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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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209Methodological 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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19Teleology and Biology: Some Thoughts on Ayala's Analysis of TeleologyHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 21 (2). 1999.
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55Teleology: yesterday, today, and tomorrow?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1): 213-232. 2000.Teleological explanations in evolutionary biology, from Cuvier to the present (and into the future), depend on the metaphor of design for heuristic power and predictive fertility.
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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
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32Species as individuals: Logical, biological, and philosophical problemsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2): 299-300. 1981.
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28Critical Notice of Andrew Woodfield, Teleology, and Larry Wright, Teleological Explanations (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1): 191-203. 1978.
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43Problems of scientific revolution: Progress and obstacles to progress in the sciences (review)Erkenntnis 13 (1): 407-416. 1978.
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26The Philosophy of Evolution Uffe J. Jensen and Rom Harre, editors Brighton: Harvester, 1981. Pp. vii, 299. £22.50 (review)Dialogue 23 (1): 171-172. 1984.
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36Evolutionary 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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31Rigorous Regularism: Physical Laws Without Necessity (review)Dialogue 27 (3): 523. 1988.This is a book about laws. Not, however, about the laws of which we learned in science classes at school: “scientific laws”. It is rather about those universalities which govern the world of facts, what Swartz calls “physical laws”—although this language is slightly misleading because the term is intended to cover the living as well as the non-living world. Of course, it may well be that a scientific law does capture the essence of a physical law, but not necessarily or usually. A physical law b…Read more
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31Creationism and its critics in antiquity (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (3). 2009.he history of evolutionary theory is a little bit of a puzzle. Charles Darwin, the author of the Origin of Species in 1859, was the man who made evolutionary ideas reasonable—ideas that were generally accepted—and it was Darwin who provided the major mechanism of natural selection. He was not the first evolutionist, however. For at least one hundred and fifty years, starting with people like the French encyclopediast Denis Diderot, people had been speculating that organisms had a natural origin,…Read more
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44Pat Duffy Hutcheon, Leaving the Cave: Evolutionary Naturalism in Social-Scientific ThoughtStudies in Philosophy and Education 17 (2/3): 155-158. 1998.
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36Scott F. Gilbert—second to the right, straight on till morning (review)Biological Theory 2 (2): 182-182. 2007.
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28Woodger on genetics a critical evaluationActa Biotheoretica 24 (1-2): 1-13. 1975.A critical analysis of Woodger's work on formal logic in biology, especially genetics, reveals that the claim for the value of such methods in genetics is misplaced
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28Grünbaum on psychoanalysis: Where do we go from here?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (2): 256-257. 1986.
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85Naturalism and the scientific methodIn Stephen Bullivant & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 383. 2013.Methodological naturalism is the claim that there is no need to invoke the supernatural, including God or gods, in giving scientific explanations. Metaphysical naturalism is the claim that there is no supernatural, including God or gods. Does methodological naturalism entail metaphysical naturalism? Many seem to think that it does, in practice if not in principle. This essay questions this assumption.
Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Biology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Biology |