History and Philosophy (often of Science)
jlynch | February 2, 2009First there was the Darwin Correspondence Project. Then came the Tyndall Correspondence Project. And now, George Beccaloni has just announced the Wallace Correspondence Project. All very exciting for students of Victorian science.
jlynch | January 28, 2009Iâve been picking on creationists for a number for years now, so it is somewhat strange for me to come out and offer one a gold star but, hey!
Todd Wood, a YEC at Bryan College had had a paper accepted over at Answers Research Journal that gives his take on the whole ridiculous âDarwin was a plagiaristâ riff that the likes of Roy Davies have been shilling. So to recap, John Wilkins, Jim Lennox, and now Todd Wood (a creationist for cripes sake!) think that Davies is wrong.
Short version of Wood:
According to Davies, these alleged evidences of Darwinâs misdeeds have been ignored by Darwin…
jlynch | January 20, 2009A few days ago I highlighted the current state of the Natural History Museum in Dublin. Nigel Monaghan, the Keeper of the museum, contacted me and has kindly allowed me to repost a piece he wrote for Museum Ireland on the past and future of the museum. Enjoy!
The Natural History Museum
Dublin, past and future.
Nigel Monaghan
Keeper, Natural History Division,
National Museum of Ireland
Museum Ireland 17: 48-52
The Natural History Museum
celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2007. The building houses
collections that are even older and faces challenges on a number of
fronts. The Victorian ‘…
jlynch | January 16, 2009It is always cute when the anti-evolutionists (in all their guises) try to do history; witness here, for example. Veteran observers are not surprised to find them trying to warp history (see here, here, here & here for that). Nowhere is this warping more evident than in how DI-hacks such as John West & Richard Weikart have promulgated a meme linking Darwin to Haeckel to Nazism. This has been clearly dealt with by a number of historians (see references herein and read Robert Richards’ latest book on Haeckel). Equally as resilient is the idea (also held by West & Weikart) that…
jlynch | January 16, 2009David Klinghoffer is promising to deliver some revisionism over at the Discovery Institute:
Starting tomorrow, I would like to devote a couple posts to the thesis that Communism has deeper Darwinian roots than many of us realize. That, in fact, even though Marx had already begun sketching the outlines of his ideas before Darwin published the Origin of Species — the Communist Manifesto appeared in 1848, the Origin in 1859 — he is fairly called a Darwinist. That, finally, the men who translated Marxism into practical political terms in the form of Soviet terror were evolutionary thinkers, just…
jlynch | January 15, 2009An interesting looking paper has just appeared online by John Beatty and Eric Cyr Desjardins that looks at the importance of history in determining form. The abstract reads:
In “Spandrels,” Gould and Lewontin criticized what they took to be an all-too-common conviction, namely, that adaptation to current environments determines organic form. They stressed instead the importance of history. In this paper, we elaborate upon their concerns by appealing to other writings in which those issues are treated in greater detail. Gould and Lewontin’s combined emphasis on history was three-fold. First,…
jlynch | January 11, 2009Glenn Branch brought my attention to a book by John Henry Egan. Since it is titled 6 Million and Counting: Darwinism, Atheism and Genocide, I think you can see where it is going. The following appears to encapsulate the gist of this fine work of historical investigation:
Charles Darwin invented the term "sub-human" a phrase used by the Nazis to demonize and murder Jews, gypsies, and many others ...
Darwinism is an Atheistic philosophy, anathema to both Jews and Christians. Leading Darwinists advocate the violent destruction of all religions. Charles Darwin was himself an atheist and advocate…
jlynch | January 11, 2009Chris Elliot (Philosophy, Hofstra) has made me aware that Project Gutenberg has doubled its coverage of works by Thomas Henry Huxley. Some light reading on this weekend for those not watching the NFL. The additions are:
Conditions of Existence as Affecting the Perpetuation of Living Beings
Coral and Coral Reefs
Criticism on "The origin of species"
Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature
Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life
Method By Which the Causes of the Present and Past Conditions of Organic Nature Are to Be Discovered -- the Origination of Living Beings
On Some…
jlynch | January 8, 2009John hasn't read Origin. Not *this* John. And certainly not this one. It's this one - and what he proposes to do is blog while he reads the first edition of that work. I have to say I approve of the use of the first edition - subsequent editions are a little murkier and lack the freshness of expression that makes the first such a wonderful read.
John expresses some slight shame at having not read Origin before. I don't think that's really a problem (or surprising). Biology students rarely read Origin and similarly physics students rarely crack open Principia; scientific education rarely…
jlynch | January 7, 2009Just a quick update on the book I mentioned last night. It appears that it will be published by Dembski's vanity press (for which Flannery is in charge of publicity and marketing). The work is not an edited series of papers, but a re-issue of Wallace's World of Life (available for free here) with an introduction by Flannery and foreword by Dembski.
So nothing interesting here, I'm afraid, beyond perhaps some breathless claims that "OMG! Wallace would have been one of us!!!!" or "Teach the controversy over Wallaceism!!!!" This one will die a natural death. Move on.
From Charles Smith's…
jlynch | January 6, 2009Dembski just announced a forthcoming book for which he is apparently writing a foreword: Michael A. Flannery (ed.) Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace's World of Life Challenged Darwinism. Flannery (MA, MLS) is associate director for historical collections at Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham and claims to have "published extensively on the history of medicine, pharmacy, and bioethics" [pdf] and is a recipient of the Edward Kremers Award for outstanding scholarship in pharmaceutical (rather than biological or…
jlynch | January 6, 2009John Wilkins has a nice post up regarding the deification and demonization of Darwin. With regards the latter, he particularly discusses something I have intended to blog since I heard about it through a Wall Street Journal article - Roy Davies' book, The Darwin Conspiracy, which repeats the historically inaccurate (and unfortunately perennial) claim that Darwin plagiarized Wallace. Davies is a retired TV producer. Wilkins is an historical philosopher. Jim Lennox - who has replied to Davies' claim - is a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science. I'm not saying that Davies has to be…
jlynch | January 3, 2009
Every position of permanent agreement or harmony between reason and life, between philosophy and religion, becomes impossible. And the tragic history of human thought is simply the history of a struggle between reason and life - reason bent on rationalizing life and forcing it to submit to the inevitable, to mortality; life bent on vitalizing reason and forcing it to serve as a support for its own vital desires. And this is the history of philosophy, inseparable from the history of religion.
From Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida (The Tragic Sense of Life) by the Spanish existentialist…
jlynch | January 1, 2009The coming year should be fairly productive. Here are what I hope to be the highlights for 2009:
Finish and submit three book reviews over the next few weeks
Finish some work for the History of Science Society's Committee on Education
Have a paper accepted by Pediatrics (more of that anon)
Teach my Origins, Evolution and Creation course for what must be the eleventh time (Spring)
Give a talk at the University of Oklahoma for their Darwin celebrations (February). This was the first of a number of invites I got to give a talk on February 12th and thus the one I accepted.
Give a four day…
jlynch | January 1, 20092009 is not just the Darwin Bicentennial, it is also the International Year of Astronomy. As APOD reminds us,
This year was picked by the International Astronomical Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization because it occurs 400 years after Galileo turned one of the first telescopes toward the heavens. Peering through that small window, Galileo discovered that the Moon has craters, Venus has phases, Jupiter has moons, and Saturn has rings.
ASU is hosting a series of events celebrating Darwin, and April will see a big symposium on origins, but I'm not…
jlynch | December 31, 2008Quoth Fuller:
But I happen to think that there is something more worth arguing about here, and a better way to think about the stakes is to ask, Suppose the matter of evidence remains unresolved or equally balanced: What difference does it make whether I endorse ID or Darwinism? Does it lead me to do science differently - in terms of the research questions chosen, the range of interpretations given to research results, as well as science's broader cultural significance? The answer to these questions seems to me to be clearly yes - and this is what the battle is about. Only some leftover…
jlynch | November 22, 2008
The Tyndall Correspondence Project (of which I am a participant) has now gone online. Our aim is to follow in the footsteps of the Darwin Correspondence Project and transcribe the letters of the Irish physicist, John Tyndall. The site is a little bare at the moment, but more information and resources will be forthcoming.
jlynch | November 1, 2008ASU has a number of exciting graduate programs in history, philosophy and social studies of science (with particular emphasis on the biological sciences). I am a faculty member for three of these programs (Biology & Society, Philosophy & Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology) and have worked with PhD and MA/MS students. If you are an undergraduate or graduate student who wants to study in these fields, please do not hesitate to use the contact information below or contact me with any questions you may have.
We announce new graduate programs to study science and society…
jlynch | October 28, 20082009 ASU-MBL History of Biology Seminar: Theory in the Life Sciences
May 20-27
Application Deadline: January 15, 2009
The MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar is an intensive week with annually varying topics designed for a group of no more than 25 advanced graduate students, postdoctoral associates, younger scholars, and established researchers in biology, history, philosophy, and the social sciences.
The 2009 seminar will focus on the meaning of "theory in biology" as well as "biological theory." What makes biological theories different from theories in the physical sciences, and how has…
jlynch | October 8, 2008I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Indianapolis. Tomorrow I will be attending a two-day Liberty Fund seminar on "Liberty in the Scientific Enlightenment," a discussion using E.O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge as a jumping off point. Other attendees (there are 15 in total) include Vernon Smith, Larry Arnhart, Carl Mitcham, Stephen Barr, and Ronald Bailey. How - or why - I ended up in such company, I'm still unsure, but if anything interesting happens, I might just post something.