John Wilkins has an interesting post on the problems that philosophers have had with evolution: The odd thing about this is that as people were asserting that essentialism is dead (see the article on species linked above), they were being essentialists about concepts and units and ranks. Ernst Mayr, for example, who asserted that species… Continue reading
Month: May 2009
Brad Gooch’s new biography of Flannery O’Connor is reviewed for the Atlantic by Joseph O’Neill. It looks like a fascinating book, and one I’m planning to add to my list. I was struck in particular by this: O’Connor was a fervent Roman Catholic—a “thirteenth century” Catholic, as she described herself. She read deeply into theology,… Continue reading
Anthony Lane has some serious fun with the new Star Trek movie. Here, in other words, is a long-range backstory—a device that, in the Hollywood of recent times, has grown from an option to a fetish. I lost patience with “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” once we learned of Willy Wonka’s primal trauma (his father… Continue reading
Superb video on PCR and electrophoresis.
Calling Jerry Coyne’s BluffSteve Matheson does a nice job explaining the problem with ‘theistic evolution’, and therein I think nicely shows why Coyne’s attacks on accomodationism really amount to nothing more than attacks on fellow scientists who are religious.