16Jan 2023 by Post

Old Wine in New Bottles: How Darwin Recruited Malthus to Fortify a Failed Idea from Antiquity

abiogenesis, Alphonse de Candolle, Aristotle, atheists, atomism, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Christianity, complexification, David Hume, Edward Aveling, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Friedrich Engels, Georges Cuvier, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Greece, Homo sapiens, Intelligent Design, Karl Marx, Law of Correlation, Lucretius, Matthew Arnold, Middle Ages, natural selection, Origin of Species, Patrick Matthew, Plato, Poor Law, Rome, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Malthus, transhumanism, Unmoved Mover, Victorian England, William Paley
It was undoubtedly a tremendous philosophical coup for Darwin whose knowledge of formal philosophy was limited. Source
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22Jun 2022 by Post

From Darwinists, a Shift in Tone on Nanomachines

Adam Watkins, bacterial flagellum, BioEssays, biology, Bruce Alberts, Darwinian pathways, Darwinism, David Hume, Dubai, E. coli, Evolution, flagellar filaments, From Darwinists, Guide to Reading Jason Rosenhouse (series), Harvard University, Howard Berg, Intelligent Design, Jason Rosenhouse, magnetotactic bacteria, molehills, moles, mountains, nanomachines, National Academy of Sciences, Rube Goldberg device, Stone Age, Technology
The shift in tone from then to now is remarkable. What happened to the awe these systems used to inspire? Source
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13Jun 2022 by Post

How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind

Alfred Russel Wallace, Animal Liberation, Anthony Flew, Anthony O’Hear, biology, consciousness, cosmogonism, Darwin, David Bentley Hart, David Hume, deism, Donald Hoffman, Erasmus Darwin, Europeans, Evolution, Francis Crick, How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Lawrence Krauss, Lucretius, materialism, Michael Ruse, mind, natural selection, natural theology, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Peter Singer, Racism, rationalism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Rorty, Richard Spilsbury, Stephen Hawking, Ternate letter, The Origin of Species, Thomas Huxley, Tom Wolfe
Marvelously free of racist prejudice, Wallace noted in his fieldwork in far-flung locations that primitive tribes were intellectually the equals of Europeans. Source
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28Jan 2022 by Post

For Darwin, Timing Was Everything

Bible, Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin and the Ghost of Epicurus (series), Christianity, Christianity Not Mysterious, Culture & Ethics, Das Wesen des Christentums, David Hume, deism, demythologization, Enlightenment, Essays and Reviews, Evolution, faith, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, John Toland, Ludwig Feuerbach, On Liberty, On the Origin of Species, Owen Chadwick, philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Wilberforce, secularization, The Essence of Christianity, Thucydides
Charles Darwin, as we saw yesterday, pulled off an intellectual coup against the major thinkers of the Western tradition. How did he do it? Source
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05Aug 2021 by Post

Evolution Versus Design: An Ancient Debate

Anaximande, Anaximenes, ancient Greeks, atomism, Charles Darwin, Creation, daemons, David Hume, De Rerum Natura, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, dryads, Enlightenment, Epicurus, Evolution, Fates, genii, George Strodach, Greek gods, harpies, Intelligent Design, Iphigenia, Jesuit Pierre Gassendi, King Agamemnon, Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Poggio Braccioloni, Romans, satyrs, Stephen Greenblatt, The Art of Happiness, Thomas Creech
The universe, according to Epicureanism, is without a creator, a purposeless and non-intelligent concourse of atoms without any cosmic source of direction. Source
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27Oct 2020 by Post

When Scientists Make Truth Claims Outside Science

Alexander Oparin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Baden Powell, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, clockmaker, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, creator, David Hume, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, evolutionists, Francisco Ayala, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Isaac Newton, John Ray, Joseph Le Conte, Kenneth Miller, mosquitos, religion, Robert Chambers, scientists, Stephen Jay Gould, theology, Thomas Burnet, universe
Here is a small, representative sampling of such claims over the past three centuries. These claims are not from science, but they drive science. Source
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16Aug 2020 by Post

That Hideous Strength — C. S. Lewis’s Fantasia of Consciousness at 75

A.D. Nuttall, Abraham Lincoln, Aldous Huxley, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, Brave New World, Burke, C. P. Snow, Clarence Darrow, Culture & Ethics, Dante, Darwinian theory, David Hume, Deborah Blum, Dickens, Dr. Faustus, E. A. Burtt, Emma Goldman, Evgeny Zamyatin, F. R. Leavis, Frederick Douglass, Friedrich Nietzsche, From Darwin to Hitler, Fyodor Dostoevsky, G. E. M. Anscombe, G. K. Chesterton, Ghost Hunters, Gulag Archipelago, H. L. Mencken, J. D. Bernal, J.B.S. Haldane, Jacques Maritain, Jane Austen, John Dewey, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Leszek Kolakowski, Logical Positivists, Lord Acton, Malcolm Muggeridge, Marquis de Sade, Marxists, Max Stirner, metaphysical fiction, Michael Polanyi, Msgr. R.H. Benson, National Institute of Coordinated Experiments, Petrarch, Pierre Duhem, Richard III, Samuel Johnson, Social Darwinism, space-fiction, St. Francis of Assisi, Stanley L. Jaki, Superman, T.S. Eliot, That Hideous Strength, The Alienation of Reason, The Intellectuals and the Masses, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, The Odyssey, Thomas Carlyle, William Jennings Bryan, William Shakespeare, Yuval Harari
The novel is a narrative, fictional version of a philosophical anatomy of the satanic dimension and implication of much modern history from 1914 onwards. Source
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