While Nature magazine is preparing something about Darwin’s enduring legacy here is a piece from Darwin’s own writings
doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
which can be found in Continue reading Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind?
The Just Science 2008 will start next week – and here is my last chance to say something non scientific: Science is a method, that has certain prerequisites, works under certain conditions while using techniques with strengths and limitations and is leading to certain conclusions evident to some but not all humans. Needless to say that from a protestant / Lutheran view that there are other ways to explain a phenomenon while providing even extra dimensions like giving an ethical justification.
Haldane / When I am dead / 1928: I am not myself a materialist, because, if materialism is true, it seems to me that we cannot know that it is true. If my opinions are the results of a chemical processes going on in my brain, they are determined by the laws of chemistry, not those of logic.
More at the recent immersion blog post…
Here comes the second comment on the Annual Edge Question 2008.
When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s theology.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
What have you changed your mind about? Why?
I would have done it in a different way: Continue reading Edge Question wrong
I have been asked to give an evening lecture about science and religion here at a local congregation. At the first moment, I did not want to do that, but finally promised to take up this challenge – there are so many heroes where I could get some inspiration. I remember having read a wonderful paper by an author but could not recall his name. Continue reading In memory of Peter Lipton
I am currently reading Geert Mak’s “In Europa”, an excellent history of European history (in particular important for me as my high school education ended with the Weimar republic! I always wanted to ask my former teacher R. Grundel for the reasons but he died recently). This book finds and connects all the lost threads while being excellently written and easy to read. I am citing here from the notes of Harold Nicolson (p 137), a young British diplomat, who served as an advisor to Lloyd George, Clémenceau and Wilson: Continue reading Precisez, mon cher, precisez
I am currently reading “The Lucifer effect” by Philipp Zimbardo. Having seen many terrible things like a woman killed by more than 30 stabs with knife I know that theodicy is the main problem in theology – when the bad “situational power triumphs over individual power”. Zimbardo examines the process of transformation when good or ordinary people do bad or evil things Continue reading The Lucifer effect
An excellent new review summarizes our current knowledge about telomeres – the complicated chromosome end machinery that is necessary to prevent unwanted repair while allowing to track for the number of replications. Think of it like a source code control system as CVS, the Concurrent Version System. During a recent research project on life cycle of single point mutations / SNPs I realized Continue reading Living on borrowed time
Nature magazine has an interesting essay how science works: “The security of knowing nothing” is basically arguing that we need to trust other scientists. Continue reading Landing on the moon
Wikiquote has already a large collection:
* “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” – Albert Einstein
* “The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me purely factitious, fabricated on the one hand by short-sighted religious people, who confound […] theology with religion; and on the other by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension.” – Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), “The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature” (1885)
Hymne an das Ewig-Weibliche / 19. – 25. März 1918 – Verzy / Teilhard de Chardin / An Beatrix / Ab initio creata sum…(Proverbs 8:22)
Seit Weltbeginn bin ich erschienen. Vor den Ewen (Äonen) ging ich hervor aus Gottes Händen – umrißhaft, um im Gang der Zeit an Schönheit zu gewinnen, Mitwirkerin seines Werkes.
Alles im Universum erfolgt durch Vereinigung und Befruchtung – durch Zusammenschluß der Elemente, die zueinander suchen, paarweise verschmelzen und neugeboren werden in einem Dritten.
Gott hat mich in das ursprüngliche Viele hinein ergossen als die Kraft, die verdichtet und den Dingen zu ihrer Mitte verhilft.
Ich bin das einigende Antlitz der Seienden – bin der Duft, der sie herbeilockt und sie in Freiheit und Leidenschaft mitzieht auf den Weg ihrer Einigung.
Durch mich gerät alles in Bewegung und ordnet sich zueinander.
Ich bin der Zauber, der in die Welt gemischt ist, auf daß sie sich sammle – das über ihr schwebende Ideal, auf daß sie emporsteige.
Ich bin das wesenhaft Weibliche.
Teilhard de Chardin was one of the few theologians who had also a sound scientific background. He worked in the paleontology laboratory of the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle; in 1913 he took part in excavations in the prehistoric painted caves in the northwest of Spain – more information at
His verses reminds me to Jeremiah 1:5 who already expressed 628 BC a clear view of our pre-existence: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee. Is there really so much difference to what we currently believe about meiotic events?
Doing science and seeking truth may be occasionally unkind to others. Watching a beautiful movie (“Babette’s Feast“, Oscar 1988) I was deeply moved by the speech of the officer Lorens Löwenhjelm about “Barmherzigkeit und Wahrheit” or “mercy and truth” – it goes back to
Ps 85:10 (KJ) Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Also Martin Luther found that remarkable as well as Wolfgang Huber. Yea, yea.
So far we could admire the wonderful Gutenberg bible in Göttingen (1454)
Current students of theology seem to have much better tools… The exciting news are that Codex Sinaiticus (dating back to 350?) is currently being digitized where NT and half of AT will be available in 2 years or so.
In 1844 Konstantin von Tischendorf discovered the Codex in a paper basket at Saint Catherine monastery of Mount Sinai (I also visited the monastery some years ago but did not find anything useful in the basket). He was allowed to take 43 of the 129 sheets to Leipzig. On another visit he discovered even more papers that were donated to Tsar Alexander. In 1933 former USSR sold 347 sheets to the Britische Museum in London, 6 sheets are still in St. Petersburg. In 1975 another 38 pages were found that are still Saint Catherine. At the moment British Library London, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Russian National Library St. Petersburg and Saint Catherine work together for a digital edition of the manuscript including the use of hyperspectral imaging to uncover erased or faded text. This is quite important as Codex Sinaiticus (together with Codex Vaticanus) has heavily influenced our textus receptus.
A book that crossed my desk only very recently is about the exodus of science from Berlin after 1933. As a child I never understood the second commandment when God said to Mose that
Ex 20:4 I am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
I always thought the idea to be unfair to be under collective guilt. Nevertheless when reading this book (published already in 1994 by Walter de Gruyter) we get a deeper meaning how science is affected for many generations by the displacement of the most prominent scientists.
Particular important in this book is the first chapter of Hubenstorf and Walther that highlights the situation in Berlin. Following world war I, Berlin had become the indisputable center of most scientific disciplines in the German speaking territory. In some disciplines Leipzig, Vienna or Munich may have been competitors, economics had been strong in Kiel, mathematics and physics in Göttingen, history in Marburg, however, for most scientists Berlin had been the highly desired “endpoint” of their career. he Friedrich-Wilhelms university had been the largest university, but there have been many more science organizations like Technical University Charlottenburg, Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (that is covered in more detail in another excellent chapter).
Medicine has been hit hardest during the Nazi period by having a large number of Jewish scientists. The resulting repercussions in the realm of science are described at different levels. Starting with a typology of transformation of scientific institutions, the establishment of new disciplines and the establishment of a military science sector, the autors give many historical details about the ways of scientific publishing or the organization of displaced scientists.
The cancer research department of the medical faculty fired 12 or 13 scientists; the hygiene institute dismissed 8 of 12 scientists including later Noble prize winner Erwin Chargaff. Hospital Lankwitz fired all physicians, Neukölln 67%, Freidrichshain 62% and Moabit 56%.
It is a terrible story – you can read how the editor of the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift Paul Osswald Wolff was replaced by a Nazi supporter. Karger publisher even moved from Berlin to Basel (where they still reside today).
As any good science is strongly connected to teaching it may be understood that breaking this tradition has lead to a punishing of the children for the sin of the fathers to the third a fourth generation. Science politicians may even recognize the downside of spending money into science: they will be blessed by thousands of generations.
No, this essay will not deal with altruism in science but with the science of altruism. There are two new papers from the Fehr group (one in Science on Nov, 3 about diminished reciprocal fairness after magnetic stimulation of the right prefrontal cortex and a second in Nature on Aug, 24 about altruism in two indigenous groups in Papua New Guinea). I was, however, much more impressed by their recent review of human altruism.
Cooperation between genetically unrelated groups is a typical human behaviour (otherwise seen only in ants, bees and the naked mole rat) where there seems a strong reciprocity between selfishness and altruism. Cooperation is rarely stable and may deteriorate under worse conditions. Altruistic rewarding and reputation seeking seem to be the most powerful determinants of future donors’ behaviour where effects of punishing behaviour seem to be underestimated: Cooperation in larger group continues only if punishment of defectors and non-punishers is possible.
There is a never ending stream of popular press articles in Germany about creation versus evolution (ZEIT Wissen 1/2006:58 reports that 50,4% of all German believe in creation). Much of the controversy between ID-activists and evolutionary anthropogists is about timescales. Why can creationist not accept that
Ps 90:4 For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
Anthropogists may find a new review on coalescence methods interesting that finds
If the importance-sampling distribution is well chosen, the algorithm will perform well, otherwise, it will perform poorly. Unfortunately, unless we have a good idea of the correct answer from some alternative source, it is not obvious whether the algorithm is working well. Once again there is significant scope for intuition when choosing the importance-sampling distribution. The method is as much art as science. [sic!]
or another review:
… new results contradict early but still influential conclusions that were based on analyses of gene trees from mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome sequences
where the search for the most recent common ancestor by haploid marker is expected to result in shallower times. A recent letter in Nature on “Dogma, not faith, is the barrier to scientific enquiry” offers a nice compromise, that can be read twice:
In a famous article, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (Am. Biol. Teach. 35, 125–129; 1973), Dobzhansky described his religious beliefs: “It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s, method of Creation.”
In contrast to modern creationists, Dobzhansky accepted macroevolution and the documented age of Earth. He argued that “the Creator has created the living world not by caprice (supernatural fiat) but by evolution propelled by natural selection”.
He collaborated for many years with Ernst Mayr, who, when asked about his religious views, replied: “I am an atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God. On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God. He would work as a scientist all week and then on Sunday get down on his knees and pray to God” (Skeptic 8, 76–82; 2000).
Yea, yea.