Debating Design: from Darwin To
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Arguments from Design
Arguments from Design: A Self-defeating Strategy? Victoria S. Harrison University of Glasgow This is an archived version of ‘Arguments form Design: A Self-defeating Strategy?’, published in Philosophia 33 (2005): 297–317. Dr V. Harrison Department of Philosophy 69 Oakfield Avenue University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8LT Scotland UK E-mail: [email protected] Arguments from Design: A Self-defeating Strategy? Abstract: In this article, after reviewing traditional arguments from design, I consider some more recent versions: the so-called ‘new design arguments’ for the existence of God. These arguments enjoy an apparent advantage over the traditional arguments from design by avoiding some of Hume’s famous criticisms. However, in seeking to render religion and science compatible, it seems that they require a modification not only of our scientific understanding but also of the traditional conception of God. Moreover, there is a key problem with arguments from design that Mill raised to which the new arguments seem no less vulnerable than the older versions. The view that science and religion are complementary has at least one significant advantage over other positions, such as the view that they are in an antagonistic relationship or the view that they are so incommensurable that they are neither complementary nor antagonistic. The advantage is that it aspires to provide a unified worldview that is sensitive to the claims of both science and religion. And surely, such a worldview, if available, would seem to be superior to one in which, say, scientific and religious claims were held despite their obvious contradictions. -
Super! Drama TV December 2020 ▶Programs Are Suspended for Equipment Maintenance from 1:00-7:00 on the 15Th
Super! drama TV December 2020 ▶Programs are suspended for equipment maintenance from 1:00-7:00 on the 15th. Note: #=serial number [J]=in Japanese [D]=in Danish 2020.11.30 2020.12.01 2020.12.02 2020.12.03 2020.12.04 2020.12.05 2020.12.06 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 06:00 06:00 MACGYVER Season 2 06:00 MACGYVER Season 2 06:00 MACGYVER Season 2 06:00 MACGYVER Season 2 06:00 06:00 MACGYVER Season 3 06:00 BELOW THE SURFACE 06:00 #20 #21 #22 #23 #1 #8 [D] 「Skyscraper - Power」 「Wind + Water」 「UFO + Area 51」 「MacGyver + MacGyver」 「Improvise」 06:30 06:30 06:30 07:00 07:00 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:00 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:00 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:00 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:00 07:00 STAR TREK Season 1 07:00 STAR TREK: THE NEXT 07:00 Season 12 Season 12 Season 12 Season 12 #4 GENERATION Season 7 #7「The Grant Allocation Derivation」 #9 「The Citation Negation」 #11「The Paintball Scattering」 #13「The Confirmation Polarization」 「The Naked Time」 #15 07:30 07:30 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:30 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:30 THE BIG BANG THEORY 07:30 information [J] 07:30 「LOWER DECKS」 07:30 Season 12 Season 12 Season 12 #8「The Consummation Deviation」 #10「The VCR Illumination」 #12「The Propagation Proposition」 08:00 08:00 SUPERNATURAL Season 11 08:00 SUPERNATURAL Season 11 08:00 SUPERNATURAL Season 11 08:00 SUPERNATURAL Season 11 08:00 08:00 THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO 08:00 STAR TREK: THE NEXT 08:00 #5 #6 #7 #8 Season 3 GENERATION Season 7 「Thin Lizzie」 「Our Little World」 「Plush」 「Just My Imagination」 #18「AVALANCHE」 #16 08:30 08:30 08:30 THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO 「THINE OWN SELF」 08:30 -
A Comprehensive Look at the Salem Witch Mania of 1692 Ashley Layhew
The Devil’s in the Details: A Comprehensive Look at the Salem Witch Mania of 1692 __________ Ashley Layhew Nine-year-old Betty Parris began to convulse, seize, and scream gibber- ish in the winter of 1692. The doctor pronounced her bewitched when he could find no medical reason for her actions. Five other girls began ex- hibiting the same symptoms: auditory and visual hallucinations, fevers, nausea, diarrhea, epileptic fits, screaming, complaints of being bitten, poked, pinched, and slapped, as well as coma-like states and catatonic states. Beseeching their Creator to ease the suffering of the “afflicted,” the Puritans of Salem Village held a day of fasting and prayer. A relative of Betty’s father, Samuel Parris, suggested a folk cure, in which the urine of the afflicted girls was taken and made into a cake. The villagers fed the cake to a dog, as dogs were believed to be the evil helpers of witches. This did not work, however, and the girls were pressed to name the peo- ple who were hurting them.1 The girls accused Tituba, a Caribbean slave who worked in the home of Parris, of being the culprit. They also accused two other women: Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne. The girls, all between the ages of nine and sixteen, began to accuse their neighbors of bewitching them, saying that three women came to them and used their “spectres” to hurt them. The girls would scream, cry, and mimic the behaviors of the accused when they had to face them in court. They named many more over the course of the next eight months; the “bewitched” youth accused a total of one hundred and forty four individuals of being witches, with thirty sev- en of those executed following a trial. -
Polanyi Review Committee Report
THE EXTERNAL REVIEW COMMITTEE REPORT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY The External Review Committee was convened to review the status of the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University, which was established a year ago with the primary aim of advancing the understanding of the sciences. In the early summer, members of the Committee received copies of books and articles relevant to the work of the Center. On September 8 and 9, 2000, the Committee met to discuss what they had read, to hear from persons who addressed matters about which the Committee was concerned, and to formulate a response to the charge the Committee had been given. The vigorous discussions about the issues contained in the charge reflected the variety in the backgrounds and perspectives of the Committee members. The outcome of these discussions was a thorough and even- handed review of the concerns before the Committee. It is important from the outset to emphasize that the sciences at Baylor University are the inheritors of a long and distinguished tradition. For many years, undergraduate instruction in the sciences at Baylor has been conducted in an exciting and effective manner. The graduate and research programs are solid and well respected throughout the scientific community. Not only have students and faculty been active in the mainstream of scientific disciplines, but they have also pursued initiatives in new areas and directions. Baylor’s heritage, in this regard, is clearly one of which it can be proud. The relationship of the sciences to other academic fields is a further responsibility that Baylor seeks to address. Relationships between the sciences and the humanities, as well as issues relating to the environment and public policy, are matters of real concern to the Baylor community. -
Distinguishing Drift and Selection Empirically: “The Great Snail Debate” of the 1950S
Distinguishing Drift and Selection Empirically: “The Great Snail Debate” of the 1950s ROBERTA L. MILLSTEIN Department of Philosophy University of California, Davis One Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616 USA E-mail: [email protected] Forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Biology -- no doubt, there will be some (hopefully small) changes in the proofing process Distinguishing Drift and Selection Empirically p. 1 Abstract: Biologists and philosophers have been extremely pessimistic about the possibility of demonstrating random drift in nature, particularly when it comes to distinguishing random drift from natural selection. However, examination of a historical case - Maxime Lamotte's study of natural populations of the land snail, Cepaea nemoralis in the 1950s - shows that while some pessimism is warranted, it has been overstated. Indeed, by describing a unique signature for drift and showing that this signature obtained in the populations under study, Lamotte was able to make a good case for a significant role for drift. It may be difficult to disentangle the causes of drift and selection acting in a population, but it is not (always) impossible. Keywords: adaptationism, Arthur J. Cain, conspicuous polymorphism, Cepaea nemoralis, random genetic drift, ecological genetics, evolution, Philip M. Sheppard, Maxime Lamotte, natural selection, selectionist Pessimistic Introduction The process known as “random drift”1 is often considered to be one of the most important chance elements in evolution. Yet, over the years, biologists and philosophers have expressed pessimism about the possibility of demonstrating random drift in nature. The following is just a sampling. In 1951, Arthur Cain argued: 1 Authors refer to this phenomenon variously as “random drift,” “genetic drift,” “random genetic drift,” or simply “drift,” without any apparent shift in meaning. -
Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Washington University St. Louis: Open Scholarship Washington University Law Review Volume 83 Issue 1 2005 Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution Matthew J. Brauer Princeton University Barbara Forrest Southeastern Louisiana University Steven G. Gey Florida State University Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Education Law Commons, First Amendment Commons, Religion Law Commons, and the Science and Technology Law Commons Recommended Citation Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey, Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution, 83 WASH. U. L. Q. 1 (2005). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol83/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Washington University Law Quarterly VOLUME 83 NUMBER 1 2005 IS IT SCIENCE YET?: INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND THE CONSTITUTION MATTHEW J. BRAUER BARBARA FORREST STEVEN G. GEY* TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................... 3 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. -
Evidence for Design in Physics and Biology: from the Origin of the Universe to the Origin of Life
52 stephen c. meyer Pages 53–111 of Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe. The Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute. Michael Behe, STEPHEN C. MEYER William A. Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001. 2000 Homeland Foundation.) EVIDENCE FOR DESIGN IN PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY: FROM THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 1. Introduction In the preceding essay, mathematician and probability theo- rist William Dembski notes that human beings often detect the prior activity of rational agents in the effects they leave behind.¹ Archaeologists assume, for example, that rational agents pro- duced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone; insurance fraud investigators detect certain ‘‘cheating patterns’’ that suggest intentional manipulation of circumstances rather than ‘‘natu- ral’’ disasters; and cryptographers distinguish between random signals and those that carry encoded messages. More importantly, Dembski’s work establishes the criteria by which we can recognize the effects of rational agents and distinguish them from the effects of natural causes. In brief, he shows that systems or sequences that are both ‘‘highly com- plex’’ (or very improbable) and ‘‘specified’’ are always produced by intelligent agents rather than by chance and/or physical- chemical laws. Complex sequences exhibit an irregular and improbable arrangement that defies expression by a simple formula or algorithm. A specification, on the other hand, is a match or correspondence between an event or object and an independently given pattern or set of functional requirements. As an illustration of the concepts of complexity and speci- fication, consider the following three sets of symbols: 53 54 stephen c. -
The Impotent Fury of William Dembski
THE DESIGN REVOLUTION? How William Dembski Is Dodging Questions About Intelligent Design By Mark Perakh Who is William A. Dembski? We are told that he has PhD degrees in mathematics and philosophy plus more degrees - in theology and what not – a long list of degrees indeed. [1] To acquire all those degrees certainly required an unconventional penchant for getting as many degrees as possible. We all know that degrees alone do not make a person a scientist. Scientific degrees are not like ranks in the military where a general is always above a mere colonel. Degrees are only a formal indicator of a person’s educational status. A scientist’s reputation and authority are based on his degrees only to a negligible extent. What really attests to a person’s status in science is publications in professional journals and anthologies and references to one’s work by colleagues. This is the domain where Dembski has so far remained practically invisible. All his multiple publications have little or nothing to do with science. He is a mathematician who did not prove any theorem and derived not a single formula. When he writes about probability theory or information theory -- on which he is proclaimed to be an expert -- the real experts in these fields (using the words of the prominent mathematician David Wolpert) “squint, furrow one's brows, and then shrug.” [2] When encountering critique of his work, Dembski is selective in choosing when to reply to his critics and when to ignore their critique. His preferred targets for replies are those critics who do not boast comparable long lists of formal credentials – this enables him to contemptuously dismiss the critical comments by pointing to the alleged lack of qualification of his opponents while avoiding answering the essence of their critical remarks. -
Cotton Mathers's Wonders of the Invisible World: an Authoritative Edition
Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 1-12-2005 Cotton Mathers's Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition Paul Melvin Wise Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Wise, Paul Melvin, "Cotton Mathers's Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2005. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/5 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COTTON MATHER’S WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD: AN AUTHORITATIVE EDITION by PAUL M. WISE Under the direction of Reiner Smolinski ABSTRACT In Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather applies both his views on witchcraft and his millennial calculations to events at Salem in 1692. Although this infamous treatise served as the official chronicle and apologia of the 1692 witch trials, and excerpts from Wonders of the Invisible World are widely anthologized, no annotated critical edition of the entire work has appeared since the nineteenth century. This present edition seeks to remedy this lacuna in modern scholarship, presenting Mather’s seventeenth-century text next to an integrated theory of the natural causes of the Salem witch panic. The likely causes of Salem’s bewitchment, viewed alongside Mather’s implausible explanations, expose his disingenuousness in writing about Salem. Chapter one of my introduction posits the probability that a group of conspirators, led by the Rev. -
Multi-Agent Economics and the Emergence of Critical Markets
Multi-agent Economics and the Emergence of Critical Markets Michael S. Harr´e1 1Complex Systems Research Group, Faculty of Engineering and IT, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. Abstract The dual crises of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the global financial crisis has prompted a call for explanations of non-equilibrium market dynamics. Recently a promising approach has been the use of agent based models (ABMs) to simulate aggregate market dynamics. A key aspect of these models is the endogenous emergence of critical transitions between equilibria, i.e. market collapses, caused by multiple equilibria and changing market parameters. Several research themes have developed microeconomic based models that include multiple equilibria: social decision theory (Brock and Durlauf), quantal response models (McKelvey and Palfrey), and strategic complementarities (Goldstein). A gap that needs to be filled in the literature is a unified analysis of the relationship between these models and how aggregate criticality emerges from the individual agent level. This article reviews the agent-based foundations of markets starting with the individual agent perspective of McFadden and the aggregate perspective of catastrophe theory emphasising connections between the different approaches. It is shown that changes in the uncertainty agents have in the value of their interactions with one another, even if these changes are one-sided, plays a central role in systemic market risks such as market instability and the twin crises effect. These interactions can endogenously cause crises that are an emergent phenomena of markets. 1 Introduction Multi-agent models have grown in popularity [2, 5, 64, 9, 34, 37] as a way in which to simu- late complex market dynamics that might have no closed form solutions. -
Divining Darwin: Evolving Responses and the Contribution of David Lack1
S & CB (2014), 26, 53–78 0954–4194 R. J. (SAM) BERRY Divining Darwin: Evolving Responses and the Contribution of David Lack1 Christian believers, particularly evangelicals, often react to evolutionary ideas with more heat than light. A significant contribution to clarifying understanding was a book published in 1957, Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief by the eminent ornithologist David Lack. It was the first attempt to tease out the issues by a scientist of his calibre. Information about this book has recently been published in a biography of Lack. This essay seeks to put Lack’s contribution into the perspective of both past and continuing perceptions of Christianity and evolution. Key words: Darwin, Darwinism, Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief, David Lack, Dan and Mary Neylan, C.S.Lewis, human nature, imago Dei This paper is about the contribution of David Lack, one of the most dis- tinguished biologists of the twentieth century, to the debates about evolu- tion and Christianity, and his personal journey thereto. His contribution is significant because of the authority he brought to a book he wrote in 1957, which raised these debates to a much more positive and informed level than had previously been the practice. But before we get to Lack and his book, we need to understand something of the background to the understanding of evolution by both scientists and Christians. The reaction of the Christian community to Darwin’s Origin of Species2 ought to be a simple matter of historical record.3 In practice it is regularly muddied. An Editorial in Nature in 2009 claimed, ‘In England the Church reacted badly to Darwin’s theory, going so far as to say that to believe it was to imperil your soul.’4 There may well have been those who maintained this, but they seem to have been few. -
Cain on Linnaeus: the Scientist-Historian As Unanalysed Entity
Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci., Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 239–254, 2001 Pergamon 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 1369-8486/01 $ - see front matter www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc Cain on Linnaeus: The Scientist-Historian as Unanalysed Entity Mary P. Winsor* Zoologist A. J. Cain began historical research on Linnaeus in 1956 in connection with his dissatisfaction over the standard taxonomic hierarchy and the rules of binomial nomenclature. His famous 1958 paper ‘Logic and Memory in Linnaeus’s System of Taxonomy’ argues that Linnaeus was following Aristotle’s method of logical division without appreciating that it properly applies only to ‘analysed entities’ such as geo- metric figures whose essential nature is already fully known. The essence of living things being unanalysed, there is no basis on which to choose the right characters to define a genus nor on which to differentiate species. Yet Cain’s understanding of Aristotle, which depended on a 1916 text by H. W. B. Joseph, was fatally flawed. In the 1990s Cain devoted himself to further historical study and softened his verdict on Linnaeus, praising his empiricism. The idea that Linnaeus was applying an ancient and inappropriate method cries out for fresh study and revision. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: A. J. Cain; Linnaeus; Aristotle; Essentialism; Systematics; Logic. The category to which the following belongs is not the history of systematics but the history of the history of systematics. I have just one small tale to tell, but I suspect there are similar tales scattered about unnoticed in the history of other sciences, and it seems to me they are worth uncovering.