Three days ago I put up a post showing a short lecture by philosopher S. Orestis Palermos that was part of a University of Edinburgh Coursera course on Science and Philosophy. His lecture basically equated evolutionary biology with creationism, dismissing both as “pseudoscience”. (The course was also sponsored by—to its eternal shame—the John Templeton Foundation.) Palermos’s lecture was part of the course’s first week, “Introduction and overview”. Sadly, he argued the following:
- Both creationism and evolution are based on faith.
- As philosophers like Lakatos and Kuhn supposedly told us, there is no way to distinguish between science and faith-based superstitions like religion. Choosing which scientific or religious “myth” you like is simply a matter of “aesthetics”.
- Evolutionary biology cannot predict anything, so it’s a pseudoscience.
- Genetics is also a pseudoscience.
- Ergo, there’s no good reason to favor teaching evolution (or presumably genetics) over creationism in science classes.
It’s palaver like this that puts scientists off on philosophy, even though there is good philosophy being done around science. The problem is that Palermos apparently didn’t know squat about evolution, yet was pushing a bunch of lies and distortions on those people who paid to take the course. And, of course, Templeton helped fund the whole thing, belying their claim that they’re really down with good science. (Templeton used to push Intelligent Design, but stopped doing that when the pushback became too great. But they’re apparently willing to diss evolution as an untestable “pseudoscience.”)
I called my post to the attention of some evolutionary biologists at Edinburgh, who were of course horrified at the distortion of both evolutionary biology and science in general. And then Twitter got hold of the video (my posts are automatically put on Twitter) and it spread rapidly. (Calling attention to nonsense is one good thing that Twitter does.) Here are a few tweets; have a look at the comments on the first tweet by Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh:
Evolutionary biology is 'on par' with creationism and 'not scientific'. Very worrying that philosophy dept at my university @EdinburghUni–a world-leader in evolutionary research–is teaching this nonsense to its students. @UoE_Philosophy what is going on?https://t.co/gCnj0RGMOx
— Steve Brusatte (@SteveBrusatte) March 25, 2018
Its been done…check out https://t.co/6YQESHHzTy
— Prof Adam Hart 🦏 (@AdamHartScience) March 27, 2018
Adam Rutherford weighed in (below) and then Carl Zimmer retweeted Brusatte’s post.
According to this lecture series from Edinburgh University, Kepler and Galileo chose to support the failing theory of heliocentricism because they liked it and they had faith in it… 1/2https://t.co/CHzY1VmtKT
— Dr Adam Rutherford (@AdamRutherford) March 27, 2018
The opprobrium continued; I’ll show just two more comments:
I just ran through the material in this course. It seems to be trying to bring evolution as close to creationism as possible, by claiming evolution isn't predictive, falisfiable or testable. No-one involved seems to know any biology.
— Chris Jefferson (@Azumanga) March 26, 2018
Add Feyerabend. He's good on science's weak spots (eg "does 'Vulcan' exist inside Mercury's orbit? Does Pluto solve any problems with Neptune's orbit? [Both are no.])
— Dave (@rthonbwooster) March 27, 2018
So, this morning I found out (again from Twitter) that Palermos’s lecture has mysteriously vanished from from the course syllabus, where it was once publicly visible as lecture 1.4 (“Evolutionary biology and creationism”). But Brusatte is not correct in saying that the course has been pulled; it’s here—minus Palermos’s lecture.
The link was correct and working as of last night. But now it looks like the course has been pulled (or moved to another website…). I would love some clarification from the Edinburgh Uni philosophy dept.
— Steve Brusatte (@SteveBrusatte) March 28, 2018
And when you go to the link where Palermos’s lecture was, you get this (click on screenshot):
I don’t know exactly what happened to get Palermos’s lecture pulled, but I’m guessing some biologists at Edinburgh objected to the nonsense being sold as “science”. It’s not “free speech” to tell lies to students, so I don’t mourn the loss. And anyway, if you want a full transcript of what the lecture said, it’s available on my website (thanks to reader Simon, who transcribed it).
Nevertheless, the course itself, which I suspect is pretty dire, still remains, along with the weeklong unit on evolutionary biology, which I can’t see. The syllabus below lists all the videos, and the Introduction, by physicist Mark Harris, is freely viewable here (click on screenshot):
I have to say, though, that the topics given, combined with the presence of biology ignoramus Orestis Palermos as one of the speakers and a religious philosopher as the other, makes me pretty queasy. As far as I know, too, none of the many well-known evolutionary biologists at the University of Edinburgh were asked to give feedback on the course material. (Remember, the course is offered under the aegis of the University of Edinburgh.)
Disappointing how much sway Templeton has. They've even infected the New York Academy of the Sciences.
— Improv (@dachte) March 27, 2018
“Some of this material is deliberately provocative…”
Freely translates as “Yes, we’re peddling bullshit, but we all know who’s paying the bills now don’t we.”
Is this not a classic example of why we must protect the separation of religion from not only state but all parts of science. Good work prof. Coyne. Religion ruins everything.
The spherical earth was a failing theory for 5000 years, as the flat earth reigned supreme. Then the Pythogoreans, like Plato, and Aristotle, had faith in the spherical earth and sold it to gullible people. And now people believe that the earth is spherical (spheroidal for the pedants), showing the triumph of faith.
Or, was there something about packing matter into a sphere, constellations appearing higher in northern climes, and the round shadow that the earth casts on the moon, that clued Aristotle in to the spherical earth?
In other words, I can see why they pulled a lecture dumb enough to claim that heliocentrism (still wrong, but much less so) was taken up by Galileo (phases of Venus, Palermos you ignoramus) and Kepler, let alone the absurd claim that evolution doesn’t predict anything (like your ape-like skeleton).
At least Templeton should get a black eye out of this.
Glen Davidson
heliocentrism taken up by Galileo and Kepler “by faith.”
Of course
The flat earth society has members all around the globe
😎
I wonder if the tweeter realised what he was saying…?
cr
As delicious as the irony is, we still use “the corners of the Earth” and “the Sun rises”, don’t we?
Looks like this course and the John Templeton Foundation with it will shortly be going down in flames.
The John Templeton Foundation will not be going down in flames, it has billions in its coffers & it distributes around $80,000,000 annually as grants. It is a trust which pays its trustees ridiculously well & it has many tricks up its sleeve.
It is a 501(c)(3) organization which prohibits it from engaging in political activity & yet it finds ways to carry out the wishes of its dead evangelical Protestant founder – a devoted free market capitalist. They’ll still be infecting the godly gaps in ‘the conversation’ hundreds of years from now [or until the next big market crash, depending on how they’ve invested their principle].
Connor Cunningham’s book Darwin’s Pious Idea is a disaster that displays his ignorance of biology and his disdain for science. Rivals a Trump speech in terms of lies per sentence. A perfect choice of someone to teach the controversy.
Is the problem Templeton, or the people and institutions that sell their integrity for its money? After all, Templeton has its right to try and promote its point of view.
Sure they do. However, others have a right, even a duty to shed light on the purpose behind Templeton and make their point of view more transparent.
It can promote its point of view, but the public POV it reveals & the underlying motivation are different. The intent of its dead founder is to roll out the Christian Protestant god, roll back socialism & nasty, nasty communism & extol free market economics. You have to go through the grants awards carefully to see it donates indirectly to conservative political causes & lobby groups [as a 501 that’s illegal], but it gets more indirect over recent years. And of course the only grants we know about are the [mostly] fluffy ones it shows on its site. Not a transparent organisation.
Sort of a well funded version of that surreptitious opinion former The Reader’s Digest [no conspiracy theories intended although the Digest may well have been a forerunner propagator of the tactics we see on social media today]. There is no doubt that Templeton is changing academia which is run by money managers these days who want some of that tax-free gelt flowing through their departments. Templeton is doing the same thing in journalism [& media generally] with all expenses weekends away for writers – no strings attached of course. Creeping greed.
In quite a few places, Templeton strenuously denies supporting Intelligent Design, although they have made overtures to folks in the ID camp regarding other projects.
Were they in an earlier more on board with ID??
Well in answer to my question, here is evidence that there is a surreptitious ID contingent at Templeton
https://evolutionnews.org/2005/12/nyt_story_misinforms_on_intell/
I am glad that sensible people, including our host, got this so-called lecture down.
It doesn’t take much biological knowledge to know that this course’s view on evolution was ridiculous. Unfortunately, even that (bio 101 level) seems to be deliberately forgotten by these philosophers.
There is a trend to require more and more science or technology qualification from philosophers of science (or technology), which I generally applaud. Yet the amount needed for a lot of work is really small, so I wonder …
Yay!
On another tack: “It’s palaver like this that puts scientists off on philosophy, even though there is good philosophy being done around science.”
I am not a scientist anymore, but I do dabble in biology at my work. Maybe I started out being put off, but my main take home message was that philosophy is not a way of knowing. It joins, say, theology and religion at large, as a way of not knowing. You can use it to rehash science – but so can art, but you can equally well use it to rehash anti-science – but so can art. I rather read a good book than suffer a piece of philosophy though.
My wife told me about how she studied the English Civil War in school. Her teacher made the class watch a really terrible movie about Cromwell and challenged them to point out all the inaccuracies in it. If really stupid creationist cack is going to be taught in supposed places of learning, could it not be used for honing the ability to refute it?
It’s, like, totally not fundamentalism dude. Ask my wife Morgan Fairchild.
This is just a rehash of the “you cannot PROVE it” thing, the demand that you not say you “know” something unless it’s logically impossible to be wrong. Which is foolish.
The lecture 1.4 is now not available, but the “lecture 4.9 Is evolutionary biology scientific?” is still available on youtube.
http://www.coursera.org/learn/philosophy-science-religion-1/lecture/cAdvB/lecture-4-9-is-evolutionary-biology-scientific
I read through all the comments on Twitter. It was heartening to see all the biologists at Edinburgh U weighing in to get this closed down.
There were a couple of religion people on the thread trying to attack evolution, but their attempts were abysmal and there were lots of smart scientists to gently point out their errors.