Author: Neil Thomas | Page 6 | Science and Culture Today

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post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
August 1, 2022

Categories
Culture
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Adrian Desmond, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Edward Aveling, Erasmus Darwin, James Moore, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Matthew Arnold, On the Origin of Species, Robert Chambers, secularism, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Victorian England}

Darwin and the British Secularist Tradition

_{Neil Thomas
August 1, 2022

Culture, Faith & Science

10}

The arresting historical vignette of Darwin’s fraught meeting with Bradlaugh and Aveling at his country retreat would doubtless make for a good TV docudrama. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 19, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, A. N. Wilson, Benjamin Wiker, chance, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Daniel Dennett, evolution, Geoffrey Chaucer, Hamlet, John Herschel, Karl Popper, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins, St. George Mivart, The Blind Watchmaker, Victorian England, William Whewell}

The Art of Concealment: Darwin and Chance

_{Neil Thomas
July 19, 2022

Evolution, Intelligent Design

13}

It is appropriate that Fortuna’s emblematic representation with her ubiquitous wheel should have gone on to become the prototype of the modern roulette wheel. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 15, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Christianity, Europe, faith, Geoffrey Chaucer, George Levine, Lucretius, Mother Earth, Mother Nature, natural selection, natural theology, On the Origin of Species, Ovid, paganism, Plato, Robert J. Richards, Samuel Wilberforce, Victorian England, William Paley}

Nature Divinized: Darwin’s Goddess for All Seasons

_{Neil Thomas
July 15, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science

10}

Some modern archaeologists have even gone so far as to claim that the archetype of the Great Mother has been a mythic universal. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 14, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Basil Willey, breeders, Charles Darwin, Emma Darwin, faith, Gaia, George Levine, Janet Browne, literature, metaphor, Mother Nature, natural preservation, nature, On the Origin of Species, paganism, Robert J. Richards, Stephen Jay Gould}

Darwin’s Goddess: Natural Selection as “Divine Surrogate”

_{Neil Thomas
July 14, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science

7}

When parsed carefully, the metaphorical structure of Darwin’s argumentation emerges as little less than a periphrastic description of the goddess Natura. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 11, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Faith & Science
Geology
Tagged
, BBC, Bible, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Christianity, creation, Darwinism, faith, fundamentalism, Gospels, HMS Beagle, Honest to God, John Robinson, miracles, New Testament, Old Testament, original sin, orthodoxy, Oxford University, Principles of Geology, revelation, Richard Dawkins, Robert Fitzroy, Rudolf Bultmann, theology, Tower of Babel, Victorians}

Darwin, Lyell, and a Tale of Two Faiths

_{Neil Thomas
July 11, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Faith & Science, Geology

10}

Darwin found himself in the unhappy position of having his faith undermined by what he saw as the non-directed processes of geological and biological evolution. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 8, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Faith & Science
Geology
Tagged
, catastrophism, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, evolution, faith, Hell, James Hutton, jesus, mythology, On the Origin of Species, Principles of Geology, Rudolf Bultmann, saltations, special creation, uniformitarianism}

Darwin, Lyell, and Demythologization

_{Neil Thomas
July 8, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Faith & Science, Geology

7}

The term demythologization is today most frequently associated with the mid 20th-century German theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 7, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Koestler, Charles Darwin, Charles Kingsley, Charles Lyell, Darwinism, epigenetics, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Joseph Hooker, Lamarckian theory, Mendelian genetics, mount improbable, natural preservation, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, Pyrrho, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stephen Buranyi, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, The Guardian}

Darwin and the Ghost of Lamarck

_{Neil Thomas
July 7, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science

15}

The lure of Lamarck was exemplified most strikingly in the case of Viennese biologist Paul Kammerer and the unhappy affair of the “midwife toad.” Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 16, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Scientific Reasoning
Tagged
, antiquity, Aristotle, atomism, Cambridge University, Darwinism, David Hume, Enlightenment, evolution, Gospels, Judeo-Christian tradition, Meister Eckhart, Mendelian genetics, Middle Ages, New Testament, On the Origin of Species, Oxford University, Phillip E. Johnson, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Thomas Aquinas, Victorians}

On Darwinism and the Abdication of Reason

_{Neil Thomas
June 16, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science, Scientific Reasoning

15}

It is a pity that Darwin’s homeland no longer boasts a satirist of the caliber of Thomas Love Peacock to exploit this rich seam of comic absurdity. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 13, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Neuroscience & Mind
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Animal Liberation, Anthony Flew, consciousness, Darwin, David Bentley Hart, David Hume, deism, Donald Hoffman, Erasmus Darwin, Europeans, evolution, Francis Crick, intelligent design, Irreducible Complexity, Lawrence Krauss, Lucretius, materialism, Michael Ruse, mind, natural selection, natural theology, neuroscience, On the Origin of Species, Peter Singer, Racism, rationalism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Rorty, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Huxley, Tom Wolfe}

How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind

_{Neil Thomas
June 13, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Neuroscience & Mind

17}

Marvelously free of racist prejudice, Wallace noted in his fieldwork in far-flung locations that primitive tribes were intellectually the equals of Europeans. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 10, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Aristotle, biosphere, Charles Lyell, Democritus, Empedocles, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, Georges Cuvier, Greece, Homo sapiens, intelligent design, Joseph Hooker, Loren Eiseley, materialism, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, Patrick Matthew, pigeons, Rome, Royal Society, Samuel Haughton, Thomas Malthus, Victorian England, Whitwell Elwin}

Meet Samuel Haughton, Darwin’s First Scientific Critic

_{Neil Thomas
June 10, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design

18}

Darwin reports Haughton’s verdict as having been that “all that was new in there was false, and what was true was old.” Read More ›