Creationism and Intelligent Design Does science lead to atheism? Not really 2 Jul 2009 Occasionally one’s sole impact on things is the ability to get other people to do good work by threatening to do it badly. I was set to do a review of survey’s on scientists and religious belief, but the literature got out of hand rather quickly, so I emailed Matt… Continue Reading
Evolution Social dominance hierarchies 1 Jul 200922 Jun 2018 Given the dynamic nature of dominance hierarchies among animals, it would be very unlikely to get a well formed control hierarchy in nature. Continue Reading
General Science Indifferentialism 30 Jun 2009 The Sensuous Curmudgeon has a new (old) take on the accommodationism debate: indifference. To quote him/her/them: Our position is to totally disregard what we consider to be a sectarian disagreement among various denominations about whether scripture should be read in a manner to deny verifiable information about reality. One might… Continue Reading
General Science Science in the “dark ages” 30 Jun 2009 God struck down my internet last night, or I’d have posted this sooner: Thony Christie, who has guest blogged here, now has his own blog, The Renaissance Mathematicus. Responding to a comment on the Accommodationism thread, Thony takes down the claim that religion caused the dark ages, when it was… Continue Reading
Censorship The great accommodationism debate 26 Jun 2009 I’ve stayed away from the current round of accusations and counteraccusations about accomodationism between religion and science. This is because I am a wishy washy Chamberlainist fencesitting Laodicean. But I am impressed by a few bloggers’ posts on the matter. First, what’s the background? Continue Reading
Biology The relation between physics and biology 23 Jun 2009 … or, The Real Anthropic Principle… I was musing, as one does, about the relation between physics and biology. Usually we think of biology as some domain that can (or, depending on your personal position, cannot) be reduced to physics. I, on the other hand think of biology, like chemistry,… Continue Reading
Biology Taxonomist’s revenge 21 Jun 2009 There’s a long and distinguished history of taxonomists taking revenge upon friends and enemies (sometimes simultaneously!) by naming unpleasant things after them. Linnaeus himself named an ugly useless weed after his major critic, Siegesbeck, who had attacked the “sexual system” of Linnaean botany. More recently, Quentin Wheeler named three types… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity Apes and evolution in the news 19 Jun 20094 Oct 2017 So there are a couple of interesting developments about fossil apes. One is the retraction by the author of the claim 14 years ago to have found a jaw bone that was evidence of Homo habilis, a precursor species (arguably) of H erectus, in a recent Nature. Previously he and… Continue Reading
Epistemology Linnaeus: the founder of databases 17 Jun 200918 Sep 2017 A couple of years ago I was in Exeter, and was chatting to Staffan Müller-Wille, who is an expert in the history of biology specialising in Linnaean taxonomy. He mentioned to me that Linnaeus had invented the index card in order to keep track of the increasingly large data set… Continue Reading
Epistemology Laws and explanation in history 14 Jun 2009 One of the critical pieces on the philosophy of history was published as Laws and Explanation in History in 1957. Now the hist-analytic site, run by Stephen Bayne, has added the entirety of the book online to its growing list of significant philosophical contributions to the philosophy of history. Links… Continue Reading