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The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays |  | Author: David Berlinski Ph.D.
Publisher: Discovery Institute Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 306816
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Edition
Pages: 558
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0979014123
Dewey Decimal Number: 576
EAN: 9780979014123
ASIN: 0979014123
Publication Date: February 1, 2010
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Product Description
David Berlinski, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, writes about three profound mysteries: the existence of the human mind, the existence and diversity of living creatures, and the existence of matter. His other books include: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Newton's Gift, and A Tour of the Calculus.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 A Delightful Feast September 25, 2009
Michael W. Perry (Author of Untangling Tolkien, Seattle, WA)
71 out of 86 found this review helpful
This book is an intriguing collection of essays on science and scientific topics written by Dr. Berlinski, the author of The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. In the Introduction, he summarizes their underlying theme:
"My own view, repeated in virtually all of my essays, is that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else. It is not a view that the scientific community has ever encouraged. The sciences require no criticism, many scientists say, because the sciences comprise a uniquely self-critical institution, with questionable theories and theoreticians passing constantly before stern appellate review. Judgment is unrelenting. And impartial. Individual scientists may make mistakes, but like the Communist Party under Lenin, science is infallible because its judgments are collective. Critics are not only unwelcome, they are unneeded."
For those who believe that the present and fleeting 'consensus' among scientists is far from infallible, this book is a delightful feast of thought-stimulating ideas. Here's a list of the essays included:
---- 1996 ----
The Soul of Man Under Physics
The Deniable Darwin
Denying Darwin: David Berlinski & Critics
Keeping an Eye on Evolution
The End of Materialist Science
Full House Follies
---- 1998 ----
Gödel's Question
Was There a Big Bang?
---- 2001 ----
What Brings a World into Being?
Where Physics and Politics Meet
---- 2002 ----
God, Man and Physics
Einstein And Gödel: Friendship Between Equals
Lucky Jim
Stephen Jay Gould, 1942-2002: In Memoriam
Has Darwin Met His Match?
---- 2003 ----
Darwinism versus Intelligent Design: David Berlinski & Critics
Borges on Intelligent Design
A Scientific Scandal
A Scientific Scandal? David Berlinski & Critics
The Vampire's Heart
---- 2004 ----
On the Origins of the Mind
---- 2005 ----
All Those Darwinian Doubts
Academic Extinction
The Strength of Natural Selection in the Wild
An Open Letter to the Amazing Randi
Our Silent Partners
Copernicus Stages a Comeback
---- 2006 ----
On the Origins of Life
---- 2007 ----
Inside the Mathematical Mind
---- 2008 ----
Connecting Hitler and Darwin
The Scientific Embrace of Atheism
---- 2009 ----
The State of the Matter
Highly recommended!
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II
Is Darwin Deniable? November 27, 2009
The Professor
18 out of 25 found this review helpful
Dr. Berlinski is an award winning writer those work was twice honored in the Best American Science Writing series. He has a PhD from Princeton, did a postdoc in math and molecular biology at Columbia, and has taught at Stanford and 3 other leading universities. This work reprints many of Dr. Berlinski's articles first published from 1996 to 2009. Many of the articles I have read in their original, including those from Commentary which put Berlinski in the limelight as a Darwin Doubter. As I reread the essays, I have noticed things that I never noted before, thus the chapters in this book seem fresh. Berlinski is an excellent writer, although his style for me, as one who reads mostly in the area of cell biology, takes some thought to adjust to. He noted that many people believe in God and others believe in science, creating a deliberate dichotomy which over generalizes but makes a clear point. Clarifying the title, Berlinski writes that what he denies is more than what Darwin concluded about the origins of life, but also especially the spirit that Darwinism has engendered in science today, namely the dogmatism of many scientists that prevents them from seriously considering doubting Darwinism, the problems with evolutionism. The main group that defends this dogmatism is the so-called misnamed National Center for Science Education. His main theme is "the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences ... not a view that the scientific community has ever encouraged. The sciences require no criticism, many scientists say, because the sciences comprise a uniquely self-critical institution, with questionable theories and theoreticians passing constantly before stern appellate review. ... Individual scientists may make mistakes, but like the Communist Party under Lenin, [they claim that] science is infallible because its judgments are collective. Critics are not only unwelcome, they are unneeded." Berlinski then eloquently documents that science is very fallible.
The Incorrigible Berlinski January 17, 2010
Gord Wilson (Bellingham, WA USA)
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
From the title, it would appear that the essays collected in this book, which span the years 1996- 2009, might all be subtitled, "Doubts About Darwin". Could they? Yes and no. Page 17 reveals where these essays first appeared. Three of them, "The Deniable Darwin" (1996), "Has Darwin Met His Match?" (2002), and "A Scientific Scandal" (2003) appeared in Commentary magazine. Here they are reprinted in their entirety, along with letters about the articles (many of them taking issue with Berlinski), and, what is even more delightful, Berlinski's replies, which also appeared in the magazine. These essays, the subsequent letters, and the author's replies easily fall under the "Doubts About Darwin" rubric.
That barely exhausts this volume, however, which spans more than 550 pages. Two essays, "On the Origins of the Mind" and "What Brings a World into Being?" were reprinted in The Best American Science Writing. Berlinski considers, respectively, the brain and physics; and information and DNA. Anyone who has dipped into A Tour of the Calculus A Tour of the Calculus knows what a delightful and unique writer Berlinski is. I've read numerous popular science writers, from Carl Sagan to Nigel Calder, Paul Davies to Heinz Pagels, Steven Weinberg to Rene Thom, and with a few exceptions like Rudy Rucker, few approach the prose style of Berlinski. The best pieces here in that vein include "The Soul of Man Under Physics"; "The End of Materialist Science?"; "Godel's Question"; "Was There a Big Bang?"; "Where Physics and Politics Meet"; and the not-to-be-missed final essay, "The State of the Matter.
What of the rest? These include short, imagined conversations with the Argentine writer Jorges Luis Borges, book reviews, and humorous and thoughtful op ed pieces, some of them from Commentary. Editor David Klinghoffer had to pick and choose from the author's prolific output. One essay I wish had been included is Berlinski's rejoinder to Daniel Dennett's article in Nature magazine about Darwin's theory being like a universal acid. But that will have to wait. May one hope for a second volume? But for everyone who closed The Devil's DelusionThe Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions wanting more, or even those who have perused his popular science books: the incorrigible Dr. Berlinski.
David Berlinski, Critic of Contemporary Science and Scientists December 3, 2009
Raymond C. Togtman (Chicago, IL USA)
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
In the essays in this book, David Berlinski turns the skeptical eye of science upon science itself. Such criticism of science, which has never been encouraged by the scientific community, is especially necessary at this time, when the traditional skepticism of science has been dramatically transformed. For under the influence of Darwinism in biology, cosmology, and psychology, credulity has become a virtue and incredulity a vice.
Jerry Coyne states peremptorily on page 231 of his book Why Evolution is True that "evolution operates in a purposeless, materialistic way," through random mutation and natural selection. But most people in human history would have disagreed that the natural world can be understood in purely material terms and as devoid of purpose or intelligence. Kenneth Miller in Only a Theory worries that the notion of intelligence in nature could lead to a closing of the scientific mind. But everyone from Anaxagoras to Aristotle to Leonardo to Newton to Leibniz to Maxwell to Einstein has thought that the natural world displays intelligence. That there is nothing in reality except matter is not a conclusion of any science, nor is it a conclusion of science that there is no causation that cannot be explained by physics and chemistry.
It is against the unthinking dogmatism of Coyne, Miller, and most other publishing scientists that Berlinski argues. In The Deniable Darwin he turns his penetrating, skeptical, and erudite mind not only upon the scientific influence of Darwin, but also upon the unscientific spirit that he engendered. My personal favorite in this collection is The End of Materialist Science, which has been incorporated with small alterations as the final chapter of his excellent book The Advent of the Algorithm. The repartee displayed in the three articles subtitled "David Berlinski and His Critics" is also very delightful.
Deniable Darwin October 19, 2009
Mankell fan
18 out of 27 found this review helpful
Berlinski has a very distinctive style, could perhaps be described as "impressionistic". Tries to communicate difficult scientific ideas in a way the layman can appreciate them.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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