Some people say that Stephen Hawking is the smartest man in the world, and doubtless he is a brilliant physicist. But when it comes to metaphysics he has said some silly things. Consider his famous universe-from-nothing quote: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” Read that statement again. It is gobsmackingly stupid. First, as we have discussed before, the statement “because there is something the universe can create itself from nothing” is self-referentially incoherent. But more importantly consider this. The statement appears to confer causal agency on “gravity.’ But what is gravity? It is a “law” of nature. What is a law of nature? It is an observed regularity that Read More ›

PZ Myers whiffles here re little junk DNA. (The world yawns and marches on.) Rob Sheldon responds, Thomas Kuhn gave a name to this phenomenon, he called it a “paradigm shift”. And it is essentially unresolvable for reasons that haven’t changed in 100 years, which is why I’m partial to Max Planck’s version: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” The reigning Darwinian paradigm is that Natural Selection operates on the functionality of traits, promoting those that lead to greater fecundity. The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis moved those traits into the genome and called them genes. The Watson-Crick-Franklin discovery moved those genes into DNA strands and sequenced them, so the present debate is whether the entire story is unravelling beginning with the Read More ›

Spread the news. From News’ compatriot Mark Steyn: Free speech shouldn’t need “defending”. It’s the shut-uppers who should be on the defensive, who should be made to explain why only their side of the argument can be heard. Before Mann launched his suit, I was broadly familiar with the corruption of the scientific process that Climategate et al had revealed. But I was still shocked to discover just how deep it goes. Over the last three years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with scientists who occupy different positions on the climate spectrum: Some are out-and-out “skeptics”; some broadly agree with the so-called “consensus” but dislike its intolerance; others define themselves as “lukewarmers” or have only relatively modest disagreements with Read More ›

… can’t resist this first – evolution of metabolizing booze: From The Scientist: How we are able to metabolize booze: A mutation in an ethanol-metabolizing enzyme arose around the time that arboreal primates shifted to a more terrestrial lifestyle, perhaps as an adaptation to eating fermented fruit. Why are humans so attracted to alcohol, and why do so many struggle with its abuse? These are questions that science still can’t answer. The “drunken monkey” hypothesis proposed by University of California, Berkeley, biologist Robert Dudley posits that, unlike our attraction to other addictive drugs, our use and sometimes dependence on alcohol stems from the millions of years our ancient primate ancestors spent consuming ripe, fermented fruits. Perhaps these predecessors evolved some Read More ›

Not much “junk DNA.” From him: Dan Graur has snarled at the authors of a paper defending ENCODE. How could I then resist? I read the offending paper, and I have to say something that will weaken my own reputation as a snarling attack dog myself: it does make a few good points. But it’s mostly using some valid criticisms to defend an indefensible position. The world yawns and marches on. Friends point out that we do not know anywhere near enough to know what is or is not junk in the geonme, but that under those circumstances, it is wise to assume that any given component is doing something useful. One friend kindly writes to say that the term Read More ›

Well, that’s way better than fronting design in nature, right? Remember the conference on the source of biological information at Cornell? Where the papers couldn’t be published at first , due to a publisher’s disgraceful retreat in the face of a campaign by Darwin’s rags and tatters? The Cornell conference was most enlightening. And so is this: The university has decided to support Islamic terror. That makes sense, actually. The way a news writer friend once explained the attitude to O’Leary for News, progressives hate other people so much that they do not care what happens, as long as those others are killed, maimed, jailed, censored, or just plain shut down. They do not even think about what is going to Read More ›

From the Economist: Alastair Crisp and Chiara Boschetti of Cambridge University, and their colleagues, have been investigating the matter. Their results, just published in Genome Biology, suggest human beings have at least 145 genes picked up from other species by their forebears. Admittedly, that is less than 1% of the 20,000 or so humans have in total. But it might surprise many people that they are even to a small degree part bacterium, part fungus and part alga. Dr Crisp and Dr Boschetti came to this conclusion by looking at the ever-growing public databases of genetic information now available. They did not study humans alone. They looked at nine other primate species, and also 12 types of fruit fly and Read More ›

 Except in this case?: Philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci (defender of falsifiability*) offers a thoughtful review of The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin: Before we get to what the authors set out to accomplish, it is worth discussing a more basic premise of the book: they see it as an exercise in what they call (a revived form of) “natural philosophy.” Of course, natural philosophy was the name by which science went before it became a field of inquiry independent of philosophy itself. Descartes, Galileo, Newton and even Darwin thought of themselves as natural philosophers (the word scientist, in fact, was invented by Darwin’s mentor, William Whewell, in 1833 [2]). Read More ›

Yesterday, we asked, “Should the dying Gray Lady stop writing about science?” That got started because the Real Clear Science founding editor wondered about it, based on recent coverage he deems faulty. (It would be no surprise to us.*) Anyway, Sheldon here: Fascinating blog on NYT! It is exactly what Paul Johnson said would happen to America when he wrote in the 1990’s that America was being taken over by special interest groups, who like a pantheon of demi-gods, would endlessly bicker about whose ox was being gored. This is because America had rejected the Western synthesis of theology-philosophy-religion that had rocketed to supremacy over all other civilizations on this planet. And once the synthesis was destroyed in our Post-Modern Read More ›

In a recent UD thread on evidence vs selectively hyperskeptical dismissal, AS has been challenging that “religious” belief [= theism as worldview, worked into way of life]  is ill founded, lacks evidence beyond testimonials, and the like. (Such is not new, already at UD I have had occasion to rebut his blanket dismissals of religious “dogma.”) At 64, he sums up his perspective particularly succinctly: AS, 64: I think religions have an emotional appeal that some people are more susceptible to than others. For those that succumb to that emotional need, evidence is superfluous. Those that lack that need aren’t swayed by testimony. Whether they might be impressed by evidence other than testimony is yet to be tested. This is Read More ›

Sheldrake, author of Science Set Free, is a Cambridge-trained biochemist and plant physiologist, is a prominent public intellectual critical of the authoritarianism and closed-mindedness that he finds increasingly typical of mainstream science. But we will let him tell it to philosopher James Barham here: The Best Schools: On p. 93 of your new book, Science Set Free (Deepak Chopra, 2012), you speak of the “intellectual phase-locking”—that is, the “group think” or herd mentality—that clearly plagues mainstream science today. We were wondering whether this was mainly due to the hubris that comes from the unprecedented social prestige scientists now enjoy, or whether it might not be more a matter of the metaphysical commitment to materialism that has been deeply ingrained in Read More ›

How does a life form that is still around get to be called a fossil at all? On what terms exactly? We human beings aren’t “living fossils” just because someone can dig up the bones of our ancestors and find out that they looked and lived a lot like us! So what is the term really doing in science anyway? Well, anyway, at Nautilus: The idea that some species are relics that have stopped evolving is finally going extinct. … Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossil” in The Origin of Species to describe some of the planet’s more ambiguous creatures—such as the lungfish and platypus—that evolved relatively early and “endured to the present day.” He saw these animals as Read More ›

From Alex Berezow, founding editor at Real Clear Science: What has gone so wrong for the NYT? Many things are to blame. The paper’s leftish editorial page is out of step with a large portion of the American public. A high-profile scandal, in which journalist Jayson Blair was caught fabricating articles, damaged its credibility. The biggest factor, however, is the rise of credible challengers — both print and digital — that simply do better journalism. There is little incentive to spend money to read the NYT when superior news coverage (and more sensible editorializing) can be found elsewhere. The NYT’s science coverage is particularly galling. While the paper does employ a staff of decent journalists (including several excellent writers, such Read More ›

A friend writes to offer this excerpt from British biologist William Bateson (1861–1926): In what follows it will be assumed that the Doctrine of Descent is true. It should be admitted from the first that the truth of the doctrine has never been proved. There is nevertheless a great balance of evidence in his favor, but it finds its support not so much in direct observation as in the difficulty of forming any alternative hypothesis. The Theory of Descent involves and asserts that all living things are genetically connected, and this principle is at least not contrary to observation; while any alternative hypothesis involves the idea of Separate Creation which by common consent is now recognized as absurd. In favor Read More ›

In his first inaugural address, President Obama pledged to “restore science to its rightful place.” But has the Obama Administration restored science or abused it? In this talk based on the expanded paperback edition of his book Darwin Day in America (ISI Books, 2015), political scientist John G. West will examine how the Obama Administration has illegitimately invoked “science” to curtail basic freedoms, undercut ethical protections, and circumvent democratic accountability. He also will explore how during the Obama years free speech is being increasingly restricted in the name of science and how science is being misused to attack religion, especially in educational institutions. West will argue that science has produced great blessings, but its current abuse is bad for both Read More ›