In “Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds” (Wired Science, May 24, 2011) , Bruce Bower reflects on the fact that research among peoples who do not even count suggests that abstract geometric principles are probably innate in humans:

If geometry relies on an innate brain mechanism, it’s unclear how such a neural system generates abstract notions about phenomena such as infinite surfaces and why this system doesn’t fully kick in until age 7. If geometry depends on years of spatial learning, it’s not known how people transform real-world experience into abstract geometric concepts — such as lines that extend forever or perfect right angles — that a forest dweller never encounters in the natural world.

As always, we needn’t wait long for a Darwin answer: Read More ›

In “’Belief’ in evolution? It may be the wrong word” (06/27/2011), Faye Flam, Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer, allows us to know that we really shouldn’t say we “believe in” evolution because, as Larry Krauss puts it,

“I have attempted, largely through spurring on from several colleagues . . . to never use the word belief in talks,” said Arizona State University physicist and writer Lawrence Krauss.

“One is asked: Does one believe in global warming, or evolution, and the temptation is to answer yes,” he said, “but it’s like saying you believe in gravity or general relativity.”

“Science is not like religion, in that it doesn’t merely tell a story . . . one that one can choose to believe or not.”

Ms. Flam typefies the legacy media in decline because she cannot Read More ›

In John R. Paterson’s “Modern optics in exceptionally preserved eyes of Early Cambrian arthropods from Australia (Nature, 30 June 2011)

from Nature by, we learn of a particular, “exceptionally preserved” trilobite-like eye from South Australia that predates other known finds from 85 million years later:

The arrangement and size of the lenses indicate that these eyes belonged to an active predator that was capable of seeing in low light. The eyes are more complex than those known from contemporaneous trilobites and are as advanced as those of many living forms.

Well, that raises a question, doesn’t it? At the dawn of multicellular life, we find – not primitive fixes – but …

Then the authors deftly write, Read More ›

From John Nolte at Andrew Breitbart’s “Big Hollywood,” we learn John Lennon’s take on evolutionary theory. “More on John Lennon’s Move Away from ‘Imagine’: Evolution is ‘Absolute Garbage’:

Even more shocking to the idea of Lennon as a secular leftist, or a deep thinker, the man rejected evolution. “Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the way,” he insisted. “That’s another piece of garbage. What the hell’s it based on? We couldn’t’ve come from anything—fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don’t believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren’t monkeys changing into men now? It’s absolute garbage.”

Nolte is referring to Jordan Michael Smith’s article, “Stop Imagining,” kicking around since last December in American Conservative.

So why did his widow sue Expelled’s producers? (In the end, the court required her to Imagine fair use.)

Possible answer:

Read More ›

Perhaps they weren’t thinking how other evolutionists might react. The fact that the Sage of Morris, Minnesota scored in Technorati’s top 3500 doesn’t tell us much about who reads his blog or why, and that’s now Nature made the decision. And you have to pay to read about it.

Over at Evolution News & Views (June 28, 2011), Casey Luskin advises that many fellow Darwinists are not amused by P. Z. Myers’ antics. (The one that comes immediately to some minds just now is the circus around producer Mark Mathis booting him from a screening of Expelled, but that’s probably an accident of timing.) Anyway,

In fact, the rhetorical strategies of Professor Myers and his colleagues are so uncivil that they have earned criticism from mainstream academics and writers who are otherwise pro-evolution. Read More ›

Also, from Stephen Battersby (New ScientistJune 21, 2011), we learn: , “Largest cosmic structures ‘too big’ for theories”: We know that the universe was smooth just after its birth. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the light emitted 370,000 years after the big bang, reveal only very slight variations in density from place to place. Gravity then took hold and amplified these variations into today’s galaxies and galaxy clusters, which in turn are arranged into big strings and knots called superclusters, with relatively empty voids in between. On even larger scales, though, cosmological models say that the expansion of the universe should trump the clumping effect of gravity. That means there should be very little structure on scales Read More ›

Catching up with the news from outer space, from New Scientist’s Vanessa Thomas and Richard Webb (June 13, 2011), we learn that spiral galaxies are a headscratcher for cosologists: Easy as these spiral beauties are on the eye, for cosmologists they are becoming something of a headache. As we survey the spiral galaxies around us more closely, nagging doubts are creeping in that some of the largest, most luminous examples in fact look rather too perfect. What’s more, many of them seem to be in entirely the wrong place. How can a galaxy be in the “wrong” place? Doesn’t anyone enforce our rules out there? – (Registration required)

At Eurekalert, we learn about “The mechanics of speciation: Model examines factors that contribute to the emergence of new species” (24-Jun-2011). And we learn that sympatric speciation – a key current claim – is “not impossible.” Read More ›

Welcome news from ScienceDaily (June 24, 2011), for people who are fed up with Genes Rule contending with Environment Rules:

Effects of Stress Can Be Inherited, and Here’s How

“There has been a big discussion about whether the stress effect can be transmitted to the next generation without DNA sequence change,” said Shunsuke Ishii of RIKEN Tsukuba Institute. “Many people were doubtful about such phenomena because the mechanism was unknown. Our finding has now demonstrated that such phenomena really can occur.” Read More ›

The latest edition of The Reasoner (Volume 5, Number 7 – July 2011),

a monthly digest highlighting exciting new research on reasoning, inference and method broadly construed. It is interdisciplinary, covering research in, e.g., philosophy, logic, AI, statistics, cognitive science, law, psychology, mathematics and the sciences,

is available for download. Articles of interest: Read More ›

“… the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate.”

The Darwin circus wagons should have halted there at Chengjiang and been repurposed as hot dog stands for public convenience. But too much had been invested. Paul Chien, chairman of the biology department at the University of San Franciscos explained some while back to Leadership University the significance of the Chinese Cambrian era fossils,

Chien: In some ways there are similarities between the China site and the other famous site, the Burgess Shale fauna in Canada. But it turns out that the China site is much older, and the preservation of the specimens is much, much finer. Even nerves, internal organs and other details can be seen that are not present in fossils in any other place.

RI: And I suppose many of these are probably soft-tissue marine-type animals?

Chien: Yes, including jellyfish-like organisms. They can even see water ducts in the jellyfish. They are all marine. That part of western China was under a shallow sea at the time. Read More ›

At ScienceDaily we learn, “Scientists Uncover an Unhealthy Herds Hypothesis” (June 24, 2011), Biologists worldwide subscribe to the healthy herds hypothesis, the idea that predators can keep packs of prey healthy by removing the weak and the sick. This reduces the chance disease will wipe out the whole herd, but could it be that predators can also make prey populations more susceptible to other predators or even parasites? Biologists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered at least one animal whose defenses against a predator make it a good target for one opportunistic parasite. In principle, that should be no surprise; most defense strategies carry a cost, for water fleas or nations. That’s because while growing larger keeps Daphnia Read More ›

Bernard Wood asks “Did early homo migrate into or out of Africa?” (Science June 17, 2011):

The origin of our own genus remains frustratingly unclear. Although many of my colleagues are agreed regarding the “what”with respect to Homo, there is no consensus as to the “how” and “when” questions. Until relatively recently, most paleoanthropologists (including the writer) assumed Africa was the answer to the “where” question, but in a little more than a decade discoveries at two sites beyond Africa, one at Dmanisi in Georgia and the other at Liang Bua on the island of Flores, have called this assumption into question.

Meanwhile, Anne Gibbons asks, Who was homo habilis? And was it really homo? (Science June 17, 2011): Read More ›

In a previous post, I misidentified Mathgrrl with another anonymous contributor to Uncommon Descent, and accused Mathgrrl of making uncivil and ungentlemanly remarks on a certain evolution forum. It now turns out that this identification was incorrect. I would like to apologize to Mathgrrl.

A bid by Darwinists to acquire rights to the Expelled documentary on the ID theorists has failed. From TOAF:

Combined with the funds the Foundation already had on hand, we had just over $50,000 available to bid on the film (and pay the 10% buyer’s premium). The winning bid, however, was $201,000. Because all of the bidders were anonymous, we do not know identity of the winning bidder.

Film probably went to business interest. More later.

Update, just in: Walt Ruloff and his associates, who were the original producers of EXPELLED, won the auction. More later.

Timeline

Talk origins were trying to buy Expelled “The reason given is so they can then release unpublished material, but equally they could prevent future sales of the film.”

10 June 2011 Expelled film to be sold due to bankruptcy. That was not a surprise.

There is a hiatus in significant coverage at this point because the companies that owned various aspects of Expelled lost touch with the people featured in it – for reasons still unexplained – despite the fact that the film was doing well.

23 October 2008 Expelled #1 in documentaries, #11 in DVDs Read More ›