Science

http://www.aaas.org/teachscience

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/audio/05-06/public_lectures/kadanoff

Let me encourage you to think seriously about supporting this organization: http://www.scimednet.org. Its mission statement is “To challenge the adequacy of scientific materialism as an explanation of reality.”

Thomas Lessl: Science and Rhetoric
Interviewed by Paul Newall
http://www.galilean-library.org/lessl.html

Thomas Lessl is Associate Professor in the Department of Speech
Communication at the University of Georgia. His work involves the rhetoric
of science, looking in particular at the meeting of science with the public
sphere. I was fortunate enough to be able to ask him some general questions
about rhetoric as well as focusing on its role in scientific debate.

“… the scientific culture of [the nineteenth century] was committed to
evolutionism long before any scientific theory of development appeared”

PN: How would you define rhetoric and why should we study it?

TL: Most simply I would define rhetoric as the art of public communication.
Anyone who engages in public communication is practicing the art of
rhetoric. Art can also mean a body of principles pertaining to its
practices, and this is true of rhetoric as well. Read More ›

The following conflation of intelligent design and global warming is unworthy of Chomsky the scholar (as opposed to Chomsky the activist). Chomsky uncritically takes as the definition of ID what he has read in the popular press. It might interest readers of this blog to know that I hold in my files a note (dated February 26, 1997) from Chomsky on MIT stationery commeting favorably on one of my early papers on information and ID (namely, “Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information” — which ultimately became chapters 3 and 4 of No Free Lunch). Chomsky in his private moments has in fact been a critic of evolutionary theory, a fact reflected in Daniel Dennett’s criticisms of Chomsky in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Evolution, ecology and `malignant design’

Noam Chomsky says the Bush administration’s hostility toward scientific inquiry puts the world at risk of global-warming disaster

NOAM CHOMSKY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Nov. 13, 2005

President George W. Bush favours teaching both evolution and “intelligent design” in schools, “so people can know what the debate is about.”

To proponents, intelligent design is the notion that the universe is too complex to have developed without a nudge from a higher power than evolution or natural selection. Read More ›

Intelligent Design: Official statement on false and misleading information published in the Wall Street Journal today.*

By Charles L. Harper, Jr., Senior Vice President, John Templeton Foundation.

*[Monday November 14th, 2005. Article by Daniel Golden:
At Some Colleges, Classes Questioning Evolution Take Hold.]

Today the WSJ ran a front page story mentioning the John Templeton Foundation in a way suggesting that the Foundation has been a concerted patron and sponsor of the so-called Intelligent Design (“ID”) position (such as is associated with the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and the writers Philip Johnson, William Dembski, Michael Behe and others). This is false information. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The John Templeton Foundation has provided tens of millions of dollars in support to research academics who are critical of the anti-evolution ID position. Any careful and factual analysis of actual events will find that the John Templeton Foundation has been in fact the chief sponsor of university courses, lectures and academic research which variously have argued against the anti-evolution “ID” position. It is scandalous for a distinguished paper to misinform the public in this way. Read More ›

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5007508

[From a colleague:] The way a scientific theory gets empirically established is not by showing that the evidence requires that precise theory. That is an impossible task–there are always infinitely many theories that fit the data. Rather, it gets established through showing that the evidence discredits the main alternative theories but does not discredit this theory. Read More ›

As you read this riff on Kuhn, ask yourself why ID should or shouldn’t fit into this characterization of the scientific enterprise: http://www.the-scientist.com/2005/11/7/10/1.

Green Gray Areas — Books that question the conventional wisdom on the environment.

BY MICHAEL CRICHTON
Saturday, October 29, 2005 Read More ›

http://www.dc-connect.org/s/117/index.aspx?pgid=13&cid=97&sid=117&gid=1&event_id=77

Fuel’s paradise? Power source that turns physics on its head · Scientist says device disproves quantum theory · Opponents claim idea is result of wrong maths Alok Jha, science correspondent Friday November 4, 2005 The Guardian It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1627424,00.html

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science
by Tom Bethell

Regnery, 2005

In science, dispassionate, objective inquiry reigns supreme, and researchers
will readily give up their most cherished views if the evidence proves them
wrong — right? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Read More ›

From “Science Versus Scientism” by John Silber (appeared in the Nov05 issue of The New Criterion):

The critical question posed for evolutionists is not about the survival of the fittest but about their arrival. Biologists arguing for evolution have been challenged by critics for more than a hundred years for their failure to offer any scientific explanation for the arrival of the fittest. Supporters of evolution have no explanation beyond their dogmatic assertion that all advances are explained by random mutations and environmental influences over millions of years. Read More ›

Pam Winnick’s new book, A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion, is out in stores. It provides a nice counterblast to Chris Mooney’s diatribe about the Republican/conservative hijacking of science.