2018

Fr. Robert Verrill, OP, takes different view: In his paper “Real Patterns,” Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett writes the following: In my opinion, every philosophy student should be held responsible for an intimate acquaintance with the Game of Life. It should be considered an essential tool in every thought-experimenter’s kit, a prodigiously versatile generator of philosophically important examples and thought experiments of admirable clarity and vividness. One of the reasons why Dennett likes the Game of Life is because he thinks it can help us understand how computers could be genuinely intelligent. Now I do think the Game of Life provides us with some interesting thought experiments, but precisely for the opposite reason to Dennett: the Game of Life simulation Read More ›

Science writer John Horgan well remembers going to interview Popper, who had strong views on subjectivism in physics: Words poured from him so rapidly and with so much momentum that I began to lose hope that I could ask my prepared questions. “I am over 90, and I can still think,” he declared, as if I doubted it. Popper emphasized that he had known all the titans of twentieth-century science: Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg. Popper blamed Bohr, whom he knew “very well,” for having introduced subjectivism into physics. Bohr was “a marvelous physicist, one of the greatest of all time, but he was a miserable philosopher, and one couldn’t talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically only Read More ›

Let us soberly ponder, reading between the lines: Food for thought. END PS: By way of sharpest contrast:

Many times we hear about the “argument from evil” as a knock-down argument for the non-existence of God.  For those of you who are not familiar with the argument, I will explain it.  It goes like this: All good arguments depend on the precise, clear and unambiguous use of language.  The argument from evil is no exception.  It obviously demands an exacting definition of the word “evil.”  Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, says the universe has “no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”  If he is right and there is no evil, that might seem like a problem for an argument from, well, evil.  But it is not.  Dawkins means there is no objective transcendent morality.  Stuff Read More ›

The pythons invading Florida have been found to be Burmese-Indian hybrids, which means that they may be more adaptable than hoped. From ScienceDaily: The study also found that at least a few of the snakes in the invasive South Florida population are not 100 percent Burmese pythons. Instead, the genetic evidence shows at least 13 snakes out of about 400 studied are a cross between two separate species: Burmese pythons, which mostly inhabit wetlands, and Indian pythons, which prefer higher ground. The interbreeding between Burmese and Indian pythons probably took place before the animals became established in the South Florida environment, and may have given them greater adaptability in their new habitats. The South Florida pythons spring from a tangled Read More ›

Transcription is certainly the essential node in the complex network of procedures and regulations that control the many activities of living cells. Understanding how it works is a fascinating adventure in the world of design and engineering. The issue is huge and complex, but I will try to give here a simple (but probably not too brief) outline of its main features, always from a design perspective.   Fig. 1 A simple and effective summary of a gene regulatory network   Introduction: where is the information? One of the greatest mysteries in cell life is how the information stored in the cell itself can dynamically control the many changes that continuosly take place in living cells and in living beings. Read More ›

There were no external injuries. The fossil — discovered in the region of Yakutia — has its skin, hair, hooves and tail preserved. Yakutia is also famous for having found woolly mammoth fossils in the permafrost. Scientists from Russia’s Northeast Federal University, who presented the discovery Thursday, said the foal is estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old. They believe it was about two months old when it died.[name], “Ancient horse found perfectly preserved in permafrost” at CBC News, via Associated Press From Phys.org: Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in the regional capital of Yakutsk, was surprised to see the perfect state of the find. He noted it’s the best-preserved ancient foal found to date. More. Soil Read More ›

As we might expect. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne offers his thoughts on science writer David Quammen’s new book about Carl Woese, The Tangled Tree:A Radical New History of Life: Quammen is right that the horizontal transfer of genetic information does complicate our effort to understand the evolutionary past, but he goes too far in claiming that HGT essentially undermines any and all attempts to reconstruct the evolutionary past: “The tree of life is not a true categorical because the history of life just doesn’t resemble a tree.” Before accepting this radical conclusion, we must answer two questions: How in practice can horizontal genetic transmission occur, and how common is it? … In the end, Quammen provides us with a lucid Read More ›

John Hawks is an anthropologist we’ve often noted here. In his review of palaeobiologist Peter Ward’s LaMarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past and Present (“Epigenetics upends natural selection and genetic mutation as the sole engines of evolution, and offers startling insights into our future heritable traits.”), Hawks has this to say about epigenetics: Some scientists have hailed epigenetics as the future of biology, while others denounce it as an empty buzzword. Perhaps no other term inspires so much debate among scientists about how to define it. … But here’s the catch. When it comes to the fossil record, paleontologists have a different idea of “fast” from everyday life. Hundreds of thousands of years is plenty Read More ›

Here’s an entirely too self-satisfied item from The Conversation that, hard on the heels of another well-earned jab at “nutrition science,” captures one of the things that is wrong with science today: unearned self-satisfaction. Molecular biologist Merlin Crossly tells us that we should trust name journals, peer review, and impact factors. Are we to believe that none of the questioned nutrition science passed those tests? If they had all flunked such credibility tests, the question would be: Why was the pattern not noticed earlier? This has all been going on a while… If they passed Dr. Crossly’s tests, then his advice is not going to help us much. He closes with: Can you trust the edifice that is modern science? Read More ›

Alex Berezow sticks another fork in nutrition science, courtesy John Ioannidis: Dr. Ioannidis has gone on to show that the best scientists don’t always get funded, why neuroscience is unreliable, why most clinical research is useless, and that most economics studies are exaggerated. In other words, the process by which we acquire new knowledge is fundamentally flawed and much of what we think we know is wrong. Dr. Ioannidis is not just a bull in a china shop; he’s a bazooka in a china shop. … Here at ACSH, we have been saying for a long time that nutrition research is shoddy and mostly wrong. The reason is inherent to the way research is conducted in the field: Too much Read More ›

There has been some discussion in other threads about the nature of experience and how it relates to what we call the material or physical world.  It is my position that the belief that an actual physical world exists independent of mind is just that – a belief, and that it cannot be (or at least has not been) demonstrated in any way to actually exist.  I agree that there is a lot of empirical evidence that supports the theory that a physical world exists “outside” of the parameters of what we consider our “self”, and that others we experience as separate beings appear to agree with that assessment and provide additional testimonial evidence supporting that theory.  However, there is Read More ›