Klinghoffer offers his vid, The Information Enigma by way of rebuttal. But rebuttal almost misses the point. Today’s Darwinism is a snipe on Twitter, a swipe in passing, a slogan on a whiteboard, a well-practiced rant – not something it would make sense to ask anyone to support with reference to facts or coherent ideas. Williamson’s got that right. No arguing with fashion.
Author: News
Denyse O'Leary is the News blogger for Uncommon Descent
Why did an evolutionary biology prof imply world-famous chemist James Tour was “stupid”?
A writer encountered this all-too-common type of behavior recently and was, well, surprised. To see why it feels normal to many of us, it is helpful to understand a bit about Darwinism as a social phenomenon. Faithful readers of various vintages will, of course, remember University of Toronto evolutionary biologist Larry Moran, best known publicly […]
How can consciousness be a material thing?
Maybe it can’t. But materialist philosophers face starkly limited choices in how to view consciousness. Galen Strawson argues for materiality.
Rob Sheldon responds to cosmologist Sean Carroll’s 19 True Facts of Cosmology
Sean Carroll, an avowed atheist in the “scientism” camp of Bill Nye and Jerry Coyne, has made a list of apologia for the Big Bang (hereafter BB). You might wonder why there needs to be any apology at all if, as he himself says, “We have overwhelming evidence that it is true.”
How do cells in a body know where they are supposed to be?
Is it just imagination or do people increasingly write in such a way as to simply abandon the pretense that there is no design, without wanting to discuss it?
A science journal’s editors resign en masse over open access foot-dragging
They’ve heard lots of noise but also seen lots of foot-dragging, about making research reports available publicly for free: The board told Nature that given the journal’s subject matter — the assessment and dissemination of science — it felt it needed to be at the forefront of open publishing practices, which it says includes making […]
One reason some scientists choose low-quality predatory journals- government money
But always remember, doubts about science – as practiced – are always because the public is narrow and stupid, according to pundits, and doesn’t “trust science. ”
We’re NOT easily fooled by fake news
And the science paper that claimed so has been retracted. A team from the Shanghai Institute of Technology sought to study whether accuracy made any difference to whether a post goes viral on social media. They cited a concern about “the digital misinformation that threatens our democracy”: “The paper found that even though individuals may […]
Did Neanderthals create the first Spanish cave paintings?
If they did, that’ll be even less reason to think of them as some kind of “missing link”: What if, long before Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, the Neanderthals were humanity’s first artists? At any rate, this is the hypothesis raised by new dating of Spanish rock paintings published in February 2018 in the journal […]
Trying to have a discussion when others want a diversion
Douglas Axe talks about a long-running dialogue he has had as a result of his 2016 book, Undeniable , where he can’t seem to get his dialogue partner to focus on what he is saying in his book and not what someone else is saying and what a fourth party is saying about them: But […]
Sabine Hossenfelder: Physics problems that lead to breakthroughs arise from inconsistencies in data, not beautiful math
And afterwards, we find the math works. Sabine Hossenfelder author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, asks us to consider what distinguishes a good problem in physics, hence in cosmology, from a trip through some interesting weeds.
Worm blobs behave like both fluids and solids
Now that mechanobiology is becoming a bigger topic, the worms’ ability to easily behave according to two states may help us understand life forms better.
Ancient cataclysms and modern conflicts in origin of life studies
The main topic of a recent Science article is a claim that life on Earth was jumpstarted by a very early hit by a moon-size object that precipitated a metallic hailstorm. But while sketching that scenario, which wowed a 2018 conference in Atlanta in October, Robert F. Service also recounts some of the more interesting […]
Women’s March falling apart before the anti-Semitism gets to science?
They’re all busting up, quarrelling.
Can DNA survival change the meaning of extinction?
Actually, it is widely suspected that the red wolf is, generally, a hybrid of wolf and coyote that appears from time to time and thus can’t go extinct unless one of the two parent groups does.