The Kingdom of Speech From Alun Anderson at New Scientist, a surprisingly balanced take on Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech: It is a dramatic fable, but at the end of the book we have not reached a real ending. Everett’s work is not enough to convince linguistics researchers, as Wolfe might wish, that they had “wasted half a century by subscribing to Chomsky’s doctrine of Universal Grammar”. But Everett is surely right in thinking that language is not going to be explained by the study of grammar alone. We need to look at how humans evolved cooperative cultures in which effective communication was at a premium, and at “theory of mind”, which gives humans knowledge of the intentions of Read More ›

Twenty years ago this Fall, biochemist Michael Behe helped spark a revolution with his landmark book Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. Featured in the New York Times, Behe’s book provoked a fierce debate that continues to this day, inspiring a new generation of scientists who are challenging Darwin’s theory and exploring evidence in nature of intelligent design. DISCO_Behe_Revolution_CoverIn celebration of the 20th anniversary of Behe’s book–and the 20th anniversary of the Center for Science and Culture–Discovery Institute is releasing the new 60-minute documentary Revolutionary. The film tells the dramatic story of how Behe came up with his revolutionary ideas, how opponents tried to silence his ideas in federal court, and how recent scientific discoveries have confirmed and Read More ›

You think bonobos cracking nuts is remarkable? Now, from Elizabeth Pennisi at Science: Hints of tool use, culture seen in bumble bees Chittka’s team has shown that bumble bees can not only learn to pull a string to retrieve a reward, but they can also learn this trick from other bees, even though they have no experience with such a task in nature. The study “successfully challenges the notion that ‘big brains’ are necessary” for new skills to spread, says Christian Rutz, an evolutionary ecologist who studies bird cognition at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. Many researchers have used string pulling to assess the smarts of animals, particularly birds and apes. So Chittka and his colleagues Read More ›

In the running, anyway. From ScienceDaily: A first of its kind study from the University of Kent found that wild-born, rehabilitated bonobos (Pan paniscus) can be efficient nut-crackers with a skill level not that different from wild chimpanzees. Conducted by Johanna Neufuss from the University’s School of Anthropology and Conservation, with the results published in the American Journal of Primatology, the research analysed the behaviour of 18 bonobos that have been cracking nuts for at least two decades at the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unlike chimpanzees — sister species to the bonobo — bonobos rarely use even simple tools in the wild. Only a few studies have reported tool-use in captive bonobos, including Read More ›

From Shawn Otto at Scientific American: Four years ago in Scientific American, I warned readers of a growing problem in American democracy. The article, entitled “Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy,” charted how it had not only become acceptable, but often required, for politicians to embrace antiscience positions, and how those positions flew in the face of the core principles that the U.S. was founded on: That if anyone could discover the truth of something for him or herself using the tools of science, then no king, no pope and no wealthy lord was more entitled to govern the people than they were themselves. It was self-evident. In the years since, the situation has gotten worse. We’ve seen the emergence of Read More ›

Yes, yes, you say, gentle reader. Tell that to Darwin’s followers. Well it is too bad about Darwin’s followers. The rethinking evolution meet at the Royal Society in the fall, however disappointing at first, is only the beginning of th end. Darwinism worked so well as a dogma, foisted on school systems at public expense and defended by educrat lobbies. Over the last decade ad a half, I have sifted through countless media releases announcing either that researchers had once again proven Darwinism or come up with a casuistical explanation for why it is true anyway. That sort of thing happens when a field is not really a history but a cult. But as this post at Creation-Evolution Headlines demonstrates, Read More ›

” . . . you would be in jail.“ Clip: (To make certainty on non endorsement etc clear, snip. KF) The pivotal issue relevant to UD here, is not whether either major candidate is of any great promise ([again to be utterly clear, snip. KF]), but instead, the revelation of utter media bias and manipulation. The issue, then becomes, how do we stand against the tide of a civilisational march of folly, complete with agit prop agendas dressed up in lab coats? How does this speak to preserving a modicum of sanity and respect for facts and logic in discussion of serious issues; often in the face of all sorts of agit prop or trollish distractions, with the future of Read More ›

From Robert P. Crease at Nature, a review of Carlo Rovelli’s upcoming Reality Is Not What It Seems, A sceptic might react to this irksome scientism by objecting that, unlike in Plato’s image, the vistas seen through the window keep changing. One can imagine, too, a book by a string theorist offering another view out of the window — just how many exits does Plato’s cave have? Yet another problem is that Rovelli has a cavalier attitude towards philosophy. Plato’s cave is more nuanced than he makes out, and Rovelli misinterprets a passage to claim that Socrates was disappointed by scientists. He plucks a statement out of context from a lengthy autobiographical story in which Socrates is describing youthful views Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The pied butcherbird, a very musical species, provided a wealth of intriguing data for analysis by co-author Eathan Janney, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology at CUNY’s Hunter College. Janney based his analysis upon years of data collected and also analyzed by violinist and biomusicologist Hollis Taylor of Macquarie University, who has previously published extremely detailed analyses of butcherbird songs. “Since pied butcherbird songs share so many commonalities with human music,” Taylor writes, “this species could possibly revolutionize the way we think about the core values of music.” In the past, claims that musical principles are integral to birdsong were largely met with skepticism and dismissed as wishful thinking. However, the extensive statistical and objective analysis Read More ›

From Linda Geddes at Nature: Jeanne Calment outlived her daughter and grandson by decades, finally succumbing to natural causes at the ripe old age of 122. Calment, who was French and died almost two decades ago, is thought to be world’s longest living person. But if subsequent advances in medicine have lulled you into thinking that you might exceed this record, think again. An analysis of global demographic data published in Nature1 suggests that humans have a fixed shelf life, and that the odds of someone beating Calment’s record are low — although some scientists question this interpretation. They say that the data used in the analysis are not unequivocal, and that the paper doesn’t account for future advances in Read More ›

From Peter J.Leithart at First Things, reviewing Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion: Harrison discerns that a seemingly innocuous grammatical change signalled tectonic shifts. Calvin wrote of “Christian religion,” religio Christiana. English translators added a definite article that was not in the original Latin. According to Harrison, “the expression ‘the true religion’ places the primary focus on the beliefs themselves, and religion thus becomes primarily an existing thing in the world, rather than an interior disposition” as it was for Aquinas. During the seventeenth century, the definite article became much more common, with the unintended result of making “explicit belief and creedal knowledge” the content of religion (93). If religion is a set of beliefs, then it can Read More ›

From Debra Heine at Townhall: A child genius in Pennsylvania is studying to be an astrophysicist so he can become the person who finally proves the existence of God. Nine-year-old William Maillis graduated from high school in May and is now attending a community college as he develops his theories as to how the universe was created. … William’s parents, Peter and Nancy Maillis, also have a daughter, 29, and son, 26. “[William] was our 17-year-surprise,” the elder Maillis said. He told People that he realized William was advanced when he “started accurately identifying numbers at 6 months old and speaking in complete sentences at just 7 months old.” Priceless: William’s parent’s are allowing him to decide for himself what Read More ›

He can do it, what stops us? Meanwhile, others take a different view: Child Euthanasia Centre Soon To Open In Netherlands Civilizations must decide.

No, you don’t need any more evidence, but where O’Leary for News lives, this is the time of year one cleans out stuff and takes stock. From David Klinghoffer, quoting a biology grad at Evolution News & Views: I’m just finishing up my master’s degree in evolutionary biology and likely starting a PhD in evolutionary genetics next fall. I was at an evolutionary genetics lab for a few weeks earlier this year and the world-renowned geneticist there was mocking other views. Even in the absence of answers to big questions like how life started and how new enzymes arise, evolutionary biologists are closed to answers that don’t come from Darwinism. The scorn towards Darwinian skepticism is quite strong in my Read More ›

The most certain thing we know about early Earth is that we don’t know much about it. From ScienceDaily: For at least a billion years of the distant past, planet Earth should have been frozen over but wasn’t. Scientists thought they knew why, but a new modeling study has fired the lead actor in that long-accepted scenario. It’s been assumed that Earth depended on methane to stay warm for billions of years. Oxygen was building up and was thought to destroy the methane. The new study argues that sulfate was a much bigger menace to methane. Sulfate wasn’t a factor until oxygen appeared in the atmosphere and triggered oxidative weathering of rocks on land. The breakdown of minerals such as Read More ›