Monthly Archives: August 2013

Blogger The OFloinn has started (and not yet completed) a mythbusting and brilliantly written series on the historical transition from Ptolomeic astronomy. Part one of The Great Ptolomeic Smackdown is here, and Part two here. If you like it you can follow his links to subsequent parts as he posts them. Particularly valuable is the unusually thorough debunking of the scientistic fiction that the unenlightened, stupid (and religious) Old Days gave way to the truth and light of Science. Instead, the consistent mixture of astonishing insight and human shortcomings in every age is made clear. This has obvious lessons for the current debates about evolutionary thought and its complex relationship … Continue reading →

If you look at the way the Wikipedia article on “Noncoding DNA” has settled after much to-ing and fro-ing after the ENCODE papers were published, you’ll see that the final “consensus” is that ENCODE’s figure of 80%+ function for DNA means little, since mere transcription is a poor indicator of function. Naughty ENCODE was careless in playing into the Creationists’ hands. Uncommon Descent has just pointed to a paper by Mattick and Dinger who clearly belong to that increasing “lunatic fringe” of people with excellent credentials who cast doubt on that wisdom.

This interesting paper has attracted some attention from the Intelligent Design websites like ENV and UD. And well it might, because it has reversed the usual Darwinian understanding of evolutionary expansion as an increasingly divergent tree, and replaced it with something more like a turnip. “The turnip of life” … doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it?