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René Descartes

Born_and_bred..._(32403043600)
Photo: A briar patch, by Phil Gayton from Totnes, UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

My Briar Patch: Notes of a Country Doctor 

It took me about twenty years after medical school to break free of the intellectual "comfort" afforded by the mechanistic consensus. Read More ›
071_Wild_marmot_at_Grand_Muveran_Nature_Reserve_Photo_by_Giles_Laurent
Photo credit: Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Intentionality in Living Systems: What Does It Mean?

One historically dominant position on intentionality has been the Brentano thesis, proffered by 19th-century German philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano. Read More ›
Trees_in_ICM_on_Myrstigen_hiking_trail,_Brastad_2
Photo credit: W. Carter, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Discerning the Shape of a “New Biology”

Purpose and intentionality permeate and in fact define the living state, in contrast to the inanimate. Read More ›
polar bear
Photo credit: AWeith, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Closer Look at Natural Law 

The property of a keen sense of smell allows a polar bear to smell a seal miles away under the ice. Read More ›
Noam Chomsky
Photo: Noam Chomsky, by Asadr1337, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Artificial General Intelligence: The Poverty of the Stimulus

It doesn’t even matter if the child is blind, deaf, or both. Barring developmental disorders (such as some forms of autism), the child can learn language. Read More ›
DNA
Image credit: Reimund Bertrams via Pixabay.

To Understand Nature’s Intentionality, We Must Go Back to the Future

It required the truly inimitable intellect of Aquinas to Christianize and modernize what Aristotle had said 1,600 years before him. Read More ›
Descartes
René Descartes
Image: René Descartes, after Frans Hals, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How to Overcome Scientism

Descartes is one of the founding fathers of Western science. And the conversion from medieval scholasticism to Cartesian dualism propelled science dramatically.  Read More ›
prism
Photo credit: Braxton Apana via Unsplash.

Understanding the Limits of Scientism

The great impasse in empirical science was reached early in the 20th century when quantum mechanics was first being developed.  Read More ›
Descartes
René Descartes
Image: René Descartes, after Frans Hals, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Intelligent Design in Imaginary Numbers

René Descartes, in 1637, is credited with being the first to assign this label to results involving the square root of a negative number. Read More ›
soul
Image licensed via Adobe Stock.

What Is Primary: Mind or Matter? 

The standard narrative tells a story of the increasing merit of materialistic causes. All of this allegedly occurs in a series of inevitable stages. Read More ›

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