I have never suggested that the DI’s budget is less than what it is; but I did suggest what is the perfect truth: that in comparison with the resources devoted to promoting Darwinism within the American Scientific establishment, the DI’budget is very small potatoes indeed.

I disagree with you about Fisher, although I agree that he was extraordinarily clever. Marco Schuztenbeger, who knew him, always referred to Fisher as ‘mon bon maitre.’ I have always regarded Wright as the most penetrating of the classical population geneticists, one reason I spent so much time studying what he wrote. The most penetrating, but God Knows, not the most elegant. The man was a mathematical tank. Nonetheless, I see almost no connection between Wright’s work and the sort of questions that I have raised about Darwinian theories. No, I’ll rephrase: No connection at all. Wright constructed an imaginary vector field between the genome, on the one hand, and the organism, on the other, and busied himself in looking at the properties of that vector field without ever once asking how they were coordinated with any living structures. Not a worthless activity, by any means, but not one calculated to settle any of the questions that I find tormenting. And again: precisely the same thing might be said of Smale’s work in economics — the whole Debreu tradition, in fact. You can look at Smale’s work in economcs, which I had a hand in publishing in the 1970s, tick off all the theorems about equilibria, and still ask very reasonably: economics? Is it even a science? And if so, how come it has so little to say?

On http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/goodmath_bad_ma.html there is a discussion on Berlinski’s paper “On the Origins of Life” on the DI website. It’s the second paper in a series of three to come. The goal, in line with DI’s new “critical analysis”, seems to be to attack remaining “origin” gaps in knowledge, and suggest by fiat creationism inside or outside science as demanded. Interestingly, since Berlinski seems to be a PhD in philosophy, the wellknown options of “we don’t know (yet)” aren’t discussed.

The math of “On the Origins of Life” is criticized on http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/berlinskis-bad-math.html for the usual appeal by handwaving to big numbers. Berlinski’s math skills are further looked at on http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2006/04/so-much-smarter-than-you.html which recounts a remarkably naive discussion on limits.

This got me interested in the first paper in Berlinski’s series “On the Origins of the Mind”. I find it remarkable on five accounts.

The religious treatment comes through clearly. In the beginning Berlinski notes “And yet, the impression remains widespread that whoever is responsible for figuring out the world’s deep things seems to have figured out the human mind as well.” In the end, he recounts a creationist story where a monster with a human head appears and teaches men “like the animals” “all sorts of knowledge”.

The philosophical treatment goes without further analysis from treating “the idea that human beviour is “the product of evolution”" as “a modest consensus of opinion” to “evolutionary psychology” as a theory of the mind. That seems rather limited for a philosophical study.

The scientific treatment is remarked upon on at http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2006/03/david-berlinski-vs-goliath.html as “Berlinski is particularly enamored of physics, which is highly mathematized and fraught with numbers.” By way of a *frequently employed phrase*, see below, one can see that it comes from an observation in Hubbard and West textbook on differential equations there they observe that “historically, Newton’s spectacular success in describing mechanics by differential equations was a *model for that science should be*”.

It’s unfortunately a popular philosophical pastime to try to confine the method of science to a specific model. It’s also unclear if it’s doable. After all, we know from Gödel that even rather simple formal systems needs to be indefinitely axiomatised as they are explored. If the result of science is unbounded, the boundedness of the models of it’s methods isn’t immediately obvious. Experience tells us otherwise, different fields use more or less different variants. So far, the method of science is more art than science.

Furthermore, this is an old model. It’s as bad as saying that science is verified by induction, which is also a very old and nonrelevant model that is often and in vain referred to. Differential equations and inductions are sometimes sufficient for establishing and describing hypotheses, but they are not necessary.

The mathematical treatment is reminding of the limit treatment. Berlinski, who seems careful when a point that suggest creationism is treated, states that differential equations on one side has “a variable denoting an unknown function; on the other, a description of the rate at which that unknown function is changing at every last moment down to the infinitesimal”. Leaving aside the fact that infinitesimals doesn’t need to be defined to solve such equations (they aren’t real numbers), of course both sides are rates here.

Berlinski also makes a point of that a differential equation is a local description, but must be solved globally. But global descriptions are used to develop local ones so it’s really a more symmetrical situation. From the global behaviour, he makes a disjunction between causal processes and interdicted “magic” “action at a distance”, thereby implying that a “natural process” and a “magical description” are related.

Berlinski finishes off this section with an old description of a “well-posed problem” in analysis as physically useful. The fact that the description is really about partial differential equations goes Berlinski by. Not only are ill-posed problems solvable, by regularization for example, but one of his referents, Thom, uses much more common ill-posed ordinary differential equations in his catastrophe theory. Heck, I’ve used them myself, favourable!

The model treatment is throughly discussed in http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/berlinskis-bad-math.html , there it’s noted that Berlinski likes to misapply models to make a point. Here, he takes the model for reality. “a well-posed differential equation achieves a coordination among quantities that is determined for every last crack and crevice in the manifold of time.” He goes from a particular solution to suggest that the solution is valid for ever, and he goes from the model to suggest that physical quantities are always obeying it.

And that’s mainly from the 3 first pages of 10 in “On the Origins of the Mind”. I’m already sure it is not fruitful to continue reading…

As much as I appreciate the response, I could have hoped for better — like, perhaps, addressing the point that the critics have not gotten the DI’s relative level of funding wrong, and not simply acknowledging that the obviously fantastic and whimsical bit about suits was just that, fantasy.

No. it’s not plausible: Jason Rosenhause tears into Tom van Flandern’s claim that special and general relativity aren’t used for GPS (they both are) in http://evolutionblog.blogspot.com/2005_12_11_evolutionblog_archive.html . It takes a crank to not recognise another crank.

It’s especially endearing that Berlinski doesn’t admit that ID is especially provoking, for example since it tries to push religious pseudoscience into classrooms, or that he claims The Panda’s Thumb clientele are merely “demanding its right to be heard” (but why specifically on ID, is the immediate question raised).

He comes over as fitting his characterisations – semiliterate (von Flandern) and lazy (the whole piece).

…but I’m not going to bother linking to his long-winded pompous tripe. Just read Wesley, who has the measure of the man and also has the facts in hand….