David Berlinski

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David Berlinski (born 1942 in New York City) is an educator and author of popular books on mathematics. He is a leading critic of evolution within the intelligent design movement and author of numerous articles on the topic.[1] Berlinksi is a secular Jew and self-described agnostic, and according to a 2008 Slate magazine profile "a critic, a contrarian, and — by his own admission — a crank."[2]

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[edit] Biography

David Berlinski was born to Jewish-German refugees from Nazi Germany who immigrated to New York City, and German was his first spoken language.[3] He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University[4] and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, the University of Washington, the University of Puget Sound, San Jose State University, the University of Santa Clara, the University of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University.

He has also taught mathematics at the Université de Paris. He has been a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France. He currently lives in Paris.

He has written works on systems analysis, the history of differential topology, theoretical biology, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics. Berlinski is best known for his books on mathematics and the history of mathematics written for the general public. These include A Tour of the Calculus (1997) on calculus, The Advent of the Algorithm (2000) on algorithms, Newton's Gift (2000) on Isaac Newton, and Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics (2005). Another book, The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky (2003), compares astrological and evolutionary accounts of human behavior.

He is the author of several detective novels starring private investigator Aaron Asherfeld: Less Than Meets the Eye, The Body Shop and A Clean Sweep, and a number of shorter works of fiction and non-fiction.

Berlinski described his career in a 2008 Slate magazine profile:

Nothing took—as he describes it, he "got fired from almost every job [he] ever had." And then, at some point in the last few decades, he decided to remake himself as a maverick intellectual operating out of a flat in Paris.

– Daniel Engber, A Crank's Progress, Slate Magazine[2]

[edit] Intelligent design

An outspoken critic of evolution, Berlinski is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think-tank that is hub of the intelligent design movement. Berslinski shares the movement's disbelief in the evidence for evolution, but does not openly avow intelligent design and describes his relationship with the idea as: "warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public toward my ex-wives."[2]

The scientific community, however, regards intelligent design, and its criticisms of evolution, as pseudoscience.[5] The ruling in the 2005 Dover case held that intelligent design is a form of creationism[6] and that the intelligent design movement is a political rather than scientific movement. Berlinski is a scathing critic of "Darwinism", the term used in the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns for evolution.[7]

Berlsinski's viewpoint has been described as:[2]

Berlinski's radical and often wrong-headed skepticism represents an ascendant style in the popular debate over American science: Like the recent crop of global-warming skeptics, AIDS denialists, and biotech activists, Berlinski uses doubt as a weapon against the academy—he's more concerned with what we don't know than what we do. He uses uncertainty to challenge the scientific consensus; he points to the evidence that isn't there and seeks out the things that can't be proved. In its extreme and ideological form, this contrarian approach to science can turn into a form of paranoia—a state of permanent suspicion and outrage. But Berlinski is hardly a victim of the style. He's merely its most methodical practitioner.

– Daniel Engber, A Crank's Progress, Slate Magazine[2]

Though the Discovery Institute portrays Berlinski as a scholarly writer and "mathematician,"[8] Mark Perakh, a critic of the intelligent design movement, contends that Berlinski's writings are not scientific, but popular, and that Berlinski "has no known record of his own contribution to the development of mathematics or of any other science."[9]

Berlinski, along with fellow Discovery Institute associates Michael Behe and William A. Dembski, tutored Ann Coulter on science and evolution for her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.[10] Approximately one-third of the book is devoted to polemical attacks on evolution, which Coulter, as Berlinski often does, terms "Darwinism".

Berlinski was a longtime friend of the late Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (1920-1996), with whom he collaborated on an unfinished and unpublished mathematical polemic that he described as being "devoted to the Darwinian theory of evolution."[11] Berlinski dedicated The Advent of the Algorithm to Schutzenberger.

In a 2006 DVD, Berlinski made the statement:[12]

The interesting argument about the whale, which is a mammal after all, is that if its origins where[sic] land-based originally…what do you have to do from an engineering point of view to change a cow into a whale?...Virtually every feature of the cow has to change, has to be adapted.

As a number of scientists have pointed out, whales evolved, not from cattle, but from pakicetids, hoofed carnivores.[13][14] Recent research has shown that closest living relative of whales (within Cetartiodactyla) are hippopotamus, not cattle.

The problem of the origins of whales has long been of interest to creationists, and some of them have caricatured it as cow evolving into a whale, most notably by Duane Gish who, in the words of palaeontologist Kevin Padian, "would show a cartoon of Jersey cows with bells around their necks and mermaid-like tails, asking his audience if they thought such an evolutionary transition were possible."[15]

In The Deniable Darwin, Berlinski raises the following objections to evolution:[16]

These phenomena are of course familiar to evolutionary biologists, and various explanations have been proposed in the literature. While the extent to which various mechanisms were responsible remains under debate, the above objections are not generally considered to be serious weaknesses in evolutionary theory. (Further information on the Cambrian explosion,[17] lack of transitional fossils[18] (or of smooth transitions[19]), and value of 'part of an eye'.[20])

In responding to Berlinski's arguments, marine biologist Wesley R. Elsberry comments: "I personally like my 'at once's to refer to events significantly shorter than ten million years."[21]

[edit] Writings (partial list)

[edit] Books

[edit] Articles

[edit] References

  1. ^ Discovery Institute article database for David Berlinski
  2. ^ a b c d e The Paranoid Style in American Science: A Crank's Progress, Daniel Engber, Slate magazine, April 15, 2008
  3. ^ Is the Big Bang Just a Big Hoax? David Berlinski Challenges Everyone
  4. ^ Berlinksi, David, The Well-tempered Wittgenstein, Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1968,
  5. ^ National Science Teachers Association, a professional association of 55,000 science teachers and administrators in a 2005 press release: "We stand with the nation's leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr. John Marburger, the president's top science advisor, in stating that intelligent design is not science. It is simply not fair to present pseudoscience to students in the science classroom." National Science Teachers Association Disappointed About Intelligent Design Comments Made by President Bush National Science Teachers Association Press Release August 3, 2005
  6. ^ Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
  7. ^ An Interview with David Berlinski: Part One, ID the Future
  8. ^ "Paris-based writer David Berlinski, a mathematician and microbiologist skeptical of both Darwinism and ID." [1] "David Berlinski, a mathematician with post-doctoral training in molecular biology. (Berlinksi’s scholarly article in the February issue of Commentary will prove an unpleasant read for evolutionists.)" [2]
  9. ^ "The main proponents of Intelligent Design, however, while being very active and loud in asserting their anti-evolution views, have so far produced no genuine scientific results related to their ID theory. Most of them, with a few exceptions, have produced very little of anything scientific in general. For example, David Berlinski, usually referred to as a mathematician, has authored popular books on mathematics, and papers against evolution, but has no known record of his own contribution to the development of mathematics or of any other science." Scientists Respond to the Orchestrated Assault of IDists on Professor Gross Mark Perakh. Science Insights, a publication of the National Association of Scholars, September 2003
  10. ^ Coulter, Ann, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. From the book jacket: "I couldn't have written about evolution without the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski, all of whom are fabulous at translating complex ideas, unlike liberal arts types, who constantly force me to the dictionary to relearn the meaning of quotidian."
  11. ^ Wilf, Herbert et al., "In Memoriam: Marcel-Paul Schützenberger, 1920-1996," Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, served from University of Pennsylvania Dept. of Mathematics Server, article dated 12 October 1996, retrieved from WWW on 4 November 2006.
  12. ^ The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski: A Rebellious Intellectual Defies Darwin
  13. ^ Cows into Whales, Sandwalk
  14. ^ Berlinski and his astonishing “cows to whales” argument, Pharyngula
  15. ^ The Tale of the Whale, Kevin Padian, NCSE Reports, Volume 17, Number 6, November, 1997, National Center for Science Education
  16. ^ The Deniable Darwin, David Berlinski, COMMENTARY, VOL. 101, June 1996 No. 6
  17. ^ Claim CC300: Complex life forms appear suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, with no ancestral fossils., Index to Creationist Claims, TalkOrigins Archive
  18. ^ Claim CC200: There are no transitional fossils. Evolution predicts a continuum between each fossil organism and its ancestors., Index to Creationist Claims, TalkOrigins Archive
  19. ^ Claim CC201: If evolution proceeds via the accumulation of small steps, we should see a smooth continuum of creatures across the fossil record., Index to Creationist Claims, TalkOrigins Archive
  20. ^ Claim CB921.1: What use is half an eye?, Index to Creationist Claims, TalkOrigins Archive
  21. ^ But Is It Deception? "The Deniable Darwin" examined..., Wesley R. Elsberry

[edit] External links

[edit] Video

  • The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski (55-minute DVD released in 2006, featuring a "fireside chat interview" previously recorded for use in an earlier (2002) video).
  • Icons of Evolution (51-minuted DVD released in 2002 which includes video segments of Berlinski commenting on issues associated with the story of high school biology teacher, Roger DeHart)
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