Tag: David Hume
Why Words Matter: Sense and Nonsense in Science
One might, with Darwin, theorize that the development of the biosphere was simply down to that empirically unattested variant of chance, “natural selection.”
Darwin and the Victorian Culture Wars
As Alec Ryrie pointed out in his history of Doubt, “intellectuals and philosophers may think they make the weather, but they are more often driven by it.”
For Darwin, Timing Was Everything
Charles Darwin, as we saw yesterday, pulled off an intellectual coup against the major thinkers of the Western tradition. How did he do it?
The Ghost of Epicurus and the Doctrine of Natural Selection
The classical pantheon, lacking moral credibility, had become a source of embarrassment to thoughtful Greeks.
The Enlightenment (Re)turn to Atomism
What distinguished thinkers had long called out for its manifest absurdity was now, Phoenix-like, rising from the ashes.