Miscellany 26 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 Barbara Forrest has an excellent analysis and background story on the introduction of the creationist bill in Louisiana, and the organisations supporting it, here at Talk2Reason. There’s a new phylogeny of birds out. See GrrllScientist’s post, and a full size tree here. Late edit See Bird Evolution – Problems with Science for more. Jesse Prinz has an essay on atheism and morality, which I think jumps the shark at the end (how can there be atheist charities? Atheism is the lack of some belief, so any charity that doesn’t make theism part of its core mission already is atheist), here at Psychology Today. Michael Ruse has an interesting and entertaining review of, among other things, Bill Wimsatt’s book, at American Scientist. It turns out we can know what it is like to be a bat… Science After Sunclipse has a discussion on what education can be achieved by science blogs. Laelaps‘ Brian Switek responds. Sciguy reports that Spain is about to give basic human rights to apes, something I have previously supported elsewhere. Stephen Hale had already argued one can prove a negative, before I did. Hat tip: Abnormal Interests. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution General Science Politics Sermon Social evolution Species and systematics wimsatt
Evolution Explaining religion 22 Oct 2007 I am attempting to classify the various explanations of the existence of religion, so chime in the comments. They are: Read More
Philosophy The basis for civil society 11 Aug 2009 Argument: On the other hand, I’ll take a barbaric yawp over cold silence any day. There is no margin in pretending that substantial differences do not exist in our society or our politics. Entering into conversation around those differences does not lessen their power, necessarily. Nor does it mean that… Read More
General Science Some more on Toulmin 12 Dec 2009 The History of the Philosophy of Science list has been unusually active, and even more unusually fairly restrained and complimentary, in discussing Stephen Toulmin’s significance. One point, made by Avner Cohen, is that Toulmin himself had given an assessment of his work and his modus operandi in an interview in… Read More
Thanks for the link! Sciguy reports that Spain is about to give basic human rights to apes, something I have previously supported elsewhere. That is excellent news; I certainly hope the legislation goes through. If you haven’t seen it already you should definitely check out the Nature special “Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History,” too.
The comments on that SciGuy link are mostly so deeply stupid I’m left wondering how they mustered the basic literacy to post them. How does an intelligent poster attract a rabble like that?
I learned about Wimsatt’s book through your blog and the title made me take a look at it in Amazon. The description there made me think it might be interesting to read it, but if it’s being reviewed in American Scientist (and by Ruse), I’ll have the best reference possible.