Category Archives: Science

Can God use ateleological processes to meet his aims? – 1

Posted on 20/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

Darwinian evolution is an atelological theory of origins. Theism is the belief in a “Hands On” God who acts for clear purposes. On the face of it, then, the title of this piece is an oxymoron. Purposeful purposelessness is a flat contradiction. And so in such a context, it would appear that “guided evolution” can only mean the miraculous imposition of intention on the unintentional. That would make biology intrinsically supernatural, with the concomitant that its directedness would be evidence for God as evolution’s principal efficient cause.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Divine image or pareidolia?

Posted on 11/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

BioLogos is currently doing a series with the strapline: “A continued examination of the genetic evidence that God designed humans by way of common descent.” This is actually more an attempt by Dennis Venema to demonstrate the truth of a Neodarwinian account of human origins than simply an appeal to common descent (still less to divine design), but in fairness it would seem that the description is the result of sub-editing as it does not occur in the articles themselves.

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Do the Brontosaurus

Posted on 09/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

It’s nice to see that the genus Brontosaurus is being rehabilitated after over a century of being rudely lumped together with Apatosaurus. For many of us amateurs, of course, it never needed rehabilitation, having been far more iconic than its alter-ego throughout the last century.

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Truth from afar

Posted on 04/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

Rounding off my meanderings in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions I just want to pick up on a point I mentioned near the close of the last post. Kuhn says that, in his view, it is a mistake to see science, in its various paradigmatic guises, as converging on the Final Truth of reality, preferring to see it as extending from where it is now. In other words he is committed to the value of science, and its progress, but more in terms of its utility in solving problems than in the grand ambition of reaching ultimate truth. In this, actually, he seems to echo part of the mediaeval … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

A few more Kuhnian implications

Posted on 02/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, addressed in a recent post, condenses many ideas that have already found their way into columns here in the last year or two, so I like him a lot. One such idea is the way in which perception itself, as opposed to merely the interpretation of perception, is theory-led (or paradigm-led, in his terms). He gives a number of examples in science in which it was simply impossible to see something under one paradigm that became impossible to miss under the new. For example, Aristotelian science saw swinging stones as a question about interrupted falling. Galileo, however, influenced by a century of … Continue reading →

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Against method

Posted on 01/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

A nice story in The Independent: A new (old) cure for MRSA? Revolting recipe from the Dark Ages may be key to defeat infection. The story, as I hope you’ll read, speaks of a “stomach-churning potion…”, a mediaeval eye-salve which nevertheless has been found to treat MRSA. The journalistic aim of the piece is to amaze one that the Neanderthal ignorance of the Dark Ages could accidentally produce something which, though inevitably Dark and Horrible, pluckily rivals the infallible results of Science™.

Posted in History, Medicine, Science | 11 Comments

Kuhn’s predictions make prediction harder

Posted on 30/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

Several decades ago I had a patient with complex needs that boiled down to what’s called “personality disorder”, combined with a low IQ. The problems presented as a great dependency on a weekly fix of doctor, on whom she could offload her many nebulous problems and vaguely uncomfortable feelings. She actually managed reasonably well on that.

Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science | 6 Comments

Magic in an age of incredulity

Posted on 27/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

Have you ever noticed how many serious academic bloggers are addicted to science fiction? Hardnosed researchers of evolutionary biology, or analytic philosophy or even critical theology will throw in regular posts about the latest Dr Who or Star Wars story. That got me wondering why magic remains so popular in fiction, in an age when nobody believes in magic. For science fiction, after all, is only really the supernatural set within pseudo-science rather than demonology (if you don’t count Phillip Pulman or Terry Pratchett, where it is set in demonology). As the introduction to one of the sci-fi anthologies on my shelf says, a story beginning “The last man in … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 5 Comments

Blues is truth, and so is Science

Posted on 25/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

There are probably not many readers here who would fully endorse Brownie McGhee’s dictum that “Blues is Truth”. Whilst you might well agree with me that the blues is a music very expressive of the human condition, you’d probably consider that its truth lies in a fairly restricted sphere. You might even wonder if its practitioners always bare their souls honestly, rather than playing what they know their audiences will pay for. Then again, though Leadbelly said “There never was a white man had the blues” it owes its continued popularity, and even existence, to the efforts of a generation of white, British Grammar School kids like Eric Clapton and … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

Sheldrake and divine action – a thought experiment

Posted on 23/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

I’ve mentioned Rupert Sheldrake in a few posts, and his name has come up in comments, usually with the slant, “He’s probably nuts, but there are more things in heaven and earth…” In retrospect I have underestimated the extent to which we nowadays live in intellectually muddied waters (even here one has had to learn that “scientifically discredited” may mean no more than “Jerry Coyne’s trolls scoff at it”). There’s a long and interesting interview with Sheldrake on Best Schools, which shows that he’s read and studied a lot more than many of his detractors. That doesn’t make him right in his theorising, but it does make him more worth … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Science, Theology | 6 Comments