You can do what you want, FJ, but your approach is puzzling to me. Gould was one of the leading exponents of evolutionary theory, and he was well known, for instance in The Mismeasure of Man (an excellent read), for separating good science from its hijacking by people with stupid social agendas. His views conflicted with the views of other scientists, which says nothing about which are correct. Dawkins talks some shit, and says things that are plainly anti-scientific, such as “it’s all in the genes”. But he’s also an excellent scientist, who should be read by scientifically literate people, and you’ll notice that Gould’s site includes many papers expressing a variety of opinions, many of which he openly disagreed with. The links are set up in groups, which provide an excellent introduction to various themes and a way to explore different approaches to those themes. I don’t know if Gould chose those links himself or not (he’s dead). I’ve spent some time exploring the “units of selection” grouping, for instance, and found what I learned there to be both introductory yet highly intelligent (and varied).
If you’re interested in a non-controversial introduction to science, you should just find yourself an actual textbook and figure out how to post it online without breaking any laws. yawn
I’ve added it tentatively to the page, anon. There does seem to be significant evidence that Gould misrepresented the view of evolutionary biologists of his time, and argued for various positions regarding evolution that experts pretty unanimously don’t agree with. I hope to find an introductory source that is less contentious, more approachable, and also free in the future.
So, your suggestion is up for now, but is open to be trumped (as is anything that is on that page, of course).
I did read what you quoted above, but even those topics can be treated as a series of facts. I now know that’s not what you intended but if I read that other post it’s focus comes off focused the way I took it.
The person I was responding to was talking about ‘epistemology’. I said ‘philosophy of science’. Surely ‘philosophy of science’ places a lot of importance on epistemology, no?
For Philosophy of Science, Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery) and Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) are pretty much baseline texts. Taking it further, I like van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism (The Scientific Image) as a non-ideological, non-utopian/dogmatic description of the aims and methods of science.
Gould’s “problem” is political, rather than factual. You can learn decent stuff about evolution, and get a wrong impression of the beliefs of current scientists. He was more a populiser - it’s a bit like Dawkins’ The God Delusion; it’s not wrong, but there’s nothing especially thrilling or challenging about it. Dawkins himself does a better job on evolution - The Selfish Gene is a good starting point for discussion.
Flannel, have you ever considered enforcing the standards that you espouse, in the forum? I mean by weeding out the posts which are obviously facetious, or just flaming, or totally irrelevant, or betray a total ignorance of both science and philosophy? I realise that there wouldn’t be an awful lot left, but at least it would be intellectually respectable?
He is the top moderator on this site, has been the gold standard this past year.
Perhaps you need to focus less on getting others to remove posts you want removed from insidious bias, and instead try engaging in discussions with others, in a exchange of knowledge and it’s principled validity, instead of plunging us back into a unrepresentative dark age ruled by narrow minded prejudiced. We don’t burn witches, or persecute others just because they have differing ideals. That’s not what science is about, not what we are about on this forum.
Place your faith in science and reasoning. We don’t need another Inquisition by the short sighted or the vindictive. The freedom of personal expression of ideas is paramount to propagating the Republic of Science.
