History
evolvingthoughts | August 12, 2008
A retired chemist has had his home lab confiscated in Maryland because a government official was scared of it. Sayeth Robert Thompson:
Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for Marlboro, stated, "I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."
Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: "Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his…
evolvingthoughts | August 11, 2008
Steven ("Steve") Fuller is a well known sociologist of science (he began as a philosopher of science but is presently employed by the University of Warwick as a sociologist). He is widely credited for the subject and journal of Social Epistemology. He is also the guy who wrote several hundred pages of "expert" opinion for the creationists in the Dover Trial for money. Never one to waste work, he has revised it as a book. Save yourself the $20 and read Sahotra Sarkar's review in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. I particularly like the final sentences:
These excursions into fancy allow…
evolvingthoughts | August 10, 2008
A chance link to my blog has led me through an ego search to find Will Thomas' most excellent Ether Wave Propaganda blog. Will is a historian of science post-doc, I think, and he has an engaging style.
Coincidentally, John Lynch lists various links to history of science, including a number of bloggers (your host included). It looks like the beginnings of a Mexican wave of historians.
I recommend Will's post linked to at the start of this post as a discussion of the role and justification for doing history of science.
evolvingthoughts | August 9, 2008
This is cool. I always like to find historical documents online; even better when they're free. The Society for General Microbiology has scanned its journal International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM) back to the first edition in 1951 and made the archival articles free to all. Since the discovery of organisms is a once-off affair, subsequent researchers need access to the item that announced it in peer-reviewed print to be able to be sure they are working on the right species. So more than most sciences, taxonomy is a historical science, and since bugs (the…
evolvingthoughts | August 7, 2008
Having blown my own trumpet, I should mention that there are a few other articles in the same edition of Biology and Philosophy (which I hadn't seen until now) on Gavrilets' view of adaptive landscapes now on Online First: Massimo Pigliucci has a very nice historical summary of Sewall Wright's initial metaphor and ideas and how they changed (it hadn't occurred to me, but should have, that the landscape metaphor fails to deal with new mutations, which change the landscape itself (although I did say something like this in my 1998 paper). Anya Plutinski discusses the iconography of Wright's…
pharyngula | August 6, 2008It's on the internets. The opening is something that I can't imagine flying by on American television: he simply says that evolution is a vastly superior explanation to anything religion has ever provided.
aardvarchaeology | August 5, 2008
To how many technological civilisations is our galaxy home at this moment? It would be nice to know, so we could estimate our chances of ever coming into contact with somebody out there. In 1961, astronomer Francis Drake suggested a number of parameters relevant to this issue, and summarised them in an equation that bears his name to this day. One of the parameters is the mean life-span of a technological civilisation.
In issue 2008:2 of Skeptic Magazine that reached me today, Michael Shermer has an interesting paper where he states that of Drake's parameters, the mean life-span is actually…
evolvingthoughts | August 4, 2008
My Sciblings Bora, John, Brian and Benjamin have asked what the value of the history of science is to scientists. Below the fold is my apologia for writing a stonking great history of a scientific concept (species, in case the sidebar wasn't enough hint), in which I defend the worth of intellectual history to historians. Maybe it will add something to this debate. It is from the preface to my book. I hope the history of science is worthwhile, but it is interesting that the people who most wanted my book to be published are scientists working in the field on which I am writing, so I think it…
pharyngula | August 3, 2008Whoa, Charlie Booker's review of a new documentary on Darwin really makes me want to see it.
Darwin's theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it's been under attack since day one. That's just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we'd still be debating Newton with idiots too.
I think this might be the documentary he's talking about, which has already made…
evolvingthoughts | July 30, 2008
For a while now, and in particular since I read Robert Bannister's Social Darwinism and then actually read Herbert Spencer's own work, I have been unable to reconcile the mythology about social Darwinism with the actual writings of Spencer himself. Supposedly the founder of the justification for robber baron capitalism, Spencer actually proposes feminism, liberal protection of the poor and weak, and other ideas that are more redolent of Mill than Malthus (who is also the subject of similar demonisation, as Flew showed). Now someone has affirmed my unease: Damon Root, writing in Reason…
oracknows | July 29, 2008Somehow, someway, a bit of slime oozed its way into a Manhattan church to insinuate itself into that fair city and thereby contaminate it. Somehow, I managed to miss it.
Sadly, the world's most famous Holocaust denier, David Irving, is touring the U.S. to give aid and comfort to anti-Semites, racists, and Nazi wannabes all throughout the United States. I can't figure out why he's allowed in the U.S., but somehow he is, and he takes full advantage of the situation to replenish his coffers with the dollars of the American white power ranger Jew-hater contingent, all the while claiming he is not…
oracknows | July 23, 2008Enough with Radovan Karadzic, already!
I know schadenfreude can be a fun thing. I've even indulged in it myself from time to time. I also know that Radovan Karadzic was a very, very bad man who engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans wars of the early and mid-1990s. My interest in the Holocaust and Holocaust denial makes it hard not to see the parallels between Karadzic and what Hitler wanted to do.
So, wonder all the people who have forwarded me links to stories revealing that Karadzic had been practicing alternative medicine while he was on the lam all these years, why have…
evolvingthoughts | July 21, 2008
I was breathless, sitting in the loungeroom of my religious studies teacher in Year 7. Unlike nearly everyone else in my year, I was a space nerd. I kept card files of each astronaut and cosmonaut. I knew how many thousands of pounds each F1 engine on the Saturn V used per minute. I was waiting...
And this ghostly and ethereal image showed a man who stood on the landing pad of the LEM on another world, and... well just watch it for yourself and know this was one of the greatest moments of my life, a year after one of the worst (the death of my dad):
pharyngula | July 18, 2008Somebody is publishing private letters! Of course, these are 186 year old private letters from a 12 year old Charles Darwin, and they're very amusing. I guess he wasn't a fan of bathing, and later wasn't shy about trash-talking his college professors. He was a very pugnacious little boy!
evolvingthoughts | July 15, 2008
Ryan Gregory at Genomicron has a couple of interesting posts; One on Natural Selection before Darwin, which discusses prior presentations back to Hutton. I think he's right that prior to Darwin selection was typically not thought of as a way to form new species. It's generally not after Darwin either - speciation is usually thought of as a side effect of selection. Also he argues that abiogenesis, the formation of life from abiotic materials, is a part of evolution, but not required by evolutionary theory. I agree: but not because abiogenesis begins with replication. Rather, I think…
razib | July 15, 2008There's a fair amount of evidence for greater social pathology among whites of Southern origin. One of the major issues that Blue State liberals like to point out that is that on metrics of moral turpitude Southern whites stand out; those who promote a narrow and strident conception of ethical behavior are the most likely to transgress those very norms. Logically one might contend that in a society where there is no murder there need be no laws against it. Similarly, in our society we don't have specific laws against consumption of one's own children for food because it is such a rare…
oracknows | July 9, 2008Courtesy of antivaccinationist Kool Aid drinker Ginger Taylor, I saw this new term for those who argue against the scientifically dubious proposition that vaccines cause autism, specifically Paul Offit:
Vaccinianity - (Vax.e.an.eh.te) n. The worship of Vaccination. The belief that Vaccine is inherently Good and therefore cannot cause damage. If damage does occur, it is not because Vaccine was bad, but because the injured party was a poor receptacle for the inherently Good Vaccine. (ie. hanna poling was hurt when she came into contact with Vaccine, not because the Vaccine was harmful, but…
aardvarchaeology | July 7, 2008
I spent Thursday and Friday digging test pits with a group of energetic volunteers at Djurhamn, the first two of seven planned days in the field. The great Ehrsson brothers are now joined by an equally solid Ehrsson nephew, among other hard-working people. We're looking for archaeological evidence for historically attested land activity around a harbour whose seafloor is covered with 17th and 18th century refuse dumped from ships. Written sources collected by Katarina Schoerner mention "the big quay" and "the military camp" including an "ale hut", but we have no idea where they were, really…
pharyngula | July 6, 2008If you're listening to Atheists Talk radio right now, you've been hearing a lot about the secular intent of the founding of the US government. The LA Times has an article on the Jefferson Bible — that greatly abridged version of the Bible that Jefferson made by chopping out all the miracles and unbelievable stuff, reducing it to a work of New Testament philosophy. The article asks,
"Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, 'I only believe these parts?'"
My reaction would be "…