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1William Whewell: OmniscientistIn Menachem Fisch & Simon Schaffer (eds.), William Whewell: A Composite Portrait, Clarendon Press. 1991.
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39Making use of creationism. A case-study for the philosophy of science classroomStudies in Philosophy and Education 10 (1): 81-92. 1990.In this paper, I describe an approach to the teaching of philosophy of science that draws normally reluctant students into controversial issues in the philosophy of science. I have found that the topic of creationism is a good vehicle for introducing students to the more difficult issues in philosophy of science. I explore the use of creationism as a case-study in the philosophy of science and detail my own experience in the creationism debate.
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Introduction to part VIIIn David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The philosophy of biology, Oxford University Press. 1998.
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27Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. Dean Keith Simonton (review)Isis 92 (3): 587-589. 2001.
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6Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species by Jeffrey H. Schwartz (review)Isis 91 (3): 608-609. 2000.
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On behalf of the foolIn John Angus Campbell & Stephen C. Meyer (eds.), Darwinism, design, and public education, Michigan State University Press. pp. 475--485. 2003.
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John Preston, Gonzalo Munevar and David Lamb (eds), The Worst Enemy of Science? Essays in Memory of Paul Feyerabend (review)History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 23 (2): 290-290. 2002.
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8Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion. x + 406 pp., app., index. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. $27Isis 98 (4): 814-816. 2007.
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22Literature after Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction, 1859–1939The European Legacy 19 (6): 812-813. 2014.
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Evolutionary medicineIn Martin H. Brinkworth & Friedel Weinert (eds.), Evolution 2.0: Implications of Darwinism in Philosophy and the Social and Natural Sciences, Springer. pp. 177-189. 2012.
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82Genetic testing and insurance: The complexity of adverse selectionEthical Perspectives 19 (1): 123-54. 2012.The debate on whether insurance companies should be allowed to use results of individuals’ genetic tests for underwriting purposes has been both lively and increasingly relevant over the past two decades. Yet there appears to be no widely agreed upon resolution regarding appropriate and effective regulation. There exists today a gamut of recommendations and actual practices addressing this phenomenon ranging from laissez-faire to voluntary industry moratoria to strict legal prohibition. One obvi…Read more
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46From belief to unbelief-and halfway backZygon 29 (1): 25-35. 1994.Through autobiography, I explain why I cannot accept conventional Christianity or any other form of religious belief. I sketch how, through modern evolutionary theory, I try to find an alternative world‐picture, one which is, however, essentially agnostic about ultimate meanings. I characterize my position as being that of “David Hume brought up‐to‐date by Charles Darwin.” I express sad skepticism about ever realizing the hopes on which Zygon was founded.
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1Bringing in Culture: how the Study of Meta-phor enriches Evolutionary EpistemologyIn A. A. Derksen (ed.), The Promise of Evolutionary Epistemology, Tilburg University Press. pp. 5--157. 1998.
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204Methodological Naturalism Under AttackSouth African Journal of Philosophy 24 (1): 44-60. 2005.Methodological naturalism is the assumption or working hypothesis that understanding nature (the physical world including humans and their thoughts and actions) can be understood in terms of unguided laws. There is no need to Suppose interventions (miracles) from outside. It does not commit one to metaphysical naturalism, the belief that there is nothing other than nature as we can see and observe it (in other words, that atheism is the right theology for the sound thinker). Recently the Intelli…Read more
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54William Whewell and The Argument from DesignThe Monist 60 (2): 244-268. 1977.The section on the Argument from Design in collections of readings in the philosophy of religion usually begins with an expository selection drawn from Archdeacon William Paley’s Natural Theology, and follows with a critical selection drawn from David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Only from the footnotes does the student learn that Hume’s Dialogues was published over twenty years before Paley’s Natural Theology. Probably the student will feel that Hume’s devastating critique of t…Read more
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54Reduction in BiologyThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 10 43-50. 2001.In this paper I shall discuss the concept of reduction—ontological, methodological, and epistemological or theoretical—in the biological sciences, with special emphasis on genetics and evolutionary biology. I suggest that perhaps, because the biological world has a form different from the non-biological world, it is appropriate to think of terms or metaphors different from those we would use when trying to understand the inorganic world. As such, the attempt to show that the biological is simply…Read more
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35Evolutionary biology and the question of teleologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 58 100-106. 2016.
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29Are Pictures Really Necessary? The Case of Sewell Wright's "Adaptive Landscapes"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990. 1990.Philosophical analyses of science tend to ignore illustrations, implicitly regarding them as theoretically dispensible. If challenged, it is suggested that such neglect is justifiable, because the use of illustrations only leads to faulty reasoning, and thus is the mark of bad or inadequate science. I take as an example one of the most famous illustrations in the history of evolutionary biology, and argue that the philosophers' scorn is without foundation. I take my conclusions to be support for…Read more
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Biology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Biology |