John Maynard Smith was a leading evolutionary biologist who passed away in 2004. Here is a short announcement for a tribute held by the University of Sussex.
Yet this great evolutionary biologist has left us with a mystery.
I've always considered the philosopher of science Del Ratzsch one of my favorite writers about ID. He's well-read on the subject, his arguments are both detailed and clear, and he doesn't care a whit about toeing the line or belonging with the right crowd. Imagine my joy when Dembski posted a link to an article (PDF) of Ratzsch's, reviewing the book God, the Devil, and Darwin by Niall Shanks (also mentioned here). Although Ratzsch makes it clear that he too sees some problems with ID, he makes no attempt to hide the polemical and innacurate nature of Shanks' book, showing that it commits the same fallacies as proponents of ID are usually accused of committing, including: Ignoring the relevant literature about the matter under discussion (in this case, history of science), quoting opponents out of context, comitting elemental errors of logic (confusing the motivations of people with the contents of the view they're proposing), and stacking the deck. In fact, Ratzsch's article isn't so much a review as a detailed refutation of a number of arguments popular among the ID critics one can meet on discussion boards and on blogs.
Over on Panda's Thumb, Nick Matzke blogs about an apparent hoax that has ensnared Kelly Hollowell.
On June 13, I received the exact same e-mail (the author found me through my web page). I dismissed the letter as a hoax for a variety of reasons. Anyway, for what it is worth, the old, dying, ex-professor who is willing to donate his revolutionary ideas to fight the spiritual battle, uses one of those free yahoo e-mail accounts and registered with a name that google does not pick up.
Scott LaFee, from the San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE, proposed various questions about ID to several different scientists. So crack open a cold one, kick back, and enjoy the show.
Well, it happened again. Yesterday, on the way to the store, I found myself behind a car that was going about 20 mph in a 25 mph zone. I couldn't pull around the car, but thanks to my genes, I didn't get impatient or upset. On the contrary, this was a time do to some Science!
While the effectiveness of natural selection in evolution is being questioned by more than just ID proponents, it is the non-intentional (randomness) aspect of the mantra, "random mutations and natural selection" that is the most vulnerable to both scientific and logical attack.
Regular readers of this blog will remember "The Amazing James Randi" offering the Smithsonian $20,000 if they'd cancel the showing of the movie The Privileged Planet. The Smithsonian didn't bite, but in an open letter, David Berlinski is offering Randi a chance to cancel another showing of the film:
"But here's the thing, Randi. I was sort of planning to screen the film right here in my apartment in Paris. I've got a little screening room I call The Smithsonian right between the bathroom and the kitchen, I sort of figured I'd invite some friends over, open a couple cans of suds, sort of kick back and enjoy. Now you fork over $20,000 to the Smithsonian not to show the film and right away I'm showing the film here in Paris - that's just not going to work for you, if you catch my drift.
But hey, what are friends for? I mean for $20,000, I can make my screening of the The Privileged Planet go away too. An extra $10,000 and we spend the evening reading aloud from Daniel Dennett's autobiography. I hear it's a real snoozer, no chance at all that anyone's going to walk away from an evening like that with poor thoughts about the cosmos or anything like that. You handle the refreshments - nothing much, some cocktail franks maybe, a few kegs of French beer - and I knock ten percent off the price. What do you say?"
(HT: Evolution News and Views)
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy Blog is mad as hell and he's not gonna' take it any more:
"[The creationists] may have fired the first shot, but we have plenty of ammo on our side as well. And we also have many, many scientists willing to accept this call to arms.
I'm one of them. Over the course of time, you'll be seeing more rebuttals - no, debunking - of creationist claims here. I've had enough, and this threat is real. They want to turn our classrooms in a theocratically-controlled anti-science breeding ground, and I'm not going to sit by and watch it happen. "
The London School of Economics and Political Science has a nice tribute to philosopher of science Imre Lakatos. Included is an actual audio recording of his Science and Pseudoscience lecture.
Science and Pseudoscience is Lakatos's most succinct public summary of his philosophy of science. In this talk he outlines his distinctive view of the importance of 'the demarcation problem' in the philosophy and history of science, namely the normative methodological problem of distinguishing between science and pseudo-science, and of why its solution is not merely an issue of 'armchair philosophy', but also one of vital social and political significance, and even of life and death itself. It reviews what he saw as the inadequacies of previous attempted solutions, such as both probative and probabilist inductivism, and how his own methodology of scientific research programmes solves some of the problems posed by the history of science for those of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. He proposes that scientists regard the successful theoretical prediction of stunning novel facts - such as the return of Halley's comet or the gravitational bending of light rays - as what demarcates good scientific theories from pseudo-scientific and degenerate theories, and in spite of all scientific theories being forever confronted by "an ocean of counterexamples".
MP3 audio of a Lakatos lecture
Once again, it's time for our semi-weekly ID carnival, Meeting of Minds. I'll be accepting submissions at krauze_id AT hotmail DOT com until Monday the 20th, so get cracking. Also, I'm going to be pressed for time around the 20th, so please enclose a short summary of your post. I plan on reading each post and writing my own summary, but if I can't do this, I'll just use your summary instead.
Help get the word out. If you have a blog and is interested in ID (of course you are; why else would you be here?), link back to us and encourage others to do the same. And remember that we would very much like our little brain-child to see new places, so if you're interested in hosting the next edition I'm sure we can work something out.
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