If you live near Austin, on 9 March there will be A Debate on the History of Life on Earth with Sahotra Sarkar and Paul Nelson. I scowl disapprovingly on the debate format: it means half the time is going to be wasted with some creationist babbling on stage. The topic, “Can the history of life on Earth be explained by purely natural processes?”, doesn’t sound particularly promising, and simply invites the creationist to say “no”, although he won’t have any evidence to support that conclusion. Go to hear Sarkar, though, which should be interesting.
New Yorkers can attend the Bridges symposium at NYU on 4 March. This is what I like: more young scientists presenting their work, with none of the creationist wibbly-wobbly nonsense in sight. Douglas J. Futuyma is the keynote speaker.
I see that the two DI drones at the Austin talk are from the philosophy department. I’ll bet the other one from the philosophy department is going to argue in favor of creationism too. Philosophers versus actual biologists. How depressing. Why don’t we get the philosophers to debate whether gravitational or germ theory are subject to philosophizing too?
Science vs. opinion. That’s always the way it shakes out.
I’ll bet you’re wrong.
As far as I know, the only DI drone in the UT Philosophy department is Rob Koons; he’s a kook, IMHO, and he is not representative of the department. Got tenure doing perfectly fine metamath, then ate his brain and became a Christian apologist along the lines of Alvin Plantinga. Blechh. Tenure has its downside.
I used to know a number of professors in that department, and they generally found Koons to be an embarrassment or worse, once they realized he was up to. (I had the honor of breaking the news to a couple of them, who were aghast.)
Sahotra Sarkar is a smart guy. He will be worth listening to. Bill Wimsatt, too. (I was hanging out with philosophers and evolutionary biologists at Chicago when Sarkar studied under Wimsatt at U of C, and an evo bio friend of mine went off to study philosophy with Wimsatt.) I would also be surprised if Cory Juhl was pro-ID, from a few conversations with him years ago.
I’ve met most of these guys, at one time or another, and I think you do them a disservice by dismissing them or philosophers in general as wankers. (I’ve argued with Rob Koons a couple of times, and I can tell you even he’s not stupid, even if I think he’s a religious kook.)
(Thomas Milner, the biomedical engineering guy, is on the ID side. His background is mostly engineering, physics, and specifically optics. Another data point for Salem.)
All the philosophers I know, except for Koons, think that ID is crap, and many of them can explain that better than most of the biologists I know.
Of course, P.Z.’s right that debate format often sucks for this sort of thing. But as such debates go, this should be a good one.
PZ, you’re correct. These debates are terrible ideas, and not simply because ID gets half the time.
Due to the nature of the complex, century-long data-and-theory construct that is evolutionary biology it’s extremely difficult to convey in this format. And these debates are immense blunders and a prime example of how clueless scientists are about the science-derived communication technology they are facing.
The plaintiff’s in the Dover trial claim they spent $2.5 million on it. What the hell makes scientists believe they can waltz in, ignorant of the sophisticated communication technology they face, and make the event a positive for our side?
This fits a longer post I made on Ed Brayton’s War on Christians post a bit earlier here.
Paul W., if you’re right, I’ll feel a lot better. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve had anything to do with the UT philosophy department, so I would hope it hasn’t gone to the dogs …
Ah, philosophy — the last refuge of the incompetent.
Ask the philosophers to produce a definition of ‘natural’. Then ask them to explain how their definition is different than the one used in the philosophy of science.
It doesn’t matter what we postulate being involved in the history of life, whether it’s asteroid impacts, alien visitations, to quasi-omnipotent beings rearranging molecules for fun — it’s all ‘natural’.
Hey, what’s with all the hating on philosophers?
Nope. On average, the people who go into philosophy are a bit smarter than the people who go into most of the sciences. (Including, for example, biology.) And given the very stiff competition for jobs in philosophy, after that, I’d hardly say it’s the last refuge of the incompetent.
That was a factor for me when I decided to be a scientist/engineer instead.
‘Smarter’ in what way, exactly?
While there is a significant number of intelligent and competent philosphers doing innovative work, a section of the field seems to be composed of highly educated doofi.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh. But if you’d suffered through the ‘Philosophy of Science’ course taught my alma mater’s head of the philosophy, you might agree with me.
Oh, the usual semi-bogus measures we use for measuring smarts in academia, like combined scores on the general GRE test. (Which is highly correlated with “IQ” measured by IQ tests.)
One study I saw—this was 20 years ago—simply broke down the GRE general test scores of US students taking various GRE advanced tests in various subjects. That is, the pool was broken down by “major” (advanced test) but ranked by general test.
That’s a pretty good indicator of the GRE-measured quality of students who’ve done undergraduate work in a given field and who are likely applying to graduate programs in those fields.
The “philosophy students,” by that measure, came out ahead of everybody but the “physics students.”—somewhere ahead of the engineering, biology, and chemistry students, who were somewhere ahead of the psychology and English students, who were roughly in the middle of the pack. (As I recall, psych students were above average, on average, but not by a lot, and I think English students were a bit below.)
That’s depressingly plausible.
Aha! I finally figured out the proper command!
Apart from the inane philosopher-bashing above, let it be noted that Sahotra, in addition to being a philosopher of biology of note, is also a practising biologist, and has a major text on conservation biology coming out.
He is well known already for his work on molecular genetics and reductionism. He has chops Dembski and Nelson can only dream of. I wish I could see the video…
I think the point of the question has been lost.
Leaving aside the old joke about philosophy degrees causing their recipients to find new and exciting employment opportunities that involve wearing paper hats and asking “Do you want fries with that?”, you’re remembering that philosophy students supposedly scored higher on the GREs. Higher in what way, exactly? I can easily imagine that philosophy majors have significantly higher-than-average verbal fluency and ability to comprehend complex text.
Bridges is a great program. I had the pleasure of working alongside a couple of Bridges participants at Western Michigan, both of whom thrived on the research experience and eventually entered four-year degree programs. Our Bridges students were doing original research into insect and plant population and conservation genetics while they were still enrolled in community colleges.
Glad to hear the program is still going strong!
I live in Austin and if my fibromyalgia’s not acting up too much I’ll head over and listen to the debate.
Higher combined scores is what I recall. (And being pretty good on both the math and verbal part; there was no “analytical” part then.)
Here’s an updated version of the same sort of information, which I just googled up:
http://elmhurst.edu/~phl/score.html
Note that philosophy students come out a bit ahead of biology students on all three parts of the test, but especially the verbal part.
I must admit that I have never really understod the need to diss entire fields of legitimate study. Philosophers are no more incompetent than any other group of academics.
That can be interpreted in more than one way, Ms. Wager.
Interesting results. I note that this study examines grad students. How many philosophy grad students (or intending grad students) are there compared to, say, biology? Does the smaller number of prospective positions for philosophy cause the population to be more select?
Sarkar’s a good guy, but can be impatient. (A failing I share personally. :)) He was a visitor for a semester while I was at McGill and I have somewhat paid attention to his work since (as I have with all my former instructors of note). I agree, though, that the debate format isn’t exactly suitable. It can be used basically to lecture, which can be useful. (Of course, this cuts both ways.)
(I’m still waiting for PZ or others who know more about genetics than I do to comment on S’s Genetics and Reductionism, too.)
I happen to be a student at UT, and I have to wonder why it is that I can never seem to find out about these sort of events. It is kind of dissapointing that I have to find out about an event I want to go to from someone in Minnesota.
I don’t think there’s an active rationalist or humanist group on the UT campus right now. (There used to be, and I was their faculty advisor for a while, but student groups tend to come and go as the committed organizers graduate and move on.) I expect that the Centers for Inquiry will establish one of their On Campus groups at UT in the foreseeable future, but not right away.
There is an Atheist Community of Austin, with a Yahoo Group you can join whether or not you’re a member. (Check it out at http://www.atheist-community.org ) Various things of interest to Austin atheists and pro-science folks are announced there.
ACA has several (mostly social) events a week, including a happy hour tonight.
If you’re interested in organizing a student group at UT, I could point you to some people. Sahotra would be an obvious one, and I believe that Robert Solomon, another philosophy prof, is a CFI Fellow. (He’s also the philosophy prof in the movie Slacker; director Richard Linklater’s a former student and big fan of his.)
Sigh – more drivel from PZ. Read Nelson’s pre-debate comments here, and think for yourselves….
http://www.uncommondescent.com/documentation/nelson_at_austin.pdf