Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Tag: biology

  • Avoiding the Religion of Scientism

    Several weeks ago, I posted a blog about my entry to Discover Magazine’s “Evolution in Two Minutes” contest. Developmental biologist and outspoken atheist PZ Myers is judging the entries (still no word on the winner), and out of curiousity, I decided to visit his blog Pharyngula. Though it is supposedly a science blog, Myers posts…

  • The Science of Life

    Daniel Dennett says biology is engineering. He argues that living organisms are machines, flattening the classical Aristotelian difference between natural and artificial. For Aristotle, natural things had their form and purpose internal to themselves, while artificial things were designed from without for a purpose other than themselves. Of course, the beauty of human art (film,…

  • Ongoing discussion on PZ Myers’ blog

    Anyone interested in following the thread I’ve been participating in over on Myers’ blog, here’s the link: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/i_was_wondering_about_that.php A little taste of what’s been going on there (one of my posts): @ 201 John Morales writes: “those assumptions (of science) are that there is an external reality, and that it is consistent, and that only…

  • Seeing With Teilhard: Evolution and the Within of Things

    Preface “Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.” –Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, p. 30 “To see and to make others see” (p. 31)—such is the mission of Teilhard’s masterwork, The Human Phenomenon. But what is it…

  • Mechanism and Meaning: Making Room for Consciousness

    The following is an exchange I had on YouTube with cosmanthony21 about the nature of “awareness.” —————————————————–cosmanthony21’s original message: Ok, lemme give it a shot. This is an interesting topic for discussion, so if you’ll humor me, Id like to write some thoughts coming to mind on the topic of awareness you had brought up.…

  • Dennett’s Dangerous Idea

    I am a little more than half way through Daniel Dennett’s book about how evolutionary biology provides you with the only meaning your life needs (or at least the only meaning it can have, regardless of what you may think otherwise). Thoughts are, after all (after Dennett waves his material wand), just the side effects…