I had no idea

[james_davis_nicoll]

As pointed out in email, JEP on evolution.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Scientific crackpots usually try to attack founding figures and historical experiments, as if that would cause the edifice of a science to crumble, rather than critiquing contemporary science in any coherent way. The anti-relativity people are always going on about mistakes in Einstein's arguments and flaws in the Michelson-Morley experiment, as if that would accomplish anything at this point.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Maybe it's because they have trouble distinguishing science from religion? After all, when critiquing Christianity, people usually go to the bible first...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Maybe partly that, but also an identification of the science with what they read in introductory texts or popular expositions, which often take a quasi-historical approach.

Also, a limited understanding that science is fundamentally a social process, rather than a giant deduction that some isolated person makes from first principles.