Review of Paul Nurse, 'What is Life?' | Blogitem

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Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Review of Paul Nurse, "What is Life?"

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: March 14, 2021 March 14, 2021; Hits: 1137 1137

I’m including my review of Nurse’s book among my category of “Classic” texts both because his eminence and reputation as a scientist are likely to make his book the standard popular guide to evolution, and because I want to draw attention to it as representative of the greatest scandal of modern science, that natural selection should still be talked about as a scientific theory when it better deserves to be recognized as no more than myth and magic and abandoned along with science’s other obsolete theories. More...