26Sep 2024 by Post

My Briar Patch: Notes of a Country Doctor 

Biologic Revolution, Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, briar patch, cancer, Daniel Witt, Francis Crick, geocentrism, heliocentrism, Intelligent Design, Jacques Monod, James Watson, John Searle, mechanistic consensus, Medicine, painting, piano, planets, René Descartes, science of purpose, scientific atheism, Stuart Kauffman, telos, The Song of the South, The Undying Soul, UC Berkeley, University of California at San Francisco
It took me about twenty years after medical school to break free of the intellectual "comfort" afforded by the mechanistic consensus. Source
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12Aug 2024 by Post

Discerning the Shape of a “New Biology”

Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, biology, Carl Woese, causation, cell, Chance and Necessity, David Hume, dispositionalism, Evolution News, final cause, Intelligent Design, intentionality, Isaac Newton, Jacques Monod, Life Sciences, Michael Behe, organelle, powers ontology, purpose, René Descartes, science of purpose, telos, The Design Inference, Walter Elsasser, William Dembski
Purpose and intentionality permeate and in fact define the living state, in contrast to the inanimate. Source
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21May 2024 by Post

Is Vitalism Making a Comeback? 

"God of the gaps", Andrea Roli, argument from ignorance, biology, blacks, élan vital, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, Evolution “On Purpose”, Huffington Post, Intelligent Design, Irish immigrants, Jacques Monod, James Barham, James Shapiro, Kardashian family, Peter Corning, Racism, Samir Okasha, Stuart A. Kauffman, University of Chicago, vital force, vitalism
For proponents of ID, there is a natural temptation to respond to this sort of explanation with derision. I suspect this reaction may be short-sighted. Source
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07Sep 2023 by Post

Is the Cell a Machine, or More Like a Mind? 

Barbara McClintock, cell, cellular architecture, cellular behavior, cellular cognition, Chance and Necessity, circuitry, cognition, conformation, Daniel Nicholson, DNA, electronic circuitry, function, functional promiscuity, Intelligent Design, intracellular transport, Jacques Monod, Journal of Theoretical Biology, lymphotactin, machine, machine conception of the cell, machine metaphor, membranes, molecular biology, neural circuitry, Neuroscience & Mind, nucleic acids, proteins, self-assembly, Sewall Wright, wiring
At least as we’re accustomed to thinking in our age of AI, the alternative to a machine is a mind. Source
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05Oct 2022 by Post

Erasmus Darwin and Credible Denial

cancel culture, Charles Darwin, Creation, Deucalion, E Conchis Omnia, Enlightenment, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, French Revolution, Intelligent Design, Jacques Monod, Jennifer Hecht, John Milton, Lichfield, Lucretius, New Atheists, Paradise Lost, Richard Dawkins, sea shells, Sigmund Freud, spontaneous generation, The Age of Reason, theodicy, Thomas Paine
Consideration of Erasmus Darwin’s writings suggests that his unbelief could well have been father to the thought in the matter of his evolutionary speculations. Source
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