biology · DNA · evolution · junk DNA · natural selection · science

Fisking ENCODE

A recent slew of ENCODE Consortium publications, specifically the article signed by all Consortium members, put forward the idea that more than 80% of the human genome is functional. This claim flies in the face of current estimates according to which the fraction of the genome that is evolutionarily conserved through purifying selection is under… Continue reading Fisking ENCODE

metaphysics · natural law · philosophy · teleology

The Limits of Natural Law

In abstraction from specific religious or metaphysical traditions, there really is very little that natural law theory can meaningfully say about the relative worthiness of the employments of the will. There are, of course, generally observable facts about the characteristics of our humanity (the desire for life and happiness, the capacity for allegiance and affinity,… Continue reading The Limits of Natural Law

Aquinas · medieval history · Middle Ages · philosophy · theology · Thomism

The Middle Ages … and Your Latest Laptop

Those rules of argument became increasingly complex. Many, after several centuries, now seem almost banal: it is perhaps a testimony to the effectiveness and importance of the foundations laid down in the twelfth century that stages in argumentative processes which then had to be carefully thought through and elucidated are now taken for granted, with… Continue reading The Middle Ages … and Your Latest Laptop