The Golden Age of Islam 12 Oct 2009 3 Quarks Daily has a series by Namit Arora on the high period of Islamic culture to which we owe our knowledge of classical science and literature, not to mention a host of scientific developments. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. Keep an eye on this one. History Science
Creationism and Intelligent Design Noah’s Ark and the creation of the species rank 19 Jun 201719 Jun 2017 This is a section of my forthcoming revision to Species, presented here for comments that I can steal – umm, I mean for peer commentary. At this point in our narrative, we still do not have a uniquely biological notion of species, nor of a fixed rank in logic. As species concepts evolved,… Read More
Cognition Analytic thinking, religion and science – the rhetoric and the psychology 5 May 20125 May 2012 Over the past few decades there has been an increasingly large literature on styles of thinking and cognitive biases (to which I am grateful to Jocelyn Stoller, a reader of this blog, for introducing me) in psychology, culminating in the marvellous book, which I recommend to everyone, by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking… Read More
Epistemology Scientists and history 12 Jul 2013 Recently, historian of medicine Edward Shorter made the following comment [follow link for a good discussion]: Historians aren’t as interested [in his work] because they aren’t intellectually equipped to study that kind of thing. Most of them don’t have a scientific background. They can’t get into detailed discussions of therapies because… Read More