(Wallace, Darwin-s co-theorist, was a working-class stiff whom Darwin’s set elbowed out. He was not a materialist (naturalist) and he thought evolution could be consistent with meaning and spirituality. Darwin abhorred such ideas. This review was originally published at New Oxford Review.)
Tag: Michael Flannery
Science historian asks, What kicked off the ID movement?
He offers three events that he thinks boosted ID specifically: You can read about the first two for yourself at the link but you may not even have ever heard of the third (the discrediting of the Vienna Circle): …
Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922–2019) cut loose from the Darwin parade before it was fashionable
Himmelfarb: Darwin usually engaged in rhetorical sleight-of-hand where “possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties, so ignorance itself was raised to a position only once removed from certain knowledge” (p. 335)
Yesterday was the 160th anniversary of Darwinism
To judge from Darwinism’s lobbyists and followers in recent decades, who want to make a living putting rubes in their place, without embracing eugenics, Darwin has certainly paid off. But the genome map is killing all that.
Who’s throwing stones at “Nature’s Prophet”? (Wallace)
A reviewer attacking Michael Flannery, author of a book on Darwin’s co-theorist Wallace re his Discovery Institute ties, actually wrote a book with a serious racist in 2003. Of course, rules Darwinists dream up never apply to themselves.
Historian Michael Flannery: There is much more Darwin doubt now than fifty years ago
Flannery: “Most interesting of all is the last essay by a noted historian and philosopher of biology, the late Jean Gayon, “What Future for Darwinism?” Against the centennial celebration, the question itself stands out as one that certainly wasn’t to be seriously asked in Chicago [in 1959].”
Does exaptation show that nature is “not intelligent”?
Here’s a definition of exaptation: a trait, feature, or structure of an organism or taxonomic group that takes on a function when none previously existed or that differs from its original function which had been derived by evolution. – Merriam-Webster In other words, a feature that once served one purpose now serves another. How is that not Read More…
New biography of the original ID guy, Alfred Russel Wallace
Klinghoffer: A spiritualist, libertarian socialist, women’s rights advocate, and critic of Victorian social convention, Alfred Russel Wallace was in every sense a rebel who challenged the emergent scientific certainties of Victorian England by arguing for a natural world imbued with purpose and spiritual significance.