Philosophy of Science
evolvingthoughts | August 9, 2006One of the pitfalls of blogging is that you can go for days without finding anything worth saying, and then get a bunch of things worth noting all at once. Today is such a day. So here is a heterogeneous collection of links and topics for your delectation (I love that word, and "heterogeneous"):
1. The AAAS has released a book called The Evolution Dialogues, which addresses the relation between Christian theology and science, with a study guide to come. More power to Christians, I say, if it helps them understand the actual science.
2. Here is a release about the loss of retrocyclin, a…
evolvingthoughts | August 6, 2006One of my favourite bands of the 80s was Split Enz, out of which Crowded House evolved. And one of their best songs was titled "History never repeats", a sentiment that seems to be fairly widespread. Recently, I started Dawkins' latest book (what is it with established writers on evolution? Gould's brick was immensely in need of editing, and so is The Ancestor's Tale). The first epigram is attributed to Mark Twain:
History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes
Compare this with the somewhat later claim by American philosopher Georges Santayana:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends…
evolvingthoughts | August 3, 2006Science & Theology News has an article on "evolutionism" that is replete with historical errors and other misdemeanors. But it indicates some nuances of the evolutionary biological debates are starting to have some impact.
The author, Gennaro Auletta, is a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. One may applaud his attempt to come to terms with biology, but he repeats many of the usual theological canards about evolution. Let's have a look at his article, shall we?
The distinction between evolution and evolutionism is of extreme relevance. Michael Ruse's…
evolvingthoughts | August 2, 2006This week's question is
What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally....
I can't think of a film that has accurately represented science as I know it. Possibly the film on Bohr and Heisenberg from the play by Michael Frayn, Copenhagen, which attempts to not only put the viewer in the morally ambiguous position of Heisenberg as he worked for the Nazi atomic bomb project, but also explain the science behind the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and the…
evolvingthoughts | August 2, 2006Here is a worthwhile short essay on biodiversity and the role of social norms in science. I particularly liked these paragraphs:
To begin with, it is apparent that "biodiversity" is not a factual observation, but a cultural construction. One way to construct it is by considering only biodiversity that arises from evolutionary processes, in which case loss of "traditional" species equates to loss of biodiversity. Alternatively, one can consider only designed biodiversity, in which case gains in constructed forms of life, such as GMOs or engineered bacteria constitute gains in biodiversity. Or…
scientificactivist | August 2, 2006On the surface, science and poetry seem as distant from each other as the Republican Party and good science policy. And, in a large part they are. While both strive for a deeper understanding of the world around us, one avoids the subjective like the plague, while the other embraces it almost exclusively. However, as a recent article by Siobhan Roberts in the Toronto Star explores, scientists are no stranger to the poetic devices of metaphor and analogy.
Roberts' article explores analogy not as just a device used by scientists to communicate their work, but as a fundamental tool of…
evolvingthoughts | August 1, 2006
In which our hero rediscovers history and sociology and damned hot weather...
My travels continued with the usual boring flight to Heathrow, thence to Chicago, and a train trip to visit David Hull, as I said. As I flew into American airspace, I was struck looking out the window by the haze of pollution that covers the entire continent. I saw this also last year and in previous trips. Looking down from 11km, one wonders if the sun can even be seen on the ground, for the ground cannot be easily seen from the air. On the ground, though, the heat indicates that enough energy reaches the ground…
evolvingthoughts | July 31, 2006I just want to start out saying
1. Everybody has been tagged with this one, and
2. These aren't really "memes", although these days I think that term is otiose. A meme spreads itself.
Anyway, now I'm back from such non-English speaking places as Bristol, Exeter, London and Chicago (Paris and Bloomington IN were fine), I thought I'd answer this before I catch up on several weeks' sleep and blog on the second half of my trip (be patient, little ones).
1. One book that changed your life?
Well, I could start with 1984, which I read at the tender age of 8 (in 1963, ergo), but I think that David…
evolvingthoughts | July 26, 2006
In which our hero discovers the joys of walking...
Next on my trip, I visited David Williams, a paleobiologist at the Museum of Natural History in London. We talked at length about the nature of systematics (which is something I am increasingly less certain about) and of the history of species concepts. Then he showed me some of the marvellous architecture that Richard Owen commissioned when he built the place. It really is made to look like a Cathedral of Science, with mock Gothic architecture and vaulting ceilings, all decorated with biological themes, I am pleased to say. Despite his…
scientificactivist | July 13, 2006This week's Nature features a news article and editorial about Francis Collins--director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute--whose new book The Language of God advocates reconciliation between science and religion. Although the status of science in America could be improved by lessening religious anti-science hostility, and we're generally much better off in general when we all get along, the argument advanced by Collins is less than compelling.
To his credit, Collins' religious views are relatively progressive, and he disagrees strongly with creationism and intelligent…
evolvingthoughts | July 8, 2006Rob Skipper has an excellent post at his blog entitled What Scientific Explanation Isn't. It's a good explanation of the DN (deductive nomological) model of explanation offered by Carl Hempel, which has come across some serious criticism of late.
By coincidence, this was a major issue in the two conferences I recently attended. I want to say some things about explanation based on these discussions, and offer a qualified defence of the DN model.
The standard story I was taught some two decades ago was that explanation is a deduction from a law or laws and a set of initial conditions that gives…
evolvingthoughts | July 6, 2006I had a thought as I was recovering from my lack of sleep. What would you like me to cover? I have some forthcoming topics, but I thought you might like to suggest some philosophical issue with biology that interest you (and offer me a chance to catch up on some old subjects I haven't thought about for yonks). Go for it.
evolvingthoughts | July 6, 2006The question offered up to stump those ivory tower eggheads this week, is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?...
Pretty much. I expected it to be both illuminating about the way development proceeds (complicated, as it turns out, and not all that surprising), and socially insignificant. After all, we have been cloning organisms in hothouses and wombs for a long time. The earth still revolves.
What I find much more interesting (not than the biology, though; that's just plain cool), is…
evolvingthoughts | June 21, 2006The Interacademy Panel on International Issues has issued a statement on evolution:
IAP STATEMENT ON THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION
We, the undersigned Academies of Sciences, have learned that in various parts of the world, within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science. We urge decision makers, teachers, and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and to foster…
evolvingthoughts | June 13, 2006[This is another repost from my old blog. I am sitting at home suffering with a hole in my jaw where a tooth, or its remnants was extracted with extreme prejudice, so I don't feel much like blogging.]
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
After a decent period to mourn the death of one of the greatest biologists of the century on any measure, perhaps it is time now to reassess how Mayr's legacy is to be presented. I have no competence to debate his scientific ideas - if speciation is mostly allopatric, or if it is…
evolvingthoughts | June 12, 2006The Public Library of Science, which as I noted recently has started a project of Open Access review of articles with its PLOSOne, has also begun a blog on it, divided into technical and publishing streams. There's not much there yet, and the technical will probably be more useful than the other stream, for those wo wish to set up their own Open Access Review system.
evolvingthoughts | June 11, 2006PvM, in The Panda's Thumb: Laudan, demarcation and the vacuity of Intelligent design, has done a masterful job of pointing out that a favourite quotemine source of the Intelligent Design crowd, Larry Laudan, doesn't say what they say he says, quelle surprise. The issue is epistemological naturalism and the demarcation of science from non-science.
The problem arose when Karl Popper did two things simultaneously: he denied there was a scientific method of discovery, and he tried to show what was different about science from all other human endeavours (primarily Marxist sociology and Freudian…
evolvingthoughts | June 10, 2006
Originally, science began when people started to give their papers and results publicly, for discussion and correction. Back in the days of the Royal Society and other subsequent bodies, a talk would be read to the society and then published in their proceedings, and there was an immediate live feedback. Nowadays the process is much more ossified - research, give talks to your research group, present posters and if you are really lucky a talk at a major conference, then send in the paper for peer review. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Any researcher has played reviewer roulette in…
tfk | February 1, 2005A repost from the archives, providing background in theology
The Leaking of the Wedge:
The story begins, so far as the world at large is concerned, on a late January day seven years ago, in a mail room in a downtown Seattle office of an international human-resources firm. The mail room was also the copy center, and a part-time employee named Matt Duss was handed a document to copy. It was not at all the kind of desperately dull personnel-processing document Duss was used to feeding through the machine. For one thing, it bore the rubber-stamped warnings "TOP SECRET" and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION…