Apropos the continuing com-storm Ed Feser has stirred up with his critical posts on “intelligent” design (all of which I agree with), I was struck by this passage from John Hedley Brooke’s Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, which bears up precisely what Ed’s saying: Brooke devoted a chapter to Paley’s approach to natural theology,… Continue reading Brooke on Paley, Design, and all that…
Brandon Watson has an excellent post on Darwin and teleology: The most important is that the word ‘teleology’ is ambiguous, and was already ambiguous in Darwin’s time. By ‘teleology’ you can mean Paleyan teleology, in which organisms exhibit a design plan that is explained by the imposition of a designer in a special creation at… Continue reading Darwin and Teleology
Fellow blogger and outstanding philosopher of biology John Wilkins’ long-awaited book on the origin of the species concept is now out and Larry Arnhart has written the first review: When Darwin claimed that all species have evolved from ancestral species so that each species is adapted to a specific manner of life, he was closer… Continue reading
I would never describe myself as a theistic evolutionist, but John Wilkins (as always) has a thoughtful post on the implications of Darwin, God and Chance that is, as the late William F. Buckley might say, felicitous. There is a simulation program called Avida, which simulates a process of evolution by selection on “animats” or… Continue reading Felicitous Implications
