Online research in philosophy

Humans are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals. We look for and find patterns in our world and in our lives, then weave narratives around those patterns to bring them to life and give them meaning. Such is the stuff of which myth, religion, history, and science are made.

tephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History , has become something of a watershed for those who study contingency and complexity, especially applied to organisms, societies, and history, and discussions of it can be found in many works. Walter Fontana and Leo Buss, for example, ask in the title of their chapter "What Would Be Conserved If 'The Tape Were Played Twice'?" This is a direct reference to Gould's suggestion in Wonderful Life that if (...) the tape of life were rewound to the time of the organisms found in the Canadian outcrop known as the Burgess Shale, dated to about 530 million years ago, and replayed with a few contingencies tweaked here and there, humans would most likely never have evolved. (shrink)

rnst Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany, on July 5, 1904, making him, at age 95, the grand old man of evolutionary biology, one of the primary architects of the modem synthesis of genetic and evolutionary theory, and arguably one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His career interests have spanned a remarkable five different fields, including: (1) ornithology, (2) systematics, (3) zoogeography, (4) evolutionary theory, and (5) philosophy and history of science. Such broad research interests grew (...) from his education at a German Gymnasium (the equivalent of American high school, but at that time considerably more demanding), followed by a Candidacy in Medicine at the University of Greifswald in 1925 and a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Berlin in 1926. (shrink)

Tenure debates and disputes are often irresolvable because of the complex and multivariate nature of contractual relationships between faculty and administration, and the nuanced and varying beliefs about tenure held by the professoriate. The Ceci et al. study leads this commentator to suggest a simple solution – allow individual institutions to define the parameters of tenure according to their unique core values. (Published Online February 8 2007).

In his third and final investigation into the science of belief, bestselling author Michael Shermer tackles the evolution of morality and ethics A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an “evolutionary ethics,” science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us to eat) or why sex is enjoyable (to motivate us to procreate), they are now searching for the roots of human nature. In The Science of (...) Good and Evil , psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates to moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the im-plications of statistics for fate and free will fuzzy logic for the existence of pure good and pure evil and ecology for the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans. As he closes the divide between science and morality, Shermer draws on stories from the Yanamamo, infamously known as the “fierce people” of the tropical rain forest, to the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, to John Hinckley’s insanity defense. The Science of Good and Evil is ultimately a profound look at the moral animal, belief, and the scientific pursuit of truth. (shrink)