn’t the whole basis of New Scientist’s existence that it isn’t real? How Read More ›

Devolution? From ScienceDaily: A new study offers not only a sweeping analysis of how pollination has evolved among conifers but also an illustration of how evolution — far from being a straight-ahead march of progress — sometimes allows for longstanding and advantageous functions to become irrevocably lost. Moreover, the authors show that the ongoing breakdown of the successful but ultimately fragile pollination mechanism may have led to a new diversity of traits and functions. That’s well, but it can also lead to extinction. In evolution, the research shows, selection pressure or pure chance can break a functional relationship among such loosely related traits such as the one Leslie studied, even if that relationship has been working well. In fact, once Read More ›

Here: The “Hugos” are widely called the most prestigious awards in the world of science fiction and fantasy publishing. They are awarded every year by a vote of the membership of the World Science Fiction Convention, which SF fans have called “Worldcon” since time immemorial. Starting three years ago, Larry Correia, successful science fiction writer, decided to test his suspicion that the Hugo Awards of the World Science Fiction Society were increasingly being awarded through the action of a small group, and increasingly reflect the tastes of that small group rather than a more general population of science fiction readers. Correia’s experimental method was to publish a list of suggested nominees for the Hugo Awards that he thought wouldn’t otherwise Read More ›