An article about the conflict between preservation of a historic site and use by an ‘alternative’ religion gives oddly short shrift to the scholarly half of the equation.
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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Textbook Publishers Bow to Pressure from Right
Because the Bible doesn’t say fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago, so neither should books in Texas classrooms.
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Dawkins on the Church
The damage religion does to the mind is worse than sexual abuse by the parish priest.
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Two for the price of one
The intersection of two vexed subjects, evolutionary psychology and the differences between men and women, is examined in A Mind of Her Own.
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Sinister people or hoaxers?
A Sokal Hoax turned back to front? And why does the Chronicle of Higher Education call it just deserts?
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Dignity and
Mystery, humility, human finitude; science has nothing to say about who we are; the self cannot be an illusion; free will must be true…Such are the platitudes that greet a book on bioethics by a presidential pundit.
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Proving the point
Steven Pinker points out that New York Times book reviewer resorts to the very fallacy the book is about.
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Bizarre claims
Philosophers will insist on getting Dawkins wrong.
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Credentials
Philosophers uncover conceptual connections and thus help to make ethical debate better informed.
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David Lodge thinks
Which tells us more about consciousness, fiction or cognitive science?
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Tragic view
Are John Gray and Steven Pinker saying the same dismal thing about human hopes, and are they right to be saying it?
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Anyone’s neighbour
‘It could be you’. Perhaps a more useful suggestion about the Nobel prize than about the lottery.
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Truth and lies
Bernard Williams defends the truth, while also exploring when we need to tell lies.
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Cargo cult science
‘Statistics show’ is a mere rhetorical device in education research, used to support whatever policy one favors. Research in cognitive psychology shows promise.
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One way to introduce the two cultures
A computer scientist teaches liberal arts students an intelligent skepticism about computer technology…and what binary numbers are.
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Mormon correctness
Even practicing Mormons can have a hard time conforming to the rules at Brigham Young University.
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Rorty on Williams on truth
Are analytic philosophers ‘hard-working public relations agents for contemporary institutions and practices’? Or are neo-pragmatists hard-working Artful Dodgers…
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Oh, brilliant, pay the fun teachers more
Link lecturers’ pay to how popular they are with students? Might there be some drawbacks to that idea?
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Where groupthink can lead
The Salem witch trials are interesting not because of the occult aspect but as an example of ‘senseless self-destruction’.
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Fiction and consciousness studies
David Lodge, while evading ‘the false intimacies of celebrity,’ discusses his new book of essays on that intersection.