Function Talk in Biology: Teleology Rehabilitated?
How biology legitimately uses purpose-language in a universe without cosmic purpose
The Reduction Wars: Why Biologists and Physicists Talk Past Each Other
Physicists and biologists mean different things by 'reduction'—and both might be right.
The Species Problem Is Not Going Away
Why biologists cannot agree on what species are—and why that disagreement reveals something profound about biological organization.
The Gene Concept's Identity Crisis
How molecular biology promised to reveal genes' true nature but instead revealed there's no single thing to find.
Why Quantum Mechanics Still Resists a Single Interpretation
After a century, quantum mechanics still offers predictions without a consensus picture of reality—and this may never change.
Why the Arrow of Time Remains Philosophy's Most Stubborn Puzzle
Why fundamental physics cannot distinguish past from future while our entire existence depends on the difference.
Emergence Without Magic: Making Sense of Strong Emergence Claims
A rigorous analysis of whether higher-level phenomena can possess genuine causal powers without violating physical law
Natural Selection: Tautology, Law, or Something Else?
Why the 'survival of the fittest is circular' objection fundamentally misunderstands evolutionary theory's explanatory structure and causal content
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Science
Why does mathematics invented for abstract purposes turn out to describe physical reality with stunning precision?
How Symmetry Principles Discovered New Physics
Abstract mathematical invariances don't merely describe physics elegantly—they predict undiscovered particles and forces, revealing how formal structure generates empirical content.
Why Neuroscience Cannot Dissolve the Hard Problem of Consciousness
Understanding why brain scans reveal correlates of consciousness but cannot explain why physical processes feel like anything at all.
Information in Physics: Substance or Metaphor?
Unpacking whether physics has discovered information as fundamental reality or extended a useful metaphor beyond its proper domain.
What Evolutionary Theory Actually Commits You To
Surgical precision about Darwin's minimal claims reveals which philosophical controversies evolutionary theory actually settles and which it leaves genuinely open.
What Developmental Biology Teaches About Genetic Determinism
How reaction norms, developmental systems, and heritability statistics reveal that genetic causation is always context-dependent and never deterministic in the simplistic sense.