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Category Archives: Philosophy
More on the human limitations of science (especially regarding politics)
My attention was drawn to an important, but rather predictably neglected, 2004 article How science makes environmental controversies worse, by Daniel Sarewitz (Environmental Science & Policy 7 (2004) 385–403). It’s essential reading.
Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science
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“Just Nature” – clarify “Nature,” please.
Chasing up, for interest, references to the 1908 “Tunguska Event” (now most commonly thought to be a meteroric or cometary air-burst), I came across this recent piece in Physorg.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
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Nobel Prize pseudoscience v Classics orthodoxy
Returning to my long thread on science in the media over at Peaceful Science, at one stage the accusations of irrational climate denialism were expressed, by a classics graduate, no less, thus: This is the language of the science denialist. Which anti-science cause will you champion next, chiropractic and homeopathy?
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science
9 Comments
Pay attention
You may or may not have seen the following sports awareness test on YouTube. If not you can check your skills:
Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science
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The tree in Berkeley’s square (no nightingale)
George Berkeley is most famous for his immaterialist view of reality, which is nicely, if incompletely, summed up in Monsignor Ronald Knox’s limerick:
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
6 Comments
Abstraction and the cover of God’s Good Earth
In my last post I drew on George Berkeley in the context of probability theory, to show how western thought’s tendency to make abstractions from reality actually leads to a misleading view of the world. The generalisations of science are particularly prone to the reification of abstract notions.
Posted in History, Philosophy, Science
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Abstraction and improbability
I’ve been dipping into George Berkeley’s philosophy recently, mainly because his mind-only view of reality resonates with some other thinkers whose ideas on the matter of matter have impressed me over the years, such as Arthur Eddington, Werner Heisenberg and William Dembski.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
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Molinism again
A quick thought here, based on a heads-up to me on Peaceful Science on a thread that, for some reason, doesn’t give me the ability to reply. No matter, because I have more space to reply here.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
4 Comments
On distinguishing miracles from providence
In my recent piece about Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, I mentioned how Bacon, supposedly the staunch supporter of methodological naturalism, included both a scientificcally detectable miracle and a providential answer to prayer in an apologetic for the new science that is only 22 pages long. He would appear to cut the world-cake rather differently from many of a scientific bent now, who divide the world sharply between the “natural” and the “miraculous.”
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology of nature
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Design and all that metaphysics
A thread at Peaceful Science tosses around the usual argument-suspects about Intelligent Design. It was set up in an unhelpful way by the common ID argument contrasting Mount Rushmore (a large statue in America, m’Lud, in the form of a carved mountain) with Mount Everest, a “natural” mountain.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
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