Historians and biologists identify the debate between mechanists and vitalists over the nature of life itself with the arguments of Driesch, Loeb, and other prominent voices. But what if the conversation was broader and the consequences deeper for the field? Following the suspicions of Joseph Needham in the 1930s and Francis Crick in the 1960s, we deployed tools of the digital humanities to an old problem in the history of biology. We analyzed over 31,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers and learned that (...) bioexceptionalism participated in a robust discursive landscape throughout subfields of the life sciences, occupied even by otherwise unknown biologists. (shrink)

When the creationism issue rose to the surface in the late 1970s, an organized opposition to the creationist campaign came from an unexpected source. Local groups of rank and file evolution defenders, led by a retired biology teacher, organized a grassroots network of anti-creationism called the Committees of Correspondence. They basically approached the creationism issue as a political rather than a scientific problem and fought the battle on local fronts, where creationists were heavily engaged in legal campaigns to include their (...) ideas in the public schools. Grassroots anti-creationism was, however, eventually replaced by a centralized national operation with an educational emphasis. In this paper, I will document the development of this neglected part of the creation-evolution controversy and discuss related issues, namely the politics of science that became clearly visible in the course of evolutionists' disputes over anti-creation strategies. (shrink)

Debates around the compatibility or mutual exclusivity between Islam and evolution have received increasing academic attention in recent years. While research into Islam and evolution has often focused on the views of Muslim publics, a body of literature has emerged that has focused on the views of Muslim clerics and public figures. However, little research has been conducted about how prominent Muslim voices have used online platforms, such as YouTube, to promote their own views on Islam and evolution. This article (...) explores the online video presentations of one such figure, namely, the American Muslim theologian Dr Yasir Qadhi. The article will demonstrate that Qadhi holds a relatively nuanced position on the compatibility between Islam and evolution, based on his understanding of the scientific consensus and Islamic scripture. Furthermore, it will also explore how Qadhi appeals directly to Muslims to reject many of the most common creationist arguments against evolution. (shrink)

This paper explores the politics of representing events in the world in the form of data points, data sets, or data associations. Data collection involves an act of seeing and recording something that was previously hidden and possibly unnamed. The incidences included in a data set are not random or unrelated but stand for coherent, classifiable phenomena in the world. Moreover, for data to have an impact on law and policy, such information must be seen as actionable, that is, the (...) aggregated data must show people both something they can perceive and something that demands interrogation, explanation, or resolution. Actionable data problematize the taken-for-granted order of society by pointing to questions or imbalances that can be corrected or rectified, or simply better understood, through systematic compilations of occurrences, frequencies, distributions, or correlations. The paper describes and analyzes three different modes of authorized seeing that render data on global environmental phenomena such as climate change both visible and actionable. It argues that the political force of environmental data compilations derives from the divergent epistemological standpoints and expert practices associated with producing views from nowhere, everywhere, and somewhere. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In public debates there are occasions on which persons might feel obligated to show disrespect in order to preserve integrity. In some public discourses interlocutors often show disrespect by “writing off” one another's reasons in an attempt to defend and preserve their own particular beliefs. To make better sense of the apparent discomfiture of intuitions concerning the connections between respect and integrity in such public confrontations, an “other-words orientation” to communication is proposed. The other-words orientation requires that individuals “stand (...) for something” but in a way that respects one's opposition as the living, breathing, reason-giving entities they are. The ancient art of double argument is central to this endeavor. (shrink)

As a philosophy instructor, I strive to get my students to think critically about the subject matter. However, over the years I have encountered many students who seem to deliberately want to avoid thinking critically. I am talking particularly about some students in my “Science and Religion” course, who subscribe to scientific creationism and endorse anti–scientific beliefs which seem to be irrational. In this essay, I will offer reflections of my experiences from these classes, and argue that individuals who subscribe (...) to creationism exhibit a combination of epistemic vices that makes them prone to holding incorrect views. Employing Quassim Cassam’s framework on the epistemic vices of conspiracy theorists in his “Vice Epistemology”, I argue that the creationists’ beliefs can best be understood as resulting from similar vices. Subsequently, I move to consider the reasons why these students subscribe to creationism, using Katherine Dormandy’s analysis in her “Does Epistemic Humility Threaten Religious Beliefs?” as a springboard. Following Dormandy, I explore how epistemic vices lead to someone holding false —even irrational— beliefs. Finally, I will consider strategies in dealing with vice–charging the epistemically vicious students in a way that avoids the practical difficulties noted by Ian James Kidd in his “Charging Others with Epistemic Vice”. (shrink)