Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Physics envy is a terrible thing, especially in economists

John Rapley: That’s something that ‘physics envy’ can’t capture – that the social nature of human beings makes any laws of behaviour tentative and contextual. In fact, the very term ‘social science’ is probably best seen as an oxymoron. Read More ›

David Gelernter in a more accustomed role… asking rude questions about Facebook’s $billions

Gelernter: But why is it [Facebook] so valuable? Because we have all given it our information. It just seems to us that if this information makes Facebook such a huge amount of money, why don’t we make some of the money… we, meaning the users? Read More ›

Egnor on the evidence against materialism:

News just tagged this on to a news post but this is worth headlining: Blurb: Discovery Science In this bonus interview footage from Science Uprising, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses the evidence against materialism and explains how materialism undercuts rather than supports genuine science. Be sure to visit https://scienceuprising.com/ to find more videos and explore related articles and books. Michael Egnor, MD (from Columbia University), neurosurgeon and professor of neurological surgery at Stony Brook University. Dr. Egnor is renowned for his work in pediatric neurosurgery. See https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2516312…. Food for thought. END

Logic & First Principles: What about “appeal to consequences” (vs. reductio ad absurdum)?

In a current thread, frequent objector, Seversky, posed a one liner objection intended to dismiss an OP: “Argumentum ad consequentiam.“ This raises an obvious issue on logic and linked epistemology, as argument by reduction to absurdity (which is broader than simple logical contradiction) is a well recognised argument type. Where, also, the issue is not emotive reaction to logical or operational consequences, but that that which is false or evil often leads to chaos, logical or existential or both. Thus, for example, we learn from history that certain things are manifestly false or evil. In short, we need a way to responsibly decide on when an argument succeeds as a reductio. For example, dismissing any arguments we do not like Read More ›

Hybridization—long considered a “dead end”—may be key to rapid speciation

“And hybridization — long considered an evolutionary dead end — instead acts as a catalyst for combining old gene variants in new ways, fueling rapid diversification.” Surely, it was long considered a dead end because Darwinism was supposed to account for these changes. Read More ›