epistemology, science, kinds of knowledge, methodology
The modern distinction between fact and value goes back to David Hume who argued that “is” does not imply “ought” — there is no way to get from facts to values. This contrasts with the Aristotelian philosophy in which everything has a nature so that what something is and what it ought to be is defined by […]
Articles about creationism (and intelligent design) almost always misrepresent them for one or more of the following reasons: (1) Articles about creationism don’t quote or reference documents by creationists. Instead they explain what the author thinks creationism is. However, the author is wrong about what creationism is and ends up arguing against a position that
Indeed, the commonplace distinction between the fact of evolution and the mechanism of evolution may apply equally well to design—recognition of a fact of design need not be anchored to an understanding of the mechanisms by which design is introduced into natural phenomena. Incidentally, that point was already made by Paley. (And in fact Dembski’s
Mathematicians have built axiomatic systems since Euclid that have become more and more extensive and sophisticated. But Kurt Gödel performed a great service when he showed that there is much more truth to mathematics than could ever be formalized in an axiomatic system. Mathematicians gave up looking for a complete theory, except within limited domains
There is a kind of scholarship that starts with a very literalistic reading of a source text, finds contradictions in it, and concludes either that it is a combination of contradictory texts or that a very non-literal reading is justified. This is a method that seeks to justify one extreme by criticizing another extreme. No
Isaac Newton was the first science “star” — someone who achieved great prestige as a result of their scientific investigations. His contemporary Alexander Pope famously wrote about him: Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said “Let Newton be” and all was light. Newton himself was more modest of his own achievements, writing
I attended a seminar recently with Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute. He’s a good speaker who talked mostly about his book Darwin’s Doubt and anthropic fine tuning. Here are some highlights and things I hadn’t heard before from an ID speaker: He spoke not only about design but also about “a designing mind”. There
Google’s Ngram Viewer gives the frequencies of words and phrases in books since about 1800. It is an interesting way of looking at history in the last two centuries. What follows are some observations about the usage of words associated with religion and Christianity: Usage of the word religion has gradually decreased since 1810, steeply until 1860.
Google’s Ngram Viewer is a fascinating look at word usage since about 1800. For example, the story of how the term natural history declined and the terms biology and geology increased is told in a simple chart. Let’s look at the etymologies first, via the Online Etymology Dictionary: biology (n.) 1819, from Greek bios “life” (see bio-)
Michael Crichton, a well-known scientist and author, delivered the Caltech Michelin Lecture on January 17, 2003. He entitled it “Aliens Cause Global Warming” which criticized what is called “consensus science” starting with SETI. A few excerpts: I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called
