This is just terribly sad – Jerry Coyne gave a lecture on evolution at a public school and a lot of the students were simply “offended” in their religious beliefs. I am dispirited. I’ve just returned from a two-hour lecture and Q&A session at the Woodlawn Charter School, a public school run by the University of …
Tag Archive: Epistemology
Nov 23 2011
Thinking about thinking about thinking
More discussion of facts and belief, of Ward and Coyne, of science and philosophy, of evidence and reasons to believe. Jean Kazez did a post a couple of days ago, which I didn’t see until today, and Russell Blackford did one at Talking Philosophy. I find Jean’s post very interesting because it talks about the …
Nov 18 2011
Facts and belief
Keith Ward wrote a short piece for Comment is Free, a couple of weeks ago, saying something about religion and science and claims and facts. (I put it loosely that way because Ward oscillates between terms a lot, so it’s not easy to specify exactly what he’s claiming. The title of the piece is “Religion …
Oct 30 2011
All of empirical inference
There’s another entry for the What to call it problem. It comes from a comment by Richard Wein on Dan’s post replying to Dr Coyne. Much of the confusion over “science” and “scientism” arises from the tendency of some New Atheists (including Coyne) to stretch the word “science” to mean all of empirical inference. I think …
Oct 25 2011
The not just making it up community
That thing about drawing the boundaries in a different place, again. Julian drew them as: science everything else, especially the humanities and looking at a painting I want to draw them as: science and all other kinds of inquiry that are constrained by reality storytelling the arts, aesthetic experience, appreciation
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