基本信息出版社：Vintage Books USA
页码：272 页
出版日期：2006年05月
ISBN：0307277224
条形码：9780307277220
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语
内容简介 Evolutionary science lies at the heart of a modern understanding of the natural world. Darwin’s theory has withstood 150 years of scientific scrutiny, and today it not only explains the origin and design of living things, but highlights the importance of a scientific understanding in our culture and in our lives.
Recently the movement known as “Intelligent Design” has attracted the attention of journalists, educators, and legislators. The scientific community is puzzled and saddened by this trend–not only because it distorts modern biology, but also because it diverts people from the truly fascinating ideas emerging from the real science of evolution. Here, join fifteen of our preeminent thinkers whose clear, accessible, and passionate essays reveal the fact and power of Darwin’s theory, and the beauty of the scientific quest to understand our world.
作者简介 John Brockman is a writer, agent, and publisher of Edge, the "Third Culture" website (www.edge.org), the forum for leading scientists and thinkers to share their research with the general public. He is the author of By The Late John Brockman and The Third Culture and has edited several previous anthologies including The Next Fifty Years, Curious Minds, and My Einstein. He lives in New York City.
编辑推荐 From Publishers Weekly
Writer and editor Brockman (What We Believe but Cannot Prove), who publishes the online magazine Edge, has assembled sixteen short essays by prominent scientists on current thinking about evolution. A few of the contributors, such as Jerry A. Coyne and Daniel C. Dennett, use close readings of Intelligent Design (ID) advocates' claims to argue that ID is a political or ideological movement without scientific legitimacy. These arguments are concise and persuasive, if sometimes familiar; strong evidence and wide acceptance in the scientific community have made evolution central to biology and related branches. The most fresh and interesting essays essentially ignore ID to explore aspects of evolutionary biology, including paleontologist Tim D. White considering evidence for Homo sapiens' evolution, psychologist Steven Pinker on the compatibility of evolution and ethics, and geologist Scott D. Sampson proposing primary science education that links evolution and ecology. As a whole, this sampler makes a powerful cross-discipline case for teaching evolution as an accepted biological consensus-as opposed to "teaching the debate"-and offers glimpses into how the science behind the theory continues to evolve in a range of fields.
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Review
“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.” –Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher
“Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity.” –Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist
“An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one.” –Steven Pinker, Psychologist
Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory. –Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist
The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design. –Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist
Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all. —Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist
A denial of evolution–however motivated–is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance. —Tim D. White, paleontologist
Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity. —Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself.—Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
Review
“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.” –Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher
“Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity.” –Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist
“An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one.” –Steven Pinker, Psychologist
Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory. –Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist
The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design. –Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist
Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all. —Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist
A denial of evolution–however motivated–is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance. —Tim D. White, paleontologist
Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity. —Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself.—Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
Nothing indicates that people who believe that life arose by chance also believe that morality is haphazard. —Scott Atran, anthropologist and psychologist
An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one. —Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist
To state that a given organ is so improbable that it requires design is just ill founded. The argument uses standard probability, which does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere. —Stuart A. Kauffman, theoretical biologist
We don’t have an intelligent designer (ID), we have a bungling consistent evolver (BCE). or maybe an adaptive changer (AC). In fact, what we have in the most economical interpretation is, of course, evolution. —Lisa Randall, physicist
What counts as a controversy must be delineated with care, as we want students to distinguish between scientific challenges and sociopolitical ones. —Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist
Incredulity doesn’t count as an alternative position or critique. —Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist
Rather than removing meaning from life, an evolutionary perspective can and should fill us with a sense of wonder at the rich sequence of natural systems that gave us birth and continues to sustain us. —Scott D. Sampson, paleontologist
文摘 Jerry A. Coyne
Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Intelligent design is not an evangelic Christian thing, or a generally Christian thing or even a generically theistic thing. . . . Intelligent design is an emerging scientific research program. Design theorists attempt to demonstrate its merits fair and square in the scientific world-without appealing to religious authority.
-William A. Dembski, The Design Revolution (2004)
[A]ny view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient. . . . [T]he conceptual soundness of a scientific theory cannot be maintained apart from Christ.
-William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology (1999)
Well, which is it? Is intelligent design (ID) merely a sophisticated form of biblical creationism, as most biologists claim, or is it science-an alternative to Darwinism that deserves discussion in the science classroom? As the two quotations above imply, you won't find the answers in the writings of the leading advocates of ID.
The ambiguity is deliberate, for ID is a theory that must appeal to two distinct constituencies. To the secular public, ID proponents present their theory as pure science. This, after all, is their justification for a slick public-relations campaign promoting the teaching of ID in the public schools. But as is clear from the infamous "Wedge Document" of the Discovery Institute, a right-wing think tank in Seattle and the center for ID propaganda, intelligent design is part of a cunning effort to dethrone materialism from society and science and replace it with theism.1 ID is simply biblical creationism updated and disguised to sneak evangelical Christianity past the First Amendment and open the classroom door to Jesus. The advocates of ID will admit this, but only to their second
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