News

  From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: Croatian philosopher of science and politics Neven Sesardic (b. 1949) retired from Lingnan University, Hong Kong, in 2015. He wrote a book shortly thereafter, When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics (Encounter Books, 2016). He was wise to wait till he had his pension… He chronicles the way in which 20th Century luminaries in science, philosophy, and their mutual colleagues excused and aided totalitarian rule. As a survivor of totalitarian rule himself, Sesardic does not focus on acknowledged racists or Nazi Party members in science, the ones that we are all taught to reject by popular science journalism. He spotlights brilliant thinkers we are encouraged to look up to as Read More ›

Of course, he allows us to know, he did not read Jonathan Wells’ book, Zombie Science: I will be accused of having “reviewed” Wells’s book here without having read it, but this isn’t a review: it’s a notice that a scientifically rejected charlatan has published another book, and has even issued a “teaser trailer” for it. Here it is below. There’s no intellectual content there, but of course the buyers of the book aren’t looking for truth and reason; they’re looking to confirm their own religiously-based biases. Reading a book signals that one intends to address the information therein. When people are sufficiently well established, they do not need to know information in order to dismiss it. Indeed, that may Read More ›

From Alex Hern at the Guardian: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is launching a new online publication which will aim to fight fake news by pairing professional journalists with an army of volunteer community contributors. Wikitribune plans to pay for the reporters by raising money from a crowdfunding campaign. Wales intends to cover general issues, such as US and UK politics, through to specialist science and technology. Those who donate will become supporters, who in turn will have a say in which subjects and story threads the site focuses on. And Wales intends that the community of readers will fact-check and subedit published articles.More. The process described is elsewhere called propaganda. Translation: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is Read More ›

From Karla Lant at Futurism: The revelation that observing and measuring quantum effects changes their behavior is troubling, but it also suggests to many people that consciousness itself is part of quantum theory. Moreover, as humans creating AI that, for all its achievements still can’t master some of the things that come so easily to our own minds (at least not yet), we are bound to see a blurry reflection of ourselves in quantum computers, which promise to achieve so much more than ordinary computers ever could. However, it was the British physicist Roger Penrose who pointed out that, observer effect aside, quantum mechanics may be involved in consciousness. More specifically, he thought it might be possible that quantum events Read More ›

And won’t likely help his reputation: My Sex Junk is a message to the world about sexuality. We can probably miss the one where ice cream cones discover sex. Pop science is no match for identity politics, as we might have guessed. Someone asks, does Nye has a future as the ”Pee Wee Herman of popular science”? Maybe that’s what’s left now. See also: March for Science, Bill Nye, and constitutional government Follow UD News at Twitter!

Novelist Cormac McCarthy at Nautilus: There are influential persons among us—of whom a bit more a bit later—who claim to believe that language is a totally evolutionary process. That it has somehow appeared in the brain in a primitive form and then grown to usefulness. Somewhat like vision, perhaps. But vision we now know is traceable to perhaps as many as a dozen quite independent evolutionary histories. Tempting material for the teleologists. These stories apparently begin with a crude organ capable of perceiving light where any occlusion could well suggest a predator. Which actually makes it an excellent scenario for Darwinian selection. It may be that the influential persons imagine all mammals waiting for language to appear. I dont know. Read More ›

From Robert Tracinski at the Federalist: I am a Carl Sagan fan from way back. His 1980 TV miniseries “Cosmos” hit me at just the right age and inflamed a lifelong love of science. But we’ve had nearly 40 years to assess the long-term effects and see how Sagan unwittingly contributed to a trend that muddled public understanding of science. This weekend’s so-called “March for Science” is a perfect example of what went wrong. Fact morphed into narrative: If you don’t really need science so much as the narrative, then what you get is our own era’s official replacement for Sagan: Neil deGrasse Tyson. As the decades pass, Sagan’s imitators become less thoughtful and more propagandistic, less interested in conveying Read More ›

“an American scholar whose rigorous writings over a half century have made theism – the belief in a divine reality or god – a serious option within academic philosophy” Here: — Tuesday, 25-April-2017 WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. – Alvin Plantinga, an American scholar whose rigorous writings over a half century have made theism – the belief in a divine reality or god – a serious option within academic philosophy, was announced today as the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate. Plantinga’s pioneering work began in the late 1950s, a time when academic philosophers generally rejected religiously informed philosophy. In his early books, however, Plantinga considered a variety of arguments for the existence of God in ways that put theistic belief back on the Read More ›

From Kacey Deamer at LiveScience: The wild-born, pure Australian desert dingo recently took first place in the World’s Most Interesting Genome competition, and will have her DNA decoded thanks to the Pacific Biosciences SMRT Grant Program. The grant provides genome sequencing for “a particularly fascinating plant or animal.” … “Sandy is truly a gift to science. As a rare, wild-born pure dingo, she provides a unique case study,” Ballard, who submitted the bid to sequence Sandy’s DNA, said in a statement. “Pure dingoes are intermediate between wild wolves and domestic dogs, with a range of non-domesticated traits. So sequencing Sandy’s genome will help pinpoint some of the genes for temperament and behavior that underlie the transition from wild animals to Read More ›

Physicalism is the point of vew that everything is material, including information, presumably adopted out of despair, as an alternative to saying even dumber things. From philosopher Daniel N. Robinson at the New Atlantis: In attempts to account for distinctly human endeavors, explanations have a narrative quality. Thus, Jane’s aspiration to be a concert violinist accounts for — that is, explains — the many hours of practice expended over a course of years. Henry wishes to understand the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The story — the explanation — runs along these lines: Wellington, after the battle of Quatre Bras, moved his forces to Waterloo. The allied Prussians moved to positions drawing a large portion of the French forces away Read More ›

From Mic, via AP: You don’t need a scientific calculator to know that the March for Science was a massive success. Stretching across the United States — as well as globally from the North Pole to New Zealand — the March for Science saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets on Earth Day in many cities, adding up to totals much higher nationwide. Here are a few photos that begin to capture just how huge crowds nationwide became throughout the Earth Day celebration.More. Actually, looking at the photos, as UD commenter Chris Haynes notes, the crowds are just not that impressive. A number of foreseeable reasons come to mind, which makes one wonder about the impulse to hold Read More ›

The recent capture of a live giant shipworm highlights devolution. One form of devolution is allowing complex body systems to become vestigial, relying on microorganisms instead. From BBC: The giant shipworm is unique not just for its size, but also for feeding on nutrients in mud and marine sediment instead, using a type of bacteria. It therefore has a much smaller digestive system compared to other shipworms. And while the discovery of the animal itself is exciting, the team’s research has revealed there is an entire hidden ecosystem at play. The giant shipworm has bacteria that live inside its shell, converting chemicals from the nearby rotting wood into energy and nutrients, similar to what plants do with sunlight.More. Devolution poses Read More ›

Surely no one bet against that. From Ryan Cross at Science: More widespread support comes from the Clergy Letter Project in Olympia, a group of some 14,400 ordained clergy members that supports teaching evolution and climate change. Founder and executive director Michael Zimmerman says a survey of the group’s members showed strong support for the march. Negative responses mostly came from people who said they believed the event wouldn’t change anything, and might even further polarize science, Zimmerman says. “The new slightly more political focus of the march might have turned some members off,” he says. (In contrast, he notes, responses in favor of supporting the People’s Climate March were unanimous.) The Clergy Letter Project is best known for supporting Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: Dr. Bechly specializes in the fossil history and systematics of insects, particularly dragonflies. From 1999 until the end of 2016, he served as the curator for amber and fossil insects in the Department of Paleontology at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart. … Chosen to organize the largest museum exhibit in Germany celebrating the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth in 2009, Bechly ended up having gnawing doubts about Darwin after he read books by intelligent design proponents Michael Behe and William Dembski. Initially keeping his scientific heresy a secret, he began years of private discussions with intelligent design proponents including CSC Director Stephen Meyer. … Dr. Bechly was one of the presenters at Read More ›

The Uncommon Descent News AI team came across this golden oldie, the Purpose of Purpose talk on YouTube, datelined Omaha, Nebraska (2009). While our Dawkinsbot was very lifelike even back then, the rant, let’s face it, is pretty dated. Which just shows how far we have come. To recap, concerns have been raised recently that scientists are bored with and annoyed by the bot, which is bad for our strategy to discredit Darwinism. They have to actually be paying attention first! Plus, not too long ago, the bot started melting down over nonsense retailed in the Twitterverse and we had to do an emergency rework of the politics module. But on the whole, this old footage does show that we are Read More ›