Posts Tagged ‘carl zimmer’

The Tangled Bank

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Review by John C. Snider © 2009

I haven’t had a biology class since I was in high school in the late 1970s.  Despite two college degrees filled with math, engineering and chemistry, I never took any more biology; as a result, most of what I know about biology in general, and evolution in particular, I’ve picked up from magazine articles, internet resources and the occasional TV documentary.  So I was very excited when I heard that Richard Dawkins’ new book (The Greatest Show on Earth) would be devoted to the evidence for evolution by natural selection.  I was equally excited to discover that the latest book by science journalist Carl Zimmer is a textbook titled The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution (pub. by Roberts & Company, Oct 2009, 385 pp hdcvr, $59.95)

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More fallout from the Behe bloggingheads.tv brouhaha

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

How to deal with Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents?  It’s a bit of a Catch-22: one the one hand, unless we consistently, frequently and forcefully confront their nonsense, we might give them free rein to convince the general public that there’s some validity to what they say; on the other hand, if we give them a forum, or engage them in open debate, others might infer that there’s a real controversy within the biological sciences (there isn’t).  At what point do we write off certain people as hopeless wackaloons not worthy of notice?  How do we know when it’s beneficial to engage in dialogue and (polite) confrontation?

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