From Daniel Sarewitz at the Weekly Standard, reflecting on Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, … What, then, joins Hossenfelder’s field of theoretical physics to ecology, epidemiology, cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, biochemistry, macroeconomics, computer science, and geology? Why do they all get to be called science? Certainly it is not similarity of […]
Author: Denyse OLeary
Why climate activist scientist won’t debate the science
From climate scientist Kate Marvel at Scientific American: Once you put established facts about the world up for argument, you’ve already lost In fact, as a general rule, I refuse to debate basic science in public. There are two reasons for this: first, I’m a terrible debater and would almost certainly lose. The skills necessary […]
William Lane Craig: Is there meaning to life?
William Lane Craig offers some thoughts at YouTube: More. Relevant article: Man, writes Loren Eiseley, is the Cosmic Orphan. He is the only creature in the universe who asks, “Why?” Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions. “Who am I?” man asks. “Why am I here? Where am […]
Theistic evolution: There is no clear definition of the term, says reviewer of a critique
From Nathan Muse at Apologetics 315, a review of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, It should be noted that the scientific critiques in this volume are not new. The beauty of this project is distilling them into one volume. Even if some readers will not be completely convinced by the scientific critique […]
Does lack of a good father figure promote atheism?
From Wintery Knight Here’s a lecture by New York University professor Paul Vitz to explain a connection between atheism and fatherlessness: Wintery Knight also suggests an article by Paul Copan which points out how father presence/absence and father quality affects belief and disbelief in God: Seventh, the attempt to psychologize believers applies more readily to […]
In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.
In response to the recent story “Do racial assumptions prevent recognizing Homo erectus as fully human?”, a friend wrote to say that many Darwin defenders miss the point, as follows: The problem is not merely that Darwin, a man of his age, was a racist. The problem is that his bias resulted in him and […]
Zebrafish made “a supreme evolutionary effort” to develop superior vision (better than Google Street View), say researchers
From Phys.org, A zebrafish view of the world has been forensically analysed by researchers at the University of Sussex to reveal that how they see their surroundings changes hugely depending on what direction they are looking. The study of the colour vision system of zebrafish larvae, published today in Current Biology, reveals they use their […]
Paul Nelson: Junk DNA is one of those propositions that have “just about the worst track record” in biology.
With respect to “A “junk DNA” jumping gene is critical for embryo cell development, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson writes to say, In personal correspondence over the past couple of years with a tenured geneticist at a major university who is a “junk DNA” proponent, I’ve pointed out that “x has no function” propositions in […]
Linguists skeptical of Darwinian theory that toolmaking “paved the way” for human language
Should young ID theorists study language origins, as retired linguist suggests below? From Ben James at The Atlantic: Oren Kolodny, a biologist at Stanford University, puts the question in more scientific terms: “What kind of evolutionary pressures could have given rise to this really weird and surprising phenomenon that is so critical to the essence […]
Molecular biologist: Speculation re the last universal common ancestor is not helping science
From molecular biologist Mike Klymkowsky at The Scientist There is a pernicious temptation in science to speak authoritatively about topics that are beyond scientific exploration and certainty. This has led some theoretical physicists to advocate for a “post-empirical” form of science. That is the idea that theories need not be judged on their ability to […]
Do racial assumptions prevent recognizing Homo erectus as fully human?
From J. R. Miller at More Than Cake: Inspired by Darwin, the Dutch anatomist Eugene Dubois set sail in 1891 for Indonesia in search of the missing link between humans and apes. On the island of Java, he discovered a tooth, a femur bone, and a skull with a low forehead and enlarged brow which […]
At New Scientist: The neuroscientists’ bet that a signature of human consciousness will be found in the brain has only five years to go…
If it is still on. From Per Snaprud at New Scientist: TWENTY years ago this week, two young men sat in a smoky bar in Bremen, northern Germany. Neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers had spent the day lecturing at a conference about consciousness, and they still had more to say. After a few […]
Breaking: A “junk DNA” jumping gene is critical for embryo cell development
This was discovered by someone who was skeptical of the idea that our geomes are largely useless junk. From Nicholas Weiler at Phys.Org: A so-called “jumping gene” that researchers long considered either genetic junk or a pernicious parasite is actually a critical regulator of the first stages of embryonic development, according to a new study […]
Science has outgrown the human mind? Now needs AI?
From molecular cancer biologist Ahmed Alkhateeb at Aeon: Science is in the midst of a data crisis. Last year, there were more than 1.2 million new papers published in the biomedical sciences alone, bringing the total number of peer-reviewed biomedical papers to over 26 million. However, the average scientist reads only about 250 papers a […]
Why is the recent dating of Homo Naledi to 250 kya a problem?
From Colin Barras at New Scientist: Our earliest hominin ancestors lived at least seven million years ago. The first species to look a little like modern humans appeared between about two and three million years ago. But our own species – Homo sapiens – evolved about 200,000 years ago. So, if H. naledi lived 300,000 […]