Some more reading 21 Jul 2009 While I compose my haiku philosophical masterpieces, read these links: Douglas Kell gives an account of the problems of reverse engineering biochemical networks in biology here. It’s not just a matter of curve fitting to data. Thinking is Real gives a fair discussion of the debate between meself and PZ Marlargl on accommodationism. The Boston Globe reports on apparent racial profiling of African American academics at Harvard. Some University of Iowa rediscover that the nature-nurture distinction is without merit. Dispersal of Darwin has an account of some leading historians of biology meeting in Cambridge. This is a series, in which Dan Dennett, among others, makes an appearance. And surprise, surprise, creationists lie in order to misrepresent historians again in another creationist propaganda piece. Biology Creationism and Intelligent Design Genetics Race and politics Religion
History Aristotle on politics and religion 16 Feb 2010 “And further he [the tyrant] must be seen always to be exceptionally zealous as regards religious observances (for people are less afraid of suffering any illegal treatment from men of this sort, if they think that their ruler has religious scruples and pays regard to the gods, and also they… Read More
Biology New book on climate and human evolution 10 Mar 2010 I hope this works and WordPress doesn’t strip out the HTML code [later note: It did]. This looks like an interesting book, although its evolutionary tree is a bit old fashioned, almost Haeckelian. Read More
Politics Vedantic creationism 28 Dec 2007 Just to demonstrate that it is not only the Christians who have their religious fundamentalists opposing science, here’s a piece that claims that the Vedas are the source of all true scientific knowledge. OK, guys, inventing zero was cool, but what have the Vedas done for us lately (apart from… Read More
Now you’ve gone and done it. Larry has picked up on that article on accommodationism (by “fair,” I assume you meant something halfway between “good” and “bad”*) and will now cite your endorsement of it as proof that accommodationism is anti-science. * Kidding aside, did you really think that was a fair assessment of the accommodationist side of the argument?