Creationism and naturalism

Some creationists emphasize the difference in religious/metaphysical assumptions of creationism vs. evolutionism as if this explains almost all their differences.  But if that were true, creationists should focus on defending their religious/metaphysical assumptions instead of criticizing evolution. Since they do spend much time criticizing evolution, they are at least implicitly saying they have enough in common with …

Creationism and naturalism Read More »

Rise and fall of science

In broad Aristotelian terms, this is how it happened: Aristotle articulated four types of causes — material, efficient (mechanism), formal (design), and final (purpose) — with the final cause as the most important.  His biology tried to find these causes but he had to speculate about final causes and his biology failed. Fast-forward to Francil …

Rise and fall of science Read More »

Three research programmes

For Lakatos, what we think of as a ‘theory’ may actually be a succession of slightly different theories and experimental techniques developed over time, that share some common idea, or what Lakatos called their ‘hard core’. Lakatos called such changing collections ‘Research Programmes’. (1) Here is a description of three research programmes concerned mainly with …

Three research programmes Read More »