[ExI] darwin again: ants masturbate aphids... was RE: New Enlightenment talk

[Stefano Vaj]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Sondre Bjellås <sondre-list at bjellas.com>wrote:

> I'm currently reading 'Why Evolution is True', a new book that I just
> purchased on my recent trip to Seattle.
>
> It's a book I will push on all my friends who's still not convinced about
> evokution. Evolution is as much real as the theory of gravity.
>
> Easy to read book, even for non-scientists :-)
>


I was wondering whether to purchase it, since I already have so much stuff
on the subject.

Moreover, I have some issues with the title. A "theory" is an explanation of
things. Some theories are going to stay with us for the foreseeable future,
some are revised, some abandoned, but in any event *a* theory of gravity or
of evolution is bound to stay with us.

Thus, ID confused criticism of a theory - e.g., the theory of gravity - with
a criticism of gravity, something which does not really make sense, and
*not* for scientific, but rather philosophical reasons.

Let us say that even if we did not know zilch about biology, and we were,
e.g., presocratic thinkers, there would be very good reasons to exclude per
se what Dennett calls "skyhooks" and to decide that the only sensible
attitude is to investigate which crates have been at work in the generation
of the current biological landscape.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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