09.02.10
Hucklebird reviews Meyer’s SIC
Hucklebird (Stephen Smith) reviews Signature in the Cell/
I have problems with vitalism, but Smith makes the good point that vitalist theories are able to answer to design arguments in a way that theistic designism cannot.
We have tended here to say something like this using a different language, of ‘natural teleology’, via Kant, etc…
I have problems here, but a good review.
Meyer’s book left me frustrated, it makes the case against Darwinism in the emergence of life, then loses me on the design confusion.
I tend to shy away from vitalism, but Smith is correct in seeing its place in the real history of scientific biology. Eliminating vitalism occurred at the same time that positivistic scientism produced a reductionist view that made no better sense.
Stephen said,
September 2, 2010 at 2:14 pm
The funny thing about the universal grammar is that we tend to use different words to describe the same underlying feeling, but once the archetype is recognized the tension is resolve even with the vast plurality that offers by many different words.