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Christian PhD driven out by the raging Woke
Michael Egnor: It’s a matter of fact, not belief, that only humans reason
Readers may remember philosopher Justin Smith, who thinks that we can understand life better if we “give up the idea of rationality as nature’s last remaining exception.” Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor weighs in, responding point by point to the essay, for example: Material states of the brain can, of course, influence our power of reason—an ounce of whiskey can have quite an effect on our judgment—but the power of reason itself is immaterial. It cannot “evolve” because natural selection, whatever its worth as a scientific hypothesis, needs matter to act on. [Smith:] “Reason is exceedingly rare, a hapax legomenon of nature, and yet this rarity has led to a bind: when pushed to account for its origins, thinkers who champion reason’s Read More ›
Researchers: Maybe fundamental constants are not constant
Something new to learn about water?
In this version of the multiverse, you are unique
Science media: Insects can reason logically! Researchers: We never said that…
Hope springs eternal: Are new particles hiding “in plain sight?”
What does it mean to say, in physics, that something like the Higgs boson “exists”?
Sit down. Cells have signaling circuit boards. Only much more advanced than ours
Remember junk RNA? Cell division requires a balanced level of it
Astronomer: Seeing dead space aliens would teach us a lesson
Remember the astronomer who thought that space detritus Oumuamua might be an extraterrestrial lightsail? He’s back: Harvard professor Avi Loeb thinks humans should be on the hunt for signs of alien life and alien death. During a recent presentation at the The Humans to Mars Summit, Loeb argued that the discovery of a dead alien civilization could serve as a sort of cautionary tale for humanity, letting us know what not to do if we want to survive. “The idea is we may learn something in the process,” he said. “We may learn to better behave with each other, not to initiate a nuclear war, or to monitor our planet and make sure that it’s habitable for as long as Read More ›
When did the folk at Skeptical Inquirer become creationists?
Genes are more like a river than a string of beads…
The immune cells, it turns out, have secret police
“Natural killer cells” roam the body, demanding that other cells produce evidence of good faith—otherwise, they kill them: In general, two things must happen before an NK cell attacks a target cell: (1) It must receive an activating signal from a body cell that says, “Kill me!” (2) It must not receive an inhibitory signal that says, “Wait, don’t kill me!” This inhibitory signal is essentially a proper “ID card” known as a major histocompatibility complex I (MHC I) protein. When a body cell shows the NK cell this identification, the NK cell is temporarily satisfied and moves on to the next cell. If the next cell is not able to provide an MHC I molecule (or provides one that Read More ›