Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Although some scientists (I believe Lawrence Krauss is one) have said that philosophy is useless to scientists, I’m not one of these miscreants. Although I recognize that philosophy can’t find out truths about the real world as opposed to “truths” within logical systems, it can certainly be an aid to thinking about science. Two examples … Continue reading Why science needs philosophy: an op-ed in PNAS
After I wrote my critique of Subrena Smith’s anti-evolutionary-psychology paper this morning—hers titled “Is evolutionary psychology possible?”—I sent the link to Steve Pinker, who’s quarantining on Cape Cod. He wrote back with some nice words of approbation, but added a few points. I thought these points were good, relevant and, as the first two weren’t … Continue reading Steve Pinker weighs in on the “evolutionary psychology is impossible” paper
I thought that The Conversation was largely a news and scholarly opinion website, but every once in a while they slip in some religious nonsense that baffles and saddens me. (For one example, see this risible argument for religiously based brain/mind dualism, and this ridiculous slice of tripe explaining why morality requires God). And now we have … Continue reading The Conversation kisses the rump of religion again
UPDATE: I forgot to add this bit from Welch’s paper about the John Templeton Foundation: It is remarkable, for example, that much of the funding for challenging current practice in evolutionary biology comes from The John Templeton Foundation (Pennisi 2016), which is committed to using science to reveal underlying purpose, and rejecting what Nagel (2012) … Continue reading Why do some scientists always claim that evolutionary biology needs urgent and serious reform?
Think of the poor schmucks who work at the Discovery Institute (DI). Having completely failed to get Intelligent Design taught in schools, or ever moderately accepted in the scientific community—and they predicted such acceptance would have happened by now—they are reduced to carping about evolutionists like me, making ad hominem arguments, and touting those scholars—like Jerry … Continue reading Discovery Institute and Commentary laud Tom Wolfe’s evolution-bashing in “The Kingdom of Speech” (and diss Professor Ceiling Cat)
While we’ve been waiting for The Writing Machine, aka Dr. Steven Pinker, to issue his forthcoming book on how to write science for public consumption, he’s come out with an anthology, Language, Cognition, and Human Nature. It’s out on Kindle now and you can get the dead-tree version on October 25. The Amazon description is below: … Continue reading New Pinker anthology
Read this and we’ll be done with Dobbs, unless he proffers another overhyped piece of science journalism. Over at Richard Dawkins’s own site, he’s responded to Dobbs’s misguided critique of the “gene-centered” view of evolution as described in The Selfish Gene. Richard’s piece is called “Adversarial journalism and the selfish gene.” He’s remarkably polite for a … Continue reading Dawkins responds to Dobbs
My Chicago colleague Robert Richards, a historian of science, has just come out with a new anthology of his essays on evolutionary biology: Was Hitler a Darwinian? Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory. So far I’ve read only two essays (the two mentioned below), but those are both very good, and on that … Continue reading Robert Richards’ new collection of essays on the history of evolutionary biology, including “Was Hitler a Darwinian?”
