Monday, November 24, 2008

Notes and Links

* Chad Orzel puts his blade into the view that the many-worlds interpretation in physics has moral implications. That's one of my pet peeves from the philosophical side, too. A very serious problem in scientific popularization is the fact that people analogize scientific theory -- and I do mean people, since you will find professional scientists doing it, too, although they generally are more restrained because they understand more of the theory. Quantum mechanics, because it is so difficult to understand, is going to give us philosophical absurdities for a long time to come, through no fault of its own, because people will draw conclusions from it, not based on the science, but on a vague sense of how the claims of quantum mechanics when converted into colloquial language seem analogous to something else entirely.

* Rachel Motte has been blogging Plato at "The Evangelical Outpost":
Plato Blogging: The Phaedo
Who Killed Shatner?

* You may or may not know that Ted Turner was a classics major in college. What is interesting is that he continued to be so despite the fact that his father was horrified by the idea and berated him for it (PDF). Wow.(ht)

* Follow along with Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. (ht)

* It has been a while since I've given a link to Rebecca Stark's Theological Term of the Week series, which has grown splendidly. I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is perhaps no better place on the web than Rebecca Writes for getting the basics of Calvinist theology.

* Stephen Matheson has begun a series critiquing Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny

* Ben Witherington discusses my favorite book of the Bible: The Rhetorical Character of Hebrews.

* John Wilkins at "Evolving Thoughts" has some interesting comments on my recent post on incantatory appeals to truth, and how this might relate to science. In doing so he seems to have landed himself in a debate about scientific realism and anti-realism!

* David Mazella at "The Long Eighteenth" also considers a recent post here, namely, the one on history of philosophy, networks, and problems; in particularly, he considers possible analogies between HoP and literary or cultural studies