Paul Braterman is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University, and former Regents Professor at the University of North Texas. His research has involved chemistry related to conditions on the early Earth and to the origins of life, and collaborations with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Sandia National Laboratories, and NASA’s Astrobiology Institute. His present interests include presenting science to a wide public, and combating creationism. He is a committee member of the British Centre for Science Education, and of the Society for a Secular Scotland. His most recent book, From Stars to Stalagmites, discusses aspects of chemistry in their historical and everyday contexts. Email: [email protected]
by Paul Braterman I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The authors have read widely and deeply over an enormous range of topics, and blended their insights into a coherent unified account covering subjects as diverse as genetics, stratigraphy, and the fine details of chemical bonding. The result is an overview stretching from ancient foreshadowings, through Enlightenment…
by Paul Braterman This short book deserves the widest possible readership. The author, Paul Nurse, shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the control of the process of cell division, and is currently Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, and among other things is Chief Scientific Advisor…
by Paul Braterman Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world, Marcia Bjornerud, Princeton University Press, 2018/2020, pp 208, sale price $8.84/£7.00 through publisher There are many excellent overviews for the general reader of how life on Earth has changed over time (see, for a recent example, Neil Shubin’s Some Assembly Required,…
by Paul Braterman This book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in the way in which evolution actually proceeds, and the insights that we are now gaining into the genome, which controls the process. The author, Neil Shubin, has made major contributions to our understanding, using in turn the traditional methods of…
by Paul Braterman 20th-century creationism and racism Henry Morris, founding father of modern Young Earth creationism, wrote in 1977 that the Hamitic races (including red, yellow, and black) were destined by their nature to be servants to the descendants of Shem and Japheth. Noah was inspired when he prophesied this (Genesis 9:25-27) [1]. The descendants…
by Paul Braterman “[T]here is in fact nothing that can alleviate that fatal flaw in Darwinism” says Professor Behe, stating the book’s central claim in the mendaciously mislabelled creationist web journal Evolution News. The claim is clickbait, the book title misleading, and the argument long since rebutted. The historical roots of the argument show the close…
by Paul Braterman By chance, I chose as holiday reading (awaiting my attention since student days) The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Penguin Classics bestseller, part of the great library of Ashur-bani-pal that was buried in the wreckage of Nineveh when that city was sacked by the Babylonians and their allies in 612 BCE. Gilgamesh is…
by Paul Braterman Bullshit is sticky, and by trying to stamp on it you spread it. Because its appeal is directly to the emotions, rational critique is beside the point, while virtuous outrage is as effective as support in sending it viral. The term bullshit was introduced in its current sense by the philosopher Harry…
by Paul Braterman Karl Popper More recent strata lie on top of older strata, except when they lie beneath them. Radiometric dates obtained by different methods always agree, except when they differ. And the planets in their courses obey Newton's laws of gravity and motion, except when they depart from them. As Isaac Asimov reportedly…
by Paul Braterman Translations change the course of civilisations. The translation project begun by Caliph al-Mansour in the 8th century CE, and accelerated under his grandson Harun al-Rashid, made available in Arabic scholarly writings from Greek, Aramaic (Syriac), Persian, and Indian sources, and laid the foundation for the flowering of science and philosophy in the…
by Paul Braterman EVOLUTION: What the Fossils Say and why it Matters, Donald R. Prothero (2nd edition) If you are interested in evolution, get this book. And make sure that your library gets it. And your children's high school library. Incidentally, it's incredible value; list price $35.00/£27.95 from Columbia University Press, with over 400 lavishly…
by Paul Braterman The wise learn from everyone.1 The freak success (half a million reads) of my recent piece How to slam dunk creationists, and the subsequent discussion, have again set me thinking about how to learn from creationists. It is not enough to say, as Dawkins notoriously said, "[I]f you meet somebody who claims…
by Paul Braterman Ten minutes difference, and Earth would still be Planet of the Dinosaurs We have suspected for some decades that the dinosaurs1 became extinct as the result of a massive meteorite, an asteroid, hitting the Earth. We have known where the impact site was since 1990, if not before. But it is only…
by Paul Braterman In 1957, Charles Keeling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography began regular measurements of carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. By 1960, he was already in a position to report a steady increase, together with seasonal variations. In the northern atmosphere, CO2 concentration falls during the spring and summer growing season, but…
by Paul Braterman "Our MPs will be the kingmakers, playing a huge role" (From victory speech of Gregory Campbell, on right, 1 a.m. Friday 9th June, 2017) Overview: I am assuming as I write this that the Conservative Party will remain in power in the UK for the immediate future. As a matter of arithmetic,…
by Paul Braterman Below, R: How not to; "The Scientific Method", as inflicted on Science Fair participants. Click to enlarge Consider this, from a justly esteemed chemistry text: Scientists are always on the lookout for patterns.… Once they have detected patterns, scientists develop hypotheses… After formulating a hypotheses, scientists design further experiments [emphasis in original]…
by Paul Braterman R: Sagan warns us against fallacies. But is exposing fallacies enough to shield us from the demons? I had been waiting for a quiet moment to write about this, but there isn't going to be a quiet moment, so now will have to do. Debaters regularly accuse their opponents of using fallacies.…
by Paul Braterman The now Vice-President of the United States stands accused of having said that evolution is "just a theory"; see here and here. No he did not say that. What he did say (full text below, with notes) was far, far worse. Much more detailed and much more dangerous. After reminding us that…
by Paul Braterman Evolution has nothing to do with progress. Most evolution doesn't even have anything to do with adaptation, and it is perfectly possible for a change that is worse than useless to spread through a population. Paradoxically, however, such non-adaptive change may be a necessary prelude for major adaptations. This post was inspired…
by Paul Braterman How Darwin's name is taken in vain, with mini-reviews of some of the worst offenders From Darwin's Notebook B, 1837 Don't say Darwin unless you mean it. Don't say theory when you mean historical fact. And don't say you believe in evolution, when you mean you accept it on the basis of…