A panel of lectures moderated by Edward Davis.
Metanexus:Views 2001.11.07 3185 words One of the most wonderfully curious turns of phrase that I ever stumbledupon in science was the delightful title of Rita Levi-Montalcini’s 1988autobiography. Levi-Montalcini, a neurobiologist, was the fourth woman toreceive the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which she received in 1986, along withStanley Cohen, for the discovery of nerve growth factor….
From the 2009 Terry Lectures at Yale University by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack. Author Metanexus Editors
I have only met Ken Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, the once. This was when we together appeared on one of William Buckley’s Firing Line television debates, part of the side arguing for evolution against a group of critics, those whom I label the “New Creationists.” I should say that on those…
Metanexus: Views 2002.01.03 2679 words If we are the products of evolution, can we take positive initiatives, makethe right choices? Or are our choices fixed since days of old, and isfreedom nothing but an illusion? Libraries could be filled with books on’free will’. Here I want to indicate briefly why I hold that a meaningfulnotion…
Branden Fitelson, Christopher Stephens, and Elliott Sober review William Dembski’s 1998 book __Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities__(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998. xvii + 243 pg. ISBN 0-521-62387-1). How Not to Detect Design*As every philosopher knows, “the design argument” concludes that God exists from premises that cite the adaptive complexity of organisms or the…
There are good and bad reasons to be skeptical of intelligent design. Perhaps the best reason is that intelligent design has yet to establish itself as a thriving scientific research program. Thus far philosophical, theoretical, and foundational concerns have tended to predominate. From the vantage of design advocates, this simply reflects the earliness of the…