All Entries in the "Timothy McGettigan" Category

Judging from the human infatuation with canines of every size, shape and color--not to mention zoos, conservatories, and pet stores stocked with every imaginable critter--it is safe to conclude that humans are perhaps the world's most enthusiastic supporters of, with one caveat, genetic diversity. Of course, that one caveat is highly consequential. Remarkable as the human enthusiasm for diversity may be among non-human species, among our own species, humans tend to deplore diversity. That is, to put it mildly, a rich irony.

Racism and Hypocrisy: Celebrating Diversity–Just Not Among Humans

As Darwin pointed out in the The Origin of Species (1859), species often exhibit enormous variation. Darwin was a pigeon breeder and described at length the astounding variation that, with the help of artificial selection, pigeon breeders had succeeded in cultivating in an otherwise humdrum bird species. Similar forces operate on Canis familiaris and, if anything, have [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Mar 07, 2013 | Comments 0

Albert Einstein believed that the universe was governed by a rational god who would never dream of playing dice with his precious creation. Yet, if scientists have learned anything over the past century, it is that the universe is anything but rational. Thus, a word to the wise: if there is a god, he does play dice. Further, scientists who don't wish to crap out would be well advised to wise up to the increasingly bizarre rules of his game.

Feynman’s Cosmic Onion

Albert Einstein believed that the universe was created by a rational god; a god who would never presume to play dice with his precious creation. Einstein’s belief in a rational, knowable universe was rooted in a “clockwork” scientific philosophy that comprised the very bedrock of Enlightenment science. This perspective was most famously summed up by [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Feb 04, 2013 | Comments 1

Now that humanity has, as it were, removed nature’s boot from its neck, there are bound to be repercussions. If nature must suffer in order for humans to luxuriate in a blissful era of shameful overindulgence, then so be it. Tough nuts, Mother Nature.

Sapient Apes Ascendant: The Costs and Benefits of Human Agency

If the messages that are embedded in folklore mean anything, then until very recently humans were terrified of the natural environment (Grimm, et. al., 1915). In many cases, the scariest part of folk tales involves foolish individuals–often kids, in order to emphasize the cautionary nature of the tales–who fall prey to one of the many [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Jan 24, 2013 | Comments 1

Hard determinists assert that nothing moves, interacts, appears or disappears in the clockwork universe without having been minutely pre-determined by a chain of causality that was set in motion at the origin of the universe. Thus, hard-core determinism leaves no room whatsoever for agency, free will or indeterminism.

When You’re Wrong…You’re Right? Stephen Hawking’s Implausible Defense of Determinism

One can hardly broach the subject of free will or human agency without acknowledging the long-standing and unresolved philosophical debate regarding agency vs. determinism (Campbell, et. al., 2004). To provide an illustration of the extent of disagreement over this dualism, determinists, such as Hawking and Mlodinow (2010), have argued that agency and free will are [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Jan 03, 2013 | Comments 4

Humans are the first super-adaptable organism to evolve on earth. Rather than being deterministically restricted by the constraints of Darwinian biology, humans are the only terrestrial species that is graced with the capacity to “redefine reality.”

Evolution at the Speed of Thought

Scholars have referred to Homo sapiens’ game-changing capacity to transform the biological evolutionary process into an intellectual exercise–or what I refer to as super-adaptability–in a variety of ways. Karl Popper distinguishes between biological and cognitive problem solving. In so doing, Popper emphasizes that for most organisms the one and only means of resolving survival problems [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Dec 30, 2012 | Comments 0

Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific revolutions take place when dominant paradigms are dislodged by emergent paradigms. Science undergoes such transitions when established paradigms fail to account for an increasing number of empirical anomalies.

Good Science: An Evolutionary Theory of Truth

Thomas Kuhn (1996) argued that scientific revolutions take place when dominant paradigms are dislodged by emergent paradigms. Science undergoes such transitions when established paradigms fail to account for an increasing number of empirical anomalies. Anomalies may be understood as enigmas for which existing knowledge systems lack convincing explanations, e.g., dark energy (Panek, 2011). Kuhn’s perspective [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Dec 11, 2012 | Comments 0

There is a tragic chink in Walmart’s “populist” armor. While there is no doubt that Walmart loves to deliver severely discounted products to its customers, in order to maximize discounts, Walmart is infamously stingy with its employees. Actually, stingy is too generous a term: when it comes to caring for its employees, Walmart is like Ebeneezer Scrooge on steroids.

Thanksgiving at Walmart: Strikers Plan a Nationwide Celebration for Black Friday

Ah, Black Friday. It’s typically the biggest shopping day of the year and, for that reason, the happiest date on the calendar for retailers. On Black Friday, retailers who have been languishing in the red can count on raking in a whole lot of black. Profits galore! As usual, Walmart, the world’s largest and most [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Nov 21, 2012 | Comments 3

Albert Einstein was one of the brainiest people who ever lived. Yet, smart as he was, when it came to quantum physics, Einstein forgot the first rule of science: a scientist's personal convictions are secondary to the truths that facts reveal.

God’s Loaded Dice: Einstein and the Death of Classical Reality

There is a crucial distinction between explanatory systems that are based upon fate vs. prediction. Both perspectives purport to shed light upon the course of future events, however, fate is based upon a faith in metaphysics whereas prediction is scientific. Determinism represents a branch of metaphysics primarily because determinists claim to know more about the [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Nov 20, 2012 | Comments 1

Determinists explain everything that occurs in the universe as an outcome of an infallible master narrative: if an apple falls from a tree, or a star explodes in the Andromeda Galaxy, then determinists will insist that those events transpired precisely how and when they did because an insuperable chain of causality preordained each outcome. The magic of this type of deductive thinking--which, once again, is predicated on a dogmatic allegiance to an "infallible" master narrative--is that it can be used to explain anything and everything. However, as Karl Popper articulated so convincingly, deductive theories that purport to explain everything in fact succeed in explaining nothing scientifically.

Elementary My Dear Watson! The Beauty (and Baloney) of Being Right about Everything

Fate is the most potent weapon in a the arsenal of determinists like Stephen Hawking. To contend, as determinists plainly do, that the outcomes of events are pre-determined is essentially the same as saying that the ebbs and flows of history are all dictated by fate. Actors, whether animate or inanimate, have no control over [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Nov 16, 2012 | Comments 0

It’s Alive!! Ray Kurzweil, AI, and Frankentelligence

If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. Morpheus in The Matrix. Ray Kurzweil is obsessed with artificial intelligence (AI). Kurzweil has written a series of bestselling books–most recently How to Create a Mind–in which he advances the argument that machine intelligence [...]

Timothy McGettigan | Nov 14, 2012 | Comments 1