Book Club: Philosophy of Nature, ch. 2

Xenophanes

We have recently began taking a look at Paul Feyerabend’s (recently released, even though he died back in 1994) book Philosophy of Nature, which presents his ideas on the history of the different ways in which human beings have tried to make sense of the world. The second chapter is on the structure and function of myths, since mythological accounts are one of the three “forms of life” that humans have come up with in order to understand the world, and that Feyerabend explores in his book (the other two are philosophy and science).

Biological essentialism? No thanks

P. Godfrey-Smith (left) and M. Devitt (right)

A few weeks ago my CUNY Graduate Center’s colleague Michael Devitt gave a colloquium entitled “Individual essentialism in biology,” which was followed by a response/commentary by Peter Godfrey-Smith by the title “Modality, essence, and biology.” I thought it was a really interesting example of two top notch philosophers going at each other, respectively defending and criticizing a given central thesis, in the best tradition of analytical philosophy (no, I do not mean this as a sneer). It was also, however, a rather surreal experience for a biologist turned philosopher of science such as myself. I mean, essentialism, seriously?

Book Club: Philosophy of Nature, ch. 1

I’m going to start a new occasional series here at Footnotes to Plato: a book club. I read books all the time, of course, though lately a heck of a lot of them have to do with Stoicism and ancient philosophy. Some are more worthy than others to share, and from time to time I have written individual commentaries on interesting books or even single chapters. But this new series, identified by the corresponding category on the blog, will actually present multi-part commentaries on a whole book, either chapter by chapter, or at the least on clusters of interesting chapters. My choice for the first series is Paul Feyerabend’s Philosophy of Nature.

My (further) response to Novella on GMOs

I promise, this is the last round concerning this particular discussion, at the least on my part. To recap: Danny Hakim, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, published a critical piece on certain aspects of GMO technology; my friend and fellow skeptic Steve Novella responded; I commented critically on Steve’s response; and he responded to my criticism. The current post, however, isn’t going to be yet another blow-by-blow affair, for a few reasons: i) it would be even longer than the last installment, which I fear would severely test readers’ patience; ii) there is a diminishing return to going deeper and deeper and insert more and more qualifications to any argument; and iii) it seems to me that most of what Steve and I wanted to say has been said already.

Novella responds on GMOs

[Below is Steve Novella’s response, also published on his blog, Neurologica, to my post about his criticism of the recent New York Times article on GMOs.]

by Steve Novella

I always enjoy when someone whom I respect and who cares about using careful and valid arguments disagrees with me. It is an opportunity for me to correct any mistakes I have made, to deepen my understanding of the topic, or at least tighten up my arguments.

GMOs and the skeptic movement

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs, are a hot topic of controversy in the public arena, just like vaccines, or climate change. Public defenders of science, what are often referred to as “skeptics” (among whom I count myself), have taken sides on all these issues, trying to do their best to bring some sanity and evidence-based clarity to bear upon them. The problem is that while it is beyond doubt that vaccines do not, in fact, cause autism; and it is also pretty darn clear that human beings do, at the least in part, cause global warming; the thing about GMOs is slightly more complex. Make that a lot more complex.

The mismeasure of machine: why machine metaphors in biology are misleading

Time to indulge in the occasional revisiting of one of my technical papers, in the hope that they may be of more general interest then the original audience they were written for. This time I’m going to focus on one that I co-wrote with my long-time collaborator, Maarten Boudry, and published in 2013 in the journal Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. The title of the paper is: “The mismeasure of machine: synthetic biology and the trouble with engineering metaphors.”

Against biological Platonism

A rendition of the Library of Babel, by J.L. Borges

Despite the title of this blog, I have made it clear that I reject any form of Platonism, from the original idea of “Forms” to the mathematical variety. This is something I’ve given quite a bit of thought to, and one of those instances were I can document having changed my mind, from a positive position to a negative one. But of course I’m neither a metaphysician nor a philosopher of mathematics, so my opinions in this area are simply those of a scientist and philosopher with a general background in both disciplines.

The problem of wave function ontology

Disclaimer: I’m neither a physicist, nor a philosopher of physics. Moreover, I don’t play either role on television! Nonetheless, I’m fascinated by physics, as well as by debates amongst physicists, or between physicists and philosophers. So I perked up when a couple of weeks ago the regular colloquium at the Philosophy Program of CUNY’s Graduate Center was scheduled to be by Nina Emery, of Brown University, who gave an unusually lucid talk (given the topic) entitled “Against radical quantum ontologies.”

Should we stop using the term “pseudoscience”?

The term “pseudoscience” is obviously pejorative. Nobody wishes whatever he does to be labeled with that appellative. Recently, Katie Burke has written an essay for American Scientist arguing that we should drop it altogether. It isn’t the first time someone makes this suggestion, and I’m betting it won’t be the last one. Here is why Burke and others are wrong.

Pseudoscience refers to “any body of knowledge that purports to be scientific or to be supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method,” though since there is no such thing as the scientific method, I would rather modify the above to read “with currently accepted scientific standards.”