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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….
We interact with the world on several planes and in different modes: the psychological, the spiritual, the emotional, the rational, and the sensual. These are not fully separable aspects of our being, and we all of us have a minimum of each of these potentials. During life’s experiences, depending on the context, one or more…
Bismi-Llahi-r-Rahmani-r-Rahim I begin this address by pronouncing the traditional sentence “in the name of God the Compassionate the All-Merciful”. With this formula, the Muslims initiate all the ritual acts of their religious life, and also all the important acts of their everyday life which consequently acquire a sacred value. Before each act, I should always…
David Cope, the author of more than seventy published compositions and a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, invented a form of artificial intelligence that can emulate the great composers. It is called Experiments in Musical Intelligence.
Part 3. Design by Elimination The defects in Sober’s likelihood approach are, in my view, so grave that it cannot provide an adequate account of how design hypotheses are inferred. [18] The question remains, however, whether specified complexity can instead provide an adequate account for how design hypotheses are inferred. The worry here centers on…
NOMA One way of dealing with the apparent conflict between science and religion is to say that they are two different ways of looking at things, and that it is pointless to try to relate them, or to try to find common ground between them. This is an idea that crops up occasionally in discussions…
Let me paint the picture more starkly. Consider an elementary event E. Suppose initially we see no pattern that gives us reason to expect an intelligent agent produced it. But then, rummaging through our background knowledge, we suddenly see a pattern that signifies design in E. Under a likelihood analysis, the probability of E given…
Time is the most insubstantial element of human consciousness that is experienced very profoundly. It seems to be with us all through our waking hours, apparently drifting silently and unhaltingly out there in the external world as well as within the very core of our being. Each one of us tastes a slice of time…
1. Overview of the Design Inference Darwinbegan his Origin of Species with the commonsense recognition that artificial selection in animal and plant breeding experiments is capable of directing organismal variation. A design-theoretic research program likewise begins with a commonsense recognition, in this case that humans draw design inferences routinely in ordinary life, explaining some things…
Metanexus:Views 2001.10.03 3664 words When we here at Metanexus talk about the nexus of science and religion, whatexactly are we talking about? The connection, the joining, or the fasteningof science and religion are all possible interpretations of the term “nexus”in this regard, with each interpretation positing a different level ofengagement. But what do we actually…