#52384: — 12/06  at  10:18 AM
(.)(.)

#52407: — 12/06  at  11:27 AM
You've been Wooted! Talk about validation...

#52412: PZ Myers — 12/06  at  11:45 AM
Masked boobies? Wooting? You guys are making me feel like an old geezer, 'cause I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

#52416: — 12/06  at  11:59 AM
Ech. One of those horrendous postmodern rants complete with vacuous statements, self-congratulation, condescension, and whining.

My translation (I'm always happy to help out):

"But I'm not a postmodernist! I really DO make sense! (bombastic parenthetical) Why do all of you call me a postmodernist? Maybe it's YOU who are postmodernists! Wooga wooga argle bargle. Ever think of THAT? No, because you're dumb! (irrelevant aside) I have credentials! Quit calling me a postmodernist! (postmodernist mantra)"

#52424: — 12/06  at  12:27 PM

Masked boobies? Wooting? You guys are making me feel like an old geezer, 'cause I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Woot used to post his boobies links at Atrios' place (and probably still does - I don't have the spare time to look at the commetns there any more) and elsewhere. It's an honour to be at the receiving end.

#52434: — 12/06  at  12:38 PM
From the transcript, during the defense's DE on Fuller's witness qualifications (Fuller is a witness for the defense):

Q. I'd like to ask you, how is it then that your training, your area of academic expertise qualifies you to address the issues in this case that relate to science? You're not a scientist.

A. Well, I think the key thing is that, if you have noticed from what I said about the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, the kinds of things that are,
as it were, relevant to know about science aren't necessarily the things that would be in a science curriculum, especially if we're talking about people who are being professionally trained to be scientists.

Nowadays, to be professionally trained to be a scientist, is, in effect, to be a technical specialist in a very small area, a small branch even of your own science. And very often, these technical specialists have to take largely on faith what people from other branches of their own field are doing because they have only the most cursory understanding of it.

Now if what we're doing here in this case is making judgments about what is science and not science, we're making very general global kinds of judgments, right, the kinds of information and knowledge and forms of reasoning that one needs to have would not normally be part of an ordinary scientific education, but would, in fact, require this additional kind of knowledge, the kind of knowledge that one gets from studying the history, philosophy, and sociology of science.

Q. So is it true then that the training you have actually makes you better equipped to answer that issue than a scientist that's practicing?

A. Yes.

In other words, "Scientists know a lot about their field and a little about other fields. Because other fields will impact the content of a scientist's field, he cannot pass judgment on his own field due to his limited knowledge of the impacting fields.

"I, however, know nothing about any of their fields, and thus I am qualified to pass judgment on all of them."

Hubris. Sheer, bald-faced, maniacal hubris. Only in philosophy would such a statement pass muster; only in a court of law would it be allowed as testimony.

#52435: — 12/06  at  12:42 PM
My God the man's an idiot. I don't care what Newton thought he was doing, or how Pythagorean/Platonic notions played out early in science, Newton's work did more to desacralize the universe than anyone before him. Teleology went out the window with Newton (though the anti-vitalists had to give it a push in biology), and as much as Newton would probably dislike it, Darwin was Newton's heir.

Physics became the "real explanation" (scare quotes are for philosophical reasons) after Newton, and it still is. ID is counter to good science, of course, and apparently to Newton's predilections as well, however it is inevitable that science will oppose the anti-physics "explanation" for life. Whatever creative, spiritual, religious, magical, or even goofy ideas, are behind good science, the latter must agree with physics. The old, "God introduces energy and anti-entropy into the universe while tinkering" is simply so much BS, against the epistemology of science, and is a notion which threatens the credibility of physics. Fuller is nothing other than anti-science.

Later mystical ideas that have influenced the creativity of Einstein and others have always been compatible with physics, at least in their creators' own minds. Even Newton's physical strictures sometimes ended up on the dustpile as the more crucial conservation laws (which were not Newton's progeny, in fact, but which were in line with his physics) that normally prevail in our universe were save by new understandings of new observations. Newton's clockwork universe friendly to Deism had to go, but not after first giving us the observational science that Fuller would prefer to throw out.

Of course the biggest problem with Fuller is that he's hardly qualified to expound about science. Newton's creativity was not "Newtonian" per se, nor is today's creativity actually quantum and relativistic (yes, the physics is, but the mind is much more than textbook physics), so that religion or anything else might be able act as inspiration, provided that one thinks according to the scientific method and physics, like Newton did. This is another reason why ID is so vacuous even in inspiring new ideas, this fact that they violate physics by paying no heed to thermodynamic considerations.

Fuller discredits his profession by pretending that anti-physics ideas may be helpful to science.

#52438: — 12/06  at  12:50 PM
Couple of corrections (in italics):

Later mystical ideas that have influenced the creativity of Einstein and others have always been compatible with physics, at least in their creators' own minds. Even Newton's physical strictures sometimes ended up on the dustpile as the more crucial conservation laws (which were not Newton's progeny, in fact, but which were in line with his physics) that normally prevail in our universe were saved by new understandings of new observations. Newton's clockwork universe friendly to Deism had to go, but not before ... giving us the observational science that Fuller would prefer to throw out.

#52473: — 12/06  at  03:25 PM
JW: “Okay, the scientists are kicking our butts 500 to zero. Preacher, got any test tubes?”

Preacher: “Uh, no but I got a Bible. And some rosary beads.”

JW: “Great! Okay wave those around at the fans. They’ll eat it up. Philosopher what do you got?”

Philosopher: “I got some fancy philosophy words and some examples where scientists made a mistake.”

JW: “Awesome! Okay wave those around at the fans. They’ll eat it up. Let’s see. Who else? Oh yeah, you, the .. uh… so-called scientist. You have the test tubes, right?”

So-called scientist: “No, but I have some fancy scientific words.”

JW: “No test tubes?”

So-called scientists: “No.”

JW: “Well, okay then. Just wave those fancy words around and the fans will get confused and pay attention to the preacher and the philosopher.”

So-called scientist: “But coach, how are we going to beat the scientists at their own game?”

JW: “Here’s the deal. I know we’ve been beaten badly so far. You guys just do your thing like I told you. I’m going to defecate in this bucket and smear it all over those bastards. It’ll be awesome.”

All: “PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!”

#52475: — 12/06  at  03:29 PM
Here is a Podcast of Steve Fuller debating biologist Jack Cohen on home ground at Warwick University: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio/ (scroll down to 'intelligent design or evolution' November 9th).

Fuller is confident and arrogant and talks total jaw-dropping rubbish from start to finish. Cohen struggles desperately to keep things grounded in reality but I'm afraid he waffles a bit. It never occurred to me before that the ID virus is coming our way, but now I'm not so sure.

I work in the biochemistry department of a major UK university. Out of curiosity, I recently asked my colleagues if they had ever heard of Steve Fuller.Nobody had. I suppose an optimist would say that means Fuller still has an utterly insignificant influence on how real science is done. The problem of course is that the people Fuller teaches are not going to be scientists, they're going to be lawyers and politicians and sundry media types. People who will influence the way science is depicted in our broader society.

Be depressed, be very depressed….

#52490: Milo Johnson — 12/06  at  04:05 PM
I'm just having a little trouble figuring out why he needs to use the modifier "computer" before the word "illiterate." Seems a bit unnecessary to me...

#52503: — 12/06  at  04:37 PM
In Gorgias, Plato has Socrates arguing with some of the prominent sophists of the day that it is wrong to teach a man rhetoric without giving him a solid grounding in ethics first. Would that Fuller's instructors had followed that advice.

#52505: — 12/06  at  04:54 PM
Yeesh. He's even worse than his Dover testimony would lead one to expect.

I can't believe he hasn't already become a huge player. He seems tailor made (designed?) to be a DI mouthpiece.

#52506: — 12/06  at  04:54 PM
I want this Fuller guy to come here and explain what ground breaking discovery he has made in the science/ not science classification debate he has made. I havnt come across anything useful since the "must be capable of falsification" thing, and thats decades old. Seeing as most of the evolutionary biologists I've seen talking about ID are well aware of this idea/ useful outlook/ important bit of philosophy, I want him to explain why he thinks their definition of "science" is utterly wrong.

#52508: — 12/06  at  04:59 PM
No surprises here. Even in his own world of sociology of science or science studies or what have you, Fuller is known as a complete and utter tool.

#52521: Lee J Rickard — 12/06  at  06:13 PM

Teleology went out the window with Newton...

It might be more correct to say "Thanks to Newton" rather than "with Newton". He was apparently content to invoke divine interaction to maintain the stability of the solar system. And his presumption that gravity acted at a distance was as mysterious in his time as the mechanism of the putative designer is in ours. But his theory was so good at explaining and predicting (ID proponents take note!), that we could wait out the centuries until quantum field theories came along.

#52529: — 12/06  at  07:16 PM
Wow. Is Fuller seriously arguing that scientists are too stupid to know how to do science?

#52532: — 12/06  at  07:27 PM
jbark said:"I can't believe he hasn't already become a huge player. He seems tailor made (designed?) to be a DI mouthpiece."

I fear he may be trying to become just that. Here he is on an ID blog justifying himself to the faithful: http://www.idintheuk.blogspot.com/ (scroll down to "how intelligent design came to me", November 14th).

#52533: — 12/06  at  07:46 PM
That Andrew Rowell character is a "compleat" moron.

This is the structure which is at the heart of the intelligent design debate. The real question is who invented this wheel and this tiny motor. It is made up of more than 40 seperate complicated parts each one of which has it's own gene to code for its assembly. Each part is needed to make the motor work. A diagram of one of the parts required for the motor to work is shown on the right. Each of these components has a precise set of instructions coding for its construction. The real question is how is it possible for atheists to know all of this and still maintain that Darwin was right.

So, uh, what's the real question again, Andrew?

I think the real question is do you have an original thought in your brain. And is that thought an honest one.

I think the answer is no. That's what Steve Fuller calls a "knowledge claim." Don't be disrespecting my "knowledge claim." Steve Fuller says that's a no-no. After all, I might be right. We could torture you to find out. Absent that, my claim must be respected.

So speaketh the great Steve Fuller.

#52593: — 12/07  at  05:44 AM
The real question is who invented this wheel and this tiny motor
Wow, that's got to be the best example of begging the question that I've ever seen lol

#52608: — 12/07  at  09:19 AM

#52505: jbark — 12/06 at 04:54 PM
Yeesh. He's even worse than his Dover testimony would lead one to expect.

After the decision is handed down, maybe we should send him a fruit basket and a thank you card for helping the plaintiff's cause.

#52619: Andrew Rowell — 12/07  at  10:06 AM
Great White Wonder,
Being a Moron and not having an original thought in my brain I thought I might try and pick yours a little

Do you also think that Behe is lacking any original thoughts in his brain.

I was thinking ID after studing the Lambda Bacteriophage at Imperial College in London prior to Darwin's Black Box. It was a lecture delivered by Conrad Lichtenstein which convinced me looking at the sheer elegance of the switch between the two cycles.

#52635: — 12/07  at  10:59 AM

#52619: Andrew Rowell — 12/07 at 10:06 AM
Do you also think that Behe is lacking any original thoughts in his brain.

Ah but the real question is whether you, like Behe, think astrology is just as much a scientific theory as Intelligent Design creationism. Does that mean you wish astrology to be taught in public high school science classrooms?

#52642: — 12/07  at  11:45 AM
At this point in the Berube comments thread, it's starting to look like Fuller is only a lost-faculty-job away from being just another John A. Davidson.

He's certainly got the long windedness, obtuseness, and self-importance down pat.

#52646: — 12/07  at  12:08 PM
Andrew

"Do you also think that Behe is lacking any original thoughts in his brain."

No. I think he's a professional liar and hypocrite. You are merely an amateur script-reciter.

"I was thinking ID after studing the Lambda Bacteriophage at Imperial College in London prior to Darwin's Black Box. It was a lecture delivered by Conrad Lichtenstein which convinced me looking at the sheer elegance of the switch between the two cycles."

Yeah. I know what you mean. Back when I was getting my Ph.D. in molecular biology from UC Berkeley, I was screwing this chick behind the electron microscope and when I came I shouted out "Oh God! Oh God!" and I was, liek, where did THAT come from? It really made me think.

Seriously, dude, I'm not going to waste time on you because it's clear from your blog that your head is so far up your butt you can see out your bellybutton.