The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski. The title refers to just one essay. His essays cover the creation of this universe, the creation of life, evolution, creationism, and the social dynamics of science.
Newton's calculus of universal gravitation is illustrated by a falling object, namely a philosopher who fell off a mountain trail after tripping over a discarded copy of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." And there is an enlightening comparison of the mammalian eye to a Swedish meatball.
Oh look, another creationist!
"He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a center dedicated to promulgating the pseudoscience of intelligent design." - Wikipedia.
You must have read all the Asimov, Lem, Heller, Faulkner etc. maestros long ago to have to resort to garbage like that.
Dimiter
I'm reading "Who we are and where we came from" by David Reich. ~20% in, but so far it's great. I got it on e-book, which is actually nice.. you can zoom maps and click references. I read that the paper back on amazon is of lesser quality.
George H.
The accolades on Mr. Berlinski's web site are apparently all from fellow creationists...
"The blind leading the blind" comes to mind.
John
Or from
""" The enumerative “cows cannot evolve into whales” argument
One of Berlinski’s most celebrated anti-evolution arguments is his calculation that at least 50,000 changes were required to change a cow into a whale (he stopped counting). Of course, since even if he was capable of listing out these differences at an implausibly fast average rate of one every ten seconds, it would still take more than 5 days of non-stop 24h-hour activity to accomplish this, few believe that he actually did what he claimed to have done.[9] Berlinski does not, of course, know anything about the evolution of whales, missing such rather central details as the fact that cows did not evolve into whales.[10] """
With that being the quality of his arguments (and the ludicrously non-scientific performance on the video linked in a recent thread here), I would not have high hopes for a book of his. You really have to be blind and naïve in the extreme to be fooled by a conman like that.
He several times denies that he is either a Christian or a creationist. He is amazingly intelligent and often funny.
Wiki is increasingly propaganda. I used to donate; no more.
Intelligent Design is not necessarily pseudoscience. Nobody knows how this universe was created or how life originated on Earth. That's really his point.
Be open-minded. Read it.
which allows you to conclude that he's not worth reading. Your loss.
He is thoughtful and funny and enormously intelligent. By all means refuse to read his essays.
Grabage? Have you read it?
I have too many gadgets in my life, so I prefer real books. They still work after 100 years, too.
I'll have a look at that one.
I have grown up on books, not on TV. This one is obvious garbage.
You do not seriously believe one has to read every book to see it is garbage - if you do you just have to read more books until you learn how to do it.
Dimiter
As Mandy Rice-Davies famously said in the Profumo trial, "well he would, wouldn't he".
So he's a good comedian. OK; I'll take your word for that.
Have a look at "The Ancestor's Tale", a reverse history from us to archaea in 40 steps. One step is marked "unknown", and it does not attempt to explain abiogenesis.
Bullshit.
Berlinski is an atheist.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Phil Hobbs
Atheism is yet another religion.
Dimiter
He doesn't say that in the book either. He suggested a Jewish spiritual orientation, but is properly coy about his particular beliefs.
He does note that Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, thought that DNA was deposited on earth billions of years ago by spaceships.
OK, third-hand prejudice. Very Zen, reading without reading.
In a bookstore, I usually spot-check a few random paragraphs to see if I might be interested. But I don't sneer before I do that.
How clever of you to invoke that substance to make your point.
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