1. Cards on the Table In the movie Dream Team starring Michael Keaton, Keaton plays a psychiatric patient who must feign sanity to save his psychiatrist from being murdered. In protesting his sanity, Keaton informs two New York City policemen that he doesn’t wear women’s clothing, that he’s never danced around Times Square naked, and that he doesn’t talk to Read More ›
What’s Darwin got to do with it? When it comes to evolution, quite a bit! But many people don’t understand Darwin, creationism and intelligent design. Here’s a book that makes sense of it all! A group of scholars, teachers, writers and illustrators have teamed up to create an easy-to-read introduction and critique to this important issue. You’ll enjoy the lively Read More ›
In this scientific age, it is impossible to quarantine the claims of science. They invariably leak into other cultural domains. So we should attend to what scientists tell us. Sometimes it is quite important. For instance, in The Meaning of Evolution, George Gaylord Simpson repeats what is surely the “official” dogma of the contemporary scientific guild: “Man is the result Read More ›
Darth Vader was a thoroughly bad man, destroying planets, kidnapping princesses, and such. That’s the way it should be-we like our movie villains uncomplicated. Mr. Vader’s only virtue was in begetting Luke Skywalker, and in the finale, after we had hissed for a few hours, that relationship was enough to redeem him. Yet what if the opening scenes of Star Read More ›
“Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” George Gaylord Simpson (1) Where did you come from? Are you the result of a mindless, undirected process, or are you the handiwork of a purposeful Creator? According to several Gallup polls, only about ten percent of the American people believe in Darwin’s Read More ›
1. Introduction “No biologist today,” observes Douglas Futuyma, “would think of submitting a paper entitled ‘New evidence for evolution; it simply has not been an issue for a century.” [1] Whether they see it as an issue or not, however, biologists today still explain (in textbooks, for instance) why they think evolution is true. In other words, they regularly make Read More ›
The Temptations of Evolutionary EthicsPaul Lawrence FarberBerkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994, 210 pp. The Secret Chain: Evolution and EthicsMichael BradieNew York, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994, 198 pp. The ethical implications of evolution are receiving a remarkable amount of attention today, despite the death sentence that was pronounced on it by “nurture” enthusiasts in the Read More ›
This little book is intended to correct the popular impression that “progress and increasing complexity” are characteristics of life’s course on Earth. Progress has, in the twentieth century, already been punched silly; but paleontologists seem genuinely more complex than paramecia, a point that Gould concedes, if only for reasons of professional pride. His doubts arise whenever the twig of a trend Read More ›
A Series of Eyes How do we see? In the 19th century the anatomy of the eye was known in great detail, and its sophisticated features astounded everyone who was familiar with them. Scientists of the time correctly observed that if a person were so unfortunate as to be missing one of the eye’s many integrated features, such as the Read More ›