I will close this series by commenting on the most conspicuous element of the contemporary debate about whether science points towards the existence of some kind of ‘cosmic purpose’: the possibility that the universe we observe is only a vanishingly small part of a mega-infinity of worlds – the multiverse, and more specifically, the inflationary […]
Many books have been published on the history of science. Each one provides a specific insight, and together they offer a fairly complete overview of the evolution of a substantial part of the intellectual heritage of mankind. The book I will review in these lines is, from that point of view, one more. One more […]
Deception is natural. All animals do it as a survival strategy; prey to avoid predators and predators to catch prey. Intraspecies deception, however, occurs mainly in the most intelligent species, for example among cephalopods, corvids and, of course, apes. Studies on the subject have found a direct relationship between the size of the neocortex and […]
The geologists of the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) made a substantial decision on March 4, 2024 , by rejecting the proposal to formally acknowledge the beginning of the Anthropocene—a new geological epoch attributing humanity’s emergence as the primary force shaping the Earth’s strata. This proposal, led by the Anthropocene Working […]
The most recent, and probably most imaginative of the significant contributions to the philosophical debate on whether contemporary science confirms, or at least points to some kind of strongly teleological cosmology, is Philip Goff’s book Why? The Purpose of the Universe . In this book’s arguments, the author builds both upon the ideas about cosmological […]
When we say that someone is black or white, we may think that he or she belongs to a biological category defined by his or her color. Many people believe that skin pigmentation reflects belonging to a race, “one of the main groups that humans can be divided into according to their physical differences, for […]
One of the most recurrent (and most disputed) headers during the last half century in the debates about whether cosmology points to some ‘fundamental purpose’ of the universe is (I didn’t need to say it) the (ill-)famous anthropic principle . Many versions of it have been formulated since it was so named in the 70’s […]
Epistemology • Philosophy of science • Psychology • Sociology
“Censorship” is not a pleasant word to anyone. Its connotations are almost always negative and, in the first instance, an effort should be made to find circumstances that justify a restriction of information. Even more so in the scientific field, where empirical evidence should prevail over authority, tradition, rhetorical eloquence or social prestige. Science seeks […]
Since more than a century ago, every generation has a moment in which religious believers experience an agonising urge to persuade themselves that the ‘truths’ of their religion are compatible with the sophisticate description of the universe that contemporary science is unfolding. Every now and then this leads to the landfall of some best-selling books […]
In their recent paper “Telling Gender: The Pragmatics and Ethics of Gender Ascriptions” , the philosophers Quill Kukla and Mark Lance (well known in the philosophy of language as authors of the 2009 essential book Yo! And Lo! The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons ) embark on a journey into the heart of […]