2016

Interesting new thesis from ScienceDaily: A team of psychologists, kinesiologists and archaeologists at Indiana University and elsewhere are throwing new light on a longstanding archaeological mystery: the purpose of a large number of spherical stone artifacts found at a major archaeological site in South Africa. IU Bloomington professor Geoffrey Bingham and colleagues in the United Kingdom and United States contend that the stones — previously thought by some to be used as tools — served instead as weapons for defense and hunting. The research, which combines knowledge about how modern humans perceive an object’s “throwing affordance” with mathematical analysis and evaluation of these stones as projectiles for throwing, appears in the journal Scientific Reports.More. Paper. (public access) – Andrew D. Read More ›

US presidential candidate Mike Pence is— says Phil Plait at Slate— a creationist: Which is pretty much like being a witch, I guess. You know anyone picked by Trump to be his running mate almost certainly will have a problem with established science, of course, but it turns out Pence is also a young Earth creationist. And one with a lot of conviction about it, too. In 2002, while a congressman from Indiana, he gave a short speech on the floor of Congress denying evolution, and used quite a few misleading, if not outright false, claims. It’s a curious feature of US politics, as seen from Canada, that American media—in the face of serious present-day problems—continue raising a stink about Read More ›

At Ash Jogalekar’s “Curious Wavefunction,” we hear from physicist Ed Witten: Many people regard consciousness as the last nut to crack at the frontier of science. If we crack that nut it would open the way to an unprecedented understanding of humanity that may in part explain why mankind produces thinkers like Ed Witten that allow us to understand the deep secrets of the universe. But Witten is not too optimistic about it. And he seems to have fairly clear reasons for believing that consciousness will always remain a mystery. Here’s what he has to say (italics mine). More. Note: Readers may remember Jogalekar from a flap some years back involving Scientific American: Scientific American may be owned by Nature Read More ›

Sometimes a materialist will post a comment, and I will read it and then just sit there with my mouth literally agape, wondering at the sheer stupidity on display.  I got that treat today when Rationalitys bane posted this gem: we are much better off not pretending that morality is objective and live our lives knowing that we all bear responsibility for everything that we do in our lives. Jack Kreb quoted RB’s little aphorism and added:  “Excellent statement.” So let me get this straight fellas.  Morality is entirely subjective.  If this means anything, it means that we are not accountable to any standard of objective moral truth, because no such standard exists.  According to my dictionary “responsibility” means “the state Read More ›

Squid are smart . From book advert: Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this book, he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself. Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sprouted surprising intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. New research shows that these marvelous creatures display remarkable gifts. What does it mean that intelligence on earth has evolved not once but twice? And that the mind Read More ›

Should the consumption of animal products be banned? Here. In this book, Jan Deckers addresses the most crucial question that people must deliberate in relation to how we should treat other animals: whether we should eat animal products. Many people object to the consumption of animal products from the conviction that it inflicts pain, suffering, and death upon animals. This book argues that a convincing ethical theory cannot be based on these important concerns: rather, it must focus on our interest in human health. Tending to this interest demands not only that we extend speciesism-the attribution of special significance to members of our own species merely because they belong to the same species as ourself-towards nonhuman animals, but also that Read More ›

Predictably, in response to my last post materialists (this time Rationaly’s bane and jdk) trotted out this old chestnut: “People have been wrong about morality; therefore moral truth cannot possibly be objective.” *palm forehead*  This canard has been refuted so many times I have lost count.  I will try one more time. RB and jdk, nearly everyone once thought that the sun orbited the earth. Now we know without the slightest doubt that just the opposite is the case.  The earth orbits the sun.  Is the fact that the earth orbits the sun objectively true?  Of course it is. Now, try to follow the logic here. It is not a difficult logical chain, but you people seem to have a Read More ›

From David Warren at the Catholic Thing: Thirty years have now passed since the publication of an extraordinary book, by a respectable publisher (the Oxford University Press). This was, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, by the witty British astronomer, John Barrow, and the brilliant American mathematical physicist, Frank Tipler. It included a laudatory preface by John Wheeler, co-inventor or discoverer of “black holes.” It was an attempt to overturn the Copernican Revolution: to put man back at the centre of a miraculously conceived universe, and make his fate the whole meaning of it. This universe, from its Alpha Point in what is popularly called the “Big Bang,” to an Omega Point that is darkly foreseeable, could be described in no sense Read More ›

Earlier I posted some questions for critics of methodological by Dr. Joshua Swamidass. I plan on writing a response to Dr. Swamidass’s criticisms and questions, but for the moment I will offer my own questions to the proponents of Methodological Naturalism (update – my answers to these questions are here and here).
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From Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health: In other words, only one out of 70 papers fully met Popper’s criteria of falsification. This suggests that while Popper’s idea of falsification is a good one, it is far too difficult for scientists to implement regularly in practice. Science plods along just fine without adhering to Popper’s overly burdensome guidelines. Though he would surely dispute Dr. Hansson’s conclusion that falsification has been falsified, hopefully Popper would have at least found it amusingly ironic.More. Berezow is (perhaps ironically) missing the point here, of course. Falsification is a standard, adherence to which need not be perfect. But it provides a basis for discussion of claims. Among the people to whom that Read More ›

Fracking edition. From Hot Air: The draft report on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from the EPA is nearing the end of its more than five year journey and the findings were a major blow to the green energy crowd. Try as they might, there simply was no evidence of systemic contamination to ground water or other resources and the report essentially gives the practice a qualified thumbs up. More. See also: Alarmists are the ones in denial about climate change Follow UD News at Twitter!

From JStor Daily: As late as 1923, a British physicist despaired his coevals were still “ignorant of Einstein’s work and not very much interested in it.” British physicists Ebenezer Cunningham and Norman R. Campbell were at first quite lonely introducing Einstein to their countrymen and challenging the “ethereal” view. Campbell seems to have been the only anti-ether voice from 1905 to 1911.More. Of course, in its day, ether was a reasonable belief as—in its day—was the belief that Earth was the point of the universe down to which all things fell (geocentric system). As anthropologist J. G. Frazer put it The views of natural causation embraced by the savage magician no doubt appear to us manifestly false and absurd; yet Read More ›

In a recent exchange with Seversky I summarized his view of the Holocaust as follows:  “I personally disagree with the slaughter of every single Jew and homosexual, but that is just my view and if someone has a different view I cannot say their view is objectively bad and mine is objectively good. The only thing that matters is who is stronger.”  Sev responded: Essentially right. I don’t believe there are any objective moral standards against which all other moralities can be measured. The moral code that will ultimately prevail will be the one that offers the broadest guarantees and protections to the greatest numbers of people. Extreme exclusivist ideologies or theologies are ultimately doomed in the same way that Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Associate Professor Dr Joan Vaccaro, of Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, has solved an anomaly of conventional physics and shown that a mysterious effect called ‘T violation’ could be the origin of time evolution and conservation laws. “I begin by breaking the rules of physics, which is rather bold I have to admit, but I wanted to understand time better and conventional physics can’t do that,” Dr Vaccaro says. “I do get conventional physics in the end though. This means that the rules I break are not fundamental. It also means that I can see why the universe has those rules. And I can also see why the universe advances in time.” Paper. (public access) More. – Joan Read More ›

Zircons. From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: The oldest-known zircons, discovered in the Jack Hills of Western Australia, originally crystalized 4.4 billion years ago! It was within one of these zircons that geochemist Elizabeth Bell and her team discovered the carbon they think was produced by life. Life that old, whatever it was, would not have bones, or even a clearly-defined shape, so a true fossil find will probably never be unearthed. Instead, whatever carbon-based life existed back in the Hadean would simply leave traces of itself in the form of carbon itself. Bell’s co-author, Mark Harrison, referred to the stuff as “the gooey remains of biotic life.” More. See also: Earth’s crust cooled only 160 million years after solar system Read More ›