Stephen Meyer has an interesting op-ed in today’s Boston Globe about founding father Thomas Jefferson’s view of intelligent design. A view which Meyer argues comes from the scientific evidence, not from religious authority, and which is foundational to our nation’s adherence to inalienable rights for all: Contemplating everything from the heavenly bodies down to the creaturely bodies of men and animals, he argued: “It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.” The “ultimate cause” and “fabricator of all things” that Jefferson invoked was also responsible for the “design” of life’s endlessly diverse Read More ›

In the previous post I described the debate among evolutionary biologists over the so-called adaptive hypothesis. Some biologists believe that natural selection has the power to drive evolution in adaptive directions, and that most changes that we observe in organisms are there because they confer some adaptive benefit. Other biologists believe that most of the changes we see in organisms over time are due to neutral, non-adaptive processes. You don’t need to take my word for the existence of this debate. Michael Lynch, an eminent evolutionary biologist, lays out the case against the power of natural selection in a paper called “The Frailty of the Adaptive Hypothesis,” 1 published a few years ago for an evolutionary symposium. In it he Read More ›

Stephen Meyer’s new book, Signature in the Cell, continues to get lots of coverage. Dr. Meyer was recently interviewed for CNS and you can watch a video of the entire interview on the SITC website here. Also, over at Uncommon Descent Robert Deyes is reviewing the book chapter by chapter. When the 19th century chemist Friedrich Wohler synthesized urea in the lab using simple chemistry, he set in motion the ball that would ultimately knock down the then-pervasive ‘Vitalistic’ view of biology. Life’s chemistry, rather than being bound by immaterial ‘vital forces’ could indeed by artificially made. While Charles Darwin offered little insight on how life originated, several key scientists would later jump on Wohler’s ‘Eureka’-style discovery through public proclamations Read More ›

Editor’s Note: Ann Gauger is a senior research scientist at Biologic Institute. Her work uses molecular genetics and genomic engineering to study the origin, organization and operation of metabolic pathways. She received a BS in biology from MIT, and a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, where she studied cell adhesion molecules involved in Drosophila embryogenesis. As a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, she cloned and characterized the Drosophila kinesin light chain. Her research has been published in Nature, Development, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Her awards include a National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship and an American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellowship. A long-standing controversy exists among evolutionary biologists that Read More ›