Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

New ID-friendly journal

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

If you go by the fact that Michael Denton, a local fave, has an article in it, revisiting his thesis about (Darwinian) evolution as a theory in crisis:

IN Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Evolution), published in 1985, I argued that the biological realm is fundamentally discontinuous.1 The major taxa-defining innovations in the history of life have not been derived from ancestral forms by functional intermediates. This is the view that Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson defended in On Growth and Form:

In short nature proceeds “from one type to another” [emphasis added] among organic as well as inorganic forms; and these types vary according to their own parameters, and are defined by physical-mathematical conditions of possibility. In natural history Cuvier’s “types” may not be perfectly chosen nor numerous enough but “types” they are; and to seek for stepping stones across the gaps between is to seek in vain, for ever.

The contrary view remained predominant among evolutionary biologists until, at least, the 1980s, and remains predominant as the view offered the public today.

There have been massive advances and discoveries in many areas of biology since Evolution was first published. These developments have transformed biology and evolutionary thought. Yet orthodox evolutionary theory is unable to explain the origins of various taxa-defining innovations.

It never needs to. Darwin’s followers can just get themselves in front of a judge or an OFSTED committee, screaming about creationism in the schools, no matter what the pattern of facts.

Here’s the About Us:

SCIENCE, it is often said, is a uniquely self-critical institution. Questionable theories and theoreticians pass constantly before stern appellate review. Judgment is unrelenting. And impartial. Individual scientists may make mistakes, but Science as an institution is irrefragable because its judgments are collective.

The editors of Inference: International Review of Science believe this view to be both wrong in conception and pernicious in effect. The process of peer review by which grants are funded and papers assigned to scientific journals does not—and it cannot—achieve the ends that criticism is intended to serve.

The editors are for this reason persuaded that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else.

Not, so far as sources tell me, associated with the Discovery Institute.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments
The last time I looked, serious peer reviewed science journals publish the names and credentials of the journal editors. Why are the editors of this journal remaining anonymous? Last time I looked, there was no claim as to the cost of a subscription to this, unlike peer-reviewed print journals. In other words when the editors post the below quoted phrase, they are making a half-way tongue in cheek reference to the "science" of Darwinism as a tool of social manipulation, whose practitioners can get very nasty when opposed, as evident on this blog and on others such as Darwin's God. As such, the journal is probably targeted at the educated lay audience as much as people in the STEM fields. So why would you assert the journal to be something it is not and/or the editors pretending such? Contact Editors are pleased to receive death threats on the third Thursday of the month. groovamos
October 27, 2014
October
10
Oct
27
27
2014
02:01 AM
2
02
01
AM
PDT
Berlinksi if you recall is the scientifically illiterate philosopher Now how would one "recall" this? I mean really please explain how us readers randomly dropping in here would know this and "recall"? I tell you what: let's come up with a question for Berlinski. Lets ask him if in proving the residue theorem, one must apply Green's theorem, or is there a way to do it otherwise. Since the scientific applications for (and motivation behind) integral transforms is well known, and the residue theorem is required for inverse Laplace transformation, Berlinski with a math PhD I guarantee could answer this. But first we should get an answer from Thorton to see how much Thorton knows about science.groovamos
October 27, 2014
October
10
Oct
27
27
2014
01:40 AM
1
01
40
AM
PDT
It's hard to take them seriously when they post a schedule for accepting death threats.centrestream
October 25, 2014
October
10
Oct
25
25
2014
11:25 AM
11
11
25
AM
PDT
Apparently there's evidence that this new anti-science "journal" is the work of David Berlinski. Berlinksi if you recall is the scientifically illiterate philosopher who a few years back claimed evolution says whales evolved from cows. He makes the perfect spokesman for ID.Thorton
October 25, 2014
October
10
Oct
25
25
2014
07:34 AM
7
07
34
AM
PDT
The last time I looked, serious peer reviewed science journals publish the names and credentials of the journal editors. Why are the editors of this journal remaining anonymous?Acartia_bogart
October 24, 2014
October
10
Oct
24
24
2014
06:04 PM
6
06
04
PM
PDT
and to plug Denton's "Privileged Species" video that is soon to be released: Privileged Species - Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAHPTwGZSP4 Privileged Species - How the cosmos is designed for human life - main website http://privilegedspecies.com/ Dr. Michael Denton Interview Excerpt Question 14: 14. Q: ,,,you also detail that nature isn’t fine-tuned for just any kind of life, but life specifically like human life. Would you expound on this for our readers? A: there are certain elements of the fine-tuning which are clearly for advanced being like ourselves.,,, http://successfulstudent.org/dr-michael-denton-interview/ The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis - Michael J. Denton - February 25, 2013 Summary (page 11) Many of the properties of the key members of Henderson’s vital ensemble —water, oxygen, CO2, HCO3 —are in several instances fit specifically for warm-blooded, air-breathing organisms such as ourselves. These include the thermal properties of water, its low viscosity, the gaseous nature of oxygen and CO2 at ambient temperatures, the inertness of oxygen at ambient temperatures, and the bicarbonate buffer, with its anomalous pKa value and the elegant means of acid-base regulation it provides for air-breathing organisms. Some of their properties are irrelevant to other classes of organisms or even maladaptive. It is very hard to believe there could be a similar suite of fitness for advanced carbon-based life forms. If carbon-based life is all there is, as seems likely, then the design of any active complex terrestrial being would have to closely resemble our own. Indeed the suite of properties of water, oxygen, and CO2 together impose such severe constraints on the design and functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems that their design, even down to the details of capillary and alveolar structure can be inferred from first principles. For complex beings of high metabolic rate, the designs actualized in complex Terran forms are all that can be. There are no alternative physiological designs in the domain of carbon-based life that can achieve the high metabolic activity manifest in man and other higher organisms. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.1/BIO-C.2013.1bornagain77
October 24, 2014
October
10
Oct
24
24
2014
04:05 AM
4
04
05
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply