When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer’s Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, “You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you’re not really a scientist. You’re a biologist.”
For Barrow, biology is little more than a branch of natural history. “Biologists have a limited, intuitive understanding of complexity. They’re stuck with an inherited conflict from the 19th century, and are only interested in outcomes, in what wins out over others,” he adds. “But outcomes tell you almost nothing about the laws that govern the universe.” For physicists it is the laws of nature themselves that capture and structure the universe”and put brakes on it as well.
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Barrow's put-down of Dawkins.....on the mark or silly?
Btw, I originally thought this may just be a coffee house topic, but thought maybe not. More a topic of interest than debate, though it could become debate on what's real science or something. It's interesting beyond the science celeb personality aspect in that physics seems much more open-minded and logical to me than biology.
Edited by randman, : No reason given.
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