Reflectorites
Here is Amazon.com's front page on Johnson's The Wedge of Truth,
showing its sales rank is 9,774 which is fairly good: it is already
doing better than Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow" (12,110) and
Gould's "Leonardo's Mountain" (17,323).
Also below is another page containing some customer reviews.
Although I haven't yet received the book, I particularly like this
customer's review:
"Phillip Johnson's ...trenchant critique of philosophical naturalism,
especially when it is disguised as empirical science, has helped
start an intellectual movement. In this book, he purifies that
critique, reducing it to a simple, irresistible question: What if
science, defined as the search for truth based on evidence about
the natural world, conflicts with science as defined
(materialistically) as the search for *naturalistic* explanations
about the natural world? The "Wedge" metaphor, in the domain of
science, is precisely the attempt to split apart these two definitions
of science. Once the question is seriously considered, the genie is
out of the bottle. No one not already committed to naturalism
(whether philosophical or methodological) has any trouble
knowing how to answer the question. The only ways to avoid its
implications are to play definition games and assert raw power
over those who ask it. We should expect much of both these
tactics from Johnson's critics."
Now where have I encountered those who "play definition games and assert raw
power"? :-)
Steve
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0830822674/qid%3D965703883/104-8266606-5871926
The Wedge of Truth : Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism
by Phillip E. Johnson
[...]
List Price: $17.99
Our Price: $16.19
You Save: $1.80 (10%)
Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.
See larger photo
Hardcover - 220 pages (July 2000)
Intervarsity Pr; ISBN: 0830822674 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.85 x 9.32 x
6.29
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 9,774
Avg. Customer Review:
Number of Reviews: 5
[...]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/book-customer-reviews/0830822674/ref=pm_dp_ln_b_6/
104-8266606-5871926
All Customer Reviews
Avg. Customer Review:
Number of Reviews: 5
[...]
Subverting the Dominant Paradigm, August 4, 2000
Reviewer: Jeremy Alder from Austin, Texas USA
Phil Johnson's newest book is witty, incredibly insightful, and to the point.
In less than two hundred pages, Johnson puts forth a devestating critique
of modern materialist science and knowledge while putting forth his own
models of each based on empirical investigation and the acknowledgement
of personality and information as more fundemental than matter. Johnson
points out that as long as chance and law are the only explanations
allowed by the scientific elite as answers to the problem of the origin of
genetic information, science will continue to spin its wheels in the mud
and spin out more hollow just-so stories of how "evolution done it". Only
when scientists recognize that complex, specified information is the
hallmark of intelligent activity will the life sciences make real progress
toward true explanations. A great read for the open minded.
[...]
Vintage Johnson, July 31, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Bellevue, WA USA
Phillip Johnson's The Wedge of Truth may be his most insightful book
yet. His trenchant critique of philosophical naturalism, especially when it
is disguised as empirical science, has helped start an intellectual
movement. In this book, he purifies that critique, reducing it to a simple,
irresistible question: What if science, defined as the search for truth based
on evidence about the natural world, conflicts with science as defined
(materialistically) as the search for *naturalistic* explanations about the
natural world? The "Wedge" metaphor, in the domain of science, is
precisely the attempt to split apart these two definitions of science. Once
the question is seriously considered, the genie is out of the bottle. No one
not already committed to naturalism (whether philosophical or
methodological) has any trouble knowing how to answer the question. The
only ways to avoid its implications are to play definition games and assert
raw power over those who ask it. We should expect much of both these
tactics from Johnson's critics.
Of course, this book asks a number of other probing questions, all of
which Johnson argues should be fair game in the public square, at least in
any society that dares call itself democratic. To discover those other
questions, buy the book
[...]
ID on the offensive, July 30, 2000
Reviewer: Timbo (see more about me) from Sacto
Where Bill Dembski's Intelligent Design focused on presenting the
(falsifiable, testable) scientific evidence that complex systems are
designed by an intelligent source, Phillip Johnson's Wedge of Truth
focuses on the lack of scientific evidence that chance and law can account
for the genetic information found in irreducibly complex biological
systems. The book is well written and shows how the scientific
establishment engages in doublespeak to defend their naturalism. This
practice, Johnson argues, is unscientific and leads to circular reasoning.
The Wedge of Truth will be seen as an important contribution to the
Intelligent Design movement.
[...]
Not to be Ignored, July 28, 2000
Reviewer: Helen E Fryman (see more about me) from Shingle Springs,
California, United States
Phillip Johnson has a rare combination of talents. He is capable of cutting
to the core of issues, analyzing them, organizing his presentation, and then
writing clearly enough for almost anyone to understand. In this book he
has examined the naturalistic paradigm from several different angles. If
the naturalists in science want to know where the Intelligent Design
movement is headed, this is a book that should be read by them. For those
who are interested in what the Intelligent Design movement is doing, this
book explains it clearly. And for those who are backing the Intelligent
Design movement, this book brings the arguments and observations up to
date. Whether or not the reader agrees with Johnson, one will come away
from each chapter thinking, and that is not a bad thing.
[...]
Sweeping the Field of Dogmatism, July 27, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Irving, TX USA
This is a brilliantly clear book that exposes the pretensions of a scientific
priesthood that cannot bear to be questioned much less challenged about
its creation story, to wit, Darwinism and the naturalistic philosophy that
undergirds it. Darwinian naturalism cannot stand the light of day, and
Phillip Johnson's incisive probing is hastening that day. Let the media and
the cultural elite continue to cast the creation-evolution controversy as one
of fundamentalist Genesis-literalist bigots versus enlightened Darwinist
defenders of truth. Read Johnson and see that such easy dismissals are just
so much smoke and mirrors. Philosophers of science speak of "the
pessimistic induction": Every scientific theory, given enough time,
eventually bites the dust. Darwinism is shortly to bite the dust, and
Johnson is making it happen.
[...]
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"MODERN CRITICS have often asked themselves how it is that a
hypothesis like Darwin's, based on such weak foundations, could all at once
win over to its side the greater part of contemporary scientific opinion. If
the defenders of the theory refer with this end in view to its intrinsic value,
it may be answered that the theory has long ago been rejected in its most
vital points by subsequent research." (Nordenskiold E., "The History of
Biology: A Survey," [1920-24], transl. Eyre L.B., Tudor Publishing Co:
New York NY, 1928, p.477).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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