Available here. Axe’s analysis was motivated in part by the recent flurry of papers dealing with the problem of the waiting time for multiple independent mutations. Here is Doug’s abstract: To explain life’s current level of complexity, we must first explain genetic innovation. Recognition of this fact has generated interest in the evolutionary feasibility of […]
Author: Paul Nelson
The Weasel lives on, now at PNAS
ID critics often complain that ID advocates go ON AND ON (and ON) worrying about Weasel-type models of evolution, as illustrations of how undirected variation and selection can rapidly converge to apparently designed outcomes. No one takes such models seriously as biology, the critics say. Weasels are toys with a strictly limited teaching purpose. Over […]
Goldenfeld and Woese, paradigm-busting even more (with added goodies for ID front-loaders)
Some scientists grow more conservative with age; others, more radical. Carl Woese (age 82) represents a vivid example of the latter group. His latest paper, “Life is physics: evolution as a collective phenomenon far from equilibrium,” co-authored with fellow U of Illinois scientist and frequent collaborator Nigel Goldenfeld, includes more heterodox ideas per page than […]
Shermer vs. Nelson, Northern Arizona University, 16 November 2010
Michael Shermer and I are taking our ID versus Darwinian Evolution show back on the road, this time at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The date is Tuesday, November 16, and the venue is Prochnow Auditorium; here are some details: Debate on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design with Michael Shermer and Paul Nelson. This event is […]
It doesn’t matter what we name them…
…the “machines” of the cell will still be what they are: complex, sophisticated molecular systems, essential for the living state. Like the proteasome on the right, a sub-cellular machine that degrades proteins, among its other functions. Oops, there I went and did it — used the “machinery” language that Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) and Maarten Boudry […]
Leigh Van Valen (1935-2010)
Leigh Van Valen — an evolutionary biologist for whom the word “polymath” is entirely appropriate — died this past weekend, after a long illness. Leigh was a student of both Theodosius Dobzhansky and G.G. Simpson at Columbia University, and spent most of the rest of his career at the University of Chicago, where he served […]
George Williams (1926-2010) and the Theological Case for Evolution
Do you still think God is good? — George Williams, 1987 (p. 157) In the commentary following the death on September 8 of leading neo-Darwinian theorist George C. Williams — go here for a representative selection — I’ve seen no mention of the considerable role of theology in Williams’s thought. I’d speculate that this silence […]
Why Kissing the Wall is the Worst Possible Heuristic for Biological Discovery
And would be the worst, whether one is an ID proponent or not. Many UD readers know the Australian molecular biologist John Mattick as a leader in thinking about functional roles for so-called ‘junk DNA.’ Mattick has earned the implacable ire of ID critics such as Larry Moran and T. Ryan Gregory, although not because […]
Martin Gardner, Fundamentalism, and Adam’s Navel
The enormously influential mathematics and science writer, skeptic, and encourager of many, Martin Gardner, has died at the age of 95. I came to know Gardner through a mutual friend, the late science writer and skeptic Bob Schadewald (1943-2000), who occasionally visited Gardner at the latter’s home in North Carolina. [Here’s a tiny but relevant […]
Insane Clown Posse Channels Francis Bacon
Specifically, Bacon’s essay on atheism: God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. This is an obsolete, but still relevant, sense of “convince.” It means “to overcome or vanquish.” “‘Convince me!’ said the atheist.” In the original sense, this would mean, “Come on — defeat me.” Anyway, their video is […]
Massimo Says It’s Become a Religion
Not that Massimo — this one. And “it,” of course, is neo-Darwinism, or the Modern Synthesis: textbook evolutionary theory. There’s nothing especially novel in saying that evolutionary theory can function as a secular religion, which is Piattelli-Palmarini’s main point in his new article. Michael Ruse has said as much for years. What has changed within […]
Just Whose Science Is Todd Wood Stopping?
Yours? His? Theirs? Anyone’s? I’ve known Todd since we were graduate students in the 1990s, and have a hardbound copy of his UVA dissertation (Theory and Application of Protein Homology, 1999) sitting on my office shelves. Todd knows more evolutionary biology than many evolutionary biologists. Yet, perversely, or inexplicably, in the eyes of his critics […]
PNAS: Free Will Into the Dumpster
The article is open access, so you can choose to download it. Or choose not to download it. Or choose to click over to YouTube, or the Huffington Post, to see what’s doing there. Whatever happens, “you” — meaning the person reading this right now — won’t be making a decision. Physics and chemistry will. […]
Who Performed the Surgery?
Stephen Barr misunderstands the place of natural laws and regularities in design inferences. Barr writes: …whereas the advance of science continually strengthens the broader and more traditional version of the design argument, the ID movement’s version is hostage to every advance in biological science. Science must fail for ID to succeed. In the famous “explanatory […]