I have been blogging since January 2004 but of late my heart hasn’t been in it. So I’m taking the opportunity of a new school year to hang up my shield and move on. I may return someday, either here or elsewhere, but for the foreseeable future, you can consider me a non-blogger. Best wishes and good luck to all the readers and bloggers I have met over the years.
Onward!
John Wilkins is reporting that the noted philosopher of biology, David Hull, has passed away. I first read Hull’s Science as a Process (1988) as a break from writing up my zoology PhD in 1993 and it opened me up to the world of history and philosophy of science. Indeed, it left me cursing the fact that I wasn’t able to study HPS (in hindsight, I think it would have been my career choice for various reasons). Years later, I met David at an ISHPSSB meeting and I coyly introduced myself. David was delighted to hear that a biologist had read and enjoyed his work. He was a gentleman and will be missed.
Update (8/12): I forgot to mention that ASU houses the David L. Hull Collection (actually the collection sat in my office for a few months). And via Wilkins – obits from the Chicago Sun-Times and Northwestern.
I have just finished reviewing A Meaningful World: How the Arts And Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (IVP , 2006) by DI fellows, Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, for Reports of the National Center for Science Education. I’m not going to post the full review until it appears in print, but here is the final paragraph. It more or less clues you in to what I thought of the work.
A Meaningful World is certainly a work that would not have survived review by a mainstream press. In fact, I would say that it would not have survived as an undergraduate thesis. The very fact that it has appeared in print is symptomatic of the ID movement’s ability to find sympathetic pulpits from which to preach to the choir. No one without pre-conceived sympathy is going to be convinced by the arguments presented by Wiker & Witt and, like much ID literature, it serves as a justification of belief rather than a scientific or philosophical investigation. It is notable that the publishers choose not to classify the work as science but as discussing religious aspects of nature and meaning.
Frankly, it took me over three years to review the book. Every time I started writing about it, I got annoyed and had to stop.
I also recently reviewed Wiker’s The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin (Regnery, 2009) for the Journal of the History of Biology. Here’s the final paragraph of that one:
This is poor history and, frankly, it is also poor polemic. Wiker does not present Darwin fairly but distorts him into a dark figure bent on destroying everything that Wiker apparently holds dear. As such, the book has nothing to recommend it beyond offering a snapshot of how certain groups in America have been unable to deal with scientific ideas.
Full reviews will appear here after they have appeared in print or online. I probably won’t be getting any Christmas cards from Ben Wiker.
File this under “This Will End Predictably”. Livingston Parish (Louisiana) is looking to teach creationism in public school science classes. Problem is that they keep explicitly mentioning creationism thus clearly falling foul of Supreme Court rulings.
Jan Benton (director of curriculum) stated that the Louisiana Science Education Act allows for the teaching of “critical thinking and creationism“.
David Tate (board member): “Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”
Clint Mitchell (board member): “Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”
The Board then voted to appoint a committee to study the possibility of introducing creationism into the classroom. They obviously never heard of Edwards v. Aguillard which, ironically, was a decision against a Louisiana statute.
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HT to Jim Lippard’s twitter stream.
Update (7/28): Barbara Forrest (Louisiana Coalition for Science) has posted her thoughts. Final paragraph reads:
The Discovery Institute is heavily invested in Louisiana — up to their eyeballs. Whether the Livingston Parish School Board or some other Louisiana school board implements the LSEA — in the way that we all know is intended — won’t matter. This Livingston Parish development — and any other initiative anywhere in Louisiana — will be the Discovery Institute’s baby (or, rather, its tarbaby). As we say way down south, “You cain’t disown this youngun. It’s the spittin’ image of its daddy!” The Livingston Parish CREATIONISM initiative — in whatever form it takes — will be the Discovery Institute’s offspring. Discovery Institute owns this.
Frankly, one of the up-sides of #SbFAIL is that a number of the people I care about are now blogging here on WordPress and it has actually become easier to track what they are posting and the comments I’ve made on their blogs. So that’s an up-side. As a reminder, here are the Sciblings who are now here. Hopefully, others will follow (I’m looking at you Mark Chu-Carroll and Mike Dunford!).
If you’ve never encountered these great bloggers before – perhaps because Scienceblogs overwhelmed you – wander over, read a little, and say “Hi”. These folks are good friends and the salt of the earth.
That said, I myself will probably go back to being quiet for awhile. I’ve four weeks before the start of the semester and have to put three papers (two science, one history) and at least one book review out the door.
semper scibling!
Back in December, I noted the announcement of a new species of raccoon dog (Nyctereutes lockwoodi). The paper is now online and, as we suspected, the species is “[n]amed after the late Charles Lockwood, for his contribution to our knowledge of the genus Australopithecus in South and East Africa as well as his role in the exploration of the morphological temporal trends of A. afarensis in the Hadar Formation.” As it happens, Bill Kimbel and I are currently putting the finishing touches to our final manuscript with Charlie. More of that later, no doubt.
Ref: Gerrads et al., (2010) “Nyctereutes lockwoodi, n. sp., a New Canid (Carnivora: Mammalia) from the Middle Pliocene of Dikika, Lower Awash, Ethiopia.” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 30(3):981-987. doi: 10.1080/02724631003758326
I take no pleasure in watching what is happening to Scienceblogs. The vast majority of my time there was pleasurable, tainted only by the actions of a minority who managed to poison the community (and were allowed do so by the notional management). Now the self-same management are watching the ship go down due to “PepsiGate” and #Sbfail highlighting their inability to treat the bloggers as co=partners in a business enterprise.
Scienceblogs started in January 2006 with 14 bloggers. Within a year, a further 39 bloggers had arrived. Less than half formed the core community of Scienceblogs (by this I mean, individuals who swam in the backchannels that existed and were members of the support community I valued). It’s worth noting what had happened to them:
So, of these 22, twenty-one are still blogging, but only seven are remaining with Seed Media Group. (A further two have uncertain futures at the site.) And I think that tells you something about the ability of the Seed Media Group management to run a business.
Update: Here’s the Twitter feed – follow the fail as it happens.
Update (7/21): Abel Pharmboy (Terra Sigillata) had flown the coop. I have updated the count of those remaining. In addition, Dave Munger (formerly of CogDaily) has given his take on the whole debacle.
Been quiet here for a few weeks now, mainly because I just ain’t been feeling it regards writing online (and the World Cup has been a more compelling time-sink). In the past month – while I was essentially offline and not posting anything meaningful – there were still over 200,000 visits for the post that refuses to die, and somehow I find that somewhat dispiriting. Especially considering other posts garnered no comment or interest. Go figure.
That aside, I de-lurk to the sound of Scienceblogs perhaps circling the drain (at least in the form I knew it). Regular readers will know I was blogging there for a few years before coming here last summer. Now it appears that corporate indifference to the bloggers (which always was a vague problem and a factor in my leaving) and the bottom line has trumped all. Ex-sciblings Carl Zimmer and John Wilkins have more as we watch bloggers swim to freedom from the wreck.
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Every country is #1 for something. Cocaine? That would be Columbia. Quality of life? That would be Ireland. Closed circuit surveillance? The UK. Serial Killers? Guess, just guess.
Those of you who can remember high-school physics will know that kinetic energy is the energy a body has due to its motion, or the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its current velocity. Not according to “psychic” and convicted fraud, Sylvia Browne, who defines it thusly in her latest book :
Kinetic energy is the unintentional, spontaneous manipulation of inanimate objects through no obvious physical means, causing its possessor to become kind of a hapless walking force field. There are several theories about what creates kinetic energy. And, of course, there are just as many skeptics who will swear it doesn’t exist at all, which I’d be happy to consider if I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes a few thousand times.
What? You see, Browne believes that your “kinetic energy” can can cause inanimate objects to be spontaneously manipulated without your volition.
(Hat tip to J-Walk Blog)
The following first appeared in the British Journal for the History of Science (2009).
It is not often that one reads a book that discusses both the sixteenth century Spanish human rights advocate Bartolomé de Las Casas and the twentieth century American neo-Nazi Richard Butler, but David Livingstone’s latest monograph does just that. Livingstone offers a history of pre-adamism – the idea that human beings inhabited the Earth before Adam and that their descendents may still occupy the planet – and its engagement with race, religion and human evolution. In so doing, he covers a millennium of theology, natural philosophy, geography, ethnography and anthropology in an even-handed manner and a reader is doubtlessly going to learn much and come away impressed with Livingstone’s synthesis.
In the 1920’s the Canadian creationist George McCready Price succinctly summarized the centrality of Adam and the issue of human origins for those that hold the account presented in Genesis to be literally true: “No Adam, No Fall; No Fall, No Atonement; No Atonement; No Savior” went his oft-quoted syllogism. Without an historical Adam, there would be no original sin and no reason for the atoning death of Christ. Thus the very foundation of Christianity would be removed. Yet it was obvious to many readers of Genesis that there were problems with the narrative if read literally, one such problem being the question of the origin of Cain’s wife and of why Cain feared for his life after being banished by God. Could it have been that there were humans who were not descendents of Adam? Livingstone begins his account by outlining three further issues that raised problems for the historicity of the Genesis account of creation. The first of these was the increasing availability of non-Judeo-Christian accounts that clearly were of ancient origin yet went against claims made in the canonical texts. The second of these was the presence of “monstrous races” as detailed by Pliny, Strabo & Herodotus and their problematic relationship to humans. If these existed – and few doubted the fact – were they human and therefore should they be baptized? Lastly, and somewhat related, there was the issue of the inhabitants of the New World – if they were human – and thus in need of baptism – how did they fit into a scheme that saw all humans as descendents of Shem, Ham or Japheth? Equally as important, how did they end up at the other side of the world? Indeed the possibility of extra-terrestrial life – as raised by Giordano Bruno and Tomaso Campanella – only exacerbated these problems. These were serious questions that worried the best minds of the early modern period.
A French theologian, Isaac La Peyrère, offered one solution in 1655 in his work, Prae-Adamitae. The works English subtitle gave a clue as to La Peyrère’s methods: “A Discourse Upon the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Verses of the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. By Which Are Prov’d, That Men were Created before Adam” and he used scriptutal exegesis and non-Christian sources to argue for a polygenism that was not tainted with racial inequality. La Peyrère claims went beyond simple advocacy of plural origins for humans; he furthermore claimed that the Scriptures were fallible human transcriptions, that Moses was not the sole author of the Pentateuch, that the Noachian Flood was localized, and that Adam was only the father of the Jews. Clearly this early form of biblical criticism could not go unpunished and La Peyrère was forced to recant his views. As Livingstone notes, this recantation did not prevent the Pre-Adamite theory having significant impact on future thought in relation to the origin of humans.
A major portion of Livingstone’s account is taken with how individuals – both creationist and evolutionist, believer and infidel – wrestled with pre-adamism and its manifest consequences, and it would be impossible for me to summarize the rich vein that he successfully mines. Despite the idea being favored by atheists and unbelievers who sought to undermine Scripture, pre-adamism would equally become deployed as a means to preserve scriptural reliability when faced with such criticism. Interpretation would allow for two origins of humans as accounted in Genesis, the first being of the human species and the second being of Adam, who was thus seen as father of the Jews (or in certain readings of Caucasians or Aryans). Ethnographers in the nineteenth century were divided between polygenism and monogenism, the latter ultimately receiving support from Darwin’s work. This in turn was opposed by the polygenist Louis Agassiz who himself supported the racist writings of Samuel Morton, Josiah Nott and George Gliddon. Pre-adamism thus fed into the rhetoric of Antebellum America and became as important politically as it was theologically. In opposition to the claims of many modern anti-evolutionists, Livingstone makes it clear that many apologists for slavery (and racial inequality) sought support not in the writings of Darwin but in Scripture, some going as far as to claim that Eve’s sin was one of miscegenation with a black pre-adamite.
The amazing scope of Livingstone’s work lends to its appeal. Having personally written at various times about Agassiz, Thomas Chalmers, Hugh Miller, George Pye Smith, Robert Chambers and St George Jackson Mivart, I was pleasantly surprised to encounter these theologically diverse individuals in this work, often in unexpected contexts. Historians of other eras are likely to have similar encounters. Livingstone’s book is highly recommended both for its sweeping synthesis and the nature of the questions it raises in the mind of the reader.
David N. Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
stranger fruit 
