There are a lot of interesting comments on Other ways of evaluating truth claims; be sure to check them out. Josh Rosenau replied a couple of times, and many interesting things came up. In particular, Richard Wein gave us a passage from a statement by the University of New Mexico history department published at the NCSE site:

Science is one way of knowing the world ; it is not the only way of knowing, and it is certainly not the only way of knowing everything. Indeed, in the grand scheme of human thought and action, the domain of science is modest — the realm of natural phenomena. Science, as it has developed historically, will not and can never tell

One commenter on Josh’s post asked for just one example of another “way of knowing” and another was ready with an answer.

Let’s see … do you has a “significant other” … a person you love? How do you know that you “love” that person? Note that I am not asking about hormones or brain chemistry (unless, in fact, you have measured your hormone levels or your brain chemistry in order to decide if, in truth, you “love” that person … in which case, I feel very sorry for you). The question is how YOU know you love that person.

So…the claim is that there are “other ways of knowing” and one of them is knowing you … Read the rest

Josh Rosenau did a second post about ways of knowing and vampires and knowledge and a whole slew of other things – a very long, tangled, complicated post that still didn’t manage to clarify what he is trying to say, which is why I asked a couple of questions as soon as I’d read the post, but answer came there none. As Josh Slocum pointed out yesterday, trying to get clarification from Rosenau is very like trying to get clarification from Chris Mooney – hopelessly futile. This is especially ironice because he says ‘I think there’s some sort of progress underway in the comments to my original post.’ Well if he thinks that why doesn’t he help out a little … Read the rest

It’s B&W’s birthday again. Well actually it was a week ago, but other things were more urgent to post, and I’m always late anyway, so close enough.

Seven years old. Why, when B&W started, there were no proper roads between Missouri and Oregon, and credit default swaps were things that no nice girls would wear after nine in the evening. When B&W started Pepsi hadn’t been invented yet, and dogs still wore corsets, and families still gathered around the radio to listen to Jay Leno make fun of Jerry Seinfeld’s dinner jacket. When B&W started people still thought Cream of Wheat was food, and you could get a pound of assorted chocolates for a penny, and milk arrived at the … Read the rest