David Berlinski on Science, Philosophy, and Society

in the famous tale of the Emperor's New Clothes you'll recall all the high officials at court and all the leading men of the land agreed to pretend that the Emperor was sumptuously arrayed only one little boy told the truth today on uncommon knowledge david Berlinski mathematician philosopher and essayist in one brilliant elegant book after another dr. Berlinski has attacked global warming darwin and other scientific pretensions insisting that the Emperor is naked uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson a mathematician philosopher and essayist who has taught at institutions including Stanford Rutgers in the university to Patti David Berlinski is the author of books including the devil's delusion atheism and its scientific pretensions the deniable darwin and the forthcoming to be published next year the best of times which the author has give permit been kind enough to give to me in galleys David Berlinski welcome thank you very much for having me again scientific pretensions from The Devil's delusion quote a great many men and women have a dull hurt angry sense of being oppressed by the sciences oppressed by the sciences they're frustrated by endless scientific boasting they suspect that the scientific community holds them in contempt they are right to feel this way close quote David explain don't you kind of think that's that one is obvious I mean when you run into an any kind of group of scientists I mean not the low-level scientists the bottom feeders but physicists or mathematicians they really don't waste any time telling you how much smarter they are than you I mean that's true we all have that experience and the global warming issue is one issue the biological issue was another issue but it's more than that it's kind of this feeling that because they're so smart and that's true they are small no question about that they have accepted as an obligation and as a pleasure the prerogative of telling the rest of us what to think not only about the sciences but about everything and that is oppressive well we'll come to the 20th century in a moment with the gruesome aspects of the 20th century but there were some splendid aspects of the 20th century including for example electric light indoor plumbing decrease in infant mortality and wouldn't the scientific establishment say we science we scientists brought that to you you owe us some deference science gets places it enables lives to become better more comfortable healthier more rewarding we really want to say that an immense amount of deference is due the community of physicists for the invention of the indoor toilet I don't know I'd see this stretch to me I love the toilet as much as the next man but it's a 19th century invention not a 20th century invention and it had very little to do with the sciences it was a brilliant example of technology applied successfully also electricity like penicillin I've got you on that one have scientific terrific invention couldn't be better agreed it's a great achievement there's no question about it but the issue is not this particular triumph look I mean quantum field theory is a great achievement to mathematics in the 20th century profound achievement the issue is the overall overall omnipotence intellectual omnipotence that is assumed by the scientific community global warming now as far as I know you haven't written at length about the science of climate change but you have written this and I'm quoting here from a post you put up on Ricochet this past summer quote global warming who knows not me for sure but what I do know is that climate science is and has been in the hands of intellectual mediocrities and pious charlatans close quote for sure for sure not everyone my buddy dick Winston at MIT who was a tremendous skeptic about global warming is not a pious charlatan but anyone who read those emails from East Anglia the leaked email the leak do you know and after you stopped chortling and really paid attention to what they're saying their entire scientific position is well we've got a very weak theory it's supported by so much gibberish in the computer record let's just hide that from criticism and suppress those people who don't agree with us that is the public posture in global or not has changed it has changed there's a lot more subtlety in the issue and even the people who are most alarmed are willing to admit well you know 15 years it hasn't been much warming at all in fact there's been no warming maybe we should factor that into our self congratulation that's a good thing but the real issue is that global warming is an imponderable global warming maybe increasing too dramatic and harmful extends but we don't know that the science isn't clear enough more from that Ricochet post of last august quote what is so striking is the tendency of the scientific community both to an extravagant boastfulness you've explained that and to a barely concealed eagerness to help itself to an ever larger portion of the national wealth close quote you wish to assert that some large component of the motivation among scientists to alarm us about global warming is their desire for federal funding all of it not just some large part all of it the amount of federal money going into global warming client read the climate research is just staggering it dwarfs the paltry contribution of the average Ellis oil companies there's a huge a huge federal investment in this project and it can't be stopped it's ongoing if you want to help yourself to some of the national wealth a firm to the National Science Foundation or the National Institute for Energy or any of the federal agencies that you've got a red-hot proof that global warming is increasing and you can go to the very best Parisian restaurants the next day I guarantee it this isn't just global waters across the board since the 1950s the dominating motivation of the science to help themselves to evermore swag now I can sympathize it's a human emotion but let's not blind ourselves to the sheer facts this is as the budget increases it has increased from 1950 to 2000 a dominating emotion in the biological sciences 90% of the time is is spent on grant renewals so while we're talking I want to get in a moment to Darwin where you're at least is outrageous and provocative not very modest very modest very modest but on this question of funding of the sciences that is an artifact largely of the Cold War yes federal funding began pouring into universities during the Cold War because it was believed that on defense issues space all of this we were in a competition for a very national life now we hear over and over again that we ought to build down the Defense Department because the Cold War is over we ought to bring troops home from Europe indeed we have been bringing some troops home from Europe because the Cold War is over no one says it's time to end the tight relationship at this point deeply symbiotic relationship between federal funding and research universities does david Berlinski say that sure I just said it let's end it now but before we end it there's a final but if I thought we were all supposed to believe in basic research that's one of the not me not me what good does it do if some guy is is maniacally determined to investigate the structure of the subatomic universe good Sunday let him go do that but why should the taxpayers be billed for a 16 billion dollar superconducting collider in Texas it was it was rejected so instead the money went to to Switzerland for the Large Hadron Collider but this is a question that's very rarely asked the the virtue of fundamental research can be defined intrinsically it's important to some people but the virtue of fundamental research in a Democratic Society that's not a question that can be reserved to the scientific community that's got to be a democratic question and it never is because when the federal government provides funding it has engaged in coercion of course it has raised it has taken money away from citizens therefore the scientists bear in a democracy a particular burden of just defying the good they are doing that's for sure the justification is inevitably invariably ineluctably always the same boy this stuff is interesting maybe to some people the deniable darwin quote darwin conceived of evolution in terms of small variations among organisms variations by which a process of accretion allow one species to change continuously into another life however is absolutely nothing like this close quote the right way to think about Darwin's signal achievement to 1859 there it is in a tree but there's no question about it it is to say it's in the tradition of Newtonian mechanics when the underlying structures of change are all continuous they move seamlessly you can't do Newtonian mechanics without the assumption of continuity mm-hmm in certain respects it was a natural assumption of the Darwin to make it was the next step if this works for the orbits of the planets that continuous motion around the Sun elliptical motion around the Sun well something like that might well work for the changes in species that was a dramatic idea in 1859 but the extent to which beyal biology reveals sharply discontinuous processes and structures was not properly appreciated in the 19th century I mean speciation is still a hypothetical event we have very few dramatic examples of the transmutation of species it may be possible but you know it's also possible to transmute base metals into gold it's just very expensive it's not what happens ordinarily hmm so for example again in the deniable Darwin you write about the Cambrian the so-called Cambrian explosion the fossil record before the Cambrian era I'll try not to get this wrong to mean - to me the Paleolithic in the camera that's all of them look we got a fossil record that's very thin before the Cambrian 600 million years ago and then the cambrian comes along and suddenly there are a lot of species in those rocks and we don't see them gradually taking shape the species appear fully formed and they exist and then some of them become extinct but we don't see them developing we just see them as they are as long as they exist correct not entirely no ok close all right there is a very rich body of evidence about life forms before the Cambrian others are always mistaken Karen strata the real puzzle and it is a much deeper puzzle is that they seem to be uncoordinated with what takes place in the Cambrian we have one set of organisms before the Cambrian explosion we have an entirely other set of organisms after the Cambrian explosions and if you take a Cambrian structure and you move it back you frog step it back in time there comes a point where all the palaeontologists can say is well there must be ghost lineages in the past but we haven't put our hands on them a long time to be put in your hands in the mock looking for those ghost lineages a long time is passed yes and this is something just I want to make sure that the intuition is correct here this is something that actually ought to be accessible to nearly any layman because we've all seen movies American Werewolf in London in which a human being changes into a werewolf and you actually see frame by frame the nails grow that you ought to see something like that albeit at a pace that you're really tempting me what you ought to see some some sort of transformation from one from one mode of existence to another goddess right isn't that what's missing juicy profound transformations from infancy to adolescence to adulthood to old age and death that is a completely unacknowledged example of a transfer transmutation we all take that for granted right and that if that demands a profound explanation in its own right but the the transmutation across species lines has just been very difficult to see we see small variations and species things changing slightly for example the beak of the Finch changes but it seems to change cyclically gets bigger fatter more narrow the thing has a snout it doesn't have a snout goes back to the way it was we don't see the the Finch becoming an elephant for example all right that's an extravagant analogy but even in cases where we seem to see a record in the bones and the stacked dead of the palaeontological record we really can't quite makes it take take for example the whale transition about which I've spoken a number of time yeah the modern whale big fat blubbery things moves in the ocean it seems to have derived from the line dwelling animal about the size of a very large rock no I mean it changes all the time I used to think it was about the size of a cow now it's been demoted in size what we cannot and we yet we have the intermediate fossils we do know but we cannot figure out is how did that happen in the appropriate window of time about eight to ten million years one thing we don't have a measure to tell us how many changes we should expect and for another thing when we try to compute the changes that would be required to take a 1954 Chevrolet and make of it a nautilus class submarine we very quickly say you know thousands and thousands of changes well is the way a lot different we don't know we don't know once again that deniable Darwin time it again biologists explain the survival of an organism by reference to its fitness and the fitness of an organism by reference to its survival now I want to make sure I understand what you're arguing there because whereas what you just discussed requires deep knowledge of the fossil record which neither I nor most laymen will ever attain what you're arguing here I believe is something that anybody who Ponder's it for a moment ought to be able to see which is to say that the fundamental statement of Darwinian of the Darwinian concept survival of the fittest is purely tautological there is no objective criterion by which we can see whether it actually works or not that is why has an organism survived because it's the fittest how do you know what's the fittest because it survived so in and of itself the Darwinian conception doesn't convey as much well it's not falsifiable at a minimum is that right yeah I mean it's not a very esoteric point was made as soon as Darwin published his work the objection was raised at the fundamental idea absent and identification of fitness and qualitative or quantitative terms is vacuous and everybody everybody says to himself yeah yeah that's that's right that's not telling us a whole lot it may be an important statement in other ways but it's not telling us a whole lot because if we don't know what Fitness really comes to a qualitative account of those properties that will allow an organism better to reproduce in the future than to say survival is attributable to fitness and fitness as an evidence of survival doesn't tell us a whole lot we didn't know before yeah sure those organisms that survive survive don't have to take biology 101 to know that we hear a lot about the scientific consensus in support of global warming but that is as nothing by comparison with the scientific consensus committed to a Darwinian understanding of the way life emerged and developed on earth it's absolutely it's absolute so here you sit across from you say oh yeah well the tautological aspect of it was noticed it right away in Darwin's own time people pointed that out we've known for decades now that the fossil record is not what you would expect there are some serious short deception problems there are gaps so why why is it that well I mean all you have to do is look at the way every time you write an article now that the internet you're assailed the comments are vicious you're a sale design professor at and what what there's a level of commitment which is not rational is that right explain it yeah I think that's true look looked a lot of what I write them there's a source of deep indubitable enjoyment poking my finger in somebody's eye I'm not going to deny that and the biological is so self-satisfied so smug so sure they have all the answers that somebody who comes along and gives them a poke in the eye of course they're gonna respond with a form of indignation that is almost rabid that that that goes without saying but the much deeper question I think is why has this story that's really all that it is why has this story oh say from 1960 to the present yeah there was a lot of skepticism about Darwin after he published and throughout the first part of the 20th century why has this story becomes so governing to so many people well one answer one answer is that with the decline of religious faith with the decline of any belief in the possibility of religious experience and that's a fact of our contemporary life outside the Islamic world say there's a great hunger for a creation story and what better creationist story could be afforded than the one told both by the physicist Big Bang who knows how that happened Darwin spontaneous emergence and development of life on Earth no external transcendental spiritual creator required none welcome that's a powerful motivation that's a powerful motivation design in the deniable Darwin you quote the famous argument 18th century English theologian William Paley who said quite simply if you see a watch you know there was a watchmaker that's what the argument comes to and he used that metaphor there it is a very good watchmaker in your case David Berlinski writes in the deniable Darwin quote it is worth remarking that it is simply a fact that this old-fashioned argument is entirely compelling we never attribute the existence of a complex artifact to chance close quote do we well I mean you don't you agree you see Bill Clinton I can quote Bill Clinton in favor of your own argument which is the Bill Clinton if you see a turtle on a fence post you know it didn't get there by itself same argument there's a level of skepticism that I think becomes self-defeating if someone says looking at a watch sand mixed with water action of the way we all understand right away without the need for argument without the need for argument that's not plausible I think any discussion of Darwin and viola G has to begin with that acknowledgement that we have very powerful intuitions which have not in any way been overturned by biological research that the plain facts in front of us suggests the level of complexity which we cannot yet define agreed that we find very difficult to attribute to the kind of processes that we see explained in Darwinian theory look even Richard Dawkins says the same thing and every biologist following Dawkins says the same thing living creatures give the appearance of design Francis Crick says oh yeah that's good we've got a remember they're not really desert well why do we have to remember that maybe that's the truth and that's a truth that possibility is not acknowledged again in the deniable Darwin you tell the story it's not a story to give an account of the MIT physicist Murray Eden who ran some calculations he estimated that the number of proteins from which life might be constructed numbers 10 to the 50th power a very big number and the possible combinations of these proteins from which life might have arisen is 22 the two hundred and fiftieth power which is a number so large as to be it's meaningless incomprehensible you write quote a number larger by far than the second seconds in the history of the world since the Bing Big Bang and then you write this quote in some sense evolution knew where it was going what do you mean by that out of this incomprehensible a large possibility field so does there's must be some mathematical way of describing this somehow or other evolution didn't have time to experiment with all the chances that's for sure right isn't it I mean if we're looking at a space such astronomical size 20 250 power clearly we're not talking about any kind of random search in that space when I when I made this point in in Paris at a mathematics seminar my friend Vinay Tom the mathematician got up he immediately became excited by the whole thing is that yes we need a theory of canalization and he wandered to the blackboard inocent let's assume an n-dimensional abstract vector space and canalization on the vector space i lost i I didn't understand what he was saying but the idea immediately is obviously dealing with this enormity the house there has to be directed paths throughout the space now to say that evolution knew where it was going assigns a degree of agency to evolution that I think is probably inappropriate for sophisticated people like us but all right well that'll fall so let me quote you one more time from the deniable Darwin I want to move on to history but one more on evolution you quote the Bible you quote the Hebrew Scriptures David God said let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven close quote and then you continue and who on the basis of experience would be inclined to disagree with the biblical account and active intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being why should the artifacts of life be different out with it David are you saying that there is an intelligent designer a being a God does it seem to you that I was saying that you here's what I do comes close and then you step back exactly I've got to protect both lungs it seems to me the intuitions of mankind should not be spurned or scorned carelessly for sure there's something sometimes wrong Aristotle was wrong about physics our intuitions about moving objects are wrong there's no question about it it's not impetus that counts but acceleration but when it comes to living systems we are among the living systems and I think our intuitions about what's going on are far more profound and they are in the case of mathematical physics I think the universal reaction the universal reaction the default position of the human race is that some creative act was necessary to bring the panorama into existence and I share that default position I have here David Onley the galleys that you were kind enough to send me the best of time so let's take a moment the best of times will be published what you have is part one is part two in part three which unaccountably remain to be written I see but the best of times will be published when the book is written yeah all right but there's plenty to talk about in part one you begin this book this meditation on history and violence the best of times with the great Whig historian thomas babington macaulay who insisted that history was making progress that it was going somewhere and you quote Macaulay to this effect quote we this is Macaulay we rely on the natural tendency of the human intellect to truth and on the natural tendency of society to improvement close quote why do you start with that because Macauley writing in 1830 1831 was expressing a very reasonable assumption about early 19th century society after the French Revolution after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that at least then England we had finally come to a position where we could see all of the Enlightenment promises not fulfilled but gathering force that is perfectly reasonable to say that in 1830 1831 he extrapolated to the far future he talks he started talking about natural tendencies as if they were inexorable tendencies and he gave a very very eloquent defense of the idea that finally in 1830 after thousands of years of tumult and strife and violence we have seen our way forward just as the Enlightenment figures predict predicted we would see our way forward to ever-increasing progress this is a very powerful idea now this idea did not really survive in the 20th century after 1914 between 1914 and to my way of thinking to the present time no one could talk about the natural tendencies of societies taught improvement or the natural tendencies of the intellect poet truth that would just be absurd nonetheless what is interesting is the idea has come back and the idea is almost a default assumption of the scientific intellectual community that's what I find so interesting well the idea so here's what you haven't written parts two and three so they're even better I'm sure Macaulay is writing I'm testing this something out here I'm saying I am the thought is occurring to me as I speak so I will miss state it will occur misshapen and I will miss state it I'm sure but Macaulay is writing it occurs to me not just when we begin to understand who a gaslight this is this is when the toilet begins to change sanitation in London and so forth but he also feels I think a kind of unity of moral and material progress oh yes and that is that is not available to us is it after the first world war after Nazism after the Holocaust after the killing fields in Cambodia we're left with material or scientific progress alone nobody would argue that moral progress that that our moral life is getting anywhere isn't that right and isn't that in some ways isn't that doesn't that feed back into the scientific pretension we're the only part of this civilization that's making progress that's going anywhere we scientists I think that's absolutely true I think that's absolutely true but don't forget that the Whig interpretation of history Macaulay's view of history is a progression if you if you take away the specifics of Macaulay's view of English in the development of English history English kingship a lot of other things and you just look at what I think is the profound idea that enlightenment philosophy has given to skeptical and intelligent men and women the only set of tools that could possibly use to come to grips with the world that is reasoning rationality of faith and progress a doctrine of equality and a variety of ancillary doctrines then you'll find that macaulay very nicely expresses a kind of opinion about the world that is astonishingly common it's certainly the default position in the academic world in the United States mm-hmm it is true that every university in the country now is talking about solving the world's problems one phrase or enough one phrase like that or another is in every fund rating raising a letter you will receive well then you write about the you write at some length about the first world war which is the the huge civilizational catastrophe immolation malaysia civil and throughout the 20th century you write that but some 230 million victims of violence slaughtered in the first world war killed in the Holocaust starved by Stalin and Mao the killing fields in Cambodia and on and on and then you quote Hannah Arendt it is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past close quote that's arresting enough here's what David Berlinski adds I'm quoting you it is in this sense that the 20th century having introduced into human history crimes never before imagined is immortal it is simply there an obelisk in human history black forbidding irremovable and in expungeable close quote I think that's true God help us I think it's true when I read that I thought to myself I believe I understand how Germans of my generation feel they can't get out from under their own history and they never will and what you're saying is none of us can get out from under their history or Soviet history because we share an identity with humanity itself to lose that would be to lose something enormous importance we cannot allow ourselves to forget what the 20th century really represented and just as the crucifixion in Christian theology is beyond space and time so the crimes of the 20th century are in a place of their own they're not simply incidental acts of violence they fundamentally changed the way we should not the way we do with the way should think about human history to seriously look at the 20th century the First World War the Second World War 60 million deaths the Holocaust the inconceivable project of exterminating European jewelry the great terror Mao's lunatic experiments for the Chinese people to seriously look at all that you cannot go back and read no calling you just can't I mean you can read him but you can't take them seriously anymore and what I find so dismaying is that while I have that particular point of view to espouse there plenty of people who are going back to Macaulay we're saying the same thing 20th century well you know a lot of rotten things happen but those are statistical anomalies they happen from time to time the first and second wall well one of those things that just happens we should expect a big war every 10,000 years we just happened to live through it that to my to my way of thinking is simply insane you can't read Macaulay but you argue again in the best of times that you can read st. Agustin quote I'm quoting you now an analysis of the First World War adequate to its magnitude would require a work comparable to st. Agustin city of God Augustine's position of course is that he's Bishop of Hippo he's in North Africa as the barbaric during the first sack of Rome he witnesses the civilization of which he himself represents one of the greatest flowers deeply immersed deeply educated in the classical works and he sees across the Mediterranean a civilizational collapse he's not in the position we're in of guessing at how much longer things will run he lives through the sack of Rome he sees it alright Augustine could grasp events I'm continuing to quote you David only by a radical reinterpretation of human history the categories to which he appealed are no longer available to historical analysis close quote in what ways did Agustin reinterpret history and why can't we access his categories I think I think the prey sees the summer you gave was dead-on exactly exactly right Agustin watched a comparable catastrophe I mean don't forget classical civilization lasted a whole lot longer than modern European civilization and it was a magnificent achievement the statecraft art politics science and the bit should just crumble before his eyes you know the dates are very interesting 360 370 380 classical civilization Roman civilization is still functioning thirty years later Alaric invades and thirty years later there's a catastrophe in Augusta played around with the idea that perhaps perhaps there was an explanation in terms of the violence and stupidity of the pagan past they actually commissioned someone to to look into it a very interesting book title of which I forgot now you came to the collusion this isn't this isn't right the only explanation adequate commensurate to the magnitude of events cannot be history historical it has to be theological it has to involve a limitation of our association with this city of men and a refocusing our attention on the City of God and to see the interaction between the two is part of a divine plan now you cannot you cannot in the 21st century argue that way anymore you simply come it's no longer part for better or for worse of our intellectual experience you cannot argue that way comma and be taken seriously in faculty lounges that's running that what you mean yes didn't Benedict the sixteenth argue just that way I don't know what Pope Francis will argue aren't their wise men as there aren't there and learning rabbis in Israel who consist on grounding isn't yeah I think you're absolutely right but the point is we do live in a society where the house of intellect is coordinated with only a finite number of microphones and those microphones are connected with the academic world and with a certain part of the journalistic world I think that's true in the United States is true of Canada England France throughout Europe there is a doctrine amounting to a dogma and according to the doctrine of the dogma this way of thinking no matter what Benedict says or what the rabbi's in Israel say is not part of the interprete Balcon it cannot be introduced should it be introduced would it make more sense have we lost something of tremendous value in our culture don't forget we are part of a judeo-christian culture my answer is yes of course of course we have lost something of value we can't think we cannot think in those terms any we cannot attain the truth about the catastrophe well I don't even want to prejudge it we cannot attain to the truth about the times in which we live it's very difficult and it's becoming progressively more difficult for a very simple reason those in a position to know the 20th century from the inside where the horror really lay are dying which means that for historians to look at the 20th century they will have to look at the 20th century the way we look at the Napoleonic era now and the natural human bonds of outraged sympathy and horror will be sundered and this is very alarming it means that the whole part of the 20th century which could have been the centerpiece for a reinterpretation of human history is destined to disappear without a trace the real meaning now you argue you come close to arguing for design in science are you arguing for some kind of overarching design in human affairs I believe there must be some sort of overarching design in human affairs otherwise history is a series of disconnected rather meaningless events but I see no evidence that history is the series of disconnected obviously meaningless events we can see it whenever we do small historical research look there's an odd his connection between the catastrophe of the First World War the Russian Revolution a Russian civil war the development and rise of Nazism in Germany the Holocaust these things are not random occurrences they have an inner logic and if we're sensitive we can discern the inner logic and sometimes no great sensitivity is required look it would be inconceivable to think about killing all of Europe's Jews if European civilization had not so successfully killed 9 million of its brightest most able young men in the First World War these are connected coordinated events mmm David two final questions yes let me read to you the antiphon from mass this very day a wisdom of our God Most High guiding creation with power and love come to teach us the path of knowledge God guiding creation with power and love do you buy that I hope it's true that's a fair enough answer look the real answer is I am as much part of the same intellectual culture as everyone I'm criticizing because I find it impossibly difficult to get out of it there is no double position being in it and looking at it from the outside and that's a difficult position I think that's where we all are in the West the Islamic world has different set of procedures different concerns I acknowledge that but as anyone who came to maturity intellectual maturity in an academic setting and is responsive to academic standards of taste discretion probity goodwill of course I find it very difficult to evade the sense that I'm in a straitjacket I'm suffocating in the straitjacket but the minute I try to remove the shackles I get anxious too and I think we all feel exactly that way exactly that way last question and in the devil's delusion you write I'm just going to quote you a kind of syllogism with which you end that book if the universe is contingent there is no saying whether it existed forever maybe maybe not if anything might not exist then it is reasonable to ask why it does exist well why does it exist no I mean really how does David Berlinski answer that question at this stage in his life having written that book a decade ago and having the best of times in hand I don't think I hate to keep giving you a vase advance residence I mean I feel after an hour interview like that's someone like a seal slithering around the pier but I think the honest answer is boy are you making a mistake if you want the sciences to answer that question the physicists are not going to give you any help David Berlinski author of The Devil's delusion the deniable Darwin and as soon as he finishes writing it to be published next year we we feel certain the best of times David Berlinski thank you thank you for having me on as a pleasure good questions - thank you - all David from you very high praise for the Wall Street Journal in the Hoover Institution I'm Peter Robinson [Music]

Channel: HooverInstitution

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Keywords: David Berlinski (Author), Peter Robinson (Politician), Uncommon Knowledge (TV Program), Hoover Institution (Organization), The Wall Street Journal (Newspaper), sciences, Technology (Professional Field), Global Warming (Website Category), Darwinism (Ideology)

Id: 31MI5c7LYSU

Length: 44min 18sec (2658 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2014