Re: The Washington Post "Dissing Darwian"

There are some interesting parts to the book but the correlation between
habitability and measurability suffers from some significant problems
(scientifically speaking).

Kyler Kuehn (http://www.ps.uci.edu/~kuehn/personal/personal.html) has
done an excellent job at outlining them in two separate talks.

Available below are presentations given at the American Scientific
Affiliation 2003 Annual Meeting:
A Critique of the Privileged Planet Hypothesis
<http://www.ps.uci.edu/%7Ekuehn/personal/asa2003.ppt>.
And at the 2004 "Intelligent Design and the Future of Science" Conference:
The Potentials and the Pitfalls of the Privileged Planet Hypothesis
<http://www.ps.uci.edu/%7Ekuehn/personal/ID2004.ppt>

I have explored these and others in more detail at PT (see
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001086.html)

Douglas Adams wrote

[quote]
It’s rather like a puddle waking up one morning— I know they don’t
normally do this, but allow me, I’m a science fiction writer— A puddle
wakes up one morning and thinks: “This is a very interesting world I
find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact it fits me so neatly… I
mean really precise isn’t it?… It must have been made to have me in it.”
And the sun rises, and it’s continuing to narrate this story about how
this hole must have been made to have him in it. And as the sun rises,
and gradually the puddle is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking— and
by the time the puddle ceases to exist, it’s still thinking— it’s still
trapped in this idea that— that the hole was there for it. And if we
think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it in
the way that we have been destroying it, because we think that we can do
no harm.
[/quote]

Ted Davis wrote:

>I don't disagree with the Washington Post, in that "The Priviledged Planet"
>is religious--it offers a religious interpretation of excellent science,
>very clearly explained. (Remember, I speak about the book, since I have not
>yet seen the film version.) What I would wonder about, as others have been
>wondering, is the following.
>
>
>
Received on Fri Jun 3 13:14:32 2005