Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Can imagination be quantified in a science-based way?

From Suzan Mazur at HuffPost: (What Would Warhol Say?) Jonathan Schooler: The Science of Imagination Inspired by Andy Warhol’s Factory? Not unimaginable. In any case, the John Templeton Foundation, with $5.6M or so from its deep pockets, has given birth to the Imagination Institute—-a Philadelphia think tank that for the last two years has been tapping an array of talent for insight into the creative process, hoping ultimately to come up with an “imagination quotient.” Three dozen scientific investigators at 16 institutions have been awarded Templeton research money related to the project. But can imagination really be quantified? … One of the Imagination Institute’s grantees is University of California, Santa Barbara psychologist Jonathan Schooler. Schooler and UCSB postdoctoral researcher, Claire Read More ›

Retro: Stephen Hawking warns of evil space aliens

From Charlie Martin at PJ Media: Hawking is certainly the most famous theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein, and rightly so, as he’s been very creative, developed theoretical ideas that have turned out to explain real physical observations — as well a a lot which haven’t been physically verified — and has done so while setting an apparent world record for the longest-surviving Lou Gehrig’s disease patient. This means that anything Hawking says about any scientific topic is news. On the other hand, that doesn’t make it right, especially as he strays beyond the edges of his own field. Recently, he has been doomsaying about artificial intelligence as well as carbon dioxide and evil alien intelligences. Re the latter (2010): Even Read More ›

Biophysicist: Order can arise from nothing! I have evidence! – Rob Sheldon replies

From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: The biophysicist Jeremy England made waves in 2013 with a new theory that cast the origin of life as an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics. His equations suggested that under certain conditions, groups of atoms will naturally restructure themselves so as to burn more and more energy, facilitating the incessant dispersal of energy and the rise of “entropy” or disorder in the universe. England said this restructuring effect, which he calls dissipation-driven adaptation, fosters the growth of complex structures, including living things. The existence of life is no mystery or lucky break, he told Quanta in 2014, but rather follows from general physical principles and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.” Since then, England, Read More ›

Math vs. Darwinian evolution

From Robert Marks II, author (with Dembski and Ewert) of Evolutionary Informatics at Evolution News & Views: On a new episode of ID the Future, CSC Director of Communications Rob Crowther talks with Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, about Marks’s new book, Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, which makes an important but esoteric-sounding field accessible to the general reader. Dr. Marks talks about how he and William Dembski originally connected as researchers, and began working on the subject in 2007, how intelligent design can inform thinking on artificial intelligence, and what a “search for a search” means in evolutionary terms. More. Search for a search?: Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large spaces. Read More ›

Huge science frauds uncovered in China

From Bob Grant at The Scientist: After a sweeping research misconduct investigation, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) has found nearly 500 researchers guilty of engaging in a peer-review fraud scam. Announced late last week (July 27), MST’s findings indicate that 486 scientific paper authors engaged, to some degree, in a scheme to nominate either fictitious or paid peer reviewers who would write positive reviews of their manuscripts. … MST is meting out stiff penalties to the guilty researchers. These range from suspending their research projects and canceling grants to rescinding promotions or even harsher retribution. “They will face punishment according to the Communist Party of China discipline regulations and the regulations on personnel from public institutions,” He told Read More ›

Electronic tags tiny enough for cells now coming on stream

From Ana Lopes at Physics: Electronic tags in the form of radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices are everywhere. They show up in key cards, e-passports, toll passes, you name it. H.-S. Philip Wong, Ada Poon, and colleagues at Stanford University, California, have now made an RFID tag that is small enough to be placed inside a cell. Such tags might one day be used to track and monitor individual cells wirelessly. Paper. (paywall) More. Tracking cells should help us understand more of the specified complexity of life. See also: Tiny molecular machines that keep chromosome numbers correct have been identified

Tiny molecular machines that keep chromosome numbers correct have been identified

From ScienceDaily:“During cell division, a mother cell divides into two daughter cells, and during this process the DNA in the mother cell, wrapped up in the form of chromosomes, is divided into two equal sets. To achieve this, rope-like structures called microtubules capture the chromosomes at a special site called the kinetochore, and pull the DNA apart,” said Dr Viji Draviam, senior lecturer in structural cell and molecular biology from QMUL’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences. “We have identified two proteins — tiny molecular machines — that enable the correct attachment between the chromosomes and microtubules. When these proteins don’t function properly, the cells can lose or gain a chromosome. This finding gives us a glimpse of an important Read More ›

Fan worm eyes evolved independently of their other visual systems

From ScienceDaily: Scientists examining the multiple eyes found on the tentacles of fan worms have discovered they evolved independently from their other visual systems, specifically to support the needs of their lifestyle. Fan worms live in tubes on the seafloor. From their heads, the worms extend feather-like tentacles up out of their tubes to sift the water for food particles and aid in respiration. To protect themselves from predators, fan worms have evolved a variety of unusual compound eyes on their tentacles that act like shadow or motion detectors, alerting the worm to danger and triggering a rapid hiding response to encroaching objects in the water. Superficially, some of these eyes resemble those of crustaceans or insects, but their photoreceptor Read More ›

Cosmic inflation theory outgrows the scientific method

And thrives anyway. From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at Evolution News & Views: Two features of our universe puzzle cosmologists: One is the horizon problem: The universe looks the same in all directions and the cosmic microwave background radiation is about the same temperature everywhere. As String Theory for Dummies puts it, “This really shouldn’t be the case, if you think about it more carefully.” Assuming that current measurements are correct, the radiation must have exceeded the speed of light if it really communicated in this way, but that is forbidden by the standard Big Bang model of the universe. Then there is the “flatness problem”: “The matter density and expansion rate of the universe appear to be nearly Read More ›

Comb jellies: Evidence that if evolution began again, intelligence would re-emerge?

A bold claim from Pam Weintraub at Aeon: The ctenophore’s brain suggests that, if evolution began again, intelligence would re-emerge because nature repeats itself The ctenophore was already known for having a relatively advanced nervous system; but these first experiments by Moroz showed that its nerves were constructed from a different set of molecular building blocks – different from any other animal – using ‘a different chemical language’, says Moroz: these animals are ‘aliens of the sea’. If Moroz is right, then the ctenophore represents an evolutionary experiment of stunning proportions, one that has been running for more than half a billion years. This separate pathway of evolution – a sort of Evolution 2.0 – has invented neurons, muscles and Read More ›

Reviews of Tom Wolfe’s Kingdom of Speech actually “get” what he is trying to say

Just trying to get it is more than some might expect. From Peter Wood, Geoffrey Clarfield, Gwyneth Custred, and Carol Iannone at National Association of Scholars (NAS),  The The Kingdom of Speech is an extraordinary display of intellectual independence.[1] This is a book that treats Charles Darwin as a toplofty prig and Noam Chomsky as a haughty fake—which is to say it aims to harpoon two of the biggest whales of modern secular thought. Tom Wolfe, writing at age eighty-five with the deftness and assurance of Queequeg on the prow of Starbuck’s boat, undertakes these perilous ventures with his accustomed nonchalance. Having dispatched modern art in one book and modern architecture in another, why not aim a spear or two at Read More ›

Why much science reporting is on the way out, along with the traditional media that support it

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: The science story itself is fascinating and to all appearances solid. Human remains dating to some 3,700 year ago from ancient Canaanites yielded DNA revealing a startling overlap with modern-day Lebanese. The latter thus appear to harbor descendants of the long-ago population (“Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences,” American Journal of Human Genetics). He quotes a dozen instances of deadweights claiming that the find “disproves the Bible’s suggestion” that the Canaanites were wiped out. Only one problem: The Bible is detailed and unambiguous in relating that the Canaanites survived Joshua’s invasion. So it’s no wonder they have living descendants. Read More ›