So this is a book that I really did not expect to be reviewing as my book of the month selection, but life is funny. Mind & Cosmos is subtitled “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.” When a book with this kind of subtitle comes out, written by a philosopher …
Kicking Evolutionary Euro-Butt
Coyne’s last two chapters might best be treated together. This is because the closer we get to the end, the faster the evolution of this review wants to accelerate. In these chapters, Coyne addresses the evolution of man. Chapter 8, “What About Us?” tackles the evolution of man, and his last chapter, “Evolution Redux,” also …
If Creationists Were Beetles . . .
So then, Jerry Coyne now comes to explain, in the famous phrase, the origin of species. How is it that wherever we look we see distinct species, and not a long blur of intermediate types and missing links between each of the species? In addressing this question, he sets out laboriously to prove something that …
The Turtle On the Fencepost
As providence would have it, last night I read the next chapter of Coyne’s book in order to mull over it a bit before writing my next post. And then this morning, as is my practice, I spend some time reading through any magazines that have accumulated during the course of the week. And, as …
Evolution’s Alligatornado
Coyne’s next chapter is on the “engine of evolution,” which is to say, natural selection. One of his examples was one I was already familiar with, and since it is quite a fun one — let’s just go with it. There is a kind of roundworm that is a parasite to a species of ant …
His Brother Was Joktan, If That Helps
In his next chapter, Coyne addresses the subject of biogeography, “the study of the distribution of species on earth” (p. 88). In responding to this chapter, I want to begin by pointing out how much of it was beside the point. Coyne spent a great deal of time and energy showing the various ways that …
Evolutionary Heritage Days
The next chapter of Coyne’s book is on vestigia, atavistic throwbacks, embryonic recapitulation, topped off with alleged screw-ups in the so-called process of intelligent design. Let’s start with this last item, since we should be able to dispense with it in a paragraph or so. The structure of this argument is strange, in that Coyne …
Like Watching a Hummingbird Fly
As previously mentioned, here is my second installment on chapter two of Coyne’s book. As this chapter makes apparent, long stretches of time are essential to the project of evolutionary hand-waving, a process whereby impossible things are made more plausible to us by having them happen very, very slowly. Don’t think I can walk across …
That’s A Rabbit, You Doofus
Comes now chapter two of Jerry Coyne’s book, called Written in the Rocks. It will take a post or two to deal with this chapter, so patience, all of you. My first post will address the structure of his argumentation, and later I will look at the time involved in all this — my own …
Occam’s Shaving Kit
Jerry Coyne’s first chapter of Why Evolution Is True begins with something of a patronizing quotation from Jacques Monod. “A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it” (p. 1) Well, excuse us. But after that, he starts at the right place, which is the appearance of design. Coyne …