Next up in our Engineering and Metaphysics series is Thomist physicist and philosopher Alex Sich who gives both enthusiastic support and harsh criticisms to the Intelligent Design project. If I understand his objection correctly, he believes that ID is incorrectly and incoherently mixing categories of knowledge, not making proper distinctions of terms, and confusing univocal and analogous modes of reasoning. His call is for ID’ers to take a deeper look into metaphysics, and have a better understanding of philosophy before engaging in the public dialogue. If your video isn’t displaying, the YouTube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieqCqoKiLmk When he references a previous lecture, he is referring to this one. Pull quote – “I think that one must be literally out of their Read More ›

The Markus Covert group’s Cell paper from last week represents a tremendous achievement toward a more systematic understanding of how biological cells work. For decades much of molecular and cellular biology has focused on single genes and single pathways. This was partly out of necessity given the cell’s astronomical complexity. And it was also due to evolutionary dogma which viewed the biological world as so many organic contraptions strapped together one way or another. The result was a rather limited perspective of cellular biology. As Bruce Alberts explained in 1998:  Read more

Molecular biology is not only a story of complex molecules, machines and processes but also of massive information flow via a variety of molecular messages. And while information flow is often associated with the DNA macromolecule, there are less celebrated but ubiquitous armies of molecular machines that are busy attaching, modifying and removing small chemical tags to and from both DNA and proteins. It is a massive information network and these chemical tags—such as methyl, hydroxyl and phosphate groups—act as a sort of molecular modifier or barcode regulating a diverse array of cellular functions. Another molecular barcode is the acetyl group, long thought to be mainly at work in eukaryotes, has now found to be important in bacteria as well. It is, Read More ›