Even more FAPPery 8 May 2010 Richard Lewontin reviews FAPP in the New York Review of Books. It is a much more moderate review than many of the other reviews we have linked to. He ends up suggesting that biologists should not speculate on the origins of traits when such speculation is idle. However, like FAPP, he fails to tell us when that is, and is not. Douglas Futuyma on the other hand is much more dismissive in Science, and suggests that being experts in one field doesn’t make them competent in another. I am still wondering what we lose if we abandon the “selection for/selection of” distinction. If we do this, then FAPP’s concern resolves down to: “you can’t get intentionality out of the principle of NS”, which is rather like “you can’t get colour distributions out of a sorting process”; true but trivial. Evolution Philosophy Science EvolutionPhilosophy
History Responsibility 23 Dec 201122 Jun 2018 Click to go to the original and make rude comments about the misuse of “begs the question”. Late note: The bastard fixed it. Find something else to complain about… Read More
Philosophy You can’t explain a variable with a constant 12 Jan 2012 Courtesy of reader Jocelyn Stoller, comes this video, of respected philosopher of science Jim Woodward discussing whether or not religious beliefs explains things like suicide bombing and the moral right in the US. Answer: not likely. Watch part 2 at Youtube. Read More
Evolution Do bacteria think? 10 Dec 2007 Let’s suppose there is a game, say, baseball. This game is named and described for the ways that adult humans with bats, balls, and fields, behave normatively, as written up in an authoritative manual. Everybody knows what baseball is, or can point to an example of it. Along comes someone,… Read More
Please explain how FAPP’s concern would resolve down to: “you can’t get intentionality out of the principle of NS”.