Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Remember Rupert Sheldrake, a notorious quack who combines his pseudoscience with an extraordinarily thin skin, so that when his quackery is called out, he cries that his “good” scientific ideas are being unfairly suppressed? He’s still here, which disturbs both Pigliucci and me. The good news is that serious scientists have dismissed Sheldrake’s ideas a … Continue reading Sheldrake vs. Pigliucci
I’ve had my differences with Massimo Pigliucci, but when he says something I agree with, I give him praise (see my kudos here for his admirable critique of panpsychism). So I’m always puzzled when he has to work in a slur against me when we do have our differences. In this case we don’t seem … Continue reading Massimo Pigliucci: “Free will is incoherent”
Yesterday I posted a long critique of a misguided article from the Guardian arguing that the modern theory of evolution is obsolete and needs to be replaced. One of my comments is that the article seemed say that the claim that evolution needs to be expanded by incorporating phenomena like epigenetics, niche construction, and plasticity … Continue reading Pinker: The “evolution war” is also a culture war
Matthew was trying out the ChatGPT site—the one in which an AI bot answers questions and writes essays on any specified topic. It’s being used widely, especially by students who get the bot to write their assignments—cheating, of course. Here’s what Matthew did: I gave ChatGPT an essay: “Science and religion are enemies. Discuss.” Science … Continue reading A bot discusses the relationship between science and religion
It’s one of those days when braining is very hard, and I think this is a problem for many people during the pandemic. I’m not sure why it’s the case for me, unless I’ve internalized the anxiety I share with many people about politics, the pandemic, aborted plans, and so on—to the point where adrenaline … Continue reading Recommended weekend reading
I’ve had several public disagreements with Massimo Pigliucci (I believe he considers me a philosopher manqué), but I’m not so set in my ways that I can’t give him kudos when he writes a good paper or has some good ideas. And his new piece on Medium, which is largely a critique of panpsychism, is … Continue reading Pigliucci on panpsychism and Churchland on “intractable problems”
It must have been at least two years ago when a group of young but eager filmmakers came to my lab in Chicago to spend several hours filming my lucubrations about free will for a movie they were making. I didn’t hear much about the project after that, and assumed that it had died, but … Continue reading A new movie about free will, and it’s worth watching
This article in the Guardian really says nothing new beyond what a dozen articles have said already: “There are things we know about evolution that Darwin never imagined, and we’ve made many discoveries that weren’t part of the ‘modern synthetic theory of evolution’ forged in the Thirties and Forties.” I’ve posted a ton about these … Continue reading Once again: A misguided article on why the theory of evolution is obsolete
The latest issue of Nautilus Magazine has a special issue on panpsychism, which means that I’m compelled to read and discuss several articles on this untestable and almost certainly false explanation for consciousness. Just to refresh you, panpsychism is the view that humans are conscious (and perhaps other organisms) because the matter from which we … Continue reading Panpsychism again?
I’d never read the Wikipedia entry on “New Atheism” before, and so I just did. It’s pretty good, and clearly not heavily edited by theists. But the section on “Criticisms” of New Atheism reports a bale of the usual twaddle: New Atheism is a religion (I always read this as “See? You’re as bad as … Continue reading Atheist-bashing quote of the day
