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J. B.

The New Atlantis » What Scientists Believe - 0 views

www.thenewatlantis.com/...what-scientists-believe

Christianity and Science

shared by J. B. on 27 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • In broad statistical terms, Ecklund’s results are unsurprising: Scientists tend as a group to be less religious (however that term might be construed) than the general population. About 64 percent of the respondents described themselves as atheists or agnostics, as against only about 6 percent of the general public. “Looked at the other way around,” Ecklund writes, “only about 9 percent of scientists say they have no doubt that God exists, compared to well over 60 percent of the general public.” As far as religious practice is concerned, “about 18 percent of scientists attend religious services at least once a month or more, compared to about 46 percent of those in the general population.”However, the views of many scientists turn out to be less rigidly doctrinaire and hostile to religious belief than the raw statistics might suggest:After four years of research, at least one thing became clear: Much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. The “insurmountable hostility” between science and religion is a caricature, a thought-cliché, perhaps useful as a satire on groupthink, but hardly representative of reality.
  • only 15 percent of scientists hold firmly to the “conflict paradigm” — believing there is “no hope for achieving a common ground of dialogue between scientists and religious believers.” Meanwhile, a significant minority of the respondents, 36 percent, acknowledged holding at least some sort of belief in God. These ranged from “I believe in a higher power, but it is not God” (8 percent) to “I believe in God sometimes” (5 percent) to “I have some doubts, but I believe in God” (14 percent) to “I have no doubts about God’s existence” (9 percent).
  • Ecklund concludes from her research that most scientists do not become irreligious as a consequence of their becoming scientists. “Rather, their reasons for unbelief mirror the circumstances in which other Americans find themselves: they were not raised in a religious home; they have had bad experiences with religion; they disapprove of God or see God as too changeable.” The disproportionately high percentage of nonbelievers among scientists (as compared to the general population) would appear to be the result of self-selection: the irreligious seem more likely to become scientists in the first place.
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  • Ecklund reports that the prevailing view among scientists of faith is that it is best not to discuss their beliefs openly because of the generally negative opinion of religion held by most of their colleagues. They tend to practice a “closeted faith” in the face of “a strong culture of suppression surrounding discussions of religion” within their academic departments.
  • Purpose is not acceptable as an explanation of scientific phenomena.
  • They shun organized religion, or even denounce it as “institutionalized dogma.” Instead, they allow their spirituality to be “shaped by personal inquiry,” which gives it “more potential to align with scientific thinking and reasoning.”
    • J. B.
      J. B. on 27 Apr 11
       
      Physicist Freeman Dyson.
  • This godless group’s spirituality emphasizes a sense of wonder at the grandness and harmony of nature. These scientists feel free to “admire the complexity of the natural world and praise it,” sometimes lifting concepts from Buddhism.
  • The legend of Galileo’s persecution at the hands of a Church hostile to the Copernican worldview has led to the common misconception that he harbored hostility to faith itself. But this is simply not so. For Galileo, truth is a unity available to us through the avenues of both religion and science. When there appears to be a conflict between scripture and the evidence provided by one’s observations of the world, Galileo asserts: “We can easily eliminate inconsistency with Scripture simply by admitting that we have not penetrated into its true meaning.”
  • Ecklund also describes a category she calls “spiritual entrepreneurs”
  • He strongly denied being an atheist, instead saying his “position concerning God is that of an agnostic.” Einstein unquestionably rejected the personal God of Jewish scripture, as well as the use of fear of divine retribution as the basis for moral law — a practice he characterized as “regrettable and discreditable.”
  • the highest achievements of the intellect cannot inspire or sustain themselves. The true scientist finds inspiration beyond science — in a sense of reverence for the order of the universe and wonderment at its mysteries.
J. B.

The decline effect and the scientific method : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...101213fa_fact_lehrer

Philosophy of Science Science and Faith

shared by J. B. on 14 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws. But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe? Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to “put nature to the question.” But it appears that nature often gives us different answers.
  • “One of my mentors told me that my real mistake was trying to replicate my work. He told me doing that was just setting myself up for disappointment.”
  • J. B. on 14 Feb 11
     
    Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It's a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws. But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It's as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn't yet have an official name, but it's occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades. For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe? Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to "put nature to the question." But it appears that nature often gives us different answers.
J. B.

Massimo Pigliucci on How to Tell Science From Bunk | Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping ... - 0 views

www.skeptiko.com/-how-to-tell-science-from-bunk

Scientism Philosophy of Science Scientific Bias NDEs

shared by J. B. on 27 Feb 11 - Cached
  • that’s like saying the vast majority of astrologers are in agreement with the fact that astrology works.
    • J. B.
      J. B. on 27 Feb 11
       
      Couldn't all this come back to bite him? You can't appeal to individual scientists as authorities, because we can find individual scientists who say anything. And we can't just appeal to scientific consensus, because any consensus in any field could be analogous to "the vast majority of astrologers" having a consensus.
  • The theory is that consciousness, in some way we don’t totally understand, survives bodily death. Now, that’s well-constructed. It’s not totally framed up in scientific terms but it’s an important theory because it contradicts the prevailing materialistic explanation of consciousness, which is pretty much nonexistent because consciousness is something we’re grabbing at. So to say that consciousness in some way we don’t understand seems to survive bodily death, I don’t know why that violates some sacred creed of science.
  • If we’re going to play the expert game, it’s too easy. That’s one of the things that I get into in the book. Almost for any position whatsoever, no matter how far out it is, you will find somebody with a PhD. or an MD that is willing to defend that position. But that’s not the way science works. I mean, you can find scientists who deny climate change. You can find scientists who deny evolution. You can find scientists…
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  • If somebody who does near-death experience research claims that what these people are doing is experience-having a supernatural experience, that’s not science. It’s not science because first of all, science cannot actually say anything about the supernatural to begin with. That’s not what science does.
  • science has been well understood over the last several decades in philosophy as a particular kind of activity which is based on a particular set of assumptions about what is being studied, one of those assumptions is regularity of the laws of nature.
    • J. B.
      J. B. on 27 Feb 11
       
      Are the laws of nature discovered or are they a set of a priori assumptions? Are the laws of nature descriptive or prescriptive? Can't we modify the laws of nature as we discover more about the universe or reality?
  • It’s your paranormal explanations don’t seem to me explanations at all. There’s no mechanism that is being proposed; there is no understanding of how these kinds of things happen. That’s not science.
    • J. B.
      J. B. on 27 Feb 11
       
      Does a mechanism have to be provided in order for it to qualify as a scientific explanation? What mechanism did Newton give? And do we understand how gravity happens?
  • his definition of death, which is as good as I’ve heard, is to say to look at cardiac arrest patients and to know that when someone has a cardiac arrest, this is not a heart attack, this is cardiac arrest. Your heart has stopped. We know within 10 to 15 seconds your brain stops. We know that if we do nothing, you’re dead.
  • One of the most widely accepted ways in both theoretical science and philosophy of science these days, thinking about the relationship between claims and evidence, is the Bayesian framework. So Bayesian theory which is very wide-spread in statistical analysis decision-making theory and so on and so forth, and it’s now being used in several other areas of science.
  • That doesn’t mean we understand consciousness. It doesn’t mean that we have a good mechanistic explanation for what’s going on, but it is something that philosophers of mind refer to as the “no ectoplasm clause.” The no ectoplasm clause is the idea that whatever consciousness is, it seems to depend on the brain.
    • J. B.
      J. B. on 27 Feb 11
       
      If there is no good mechanistic explanation of what's going on, does this mean there is no science of consciousness?
  • you go to the sources, to the actual experts, you look at what they’re saying and say, ‘Well, is there a consensus within that community?’ And if the answer is yes there is, then the best bet for somebody who does not have technical expertise in that area is to say, ‘Look, unless there is in fact a controversy within the scientific community, my best bet is to go with the current consensus,’ of course with the understanding that every consensus in science is provisional.
    • J. B.
      J. B. on 27 Feb 11
       
      Does this contradict his earlier remark about consensus among astrologers?
  • So the argument from authority of course, is a fallacy when you use it this way, if you’re saying that it necessarily follows from a scientific consensus or from what an authority says that what that authority says is true. So if I were to say that, “You know what? I know for certain that climate change is real. Why? Because the experts say so,” that would definitely be an example of a logical fallacy. You cannot derive certain knowledge, you cannot derive consequentially, absolutely certain knowledge from the fact that there is agreement within a certain community of experts because of course, the history of science shows that the community of experts can be wrong.
  • J. B. on 27 Feb 11
     
    Alex Tsakiris interviews Massimo Pigliucci. They get into an interesting conversation on NDEs.
  • J. B. on 27 Feb 11
     
    Alex Tsakiris interviews Massimo Pigliucci. They get into an interesting conversation on NDEs.
J. B.

The NASA study of arsenic-based life was fatally flawed, say scientists. - By Carl Zimm... - 0 views

www.slate.com/...all

Scientific Bias Alien Life Peer Review

shared by J. B. on 08 Dec 10 - Cached
  • It turns out the NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts which they freely admit were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate.
  • I am strongly convinced that we are
  • Any discourse will have to be peer-reviewed in the same manner as our paper was, and go through a vetting process so that all discussion is properly moderated
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  • The items you are presenting do not represent the proper way to engage in a scientific discourse and we will not respond in this manner.
  • If they say they will not address the responses except in journals, that is absurd," he said. "They carried out science by press release and press conference. Whether they were right or not in their claims, they are now hypocritical if they say that the only response should be in the scientific literature.
  • I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people
  • The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up. And today many scientists think that all of the alleged signs of life in the rocks could have just as easily been made on a lifeless planet.
  • J. B. on 08 Dec 10
     
    Apparently, having your papers published in peer reviewed journals isn't all it's cracked up to be.
J. B.

Hawking contra Philosophy | Philosophy Now - 0 views

www.philosophynow.org/...Hawking_contra_Philosophy

Philosophy of Science

shared by J. B. on 15 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Science has always included a large philosophical component, whether at the level of basic presuppositions concerning evidence, causality, theory-construction, valid inference, hypothesis-testing, and so forth, or at the speculative stage where scientists ignore the guidance offered by well-informed philosophers only at risk of falling into various beguiling fallacies or fictions.
  • this diagnosis, or something like it, applies to a great many of the speculative notions nowadays advanced by theoretical physicists including proponents of string theory (Hawking among them) and some of the more way-out quantum conjectures. These thinkers appear unworried – blithely unfazed, one is tempted to say – by the fact that their theories are incapable of proof or confirmation, or indeed of falsification as required by Karl Popper and his followers. After all, it is the peculiar feature of such theories that they posit the existence of that which at present, and perhaps forever, eludes any form of confirmation by observation or experiment.
  • reliance on theoretical commitments that exceed the utmost scope of empirical testing is something that some philosophers would attribute even to basic physical laws or widely taken-for-granted scientific truths. On their view there is no such thing as plain empirical self-evidence, since observations are always to some degree theoretically informed. By the same token, scientific theories are always ‘underdetermined’ by the best evidence to hand, meaning that the evidence is always open to other, equally rational interpretations given some adjustment of this or that ‘auxiliary hypothesis’ or negotiable element of background belief.
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  • scientific theories – especially theories of the ultra-speculative kind that preoccupy theoretical physicists like Hawking – involve a great deal of covert philosophising which may or may not turn out to promote the interests of knowledge and truth. This had better be recognised if we are not to be taken in by a false appeal to the authority of science as if it possessed the kind of sheer self-evidence or indubitable warrant that could rightfully claim to evict ‘philosophy’ as a relic from the pre-scientific past.
  • Here Hawking’s argument shows all the signs of a rudderless drifting between various positions adopted by different philosophers from Kant to the present. He spends a lot of time on what seems to be a largely unwitting rehash of episodes in the history of idealist or crypto-idealist thought, episodes which have cast a long shadow over post-Kantian philosophy of science. That shadow still lies heavy on Hawking’s two central ideas of M-theory and model-dependent realism. They both look set to re-open the old Kantian split between a ‘noumenal’ ultimate reality forever beyond human knowledge and a realm of ‘phenomenal’ appearances to which we are confined by the fact of our perceptual and cognitive limits. So if Hawking is right to charge some philosophers with a culpable ignorance of science then there is room for a polite but firm tu quoque, whether phrased in terms of pots calling kettles black or boots on other feet. For it is equally the case that hostility or indifference toward philosophy can sometimes lead scientists, especially those with a strong speculative bent, not only to reinvent the wheel but to produce wheels that don’t track straight and consequently tend to upset the vehicle.
  • Indeed, there is a sense in which the scientific enterprise stands or falls on the validity of counterfactual-conditional reasoning, that is to say, reasoning from what necessarily would be the case should certain conditions obtain or certain hypotheses hold. In its negative guise, this kind of thinking involves reasoning to what would have been the outcome if certain causally or materially relevant factors had not been operative in some given instance. Hawking constantly relies on such philosophical principles in order to present and justify his claims about the current and likely future course of developments in physics. Of course he is very welcome to them but he might do better to acknowledge their source in ways of thinking and protocols of valid argumentation that involve distinctly philosophical as well as scientific grounds.
  • To speak plainly: one useful job for the philosopher of science is to sort out the errors and confusions that scientists – especially theoretical physicists – sometimes fall into when they give free rein to a speculative turn of mind.
  • To adapt the economist Keynes’ famous saying: those scientists who claim to have no use for philosophy are most likely in the grip of a bad old philosophy or an insufficiently thought-out new one that they don’t fully acknowledge.
  • There is a large supply of present-day (quasi-)scientific thinking at the more – let us say – creative or imaginative end of the scale that falls into just this hybrid category of high-flown metaphysical conjecture tenuously linked to certain puzzling, contested, or at any rate far from decisive empirical results.
  • these are pseudo-dilemmas brought about by a mixture of shaky evidence, dubious reasoning on it, fanciful extrapolation, and a flat refusal to entertain alternative theories (such as that of the physicist David Bohm) which considerably lighten the burden of unresolved paradox.
  • J. B. on 15 Feb 11
     
    Christopher Norris critiques Stephen Hawking's claim that philosophy is dead.
J. B.

The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality « On the Human - 0 views

onthehuman.org/...d-naturalists-guide-to-reality

Science and Theology Darwinism Naturalism Atheism Scientism Scientistic

shared by J. B. on 01 Dec 10 - Cached
  • It is one that most naturalists have sought to avoid, or at least qualify, reinterpret, or recast to avoid its harshest conclusions about the meaning of life, the nature of morality, the significance of our consciousness self-awareness, and the limits of human self-understanding.
  • Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously should believe, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality.
  • the answers to the persistent questions are not what people want to hear, and the bad news may lead them to kill the messenger—scientific research
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  • So, scientists have an incentive to cover up
  • the mechanism Darwin discovered for building adaptations is the only game in town. Any explanation of the very existence of even the slightest adaptation must be Darwinian. 
  • Ever since Newton physics has ruled out purposes in the physical realm. If the physical facts fix all the facts, however, then in doing so, it rules out purposes altogether, in biology, in human affairs, and in human thought-processes.
  • The fundamental laws of nature are mostly timeless mathematical truths that work just as well backwards as forward, and in which purposes have no role.
  • the process that Darwin discovered–random, or rather blind variation, and natural selection, or rather passive environmental filtration–does all the work of explaining the means/ends economy of biological nature that shouts out ‘purpose’ or ‘design’ at us. What Darwin showed was that all of the beautiful suitability of living things to their environment, every case of fit between organism and niche, and all of the intricate meshing of parts into wholes, is just the result of blind causal processes. It’s all just the foresightless play of fermions and bosons producing, in us conspiracy-theorists, the illusion of purpose.
  • When it comes to life, natural selection, it turns out, is the only game in town.
  • One source of meaning on which many have relied is the intrinsic value, in particular the moral value, of human life. People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours). Besides morality as a source of meaning, value, or purpose, people have looked to consciousness, introspection, self-knowledge as a source of insight into what makes us more than the merely physical facts about us. Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it’s not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality.
  • Just because there is strong selection for a moral norm is no reason to think it right. Think of the adaptational benefits of racist, xenophobic or patriarchal norms. You can’t justify morality by showing its Darwinian pedigree.
  • The process of natural selection is not in general good at filtering for true beliefs, only for ones hitherto convenient for our lines of descent.
  • we can’t invest our moral core with more meaning than this: it was a convenience, not for us as individuals, but for our genes. There is no meaning to be found in that conclusion.
  • J. B. on 01 Dec 10
     
    Alex Rosenberg pops the Naturalist's bubble.
J. B.

AlbertMohler.com - The Predicament - Francis Collins, Human Embryos, Evolution, and the... - 0 views

www.albertmohler.com/...and-the-sanctity-of-human-life

Science and Theology Theistic Evolution

shared by J. B. on 01 Dec 10 - Cached
  • Harvard’s Steven Pinker declared that Collins is “an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” Other leading scientists said far worse. Why? As The New Yorker reports this week, Dr. Collins is “a believing Christian.” As writer Peter J. Boyer explains, “The objection to Collins was his faith—or, at least, the ardency of it.
  • Even with all of Francis Collins’ achievements, qualifications, and experience, the bare fact that he is a “believing Christian” is enough to draw the active opposition of many in the scientific establishment. Just being a “believing Christian” is reason enough for suspicion, condescension, and opposition from many. Even when Francis Collins presses his case for evolution, he is dismissed by many scientists simply because he believes in God. In other words, when we are told that we have to accept and embrace the theory of evolution in order to escape being considered intellectually backward, remember the opposition to Francis Collins. It just doesn’t work. When Collins’ elevation to the NIH post was announced, evolutionary scientist P. Z. Myers lamented, “I don’t want American science to be represented by a clown.” This is the predicament of those who argue that evangelicals must accept some form of theistic evolution — the guardians of evolution still consider them clowns.
  • J. B. on 01 Dec 10
     
    Some evidence that Theistic Evolutionists won't gain much respect with their attempt at a mediating position in the scientific community. (Or at least they'll have to be willing to capitulate some more of their religious metaphysic first.)
J. B.

Harvard Scientist Guilty of Misconduct - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...21harvard.html

Misconduct

shared by J. B. on 24 Nov 10 - Cached
  • J. B. on 24 Nov 10
     
    Marc Hauser found guilty of misconduct in research on animal self-awareness. (There was a much better article at The New Scientist, but the url for it no longer works.)
J. B.

Prominent Atheist Professor of Law and Philosophy Thomas Nagel Calls Intelligent Design... - 0 views

www.apologetics.org/...Default.aspx

Intelligent Design Thomas Nagel

shared by J. B. on 18 Jun 11 - Cached
  • the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence.
  • the tools of natural science are useless to determine the "I.Q." of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. The mental and conscious processes going on in the criminal's mind are outside the scope of the sciences of chemistry and physics. Thus it is obvious that scientific methods can lead to the conclusion that an intelligence did something, even if those same methods cannot tell you who specifically did it, or why they did it.
  • "the purposes and intentions of God, if there is a god, and the nature of his will, are not possible subjects of a scientific theory or scientific explanation. But that does not imply that there cannot be scientific evidence for or against the intervention of such a non-law-governed cause in the natural order" (p. 190).
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  • Professor Nagel has read ID-supportive works such as Dr. Behe's Edge of Evolution (p. 192). He reports that based on his examination of their work, ID "does not seem to depend on massive distortions of the evidence and hopeless incoherencies in its interpretation" (pp. 196-197). He reports that ID does not depend on any assumption that ID is "immune to empirical evidence" in the way that believers in biblical literalism believe the bible is immune to disproof by evidence (p. 197). Thus, he says "ID is very different from creation science" (p. 196).
  • He reports that the "presently available evidence" comes "nothing close" to establishing "the sufficiency of standard evolutionary mechanisms to account for the entire evolution of life" (p. 199).
  • He notes that his judgment is supported by two prominent scientists (Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, writing in the Oct. 2005 book Plausibility of Life), who also recognized that (prior to offering their own theory, at least) the "available evidence" did not "decisively settle[]" whether mutations in DNA "are entirely due to chance" (p. 191). And he cites one Stuart Kauffman, a "complexity theorist who defends a naturalistic theory of emergence," that random mutation "is not sufficient" to explain DNA (p. 192).
  • He does not, however, say that the evidence compels acceptance of ID; instead, some may consider as an alternative to ID that an "as-yet undiscovered, purely naturalistic theory" will supply the deficiency, rather than some form of intelligence (p. 203).
  • Prof. Nagel says that "some part of the high school curriculum" "should" include "a frank discussion of the relation of evolutionary theory to religion" but that this need not occur in biology classes if the biology teachers would find this too much of a "burden" (p. 204)
  • He rejects any rule that well-educated, intelligent laymen such as himself must simply accept the assertions of the leading evolutionary biologists that the evidence in favor of evolution disproves intelligent design. Using his informed judgment, he rejects the claim that the scientific data "decisively" disproves intelligent design. He, an atheist, says that as a matter of science, intelligent design could possibly be correct. And he says it would be constitutional to say as much in a public school science class.
  • The emotionalism which scientists have brought to this issue since before the Scopes Trial, even if directed against a real, rather than imaginary target, has introduced a non-scientific motivation into the hearts of evolutionary biologists that has biased and rendered unreliable their evaluation of the data, especially the relatively recent data concerning DNA and molecular biology. Moreover, those who are convinced that we are not-very-far-descended from troupes of apes that engage in group dominance struggles should monitor themselves for the possibility that they are engaged less in a search for truth than in a search for dominance. An Achilles' Heel of modern science is the satisfying sense of pride that comes from having successfully dominated the people around you. Its origin is from the apes and its goal is to flatter emotion, not to facilitate reason.
J. B.

Sexual orientation, homosexuality and bisexuality - 0 views

www.apa.org/...sexual-orientation.aspx

Homosexuality

shared by J. B. on 02 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.
J. B.

Science Warriors' Ego Trips - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...65186

Scientism Philosophy of Science

shared by J. B. on 27 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Standing up for science excites some intellectuals the way beautiful actresses arouse Warren Beatty, or career liberals boil the blood of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It's visceral. The thinker of this ilk looks in the mirror and sees Galileo bravely muttering "Eppure si muove!" ("And yet, it moves!") while Vatican guards drag him away. Sometimes the hero in the reflection is Voltaire sticking it to the clerics, or Darwin triumphing against both Church and Church-going wife. A brave champion of beleaguered science in the modern age of pseudoscience, this Ayn Rand protagonist sarcastically derides the benighted irrationalists and glows with a self-anointed superiority. Who wouldn't want to feel that sense of power and rightness?
  • a chasm has opened up between two groups that might loosely be distinguished as "philosophers of science" and "science warriors." Philosophers of science, often operating under the aegis of Thomas Kuhn, recognize that science is a diverse, social enterprise that has changed over time, developed different methodologies in different subsciences, and often advanced by taking putative pseudoscience seriously, as in debunking cold fusion. The science warriors, by contrast, often write as if our science of the moment is isomorphic with knowledge of an objective world-in-itself—Kant be damned!—and any form of inquiry that doesn't fit the writer's criteria of proper science must be banished as "bunk."
  • It is, in principle, possible that an empirical observation could confirm intelligent design—i.e., that magic moment when the ultimate UFO lands with representatives of the intergalactic society that planted early life here, and we accept their evidence that they did it. The point is not that this is remotely likely. It's that the possibility is not irrational, just as provocative science fiction is not irrational.
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  • Far from explaining nothing because it explains everything, such an explanation explains a lot by explaining everything. It just doesn't explain it convincingly to a scientist with other evidentiary standards.
  • he concedes that "nonscientific claims may be true and still not qualify as science." But if that's so, and we care about truth, why exalt science to the degree he does? If there's really a heaven, and science can't (yet?) detect it, so much the worse for science.
  • J. B. on 27 Feb 11
     
    Critique of Massimo Pigliucci's book Nonsense on Stilts
J. B.

NAM 03: Large galaxies stopped growing 7 billion years ago - 0 views

www.ras.org.uk/...ed-growing-7-billion-years-ago

Cosmology

shared by J. B. on 26 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Galaxies are thought to develop by the gravitational attraction between and merger of smaller 'sub-galaxies', a process that standard cosmological ideas suggest should be ongoing. But new data from a team of scientists from Liverpool John Moores University directly challenges this idea, suggesting that the growth of some of the most massive objects stopped 7 billion years ago when the Universe was half its present age.
  • How galaxies form and then evolve is still a major unanswered question in astronomy.
  • conventional simulations of the evolution of the Universe predict that BCGs should have at least tripled in size over that time.
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  • cosmologists appear to lack some of the crucial ingredients they need to understand how galaxies evolved from the distant past to the present day
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