Philosophy

Stephen Jay Gould in his book 'Rocks of Ages: Science and Religon in the Fullness of Life' (Random House 2001)concludes that science defines the natural world and religon our moral world. In an insightful piece published last week in the Sunday … [Read more...] about Penguins and Sex

Owen Harries writes in today's Financial Review, "On political matters, intellectuals tend to share two characteristics: they are slaves to fashion; and on the big questions, they tend to get things hopelessly wrong." Harries proceeds to give a … [Read more...] about A Herd of Independent Minds

A reader of this web-log sent me this link, with the note: I wonder what this gamma ray burst of 13 billion years ago does for the Intelligent Design argument? I have previously commented on Intelligent Design here. … [Read more...] about Intelligent Design in Outer Space

I was going to proceed chapter by chapter through Ian Lowe's new book 'A Big Fix: Radical solutions for Australia's environmental crisis' but by the time I get to chapter 6 I'll have missed the key points, or lost my audience, or both. So here goes … [Read more...] about Chicken Little, Prof Lowe Pre-empts the Movie

Chapter 2 of 'A Big Fix:Radical Solutions for Australia's Environmental Crisis' by Ian Lowe (Black Inc 2005) is titled 'Defining Sustainability: What does it Mean?'. As I began reading the chapter I thought of Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic … [Read more...] about Scientists as Philosopher Kings

E-journal Online Opinion published a piece today titled Evolutionary science isn't a closed book about the pros and cons of teaching Intelligent Design (ID) in schools and universities. I read about the concept of ID in the August 15 issue of Time … [Read more...] about Intelligent Design