Defending Scientism
You might well think that talk of a multiverse is unscientific. The idea of additional worlds that cannot possibly be observed flies in the face of the need for science to be verifiable and falsifiable. So invoking a multiverse is a symptom of a malaise in today s physics. It is pseudoscience or metaphysics, or something [ ]
This piece first appeared on the Heterodox STEM Substack In 2024 the California Reparations Task Force recommended that each black descendant of slaves living in California receive $1 million as “reparations” for slavery. Meanwhile, Caribbean nations have asked the United Kingdom to enter a “meaningful conversation” over reparations for the Atlantic slave trade. Further, the [ ]
This piece first appeared on the Heterodox STEM Substack The Blank Slate, the idea that differences in human personality and behaviour are entirely the result of that person’s experiences earlier in life, is utterly dominant in swathes of the social sciences, including sociology, criminology, and anthropology. Left-leaning academics adhere to the blank slate because it [ ]
This first appeared at the Heterodox STEM Substack Bo Winegard writes about science and philosophy at the Aporia Substack, where, in a recent article, he discussed the relationship between science and notions of “meaning” and “purpose”. He concluded that “science cannot discover meaning” and that it must set any such notions aside; indeed he sees [ ]
This piece was written as a reply for Heterodox STEM, where it first appeared. Randy Wayne of Cornell University has recently presented his arguments for wanting to bring God into a science class, arguing that this is necessary for “the most complete scientific understanding”. He sees the exclusion from science of the idea of “immaterial [ ]
This was first published on Jerry Coyne s website: Why Evolution is True Everyone is interested in whether life exists on other planets. Thus the recent claim of a detection of a biomarker molecule in the atmosphere of an exoplanet has attracted both widespread attention and some skepticism from other scientists. The claim is that planet [ ]
This was written for The Conversation (this being my original edit of the piece). Barnard s Star is a small, dim star, of the type that astronomers call red dwarfs. Consequently, even though it is one of the closest stars, such that its light takes only six years to reach us, it is too dim to [ ]
I recently wrote a piece arguing that estimates of the heritability of intelligence that derive from twin studies are likely to be more accurate than the lower estimates from GWAS studies (Genome-Wide Association Studies). This is because GWAS studies lack the statistical power to find many genes with small effects. But in defending the high [ ]
Slavery shows us an example of how facts and reason can determine values and morals , declares Michael Shermer. That s starkly put, a direct challenge to Hume s is/ought distinction between objective facts about the world and oughts that derive from values that we humans hold. I reject moral realism (the idea that moral injunctions have objective [ ]
Whether differences in intelligence are due to people s different genes or to their different environments has long been contentious. One answer to this question comes from twin studies and adoption studies. By comparing outcomes for identical twins (who share all their genes) with those of fraternal twins and with unrelated children, one can deduce the [ ]