Steve Fuller, who supported the wrong side at the 2005 evolution trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, has now written a book making the entirely discredited argument that intelligent design is "science." Fuller's book ("Dissent over Descent") has been reviewed (actually, savaged) by philosopher Michael Ruse, whose review "A Challenge Standing On…
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently had the opportunity to attend some of the sessions of the “Future Directions in Genetic Studies” workshop at Washington University in St. Louis. One of the talks was by Paul Griffiths, a Philosophy professor from Sydney, Australia, who discussed “The Distinction between Innate and Acquired Characteristics.”
Griffiths’ talk focused on the troubled use of the word “innate.” Also troubled are various synonyms of “innate,” including “instinctual,” and “human nature.” These terms all seem to engender confusion more than anything else, because there is a wide variety of potential meanings to these terms. Can’t we all agree on what it means to be “innate,” so that we can understand each other when we use that word? As you see from this post, Griffiths is not optimistic.
Griffiths spent the first part of his lecture unpacking quite a bit of history of the biology of behavior. Many prominent scientists weighed on the use of the term “innate” during the 20th century. They include a staunch critic of behaviorism, Zing yang Kuo, “a terrific writer,” whose 1920 article, entitled “How are our Instincts acquired?” Griffiths highly recommended (I can’t find that article, but here is another of Kuo’s articles). Griffiths also mentioned the “instinct theorists,” including William McDougall (Griffiths commented that many of these theorists were actually dualists). Another of the instinct theorists was Niko Tinbergen, who argued that there is something about animal instincts that cannot be reduced.
Konrad Lorenz was …
The July 11, 2008 edition of Science (available only to subscribers on line) includes an article entitled “Modernizing the Modern Synthesis,” by Elizabeth Pennisi, regarding a group of scientists who call themselves “The Altenberg 16.” They have gathered together to explore the need to revamp the modern synthesis. What is the “modern synthesis”? According to Wikipedia, the modern synthesis “bridged the gap between experimental geneticists and naturalists; and between both and palaeontologists, stating that”:
I started thinking about the the “reductionist attitude” in presenting science when I read Erich’s Post To deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell” (from May 7, 2008). Curricula seem to begin with biology, work through chemistry, and finally introduce physics. If English were taught categorically as science is now, students would go through phases in this order:
The alphabet of science is made up of basic natural “laws” as discovered by Newton, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Heisenberg, and so on. Sentences and paragraphs are like molecules and chemical syntheses. And finally you have enough structure to begin to see how biology works from cells (essays) through organisms (stories) and populations (novels).
One could be taught holistic science, building to the grand ideas from the simple ones. By constructing the ideas instead of breaking them down, the interrelationship and the interactions of the parts can be seen, as well as the nature and function of the parts themselves. A whole is never the sum of the parts; it is the sum of the interactions between the parts set on a foundation of the parts themselves. This becomes obvious when building, but is obscured when deconstructing.
No wonder Americans doubt the “theory of evolution”. Schools try to teach this advanced and universal concept without any foundation. By the …
This computer animation was dramatic. I'd never seen anything like it. It is a lively model demonstrating how DNA is copied and how DNA is transcribed into RNA, among other things. These critical activities certainly need to zip along, given the total unraveled length of the DNA in each human…