Over on Facebook, I invited Wayne Myrvold, philosopher of physics at The University of Western Ontario, to post his thoughts about Tyson and the responses Tyson has gotten from philosophers.   In another post to follow, I will post my reaction to Wayne's post. What Neil de Grasse Tyson got right Wayne Myrvold, Department of…

This piece in the Gaurdian argues that it is.   So does the  the Congressionally-funded US Institute for Peace. "…poor responses to climatic shifts create shortages of resources such as land and water. Shortages are followed by negative secondary impacts, such as more sickness, hunger, and joblessness. Poor responses to these, in turn, open the door to…

Not very well, claims a study recently published in Nature.   The principle claim is that "laypeople interpret IPCC statements as conveying probabilities closer to 50% than intended by the IPCC authors."  In other words, if the IPCC uses a term to convey that a hypothesis is 90% likely, people intepret it to mean that the…

There appeared this morning a very interesting review of Craver and Darden’s recent book In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences by the biologist Stuart Newman.   Among the points he makes is the claim that it will no longer do for philosophers to define the function of some mechanism (or anything else) as…

There were news reports indicating that an Oklahoma affiliate did this in March, when there was brief mention of human evolution.   Some claimed it was an accident.   There are now rumors (I don't have an internet link for this) that they did this again last night in Louisiana.   Can any Louisiana viewers confirm or…

According to some big names in linguistics and evolutionary biology (Hauser, Lewontin, Chomsky, etc.) not very much.   Two things to talk about here: 1.  The claims of the article, which I find very well argued for, but not (at least to me) very surprising. 2. Is it surprising to anyone that Mark Hauser is collaborating…

Should be working again!  Thanks for everyone's patience while we've been having problems with Typepad.

In a comment to the previous post on the Fermi Paradox, David Wallace wrote this terrific exposition of it.  I agree with almost everything he says, so I will save my own quibbles for a comment.  David writes: Just to clarify the force of the Fermi paradox (which is intended to rest on quantitative factors,…

Mark, 'tis 'Talk Liketh Shakespeare Day!' Then come, good fellows, and let us dream of dragons and finless fish, take but a moment and speak of clip-winged griffins and a ramping cat. The youth of England are on fire, and though men may sleep, some have knives with edges. Such words as his delight the…

Astronomers have found the first  Earth-sized planet located in the habitable zone of a star — the right distance away to host liquid water and possibly life.  Story here.  The system is only about 500 light years away.   This of course raises the issue of the Fermi paradox:  if there is even a tiny chance of intelligent…