ENV: When did you start thinking, as a critic, about Darwinian evolution? Did anything in your biography incline you to freethinking in that area?It was the fall of 1965. My graduate school roommate Daniel Messenger and I were ambling along Nassau Street in Princeton. We were munching the kind of wonderful Winesap apples that seem to have disappeared as a variety. I wonder why that is? Daniel’s girlfriend, Sandra Petersen, was there too. Daniel was a fine philosopher and Sandra was doing a degree in classical philosophy. We walked over to Darwin’s theory of evolution, living at the time in one of Princeton’s back alleys.A back alley was the right place to look for Darwin. No one in the philosophy Read More ›

ENV: Were you always subversive? Tell us about the childhood David Berlinski.I am not sure that I would care to think of myself as subversive. It is a mole-and-badger kind of word, isn’t it? So long as we are searching for similes, I would prefer lion-like. Regal is another fine word.I was from an early age indisposed to accept what I had been told. Having been urged not to insert a fork into an electrical outlet, I stuck one in anyway; I was shocked to discover that it was a poor idea, just as my mother had maintained. An impatient child, I became a school yard terror, and a high-school bully. At the Bronx High School of Science I was Read More ›

For those who need a dose of urbane wit and keen insight, never fear; David Berlinski is back. With his excellent book is finally in paperback (after it sold out last year, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions was selling for more than three times its retail value on eBay), ENV interviewed Dr. Berlinski for a fascinating series of Q&A which we’re kicking off tomorrow, as well as an upcoming series of podcasts over at ID the Future. For more on Dr. Berlinski, including audio and video clips, articles, and continuing updates on his upcoming U.S. tour, head over to DavidBerlinski.org.