We’ve recently noted with sadness the passing of Dr. Stephen Hawking, noted theoretical physicist and cosmologist, and one of the most well-known authors and speakers on these subjects in our lifetime. Over at Evolution News, David Klinghoffer points us to an interview of Professor John Lennox by Dr. Jay Richards regarding some of the things Hawking said in his noted 2010 book, The Grand Design. This interview is from several years ago, not long after Lennox published his response to Hawking’s book, but is well worth revisiting in light of recent events as we remember and evaluate Hawking’s life and contributions. In the interview, Lennox and Richards discuss such head-scratchers as Hawking’s claim that “the universe can and will create Read More ›

Kalam cosmological argument: The cosmological argument is less a particular argument than an argument type. It uses a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from particular alleged facts about the universe (cosmos) to the existence of a unique being, generally identified with or referred to as God. Among these initial facts are that particular beings or events in the universe are causally dependent or contingent, that the universe (as the totality of contingent things) is contingent in that it could have been other than it is, that the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact possibly has an explanation, or that the universe came into being. From these facts philosophers infer deductively, inductively, or abductively by inference to the best Read More ›

This one from 2010, sent in by a reader. From John Horgan at Scientific American: Early in his career, the philosopher Karl Popper ,, called evolution via natural selection “almost a tautology” and “not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research program.” Attacked for these criticisms, Popper took them back (in approx 1978). But when I interviewed him in 1992, he blurted out that he still found Darwin’s theory dissatisfying. “One ought to look for alternatives!” Popper exclaimed, banging his kitchen table. More. Popper was forced to back down from public expression, of course, because one cannot doubt Darwin and still be Big Cool. Stupidity is much safer and more popular. But life goes on and so does doubt. Read More ›

Here at UD, we often have commenters whose remarks are well worth headlining. Here, we have JAD in action, suggesting to GP: “Here is something you might consider as a seed for a future topic for a future OP.” Yup, and even as an embryonic thought, it is well worth posting — a first, rough draft on a big topic: >>The origin of life is like the origin of the universe. It appears to be a singular, non-repeating, highly improbable event which occurred very early in earth’s history. Furthermore, all the clues of how and why it occurred have been lost. But then added to that problem are other problems: how does chemistry create code? What is required to create Read More ›

Science historian Michael Flannery kindly writes to offer a list (in case anyone was tempted to measure achievement by invites to yada yada talk shows): 1) Girolamo Fracastoro (aka Fracastorius) proposed a form of germ theory of disease in his On contagion and contagious disease in 1546 over 300 hears before Pasteur. 2) Josiah Clark Nott suggested that malaria and yellow fever were transmitted by an insect vector in 1848, mocked and derided in its day, Nott’s theory was vindicated by Albert F. A. King’s study in 1883. A word on Nott: At first Nott, a polygenist racist, opposed Darwin’s monogenist evolutionary theory but later came to fully accept it as equally supportive of his racist ideas. 3) When Carlos Read More ›

From Nicolas Geeraert at RealClearScience: However, this isn’t the case. Psychologists have long disproportionately relied on undergraduate students to carry out their studies, simply because they are readily available to researchers at universities. More dramatically still, more than 90% of participants in psychological studies come from countries that are Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (W.E.I.R.D). Clearly, these countries are neither a random sample nor representative for the human population. … Clearly culture has a massive effect on how we view ourselves and how we are perceived by others – we are only just scratching the surface. The field, now known as “cross-cultural psychology”, is increasingly being taught at universities across the world. The question is to what extent it Read More ›

No, seriously, a sober view from John Horgan at Scientific American: In his Breakthrough essay, Pinker spells out a key assumption of ecomodernism. Industrialization “has been good for humanity. It has fed billions, doubled lifespans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children. It has allowed people to read at night, live where they want, stay warm in winter, see the world, and multiply human contact. Any costs in pollution and habitat loss have to be weighed against these gifts.” Pinker contrasts the can-do ecomodernist spirit with “the lugubrious conventional wisdom offered by the mainstream environmental movement, and the radicalism and fatalism it encourages.” We can solve problems Read More ›

Here at Uncommon Descent, we never really celebrated Pi Day (March 14) this year because other stuff intervened. But pi is a really important irrational number: Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point. As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. While only a handful of digits are needed for typical calculations, Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits. More. Indeed, In Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, the main character (Ellie Arroway) is told by an alien that certain megastructures in the universe were created by an unknown advanced intelligence that left messages embedded inside transcendental numbers. To Read More ›

A reader writes to ask, quoting Sabine Hossenfelder at her blog Back(Re)Action: What the particle physicists got wrong was an argument based on a mathematical criterion called “naturalness”. If the laws of nature were “natural” according to this definition, then the LHC should have seen something besides the Higgs. The data analysis isn’t yet completed, but at this point it seems unlikely something more than statistical anomalies will show up. I must have sat through hundreds of seminars in which naturalness arguments were repeated. Let me just flash you a representative slide from a 2007 talk by Michelangelo L. Mangano (full pdf here), so you get the idea. The punchline is at the very top: “new particles must appear” in Read More ›

But, a witness says, he said it was too late for him. We’ve all had rammed down our throats past the vomiting point that Theodosius Dobzhansky was a religious Darwinist. That’s a way tenured Darwinians enforce dhimmitude among those who feel the need. His actual view: “Dobzhansky was a religious man, although he apparently rejected fundamental beliefs of traditional religion, such as the existence of a personal God and of life beyond physical death. His religiosity was grounded on the conviction that there is meaning in the universe. He saw that meaning in the fact that evolution has produced the stupendous diversity of the living world and has progressed from primitive forms of life to mankind. Dobzhansky held that, in man, Read More ›

“We played your a melody, but you would not dance, a dirge but you would not mourn.” When we are discussing philosophy as it relates to ID, some A-Mat will invariably jump into the combox and howl “I thought this was a science blog; let’s get back to the science.” Well, a few weeks ago GP put up an extraordinary brilliant science-heavy post. The Ubiquitin System: Functional Complexity and Semiosis joined together.  As of today, there were 414 comments.  I scrolled through the combox and noted there were ZERO comments from A-Mats. Keep that in mind next time the A-Mats howl.  We put up science posts, and they ignore them.  We put up philosophy posts and the criticize them for Read More ›

From Jon Cartwright at New Scientist, Although everyone has heard of the big bang, no one can say confidently what it was like. After all, recounting the beginning of time is about finding not just the right words, but the right physics – and ever since the big bang entered the popular lexicon, that physics has been murky. Perhaps no longer, thanks to an unusual way of delving into our universe’s backstory that has emerged over the past few years. In this view, the essence of space and time can exist beyond the confines of the cosmos, but in a state of roiling chaos we would not recognise. The big bang is not a hard-and-fast beginning, but a moment of Read More ›

Here’s a new word: dubiofossil From Sophia Rootsh at Aeon: Schopf’s Apex chert fossils stood in as exemplars of every dubiofossil collected by a geobiologist seeking life in the Archean Era. As Henry Gee later put it in the pages of Nature: ‘It is hard to tell the difference between a bacterium – especially a fossil bacterium – and a bubble.’ Richard Kerr posed a similar question in Science: are these the ‘earliest signs of life [or] just oddly shaped crud?’ Brasier diagnosed the problem as one of deduction: for many geobiologists studying early life, ‘If it looks like a cyanobacterium … then the most parsimonious explanation is that it is a cyanobacterium.’ Yet morphological similitude – or comparison of Read More ›

From John Timmer at Ars Technica: Why are people excited about Kelly’s DNA? The simple answer would seem to be that he has an identical twin, who must have identical DNA, and so we have a chance to see what space does to DNA. After all, space is a high-radiation environment, and we know that radiation damages DNA. But there’s quite a bit more to it than that. First and foremost, the Kelly twins’ DNA is not identical. Every time a cell divides, it typically picks up a mutation or two. Further mutations happen simply because of the stresses of life, which expose us all to some radiation and DNA-damaging chemicals, no matter how careful we are about diet and Read More ›

Longtime University of Toronto biochemistry professor and frequent Uncommon Descent commenter Larry Moran: We were discussing the field of evolutionary psychology at our local cafe scientific meeting last week. The discussion was prompted by watching a video of Steven Pinker in conversation with Stephen Fry. I pointed out that the field of evolutionary psychology is a mess and many scientists and philosophers think it is fundamentally flawed. The purpose of this post is to provide links to back up my claim. Steady,  Larry. You are not alone. Lots of people have listened to the tin pan din of evolutionary psychology and come away thinking much the same thing. Dr. Moran offers citations and goes on to note: The field of Read More ›