Tag: World War II

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Author
David Berlinski

Date
June 7, 2023

Tagged
algorithms, Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, calculus, Charles Darwin, ChatGPT, Chinese Revolution, Dan Tawfik, Darwinism, David Berlinski, DNA, Erwin Schrödinger, Evolution, Francis Crick, French zoological tradition, genetic code, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Marcel Schützenberger, Markov process, mathematics, methodological materialism, methodological naturalism, Mikhael Gromov, Murray Eden, Neo-Darwinism, optimizing process, Oswald Avery, Peter Medawar, philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, Pierre Grasse, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, protein chemistry, protein space, Richard Dawkins, Science After Babel, teleology, The Selfish Gene, Tower of Babel, What is Life?, WISTAR Symposium, World War II}

David Berlinski on His New Book, Science After Babel

_{David Berlinski

June 7, 2023

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, host Andrew McDiarmid rings up Science After Babel author David Berlinski in Paris to discuss the philosopher’s latest book. Berlinski is at his cultivated best as the two discuss everything from the biblical Tower of Babel as a metaphor for modern materialistic science, to his friendship with the brilliant and colorful French intellectual Marcel Schützenberger, a world-class mathematician who was self-taught and, as we learn here, came within a hair’s breadth of being swept up in the Chinese Revolution. Berlinski also reflects on the seminal 1966 WISTAR symposium, which laid out some mathematical challenges to Darwinism, challenges that Berlinski says remain unanswered to this day. At the same time, Berlinski gives the devil—here Darwinism—its due. Tune in for this and more, and order your copy of Berlinski’s Science After Babel here.

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post

Author
David Berlinski

Date
April 25, 2022

Tagged
Big Bang, Bill Gates, Catholic thought, Daniel Henninger, David Berlinski, declining homicide rate, eternal universe, homicide rate, Human Nature, medieval murder rate, Michael Medved, Notre Dame Cathedral, Notre Dame fire, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Devil Resurfaces in Ukraine Vladimir Putin, The Devil’s Delusion, The Kellogg–Briand Pact, Whig history, World War I, World War II}

Medved, Berlinski Take on Steven Pinker and Whig History

_{David Berlinski

April 25, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future, Human Nature author and polymath David Berlinski and radio host Michael Medved discuss everything from human depravity, the burning of Notre Dame, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Big Bang and a quixotic century-old pact to ban war. Berlinski argues that the case for the death of God and the case for the impending demise of human depravity have been greatly exaggerated. Contra Steven Pinker, Berlinski insists that there is little if any evidence that human evil is being steadily rolled back by the spread of secular values. Further, the idea that science has disproven God flies in the face of trends running in the opposite direction, perhaps most dramatically in the triumph of the Big Bang theory over an eternal universe model. Berlinski, who himself is not religious, insists that Whig history is bankrupt and that anyone imagining that human depravity and the God hypothesis are things of the past are themselves living in the past. Today’s recording is reproduced here by permission of Michael Medved and The Michael Medved Show.

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Author
David Berlinski

Date
March 28, 2022

Tagged
Alonzo Church, architecture, China, communism, cultural decay, decadence, high gothic architecture, Human Nature, Jewish Holocaust, mathematical logic, Nazis, nihilism, Notre Dame Cathedral, Philosophy, philosophy of mathematics, promiscuity, Scientism, secular humanism, technocracy, the universal civilization, World War II}

David Berlinski on the Universal Civilization, Architectural Decline, and Fleeing the Nazis

_{David Berlinski

March 28, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future, host Wesley J. Smith talks with polymath and Human Nature author David Berlinski about the philosophy of mathematics, the corruption of science, the burning of Notre Dame, modern Europe’s curious incapacity to build graceful, beautiful structures, and what’s driving the devolution of Western society. But before any of that, Berlinski relates the dramatic story of how his parents, European Jews, escaped the Nazis only by the skin of their teeth. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation borrowed with permission from Wesley J. Smith’s Humanize podcast.

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Author
Richard Weikart

Date
April 28, 2021

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, Cambridge University Press, Charles Darwin, colonialism, E.O. Wilson, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, From Darwin to Hitler, Herbert Spencer, Hitler’s Ethic, Hitler’s Religion, Jeffrey O’Connell, Michael Ruse, Pantheism, racism, Richard Weikart, Social Darwinism, struggle for life, struggle for survival, survival of the fittest, The Death of Humanity, World War I, World War II}

Richard Weikart Reviews New Book on Social Darwinism

_{Richard Weikart

April 28, 2021

Uncategorized}

In today’s ID the Future historian Richard Weikart (Cal State Stanislaus) dissects a new Cambridge University Press book on social Darwinism by Jeffrey O’Connell and Michael Ruse. Weikart, author of Hitler’s Ethic, From Darwin to Hitler, Hitler’s Religion, and The Death of Humanity,* says that a major shortcoming of the new book is the authors’ attempt to put as much distance as possible between Darwin and eugenics thinking, and between Darwin and Hitler. The new book paints Darwin follower Herbert Spencer as the eugenics-championing bad guy and posits that Darwin and Darwinism had little or no influence on Hitler’s warped master race ethic. Weikart patiently highlights some key evidence to the contrary, statements front and center in Hitler’s writing. Did Darwin cause Hitler? No. Would Darwin have approved of Hitler? Almost certainly not. But according to Weikart, Darwin’s own racist and pro-eugenics thinking, combined with some implications of his theory that he himself explicitly surfaced, manifestly did lay the groundwork for Hitler’s diabolical outlook on “the master race,” “the struggle for life,” war, and eugenics. *As an Amazon Associate, Discovery earns from qualifying purchases.