Posted in The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect, Evolution at 10:10 pm by nemo
Gene Expression discussing transhumanism links to Wikipedia’s article on Axial Age, which is really quite dreadful. There is a note saying the page requires cleanup, and I wonder if they would go for my approach.
This kind of confusion over the Axial Age has been the object of several efforts on my part, check Was There an Axial Age?. There certainly was, but we ought to change the terminology, and in any case my ‘eonic model’ does the ‘clean up’ necessary, but because I take on Darwin, the correction gets shunted off.
The article makes one good point: the original word for ‘Axial’ having the meaning ‘pivotal’.
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Posted in General at 9:53 pm by nemo
Checking out Fuller’s Social Epistemology at Wikipedia, the Epistemology link didn’t even contain a reference to Kant.
I think that, modern critiques of Kant notwithstanding, Kant is and remains at the peak of epistemological balance.
Kant has been the victim of three (or more) confusing distractions, Hegel’s attack, Nietzsche’s, and the pragmatists’.
And the result? Precisely the epistemological bedlam we find currently, and well documented by Steve Fuller in various of his books.
Noone is apparently able to surpass Kant, either because of the positivistic rejection of ethical considerations, or else because of the subtle way Nietzsche seems to convince those he somehow intimidates.
Actually, once you have been thru Nietzsche’s thunder symphony and he has made his point all that begins to pall and you realize that Kant remains about what he always was, the pivot around which the whole discussion turns.
Everyone is like a gunslinger trying to take out Kant, to become the new foundationalist debunking foundationalism. Nietzsche is especially clever at insinuating his new foundations in the name of anti-foundationalism. With what result? He can’t even handle the issue of cruelty, and does so in superb prose style.
Is that brilliant or a mess?
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Posted in Evolution at 12:32 am by nemo
Darwinism has not produced a satisfactory account of the descent of man. The eonic effect shows why, and if you feel unsure, confused or intimidated by either Darwinists or their intelligent design confreres, this different approach to the whole subject might prove useful, a theoretical self-defense in a situation where you are being bullied into submission.
So, in addition to the online text, I am starting up a new blogbook on the question of history, evolution, and the eonic effect: Descent of Man Revisited, in seven chapters and seven sections. That should produce a short book in 49 days, plus or minus!
Start here: Descent Of Man Revisited: Start Page
or jump to first section:
One Long Argument
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Evolution at 8:52 pm by nemo
A note on irreducible complexity at Cleveland Jewish News.
The point is well taken that we have no real definition of what is ‘complex’. There is an irony here if we think of Paley’s watch. That’s not complexity. It’s moronic simplicity compared to even very simple biochemical complexes in their context.
However, I don’t agree with the analogy of the New York economy. Economies show considerable design, and all in fact designed ‘free market’ economies, which is not the same as totally undesigned economies.
Not that undesigned economies might rapidly be modified by those who are ‘designed’ to be exploited by the ruling class which designs and controls them.
But in any case, the question of what constitutes ‘complex’ design is relative to the intelligence of the scientist observing nature.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Censored!, Evolution at 8:39 pm by nemo
Darksyde at Daily Kos interviews DR Wesley Elsberry who currently serves as the Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education.
Terrific.
But what happened to my diary at Daily Kos?.
Censored, that’s what! The edit button quietly disappeared, and sending an email to anyone there to protest is hopeless.
That strategy here is digging its own grave, because the tide is against Neo-Darwinism over the long haul.
My innocent essays, e.g. Toward A Liberal Postdarwinism, might help here, but the Talk.Origins and NCSE gangs have taken over, I guess.
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Posted in Evolution at 10:45 pm by nemo
Everything on both sides of the ID/Darwinism debate is a battle of hypothetical possibilities. Why doesn’t everyone just admit noone yet has the foggiest about how important items evolved?
Reading an old review by Berlinski of Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable, I find this:
It is one thing, however, to appeal to a path up Mount Improbable, quite another to demonstrate its existence. Dawkins has persuaded himself that because such a path might exist, further argument is unnecessary. Impediments are simply directed to disappear: “There is no difficulty”; “there is a definite tendency in the right direction”; “It is easy to see that…”; “it is not at all difficult to imagine….”
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