Comments on: Biology and Breeding

By: Bill Benzon

Bill Benzon — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:19:24 +0000

Hmmmm . . . didn't know that about Nabokov. But it's a very suggestive piece of information with respect to Brian Boyd, whose recent book, On the Origin of Stories, has made him the literary Darwinist (a term he explicitly disavows) of the moment. Valve review: Nature Culture Tweedledum Tweedledee. Thing is, Boyd made his reputation as a Nabokov scholar, and still maintains a hand-in.

By: Sage Ross

Sage Ross — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:28:33 +0000

Thanks for highlighting my post! I’m still trying to get digital copies of the films that were produced to accompany the textbook; if anyone can help me out there, please let me know.

Apropos Nabokov, sort of:

ID has caused the scientific community to close ranks in ways that rarely take much account of the nuances of various philosophical positions.

As Larry Moran of Sandwalk pointed out recently—http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/05/faith-and-evolution-at-discovery.html—Michael Behe and Francis Collins have more in common in how they think about evolution and creation than either of them have in commons with (Behe’s fellow ID’er) Jonathan Wells on the one side, or James Watson or Bruce Alberts (people who have had similar leadership positions to Collins).

But in the current political paradigm, the line between science and creationism runs between Behe and Collins.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:25:21 +0000

I actually know a lot about the Nabokov case. It’s fascinating, and I think it is indeed wrong to call him a creationist or ID’er. It’s ultimately impossible to tease out his literary gamesmanship – so many of his fictions involve protagonists with delusions/insights into mind behind the scenes of their lives – from his biological views, however.

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:07:58 +0000

Also, the talk of molecular biology is now reminding me of a Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future from the 1970s that I think my parents obtained as a free enticement from an encyclopedia salesman. It had an article on molecular biology and the genetic code that was illustrated in this incredible Seventies pop-art style. I remember it as being assembled out of woodcut-like clip art colored in bright pastels, with ribosomes and amino acids and the cellular nucleus represented as random knickknacks like doorknobs and golf balls and Christmas tree ornaments.

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Sat, 30 May 2009 03:36:45 +0000

A while ago there was a story that made the rounds on, I think, the Seed blogs claiming that Vladimir Nabokov was some sort of Intelligent Design advocate. Of course he wasn’t one, in any way we would recognize; to call him one would be to force him into a modern political category that did not really exist at the time (there were, of course, religious creationists, but ID as it exists is an outgrowth of the late 20th century “creation science” movement).

Rather Nabokov had the much same sort of skepticism of natural selection as Szent-Györgyi, which was not at all uncommon in the early to mid-20th century prior to the dominance of the modern synthesis. I think that by the 1970s this was on the way out, but Szent-Györgyi was born in 1893.