Pierre Laplace didn't do science any favors when he let Napoleon provoke him.
After reading the French mathematician's opus on celestial mechanics -- the movements of planets -- the emperor asked him why the treatise, unlike the work of Isaac Newton, made no mention of God. Laplace reportedly replied, in a huff, that he had no need of that hypothesis.
The Atlantic storm season officially ended November 30 [2006], but the concerns about poverty highlighted by hurricane Katrina are still very much with us.[1] Why did it take a natural disaster to draw attention to the poor of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? How many of those made homeless will join the ranks of the permanently dispossessed?
In the aftermath of the 2004 election, Democrats are being enjoined to get religion. Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, deplores the liberal disdain of spirituality, and says that Democrats should foster a “religious/spiritual left.”[1] Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times suggests that Democrats “rebrand” themselves as faith-friendly, otherwise the party will never reclaim its majority status.[2]
“The great specter of brain science is that it will demonstrate that we are merely conscious organic machines, that all our experience and behavior originate in the brain.”[1]
Some ideas, it is thought, are inherently dangerous. Some pose a threat because they are false, and by misleading us, encourage destructive behavior. Others are dangerous because although true, they might have dire consequences for those who fall under their sway. An example of the former is the belief that human beings are not a significant contributor to global warming, and that therefore there’s nothing we can or need do to avert a climate disaster over the next century.
In his article “In Defense of Intelligent Design[1] , William Dembski takes Barbara Forrest, Eugenie Scott and others to task for supposing that science is governed by “methodological naturalism” or “methodological materialism.” This is to suppose that in investigating the world, science should consider only natural or materi
