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Radical Constructivism, Naturalistic Scientism and Math Education — ideas have consequences

In the thread on Jonathan Bartlett and priorities for Math education, I raised two comments that I think it would be profitable to further reflect on. First, from 33 on how the US National Academy of Sciences tried to classify Mathematics as a “science”: https://services.math.duke.edu/undergraduate/Handbook96_97/node5.html The Nature of Mathematics (These paragraphs are reprinted with permission from Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education. ©1989 by the National Academy of Sciences. Courtesy of the National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.) Mathematics reveals hidden patterns that help us understand the world around us. Now much more than arithmetic and geometry, mathematics today is a diverse discipline that deals with data, measurements, and observations from science; with inference, Read More ›

Accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the science world: Fallout

In the wake of Epstein’s apparent suicide in prison, his predilection for funding science organizations as a virtuous cover make for reading worthy of an airport potboiler. But from some of this, there may be something to be learned. Read More ›

Do genes that jump shake the tree of life?

Yes,but what hope is there that textbooks could start teaching reality when even the right to question the Darwinian [sheet] is still a big controversy in many places? Could science writers like Jabr and others agree that it is time to make textbooks about evolution sound like the reality and not like the 1925 Monkey Trial revisited? Read More ›

Demand for a ban on teaching creationism in Welsh schools

Tradejah! Let’s have a ban on teaching Darwinism too. Oh wait — is that what’s supposed to be introduced early and often, because the “Wales Humanists coordinator” and “Humanists UK” want it? Darwinism is an obvious intrusion of religion into the school system. A different religion from what many people follow, but still a religion. Otherwise, why would humanists care so much? Read More ›

Jonathan Bartlett: Does evolution mean computers will take over?

Elon Musk sees technology as taking over the human world and we’d best consider our options. Ma points out that humans build computers but no computer has ever built a human: For Musk, technology is not a tool to promote humanity. Rather, technology will take humanity’s place of leadership in the world. Humans will have a choice to integrate with our technological masters or be left behind as a relic of evolutionary history, just one more living fossil roaming the landscape. It is interesting how the theory of evolution contributes to this idea of a technological singularity (an endpoint of human history as we know it). Ma, while impressed with technology, is more impressed with humans. He points out that Read More ›

The worm that was making those tracks 551–539 million years ago may be found

The claim that the worm challenges the Cambrian explosion which followed this Ediacaran period is weird because we knew there were worms in the Ediacaran on account of the tracks (and comb jellies too) but the explosion of multi-faceted life in the Cambrian is a unique event in any case. Read More ›

Lay Catholics questioning Darwinism?

For some years, it has not been the practice of many Catholics to question Darwinism. Most got sucked years ago into some muddle according to which the great theologian Thomas Aquinas didn’t supposedly think there could be such a thing as observable design in nature because that would make God a “tinkerer.” Some tinker. Anyway, it was interesting to see that, just recently, a California Catholic paper has started to smell the coffee at last and picked up on George Weigel’s article from First Things: The empirical evidence suggests that the notions of a purposeful Creator and a purposeful creation cannot be dismissed as mere pre-modern mythology. That may help a few Nones out of the materialist bogs in which Read More ›

Skeptics duped by fake prof

But look on the bright side. At least they care. In the social sciences, it’s the guy revealing flimflam who gets punished. But why, exactly, is a PhD so important? The Sokal hoax-ees all have PhDs, probably, and what good did that ever do? Read More ›

But how do frog dads know how to look after tadpoles?

It’s not enough to say that it benefits their offspring. What is the exact mechanism by which they learned to carry out this process? In this case, the researchers are honest enough not to just start emitting Darwinblather. They admit we don’t really know. Read More ›