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On the difference between man and all other animals
J. B. S Haldane, Julian Huxley, Animal biology, 1927 “The one great difference between man and all other animals is that for them evolution must always be a blind force, of which they are quite unconscious; whereas man has, in some measure at least, the possibility of consciously controlling evolution according to his wishes.” I […]
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Making Mind Matter More
The last paragraph from the paper: Jerry A. Fodor, Making Mind Matter More Philosophical Topics, Vol. 17, No. 1, Philosophy of Mind, 1989, pp. 59-79 http://www.jstor.org/stable/43154039 “So, then, perhaps there’s a route to physicalism from stuff about mental causation that doesn’t require the claim that ceteris paribus laws can’t ground mental cases. If so, then […]
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Understanding ‘Understanding’
Quotes from Addy Pross, What is Life? How Chemistry becomes Biology Chapter Understanding ‘Understanding’ “In the scientific world we strive to achieve understanding of phenomena in the world around us through application of the scientific method.” “At the very heart of the scientific method is the process of induction, a way of reasoning whose roots […]
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Anti-Darwinism in Russia in the Nineteenth Century
James Allen Rogers, Russian Opposition to Darwinism in the Nineteenth Century, Isis Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec., 1974), pp. 487-505 http://www.jstor.org/stable/229337 Chernyshevsky, Danilevsky, Strakhov against Darwin. “It is ironic that classical education in the form in which the Minister of Public Education reinstituted it was clearly reactionary in character while in Western Europe the study […]
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Hinshelwood, bacteria and biologists
Hinshelwood is a famous chemist (Nobel price for kinetics of chain reactions). He also spent the considerable time on research of the growth of bacterial cells. From his biography: “Shortly before the 1939-45 war, Hinshelwood began work on the growth of bacterial cells. For some time he had been thinking about applying kinetic measurements and […]
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Microbial genomics challenge Darwin
Microbial genomics challenge Darwin Collection of 14 papers. Editors Didier Raoult, Eugene V. Koonin. Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol. 2012. Editorial: Microbial genomics challenge Darwin Didier Raoult, and Eugene V. Koonin http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fcimb.2012.00127/full Different approaches: Raoult: radical upstaging of the Darwinian paradigm. Forterre and Gupta: conservative view. Koonin and Wolf: strives to balance the radical and the […]
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On Newton’s World View
Quotes from David Castillejo, Expanding Force in Newton’s Cosmos. These are quotes from Newton manuscripts. Alchemy “This rod & the male & female serpents joyned in the proportion of 3, 1, 2 compose the three headed Cerberus which keeps the gates of Hell. For being fermented & digested together they resolve & grow dayly more […]
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Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings
My comments to the everything-list while discussing Fodor’s paper Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/everything-list/xcBi6v8SAg4 ———————– To understand Fodor’s answer it is necessary to understand his argument. Shortly: 1) Natural selection is assumed to be unintentional. It just happens but it does not has a goal. 2) The existence of coextensive traits in the organism […]