http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com The weblog of BioEE 467, Summer 2006, Cornell University Fri, 18 Aug 2006 14:31:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en First, many thanks to the faithful readers who have continued to pay attention to this site and the contents therein. I am particularly pleased that the hard work and careful thought of the students whose papers have been posted has been recognized, and even moreso that they have been given ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/08/18/e-broaddus-on-the-detection-of-agency-and-intentionality/ Greetings, faithful readers! As promised, selected final research papers from the students enrolled in the “Evolution and Design” seminar at Cornell have now been uploaded to their own area in the Evolution and Design website. Just click on the “Student Papers” link in the menu bar on the right to ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/08/16/the-student-papers-are-up/ The notorious “evolution and design seminar at Cornell” has now ended. The final research papers have been submitted, final grades have been posted to the registrar, and the participants have departed for the four corners of the world…for now. Having reached this stopping point, I want to say once again how ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/08/04/the-course-is-over-but-the-conversation-continues/ In comment # 20 at http://specifiedcomplexity.freehostia.com/?p=232 PvM said: “ID relies on the concept of analogy to infer design. Science does the hard work to provide mechanisms, pathways and provides analyses of the data to support their conclusions. That’s the big difference. How do we know an analogy really exists?” This was precisely ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/08/03/on-detection-and-verification-of-analogies/ Things have been developing in rather interesting ways in our “Evolution and Design” seminar. We have worked our way through all of the articles/papers and books in our required reading list, along with several in the recommended list. Before I summarize our “findings”, let me point out that for most ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/28/update-where-we-are-now/ … in the definition of Phi_S(T), the function Phi’(.) is applied both to T, which is a member of Omega, and to U, which is a member of Patterns(Omega). Even if patterns Omega is a well-defined set - which is far from certain - Phi’(.)… Our server here is rather limited, ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/27/specified-complexity-impossibly-long-threads-and-latex/ There were several requests on the next-to-last thread for definitions of specified complexity, so to redeem a promise and– I hope–eliminate the need for repeating the same definition ad infinitum, I’ll attempt to summarize the major points of Dembski’s paper on the subject here. The context dependent ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/24/specified-complexity/ Since this blog calls itself “informal”, I’ll be informal: the gear is stowed, the food is on ice in the cooler, the canoe is on the roofrack, and the Goonies are rarin’ to go, so we’re headed for the Adirondacks for the weekend. However, this blog (and attendant moderation duties) ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/21/headed-north/ “…and, in the same manner…” Analogies. They come up all the time; useful in teaching or explaining, perhaps essential to our way of viewing the world; and yet highly problematic when too much relied upon. In his summary of Behe’s argument Allen suggests intelligent design theorists have made a fatal mistake ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/19/analogy-induction-and-specious-arguments/ I am getting ready to take my family to a Scottish highland games in central Massachusetts (my two oldest are competing in highland dance), so this will have to be brief. Last night we finished our discussion of Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box (DBB). The discussion ran over the ... http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/14/summing-up-and-evaluating-behes-arguments/