Paul Nelson

Heard about the Council of Europe’s draft resolution against ID. Sighed. Smiled to myself. And then I took my worn paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance down from the shelf: The real University…has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It’s a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real Read More ›

Recently, a friend who thinks about (and has published on) the nature of the eukaryotic genome, said to me, “Paul, no one really knows what the genome is any more.” He went on to explain that the picture most biologists carry around in their heads, of the relationship of genes to organismal form and function — indeed, the very concept of the “gene” itself — had been seriously challenged by discoveries in comparative genomics and molecular biology within the past few years. How all this will shake out eventually, he said, is anyone’s guess. But the theory of evolution, he concluded, cannot escape the coming turbulence. For an overview of some of the discoveries my friend had in mind, see Read More ›

A block of Carrera marble and a large crane, apparently. Didn’t know about the Clorox® either. So that’s why my asparagus never tastes quite right: keep forgetting to add the chlorine. (HT: Jason)

That’s me on the right, trying to climb back up into the rafters of the Nelson house garage. (Photo credit: Hannah Nelson.) Oh, you wanted information about the Shermer/Nelson debate at Penn State-Altoona? Go here.

Baby is yawning ’cause baby is bored. In three weeks, Michael Ruse and I will be asked to explain what evidence, arguments, or attractive baubles — you know: glass beads, tin whistles, loops of colored string — would persuade us to adopt each other’s viewpoint. An undebate, of sorts. A skeptical friend, who is a professor of biochemistry and prominent critic of ID, saw the debate announcement, and wrote me the following. Sounds boring, he said, unless you take some decisive steps to avoid the obvious. My reply is below his remarks, which I excerpt here: Actually, Paul, I believe this “undebate” has all the makings of a pretty humdrum affair. You’ll answer, as other commenters here would, “reproduce for Read More ›

An alert mind keeps in reserve and in good trim all that’s needed to destroy its dogmas and opinions. It is always prepared to attack its “feelings” and to refute its “reasons.” — Paul Valery, Analects Next month, on Thursday, October 4, Michael Ruse and I are going to have a sort of un-debate. Each of us will be asked to spell out what would change our minds about the other’s position. More to the point, what would persuade us to adopt the opposing stance on evolution or ID? What evidence, what arguments, what whatever, would change Michael Ruse’s view of intelligent design? Conversely, what would turn me into a card-carrying Darwinian? Go here for information about the debate location Read More ›

She’s a tough-minded and plainspoken philosopher, and no fan of ID. In her eyes, it’s creationism in thin disguise.

But Mary Midgley is also no fan of Richard Dawkins:

Some of the claims of the supporters of versions of natural selection, she holds, might more properly belong in the Religious Education curriculum alongside Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Last week at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) meeting in Sweden, Michael Majerus of Cambridge University — one of world’s leading experts on the peppered moth, of textbook fame — gave a plenary lecture where he argued that his observations over the past 7 years, in his own garden in the UK, had corrected the shortcomings of Kettlewell’s classic experiments. Bottom line: peppered moths truly are “the proof of Darwinian evolution.” Really. You can read his talk for yourself, here (click on the first link, “Stop Press,” for the pdf). Majerus is unlikely to persuade skeptical evolutionary biologists that the peppered moth story, even when told with Kettlewell’s shortcomings corrected, is a good model for evolutionary theory generally. Read More ›

In Chicago recently during the American Society of Plant Biologists annual meeting, jet-setting celebrity Professor Steve Steve visited Charles Darwin. Darwin was wearing his Chicago Cubs batting helmet. He’s is a big fan of those heartbreakers, you know. They met in the office of a notorious ID guy: After Steve Steve left to resume his world travels, Darwin was heard quietly complaining to Nelson — in the politest English tones, of course — that he never got to go anywhere, had to sit on the bookshelf next to the paleontology volumes, and certainly never met Martha Stewart. Just didn’t seem right for the panda to get all the attention…

He might just take you up on it: That lovely trilobite tattoo now resides on Michael Ruse’s right arm, thanks to a dare from one of his students.

Recently, PZ Myers accused me of lying about the views of molecular evolutionist W. Ford Doolittle in a debate on Canadian public television. Before I respond to PZ’s baseless charge, let’s see what mental image the following proposition generates: All organisms on Earth have descended from a single common ancestor. I’ll bet “single common ancestor” caused you to picture a discrete cell. And if you opened a college biology textbook, to the diagram depicting Darwin’s Tree of Life, you’d find that same image. Moreover, if someone asked you to summarize the arguments for the single-Tree topology, you’d say (for instance) that multiple independent originations of the same basic biochemistry — e.g., the 64 trinucleotide genetic code — are too unlikely. Read More ›

Gather ’round the fire, children, and I’ll tell you the whole sad story. Once upon a time, Mary-Claire King and the late Allan Wilson published a paper — that became a widely-cited classic — about the genetic similarity of chimps and humans. “Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees,” Science 188 (1975):107-116 was, alas, cited far more for proving the genetic near-identity of chimps and humans than for its much more interesting, deeper and more disturbing message: no one really understands how macroevolution occurs. In brief: King and Wilson compared the chimp vs. human amino acid sequences of several proteins (such as cytochrome c, hemoglobin, and myoglobin), and found the sequences either identical, or very nearly so. Their conclusion? Read More ›

Richard Dawkins you know, but John Lennox, his Oxford colleague in mathematics and the philosophy of science, may require a brief introduction. Professor Lennox is the author of the forthcoming book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? and has lectured around the world on mathematics, science, and theology. I first met John in Southern California 11 years ago, have spent time with him in Istanbul and Hungary, and regard him as one of the wisest scholars I know. The Alys Stephens Center at the University of Alabama (Birmingham) will be the site of the October 3, 2007, debate between Dawkins and Lennox. This promises to be a newsworthy, well-attended event.

If you visit Eugene Koonin’s lab at the NCBI — that’s Dr. Koonin standing just to the right of the woman in the red sweater — brush up on your Russian. Many of the most prolific scientists in comparative genomics work in Koonin’s group, hail from Russia, and love the Big Questions, such as the origin of life. In a new, open access paper, Koonin argues that the problem of the origin of life may under current scenarios be intractable: Despite considerable experimental and theoretical effort, no compelling scenarios currently exist for the origin of replication and translation, the key processes that together comprise the core of biological systems and the apparent pre-requisite of biological evolution. The RNA World concept Read More ›

Oh, now you’re in for it, Laura — someone is going to put you on the Naughty Female Science Journalists list. Right next to Catherine Shaffer of Wired. Readers will have to pop for a New Scientist subscription to see the whole of Laura Spinney’s piece about new puzzles in reconstructing the Tree of Life, from the June 13 issue, but here’s the bit of science crack they’re giving away to hook you: IF YOU want to know how all living things are related, don’t bother looking in any textbook that’s more than a few years old. Chances are that the tree of life you find there will be wrong. Since they began delving into DNA, biologists have been finding Read More ›