Denyse O'Leary

In this review of Nancy Pearcey’s Saving Leonardo, Christian historian Pearcey revisits the broader question of how science broke loose from reason. (I am thinking of all the “our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth” rubbish from people who honestly believe that they are on the right side of science, and that that idea somehow helps science.)

Many thinkers were so impressed by the scientific revolution that they began to regard science as the sole source of truth. Whatever could not be known by the scientific method was not real. Science was no longer merely one means for investigation the world. It was elevated into an exclusivist worldview — scientism or positivism. (91)

– Evolution News & Views (March 22, 2011)

Yes. I couldn’t know that I liked sushi until a brain scan told me. My behaviour at the buffet wouldn’t be accepted as evidence. More significant was how it affected the world of the artsie:

Pearcey describes naturalism as an outgrowth of realism, only “…grittier, harsher, more pessimistic. It portrays humans as nothing but biological organisms, products of evolutionary forces.” (145) The Darwinian influence was most noticeable in literature. This literature was rugged, harsh, and at times blurred the lines between man and animal. Jack London was profoundly influenced by the writings of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and we see in his writings a harsh, unforgiving world where survival of the fittest reigns supreme. (144, 150)

To see what this means, consider, artsies did not used to be considered flakes. Was Leonardo a flake? Michelangelo? Jane Austen? No, the flake who thinks that chimps trampling paint on a canvas is art was a product of these new ideas, not the old ones. There ceased to be any way of making a distinction. If it is in a frame, as Catbert said, it will look like art to you.

But one thing she said really set me thinking. Read More ›

My friend, Five Feet of Fury and aptly so named, comments on a recent turn of events in Christopher Hitchens’ struggle with cancer (March 26th, 2011):

It never frickin’ fails: ‘Atheist Christopher Hitchens turns to evangelical Christian doctor in his fight against cancer’Oh yeah, we’re all so stupid and backward. Yep. Retards. Totally.

Atheists all come crying to us, one way or the other, eventually.  Read More ›

MathGrrl’s friends have been discussing her recent post( here), on measuring complex specified information, which garnered 324 comments and counting.*

Not being a mathie, I couldn’t follow most of the discussion here, but certain turns in the discussion reminded me of something I’d heard before: Read More ›

My latest MercatorNet column A choice argument Did you choose to cheat on your taxes? Or snub a friend? Free will makes an unexpected comeback. Possibly no issue between traditionalists and new atheists rankles more than this one: Are we simply the products of our genes and neurons, or can we make authentic choices? Traditional religions encourage repentance for sin, which just means, “I knew what I was doing and it was wrong.” No one repents of slipping on the ice, and ending up in traction. But a new doctrine has been highly seductive. You never choose. In a blog entry, “No soul? I can live with that. No free will? AHHHH!!!,” on the Psychology Today website, Tamler Sommers, professor Read More ›

Here.

In all, Rodriguez found that separately removing seven different “gears” from a distant part of the molecule each caused the amino acid to bind more tightly to the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase. Perona explained that this provides the first systematic analysis demonstrating long-range communication in an enzyme that depends on RNA for its function.”So what we think is going on is that these enzyme-RNA interactions far from the amino acid binding site evolved together with the needs of the cell to respond to subtle cues from its environment — especially in terms of how much amino acid is available,” said Perona. “It makes sense in terms of evolution.

– Glimpse of How the ‘Code’ of Life May Have Emerged, ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2011)

Well, anything can make sense in terms of evolution, because it is a directionless story, festooned with “may haves”.

Friend Jonathan kindly writes, Read More ›

Here: A fresh look at forgotten vials from Stanley Miller’s primordial-soup-in-a-bottle experiments implies that volcanoes seeping hydrogen sulfide helped form some of life’s earliest ingredients.  Earth’s early atmospheric conditions aren’t known, and the reactions in this experiment could only have happened near a source of sulfur. On a primordial Earth, that would have meant volcanoes. Whereas Miller originally focused on chemical reactions in the atmosphere, the primordial soup may have gathered in a volcanic bowl. Danielle Venton , “Primordial Soup’s Missing Ingredient May Be Sulfur”, Wired Science (March 21, 2011) File this under Mayhaveology: Origin of life

Heaven knows, it’s hard to get attention even for a gut hit like amoebic dysentery , never mind for Blob World in general, but here, with graphic details: Amoeba sex might have been missed because when grown in the lab, many of them don’t show any signs of engaging in sex — they have the ability to reproduce themselves by cloning, or copying themselves, indefinitely. And when they did show signs of sex, researchers may have mistaken it for a rare exception to the no-sex rule.- “Amoebas: Sexier than anyone knew: Once considered the epitome of chastity, researchers say it’s not so” (Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience, 3/22/2011) Like, they’re amoebas. It would rarely occur to them to do anything, anything at Read More ›

The fossil bore holes into victims’ shell, and subsequent repair attempts, tell a curious story. So says physicist David Tyler here: Darwinian concepts of the struggle for survival have featured strongly in attempts to explain the Cambrian Explosion. However, although predator-prey roles are to be found, the evidence linking these with adaptive change is lacking. Last December, an alternative ecological framework for interpreting this part of the fossil record was discussed (go here for the 4th in the series). The authors introduce their paper by pointing out the importance of this issue in the minds of evolutionary biologists, but then they go on to show evidence that for shell-crushing predation, this selection force was non-existent before Stage 4 of the Read More ›

So they say:

Researchers at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam have discovered a universal property of musical scales. Until now it was assumed that the only thing scales throughout the world have in common is the octave.The many hundreds of scales, however, seem to possess a deeper commonality: if their tones are compared in a two- or three-dimensional way by means of a coordinate system, they form convex or star-convex structures. Convex structures are patterns without indentations or holes, such as a circle, square or oval. Read More ›

Astrobiology Magazine, (not the source you’d expect), offers MSNBC a word of caution re fossils of early life: However, the interpretation of the structures has always been controversial, and it is still hotly debated among scientists searching for Earth’s earliest evidence for life. Specimens from the site apparently displayed branching structures that some researchers said were inconsistent with life, while others dismissed such branching as artifacts from photo software.Analysis of the structures themselves suggested they were carbon-based, and therefore associated with the organic chemistry of life, but some contended they were a type of carbon known as graphite, while others said they were kerogen, a mixture of organic compounds. Now University of Kansas geospectroscopist Craig Marshall and his colleagues have Read More ›

I have asked University of Toronto’s best known evolutionary biology standard bearer, Larry Moran to explain. He says he is a “pluralist,” not a Darwinist, and partial to genetic drift as a mechanism of evolution. Sounds sensible in principle. I hope he’ll expand on the theme here. If he agrees, in principle, we’ll print it.

Earlier this year, sociobiologist E. O. “Dear Pastor” Wilson disowned his “inclusive fitness” (kin selection) theory, developed from his study of ants and bees. According to his theory, among life forms that live in groups, many members may give up the chance of reproducing their selfish genes so that the group as a whole is more fit. The problem is that it’s notclear how this situation could arise.

He hadn’t long to wait for a reaction from his colleagues: Read More ›

Today is Thursday, and here is your regular dose of No Free Will?:

Scientists from UCLA and Harvard — Itzhak Fried, Roy Mukamel and Gabriel Kreiman — have taken an audacious step in the search for free will, reported in a new article in the journal Neuron. They used a powerful tool – intracranial recording – to find neurons in the human brain whose activity predicts decisions to make a movement, challenging conventional notions of free will.

– How Free Is Your Will? A clock face, advanced neurosurgery–and startling philosophical questions about the decision to act (Daniela Schiller and David Carmel, Scientific American, March 22, 2011)

The basis of many “no free will” assertions is that people often make a decision before they are consciously aware of it:

Even with the above caveats, though, these findings are mind-boggling. They indicate that some activity in our brains may significantly precede our awareness of wanting to move. Libet suggested that free will works by vetoing: volition (the will to act) arises in neurons before conscious experience does, but conscious will can override it and prevent unwanted movements.

That’s hardly a new discovery, and were it not so, “split-second” decisions would be impossible. Hamlet can dither; the rest of us can’t.  The idea that it poses a challenge to the existence of free will is marketed almost exclusively by those who have a problem with the concept. The authors here more or less recognize the flaws in the typical reasoning when they write, Read More ›

Here’s Ann Coulter, on science as done by trial lawyers and activists:

In response to my column last week about hormesis – the theory that some radiation can be beneficial to humans – liberals reacted with their usual open-minded examination of the facts.

According to Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz devoted an entire segment to denouncing me. He called me toxic, accused me of spreading misinformation and said I didn’t care about science.

One thing Schultz did not do, however, was cite a single physicist or scientific study.

I cited three physicists by name as well as four studies supporting hormesis in my column.

Just think. There was a time when science was based on evidence (not always easy to come by).

Not on myths, rituals, incantations against evil, superstitions, and witless worship.

The latter state pretty much characterises Read More ›

Hannah Waters reports at The Scientist (14th February 2011), The mouse is not enough Early embryonic development differs between mice and cows, suggesting mice may not reflect mammalian development as well as scientists had believed [ … ] Specifically, the mechanism of cell commitment in early embryos differs between mice and cows, suggesting that development in mice may not be representative of development in other mammals, including humans. This research suggests “that the mouse alone is not the ideal model if you want to study mammalian embryogenesis,” said Michael Bader, a cardiovascular biologist who works on rat embryogenesis at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin and was not involved in the research. Reminds me of the wheeze Read More ›