Stephen Jay Gould, 1942-2002:
For more information about David Berlinski – his new books, video clips from interviews, and upcoming events – please visit his website at www.davidberlinski.org. Stephen Jay Gould was the most important paleontologist of his generation, the impact of his life best measured by the wide-spread sense of loss occasioned by his death. Gould wrote widely on a variety of topics in Read More ›
Anthropology Afoul of the Facts
In 1928, Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa. An immediate success, this slender volume established Mead as the most famous and most influential anthropologist of the 20th century. For nearly half a century, whether writing scholarly articles from her desk at the American Museum of Natural History in New York or pontificating as contributing editor of the popular Read More ›
The New Facism
Chances are we will be less free in the coming years because of a rising statist authoritarianism primarily emanating from Europe. The increasing assault on financial privacy is an example of this new threat to individual liberties. Financial privacy, a fundamental liberty which is necessary for individuals to protect themselves from corrupt or despotic governments, kidnappers and other assorted criminals, Read More ›
Obsessively Criticized but Scarcely Refuted
1. Preamble
I have many critics. Some are measured and calm. Others are obsessive. Richard Wein is perhaps the most obsessive. His critique of my book No Free Lunch (hereafter NFL) weighs in at 37,000 words and purports to provide the most thorough refutation of my work to date. It certainly is long. But is it thorough and does it succeed in actually refuting my ideas? In fact, the critique fails as a refutation and skirts key issues at every opportunity. It is therefore neither thorough nor a refutation.
Read More ›The Enron Network
Tax Patriots … and Scoundrels
During the past few weeks, some members of Congress have called corporate executives unpatriotic for moving the legal home of their companies to low-tax foreign countries. The implication is that the business people and their tax lawyers are scoundrels, and countries with low tax rates are evil tax havens. But do the charges hold up? If Webster’s dictionary correctly defines Read More ›
Playing Games with Good & Evil
As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madmans arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy In the struggle to survive, the fit win, and so it is also the fit who Read More ›
Will “Santorum Language” Save Us From Scientific Fundamentalism?
One combustible controversy is raging in Ohio school districts right now. It’s over science education and, soon enough, will flare up in all fifty states. To get to the heart of it, the controversy centers on how to teach evolution – not whether to teach it, mind you, but how. It all began with the passage of the “No Child Read More ›