Here’s a spring conference of possible interest: Evolution Evolving: Process, Mechanism and Theory Churchill College, University of Cambridge, UK 1-4 April 2019 Evolutionary biology is a vibrant field with a theoretical framework that itself evolves. The Evolution Evolving conference will focus on some emerging themes in the relationship between development and evolution. Topics include the evolutionary causes and consequences of developmental bias, plasticity, niche construction and extra-genetic inheritance — all of which contribute to an understanding of evolvability. The conference will feature a balanced program of talks and poster sessions spanning three days, and be a mix of empirical and theoretical work, as well as contributions to the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology. More. Invited speakers include Alex Badyaev, Renee Read More ›

And probably did not kill off all the elephant birds, as often claimed, say researchers: Analysis of bones, from what was once the world’s largest bird, has revealed that humans arrived on the tropical island of Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than previously thought—according to a study published today, 12 September 2018, in the journal Science Advances. A team of scientists led by international conservation charity ZSL (Zoological Society of London) discovered that ancient bones from the extinct Madagascan elephant birds (Aepyornis and Mullerornis) show cut marks and depression fractures consistent with hunting and butchery by prehistoric humans. Using radiocarbon dating techniques, the team were then able to determine when these giant birds had been killed, reassessing when humans first Read More ›

Look, as Barry Arrington noted recently, you can’t even publish research today that suggests that some teen girls believe they are boys mainly because of teen groupthink even though such a conclusion must be obvious to anyone who has spent time with teens. Now, a Darwinian has blundered in front of the overloaded freight train of Non-Binary Progress: A sturdy defender of Darwinian evolution, he was drawn into a discussion of gender studies a couple of years ago. In interviews he argued that gender ideology is incompatible with biological facts and theories. After severe criticism from feminists and gender theorists, he published a controversial book in 2016: Das Gender-Paradoxon. Mann und Frau als evolvierte Menschentypen (The Gender-Paradox. Man and Women as Read More ›

More clutter building up in the inbox about the unreproducible results from social sciences: From ScienceDaily: Today, in Nature Human Behavior, a collaborative team of five laboratories published the results of 21 high-powered replications of social science experiments originally published in Science and Nature, two of the most prestigious journals in science. They failed to replicate the results of more than a third of the studies and turned up significantly weaker evidence for the remainder compared to the original studies. Paper. (open access) – Colin F. Camerer, Anna Dreber, Felix Holzmeister, Teck-Hua Ho, Jürgen Huber, Magnus Johannesson, Michael Kirchler, Gideon Nave, Brian A. Nosek, Thomas Pfeiffer, Adam Altmejd, Nick Buttrick, Taizan Chan, Yiling Chen, Eskil Forsell, Anup Gampa, Emma Heikensten, Lily Read More ›

From researchers at Princeton: The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials. The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement of its atoms. The analysis could lead to predicting primes with high accuracy, said the researchers. The study was published Sept. 5 in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. “There is much more order in prime numbers than ever Read More ›

Well, they don’t, exactly, but here’s the deal:   From Sapiens, a journal of Anthropology/Everything Human: Pepper is a white, semi-humanoid robot, about the size of a 6-year-old, made by Tokyo-based SoftBank Robotics. You may have seen him working in a bank or a hotel, or being interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson. According to the company, Pepper was designed “to be a genuine day-to-day companion whose number one quality is his ability to perceive emotions.” Pepper uses cameras and sensors to detect a person’s facial expression, tone of voice, body movements, and gaze, and the robot reacts to those—it can talk, gesture, and even dance on wheels. How does Pepper care? Pepper and other emotional robots are particularly designed, for Read More ›

Recently, we noted the dirtiest fight in physics, over the nature of the universe. Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts: A great story on the level of confusion in the world of astronomy and particle physics. My own view is: they’re both wrong. Dark Matter WIMP proponents postulate an invisible particle that has all the properties a theorist needs to solve the problem. If it needs x-ray vision, goes through walls, and travels faster than a speeding bullet–why no problem, it’s supersymmetric you see. The other side says, no particles are needed. We just need a flexible law of gravity. Let’s replace the straight edge with a French curve drafting tool, and we can explain every galaxy Read More ›

Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe discusses the role of carbon in the most recent edition of Salvo (46): One of the more frequent challenges I get from non-theists is the following: “If there is a God who wanted to create a home for human beings, why would he create hundreds of billions of useless galaxies?” The quick answer is that, given the laws of physics God chose for the universe, it is not possible to make a planet on which humans can live and thrive without the hundreds of billions of galaxies. In fact, it is not possible for any kind of physical life to exist without hundreds of billions of galaxies. That is irrespective of whether or not Read More ›

Programmer Winston Ewert has developed a dependency graph, as an alternative to the Darwinian “tree of life,” to understand relationships among life forms. Here he discusses it with Jonathan McLatchie: Dr. Winston Ewert … proposes an alternative model to common descent to explain the hierarchical classification of life. Based on his paper published in Bio-Complexity, available here. Note: Winston Ewert, who works at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, is an author of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics See also: Evolutionary informatics: A simplified explanation of Winston Ewert’s dependency graph and New “fixed” bacterial Tree of Life looks like a cityscape seen from below

Science writer Anil Ananthaswamy Intro of surveys current theories: If nothing else, these experiments are showing that we cannot yet make any claims about the nature of reality, even if the claims are well-motivated mathematically or philosophically. And given that neuroscientists and philosophers of mind don’t agree on the nature of consciousness, claims that it collapses wave functions are premature at best and misleading and wrong at worst.Anil Ananthaswamy, “What Does Quantum Theory Actually Tell Us about Reality?” at Scientific American One wants to ask, if we cannot make any claims about the nature of reality and there is no agreement about the nature of consciousness, how does Ananthaswamy know that claims about the role of consciousness are “premature,” “misleading,” Read More ›

Carlo Rovelli, author of The Order of Time, that there is neither space nor time: A present that is common throughout the whole universe does not exist. Events are not ordered in pasts, presents, and futures; they are only “partially” ordered. There is a present that is near to us, but nothing that is “present” in a far-off galaxy. The present is a localized rather than a global phenomenon. The difference between past and future does not exist in the elementary equations that govern events in the world. It issues only from the fact that, in the past, the world found itself subject to a state that, with our blurred take on things, appears particular to us. Locally, time passes Read More ›

We’ve written some things about Jordan Peterson and a fair bit about Sam Harris: Here’s an appraisal of their recent debate in Vancouver, moderated by Bret Weinstein : Peterson and Harris spent a large part of the first night discussing what they had in common. For example, both agreed that it was important to establish an objective moral code to live by in the world. The notion of moral relativism was disavowed by both intellectuals, for mostly the same reasons. Furthermore, both agreed that not all religions were equal in their moral claims. However, here Peterson’s focus was positive; he claimed some religions were only conscious of pieces of absolute truth, while other religions, such as Christianity and perhaps Judaism, Read More ›

This chart should end once and for all the debate about the word “Darwinism.”   But I doubt that it will, because if Darwinists were not so shameless, there would be no debate to begin with.

Should science pursue truth regardless of consequences? Or must we succumb to political correctness? Must selectivity of females always equal males? Consider:
Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole – by Theodore P. Hill
“In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.” . . . Read More ›

Biola physics prof John Bloom offers some thoughts: For example, since the 1930s we have a growing body of data which show that the universe is expanding in a way which implies that everything in it came from a single point and an enormous burst of energy. Thus, it convincingly looks like our universe had a beginning and that something outside of this universe started it. Sound like God? Sure, and Christians can point to Genesis 1:1 and other verses as confirming this interpretation. But if science is restricted to only providing naturalistic answers to explain what we see, then no hypothesis can include God. Therefore, scientists must postulate “imaginary time,” or “a multiverse,” or some kind of preexistent “nothing” Read More ›