Epistemology Tautology 5b: The issues, continued 30 Aug 2009 In this post I will discuss these issues: 3. What is a function? Is it in the mind/theory, or in the world? 4. Is natural selection a mechanism? If so, what kind? 5. Is the principle of natural selection a law? Again, this will be pretty short. Continue Reading
Epistemology Tautology 5a: The issues 30 Aug 2009 So where are we? The tautology problem has laid open some deep concerns and confusions about evolution. In this post (5a) and the next (5b), which I will return to afterwards and add and amend (in other words it’s a work in progress), I aim to lay out what I… Continue Reading
Book Book review: Evidence and Evolution 26 Aug 2009 For those of you who have access to Systematic Biology, my review is here. It is online only so far. Elliot Sober’s book is by far the hardest book I have ever had to review, being one of the most complex and technical of its kind. It took me six… Continue Reading
Biology Tautology 3: The problem spreads 25 Aug 2009 This post will look at two different aspects of the tautology problem: 1. The public aspect, as it becomes a widely used counterargument to “Darwinism”, and the rebuttals of some public “Darwinists”; and 2. How it played out in the biological and philosophical literature. Continue Reading
History On Grayling on the Jesuits 23 Aug 2009 A long time ago I would debate the local Jesuits over scotch, when I was still a Christian theology student. I learned two things: 1. those guys could really hold their liquor (I drank much more sparingly); and 2. Jesuits are really really smart. But as a theolog, I also… Continue Reading
Creationism and Intelligent Design Tautology 2: The problem arises 23 Aug 2009 After Williams and others had made the comment that fitness is a tautology, it came around that the point needed to be discussed in more detail. One such discussion was by a student of Dobzhansky’s, Richard Lewontin. Continue Reading
Evolution Tautology 1b: Butler 22 Aug 2009 So, upon further investigation I find that Samuel Butler, in his Evolution Old and New (1879) states the tautology argument clearly. Continue Reading
Epistemology tautology 1a: corrections 21 Aug 2009 So Gary Nelson reminded me of his paper on “The Two Wallaces” (2009) in which he points out that Wallace used the tautology argument himself, and responded to criticisms as early as 1873. Wallace also used the term “fitness” in a general sense. Continue Reading
Creationism and Intelligent Design The tautology problem 20 Aug 2009 A long time ago I wrote a not particularly good piece on the tautology problem: that natural selection is merely circular definition. I was just out of being an undergraduate when it was published, so it was at best an undergraduate piece. I have been unsatisfied with it ever since…. Continue Reading
Epistemology Peirce on Darwin (1877) 18 Aug 2009 The Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question of logic. Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical method to biology. The same thing had been done in a widely different branch of science, the theory of gases. Though unable to say what the movements of any particular molecule of… Continue Reading