Thomas Nagel-ID como book of the year 2009!

[docdeoz]

THOMAS NAGEL

János Kis’s Politics as a Moral Problem (Central European University Press) is a superb study of the problem of dirty hands in politics, particularly democratic politics – the moral dilemmas that politicians face in achieving, maintaining, and exercising power. This is a particularly acute form of the moral problem of ends and means. The book discusses the philosophical background in Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kant, Weber and others, and examines a number of recent examples from European politics. Kis is a philosopher, but his political experience includes negotiating the transfer of power in Hungary in 1989, as leader of the primary dissident party, the Free Democrats.

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

[docdeoz]

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 931364.ece

[zumbi filosófico]

Grande coisa. Para começar, provavelmente vai ser muito criticado (e com razão) por isso, e em segundo lugar, não colabora muito com os criacionistas da Terra jovem com Adão e Eva, arca de Noé, cara vivendo dentro da baleia, cobra falante e tudo mais, porque esse autor, apesar de criacionista, aceita toda a ancestralidade comum universal.

Não que os criacionistas se apeguem a esses "detalhes", de qualquer forma. Se o Bono Vox escrever um livro anti-evolucionista defendendo o criacionismo de uma tribo nativo-americana, os criacionistas de Adão-e-Eva vão aplaudir e colocar na pilha de munição.

Que a seleção natural, exatamente como tal, não explica a origem da vida, e que a origem da vida é um assunto complicado e ainda por ser resolvido, não é novidade, e provavelmente esse livro não deve trazer a melhor representação do status das coisas.