SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " sf " 9,835 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Liverpool bid launched after Arsenal and Chelsea transfer decision
Reds facing fight to keep hold of Giovanni Leoni
Liverpool will offload struggling forward: Three clubs want January deal
Liverpool strengthened their attack with a couple of new forwards in the summer transfer window. Victor Munoz was onboarded after the Reds triggered the FIFA World Cup winner’s £34m Osasuna release...
Roma continue to follow Kvernadze ahead of January
Roma are already looking ahead to the January transfer window, and their priority would be to give Gasperini a new attacking winger. As La Stampa reports today, the Giallorossi coach is dreaming of a ...
More power or more gauges? How the sports car market has become divided
Technology has "slowly hacked away at the soul of the sports car," one analyst said.
My afternoon becoming a background actor on ‘The Chosen’
I spent an afternoon on the Texas set of ‘The Chosen,’ where a stop at the costume closet transformed me into a first-century background actor
Michigan got $173M to transform rural health. Where is it going?
Rural hospital leaders in Michigan say the federal program is unable to augment day-to-day operations to support frontline medical care, and is instead flowing to programs on the periphery of where the system is experiencing the most strain.
Michigan got $173M to transform rural health. Where is it going?
Rural hospital leaders in Michigan say the federal program is unable to augment day-to-day operations to support frontline medical care, and is instead flowing to programs on the periphery of where the system is experiencing the most strain.
Roma make contact for Endrick’s loan in January
Endrick is back on Roma’s radar ahead of the winter transfer window. The Brazilian continues to find limited playing time at Real Madrid and is reportedly considering a January departure to revitali...
Teton Gravity Research presents 'Actually, It Is Rocket Science' at Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco - October 8, 2026
Event details about Teton Gravity Research presents 'Actually, It Is Rocket Science' in San Francisco on October 8, 2026 - watch, listen, photos and tickets
New Business Manager Appointed at Phelps-Clifton Springs School
Dan Friday is the new Phelps-Clifton Springs CSD business manager. He joins from East Rochester CSD, succeeding Karl Dubash, who took a role at Pittsford CSD.
Orlando Health completes acquisition of RMC Health System in Anniston
Orlando Health completes acquisition of RMC Health System in Alabama, renaming the facility Baptist Health Calhoun Hospital.
Saturday Scoreboard
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – Here’s a look at scores from around the area: College Football:Northern St. 16 Bemidji St. 9 FSDSU 31 Illinois St. 14 FUSD 44 Indiana St. 14 FAugustana 37 USF 20 F Boys Soccer:Hot Springs 4 Douglas-New Underwood 0 FSt. Thomas More-Rapid City Christian 3 Belle Fourche 0 Girls Soccer:St. Thomas […]
Arts District reeling after deadly First Friday shooting; some business owners say event should end
One dead and two injured after gunfire during First Friday anniversary
No. 5 SFA Lumberjacks beat UIW Cardinals 28-26
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KETK) — The fifth-ranked SFA Lumberjacks football team was back at Homer Bryce Stadium for the second-straight week to host the Incarnate Word Cardinals in a Southland Conference matchup. SFA ended up holding off the Cardinals 28-26 to stay unbeaten this season. SFA quarterback Gavin Rutherford passed it to Jaylen Jenkins who ran […]
What to know about the Kelvin wave raising the sea level along the West Coast
Kelvin waves are not like tsunamis, and they don't curl over and crash on the beach. A better image is water sloshing in the bathtub or a swimming pool during an earthquake. In the ocean, they are bulges of water that lift the sea level as they move along the coast.
A pulse of warm water hitting the Pacific coast could mean erosion and flooding
Kelvin waves are not like tsunamis, and they don't curl over and crash on the beach. A better image is water sloshing in the bathtub or a swimming pool during an earthquake. In the ocean, they are bulges of water that lift the sea level as they move along the coast.
Mormon leader decries explosion in sports gambling, prediction markets
A leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says an explosion in online prediction markets and sports betting is fostering greed among young people
Fulton County pairs deputies with mental health clinicians to help keep people in crisis out of jail
When a person is experiencing a mental health crisis, a call for help can bring law enforcement to the door. But in Fulton County, a new team is giving deputies another option before someone ends up in jail.
How to watch the Dodgers vs Braves without cable today
Here's how to watch Dodgers vs. Braves Game 1, including first pitch, TV channel and streaming options.
$28B hemp THC industry fights to save itself from looming federal ban
America’s multibillion-dollar market for impairing hemp products faces potential elimination before the end of the year
Video Weekend health roundup
ABC News contributor Dr. Alok Patel shares health advice on topics that are making headlines this weekend.
Workers say safety changes at Ward 86 are just scratching the surface
UCSF workers at other sites concerned about safety as well.
Anthropic Is Aiming To Transform Healthcare—Here’s How
Anthropic is pushing Claude into prior authorization, medical records, drug discovery and global health. A physician explains what it means for doctors and patients.
Democratic mayors in red states launch new group to counter MAGA and far-left extremes
Cleveland Mayor Bibb will lead Blue Cities/Red States, launching next week.
Endrick remains Roma’s top priority for January
The January transfer window is still a ways off, but at Trigoria, a name continues to gain traction in the attacking strategy. Endrick has become one of the players being closely monitored by Roma, wh...
NICK STROBEL: Saturn and its rings on display
Tonight Saturn is at opposition, appearing opposite the sun in our sky. This happens as we pass by Saturn in our faster, inner orbit. This also marks the time when
AI's race to transform the world before the money runs out
Never has so much cash flowed into a new technology as is pouring into AI, eclipsing the sums splurged on railways or the internet when those technological revolutions sucked in capital.
From Digger to The Strokes: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Tom Cruise transforms in Alejandro Iñárritu’s heavyweight satirical comedy, while the NYC indie rockers are in the UK for an arena tour
Capcom Announces Plans to Transform the RE Engine Into an AI-Generation Game Engine — ‘Our Goal Is a Future Where We Create Games Together With AI’
Resident Evil and Street Fighter developer Capcom revealed some big changes coming to its RE Engine, which they plan to gradually improve and transform into an "AI-generation game engine."
Agency diverted $1.4 billion in science funds mandated by Congress
The extraordinary move — holding back part of the National Science Foundation’s research budget — is another creative sidestep by the Trump administration.
Android 17 QPR3 Beta 1 gives us an early look at next year’s Pixel updates
Android 17 QPR3 Beta 1 is here to fix your Pixel’s worst bugs.
‘A lack of respect’: Repeated vandalism, disruptions from teens frustrate Canonsburg business owners
Business owners along Pike Street in Canonsburg say they are frustrated by what they describe as a growing problem involving a group of young teens.
Bakersfield police seeking help ID’ing man who burglarized Planz Road business through roof
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — The Bakersfield Police Department is investigating a burglary that took place in early September. The police department is seeking help identifying the suspect in…
A Tiny Piece of Glass Beats Out Data Centers—As the Key to Protecting Human Knowledge for Thousands of Years
This crystal could transform digital data storage, preserving all human knowledge against fire, water, heavy impact, and hacking.
During Science Month: ALMA Opens Its Doors to Celebrate 15 Years of Observing the Universe
Throughout October, Chile’s Science Month, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) will open its doors to the community with two special public visits to its Operations Support Facility (OSF), near San Pedro de Atacama. The celebration also coincides with a special milestone: 15 years since ALMA’s first scientific observations, which marked the beginning of a...
Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time
This Chronicle Review Deep Cut was first published in 2025. By Julianne Werlin Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe The last two decades have not been kind to science studies. Already bruised and battered by the “science wars” of the 1990s, by the 2000s sociologists of science — who had long argued that science had to be understood in its human context — were encountering the funhouse-mirror version of their own views in right-wing critiques of climate scientists. It was enough to give some prominent scholars pause. “Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?” asked Bruno Latour, the most famous sociologist of science in the world, in 2003. “Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?” In response, Latour proposed a change of method and attitude. Science studies, now chastened and contrite, would no longer seek to strip facts of their authority, but to enrich and enhance them. What this meant in practice was never fully clear. But his diagnosis of problems resonated, even if his solutions did not. Latour’s exercise in public hand-wringing signaled a shift in mood. By 2016, with the first election of Donald Trump, the idea that skepticism of science was a right-wing position, not a left-wing one, had become a commonplace, discussed eagerly in The New York Times. For liberals, vaccine denial during the Covid era and Trump’s second-term attacks on the funding of scientific research, covered extensively in these pages, added a new urgency to the defense of science on both practical and principled grounds. There was little appetite for a sociology or philosophy of science that emphasized the messiness and missteps of the scientific process rather than its integrity and triumphs. The distinguished historian of science Peter Dear’s new book, The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2025), which seeks to tell the story of 18th- and 19th-century science for a general public, may seem comfortably remote from these bitter contests. In its 16 short chapters, Dear draws swift, sure sketches of major discoveries from Newton to Einstein, ably guiding the reader through debates on stellar nebulae, animal taxonomy, atomic chemistry, evolution, and other flashpoints in the history of science. But though a work of history, Dear’s book must still negotiate our polarized present. In a blurb on its back cover, the historian of biology Lynn K. Nyhart alludes to the “present moment, when scientific knowledge is being swamped by misinformation and its institutions are under siege.” Dear himself, in his conclusion, refers to the “yard signs” and “bumper stickers” that proclaim “Science Is Real.” One antidote to both anti-science propaganda and to reductive slogans in science’s defense is a robust history and philosophy of science: exactly what Dear’s scholarship has long offered. But his new book illustrates how difficult such work has become. Dear, an emeritus professor of history at Cornell University, is best known as a creative and philosophically minded historian of the Scientific Revolution. His edited volume The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (1991) analyzed the rhetoric of Galileo’s thought experiments to brilliant effect. Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (1995) was a major contribution to the analysis of scientific experiments in early modern Europe and beyond, while Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500-1700 (2001), now in its third edition, remains one of the best overviews of the profound epistemological upheavals of 16th- and 17th-century science. But Dear has also ventured into later periods. Nearly two decades ago, in The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (2006), he turned to the 18th and 19th centuries to sketch a history and theory of scientific knowledge. Aimed at a generalist audience, Dear’s simple prose belied serious philosophical ambitions. Science, Dear argued, has two aspects: “natural philosophy,” the quest to understand the true nature of the universe, and “instrumentality,” the applied skills and technologies that allow us to manipulate the world for human advantage. Both strands are ancient, but the innovation of the phenomenon we call “science” was to yoke them together. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced,” an insight typically abridged to “knowledge is power.” Or, in Bertrand Russell’s characteristically blunt phrase, science has two functions, “1. to enable us to know things, and 2., to enable us to do things.” So far, so conventional. But Dear took issue with this familiar story in one respect. Bacon’s formula implied that theory and practice could be fused in a single method. In fact, Dear argued, the quest to understand nature and the desire to manipulate it were coupled only loosely. They could come together, but they could also pull apart. Focusing on natural philosophy, the “knowing” half of the scientific circle, he used a series of case studies from cosmology, taxonomy, chemistry, electromagnetism, and quantum theory to show how theories changed over time, in dialogue with practice, but never reducible to it. Take the case of matter, the basic substrate of the physical world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists not only disagreed about what it was, but also about how well it could be known. In 1789, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier dismissed speculation about the atomic composition of chemicals as “discussions entirely of a metaphysical nature,” as he sought to orient chemistry away from philosophical abstraction and toward laboratory results. But in the 19th century, atoms returned with a vengeance in the atomic chemistry of John Dalton, who wanted to explain the underlying structure of nature. It was not just that Dalton and Lavoisier had a different set of experimental results, or even a different theory, Dear showed. What counted as an explanation had changed. In arguing that scientific theories depended on their intelligibility to human beings with complex arrays of beliefs and commitments, Dear was in sympathy with science studies. Key figures such as the sociologist Steven Shapin emphasized the importance of psychological mechanisms like trust in the formation and acceptance of scientific ideas. But in focusing on the scientific pursuit of knowledge, not its politics or economics, Dear resisted the more cynical perspective of some of his colleagues. The Intelligibility of Nature strikes a very different note than Shapin’s collection of a few years later, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (2010), to name just one example. Walking a very fine line, Dear depicted science as driven at once by complex social dynamics and by the intellectual power of real discoveries. It was a testament not only to his own acumen but also to the vitality of the field that he was able to do so. Nearly two decades later, The World as We Know It returns to the questions broached in The Intelligibility of Nature. Like Dear’s earlier study, it begins with the Newtonian cosmos and ends with debates between Einstein and Bohr on quantum physics. Beyond its terminal figures, many of the same characters appear in both studies, including the naturalists John Ray and the Comte de Buffon; the chemists Étienne François Geoffroy, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton; as well as Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, among others. Its subject is nearly identical: As in The Intelligibility of Nature, The World as We Know It considers natural philosophy as opposed to instrumentality, here defined as the “desire to create a picture of what the world is really like — the world as God knows it — rather than simply having instrumental or operational control over it.” The two books also overlap in insights — and sometimes even in language. The reader who has learned in The Intelligibility of Nature that Buffon’s method of classifying animals “reflected his belief in the importance of the senses and empiricism in learning about nature (a doctrine associated with Newton and the philosopher John Locke)” will experience a sense of déjà vu on reading, in The World as We Know It, that the classification “reflects Buffon’s commitment to the epistemological stance of Newton and his philosophical underlaborer John Locke, who stressed the role of the senses in creating natural knowledge.” Later in the passage, we read that, “because of its stress on understanding the ways of life of animals in their environments, Buffon’s approach could almost be labeled (anachronistically) as ‘ecological.’” And again, “an anachronistic way of putting it would be to say that Buffon recommends an ecological mode of understanding.” Likewise, in The Intelligibility of Nature we read of Dalton that he was initially drawn to meteorology, and that: He did a bit of experimental work on these things, especially having to do with the water-holding capacity of gases, but his real interest lay in understanding what, at an underlying natural-philosophical level, was really going on physically.” Whereas, in The World as We Know It: He did experimental work on these things, especially concerning the water-holding capacity of gases — although not at a very refined level quantitatively — but he was continually trying to develop a theoretical conception of what was happening physically. The final full chapter of each book closes on the same resigned note. Intelligibility: These days, most serious work on the natural philosophical underpinnings and implications of quantum mechanics is performed not by physicists but by philosophers of science. Among scientific practitioners themselves, Bohr’s attempt to use instrumentality as sufficient grounds for a respectable science has met with a high degree of success. And again, in The World as We Know It: Bohr’s and Einstein’s concerns are now questions that are mostly discussed by philosophers of science rather than by physicists themselves. The marginalization of these sorts of questions amounts to the demise of natural philosophy, at least in physics, in the 20th century. Quantum mechanics “works,” and that’s good enough for most scientists who encounter it. Examples could be multiplied. When handling the same subject matter, some echoes are inevitable. Scholars should not feel that because they have written “Isaac Newton died in 1727” in one book, in the next they must describe him as perishing, expiring, or meeting his maker. But the repetitions of language and arguments (not to mention six reproduced images) threaded throughout The World as We Know It are more extensive than that. They should have been caught by Princeton University Press or its reviewers, and revised. Because the two books have so much in common, it is easy to see where they diverge. The World as We Know It is a less theoretical work than its predecessor. The sociology of knowledge that organized The Intelligibility of Nature has been reduced in scale and folded into readings and examples. The taut interplay between history and theory, which gave the earlier study so much interest, is there, but it is subtle. In the earlier book, the case studies demonstrated theoretical claims about the character and development of science. In the later work, each narrative of discovery is an end in itself. Insights emerge from the history, but they do not control the organization of the study. With the theory muted, it can be hard to understand the logic uniting Dear’s sprawling history of more than two centuries of scientific knowledge. The 16 brisk chapters cover an enormous amount of material. But the closer the volume edges to comprehensiveness, the more obvious the missing elements become. A chapter on “Institutions and Pedagogy,” describing the birth of the research university, illustrates the problem. Inserted roughly halfway through the book, the unnumbered chapter is designed as an “entr’acte,” in acknowledgement that it does not fit the study’s organization around scientific discoveries. Yet as Dear is well aware, no general history of the development of modern science can bracket its 19th-century institutionalization and professionalization. It was the 19th-century university, after all, that gave us the “scientist,” a term coined by the Cambridge philosopher William Whewell. Dear’s history of scientific discoveries implies a wider social and institutional history, but it remains largely subterranean, only occasionally extruded under the pressure of the narrative. It must be said that the balance is not all on the side of the earlier study. There are some advantages to the more historical, less theoretical organization of The World as We Know It. Dear’s accounts of paradigm shifts are remarkably lucid, no small accomplishment given that they span fields and centuries. He makes excellent use of the wealth of new scholarship on Darwin and his influences, to which he has himself contributed. It is satisfying to see puzzle pieces from Buffon’s natural history, Georges Cuvier’s animal taxonomy, Thomas Robert Malthus’s demography, and Charles Lyell’s geology recombined seamlessly in the Darwinian jigsaw. Likewise, Dear’s discussion of stellar nebulae, divided between chapters two and 15, shows vividly how Newton, Kant, Herschel, and Hubble reimagined insights and observations as they sought to discover whether the diffuse light that filtered through early telescopes was a glowing, gaseous substance or discrete but distant stars. Yet despite such pleasures, the book remains a more modest work than The Intelligibility of Nature. Dear has clearly not changed his views about the history of science. But in the two decades that have elapsed, the discipline and the world around it have changed, making it harder to write a sociologically and philosophically ambitious history of science for the general reader. That is a shame, because in the age of Silicon Valley and biotechnology, both the reciprocity and the tensions Dear identified between the epistemological and instrumental ambitions of science are more evident than ever. In recent years, some of the most exciting new books on the history of science in early modernity have focused precisely on this pressure point. Important studies such as Pamela H. Smith’s From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022), James Poskett’s Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science (2022), and Vera Keller’s The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge (2023) all shed new light on how early modern science negotiated the relationship between its instrumental and epistemological ambitions, or in Russell’s phrase, knowing and doing. There is every opportunity for a philosophically informed approach to draw new insights from this wealth of material. Dear, unfortunately, has not done so in The World as We Know It. But for future scholars of the history of science, his body of work over nearly four decades may provide just the model. Julianne Werlin is an associate professor of English at Duke University. Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe
Scientists search for answers as baby whales wash up dead in Argentina
Scientists in Argentina are trying to find out why unusually high numbers of baby whales are washing up dead along the Patagonian coast
National Science Foundation Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress
The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.
1st & 10 Football: Week 6
This is your home for OzarksFirst 1st & 10 high school football coverage. We will begin live streaming at 8:30pm every Friday in the video player above. Stay caught up on local scores, streams and the biggest stories from the gridiron, and beyond! Click here to see feature stories about our Game of the Week. […]
New Macomb-Kettering deal enables business students to transfer straight into bachelor’s program
The Flint-based university will provide a pathway to its Bachelor of Science in management degree.
AP report: Senate Republicans move cash from North Carolina to Kansas as battle for majority shifts
The moves offer a stark sign of how dramatically the Senate map has shifted just a month before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
Schumer vies for the Senate majority in a looming leadership headache
Only one thing could put a damper on a good election night for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): the arrival of Senate nominees who, if successful in November, have vowed to oppose him as Democratic leader. Schumer told reporters this week that he will run for another term as the top Senate Democrat, and that he […]
Remembering Howard Stevenson, Who Transformed the Study of Entrepreneurship
Howard Stevenson transformed entrepreneurship from a study of founders’ personalities and business formation into a way of managing: pursuing opportunity beyond the resources currently controlled. His approach emphasized testing ideas, committing resources in stages, assembling teams, and rewarding value creation—practices that could benefit organizations of any size. His ideas reshaped business education and influenced generations of entrepreneurs and managers around the world.
Who is Randy Villegas, the political newcomer trying to oust David Valadao from Congress and flip District 22 blue?
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – Although he’s relatively new to the political scene, Randy Villegas has been making waves in the legislative stage. Villegas, a self-described populist, is …
Who is Randy Villegas, the political newcomer trying to oust David Valadao from Congress and flip District 22 blue?
GVH awarded $4.5 million through Rural Health Transformation Program
Gunnison Valley Health (GVH) has been awarded $4.5 million through Colorado's Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), a federal initiative designed to strengthen rural healthcare systems, expand …
New name of Paramount-Warner Bros. revealed
CEO David Ellison announced that the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. will result in Skydance ahead of the official deal closure on Oct. 6.
Moms of infants overcome barriers to postpartum care with help from patient navigators
A new Northwestern Medicine study has found patient navigators — trained guides who help patients access care and resources while working alongside the healthcare team — can ease the challenging transition to motherhood for low-income pregnant individuals, leading to better health in their postpartum period and more consistent primary care for years to come.
$1 million state grant awarded to SFM Skatepark in Rome
The SFM Memorial Skatepark in Rome has been awarded a $1 million grant through the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, which will help push forward Phase 2 of the project to include more amenities such as seating, landscaping and a modified access road, according to Governor Kathy Hochul.
Clearwater approves Scientology road requests for entertainment center
The Clearwater City Council this week approved the transfer of portions of two roads and an alley to the Church of Scientology for a planned $50 million entertainment center. The city also approved th...
Maryland Democrats should reject gerrymandering and set a national precedent
Marylanders have a chance in November to turn the tide against one of the worst tactics in American politics.
Two Most Important Things for New Blazers Coach Micah Nori
Armed with elite playmaking and a stingy defense, Portland’s new leader must balance offensive star power with rotation flexibility to transform the Blazers into Western Conference contenders.
Friday Cannon Fodder: unlikely
Happy Friday, TSFers! This extra-long international break won’t wind up until Tuesday, but it’s time to start re-focusing on Arsenal. Unfortunately, we’ve got an injury update coming later today for a couple guys who picked up issues on international duty. I don’t like international breaks. I really don’t like extended international breaks. This morning, we’ll […]
UMHB Meets Fundraising Challenge for New Science Lab Facility
UMHB Meets Fundraising Challenge for New Science Lab Facility
Would-be Pelosi successors debate who’s more progressive in San Francisco congressional race
In the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi, the candidates clashed over who will be most aggressive in regulating AI and who is closest to organized labor
Californians are in a sour mood but don't want to change the political status quo
Californians are dissatisfied with the present and sour on the future, but the Democratic Party can expect to maintain its hegemony.
FC Barcelona And Real Madrid Linked To Emerging Talent
Real Madrid and FC Barcelona could be primed to play out a proxy war in the transfer market like the days of old.
Inzaghi: ‘Playing with Zidane was a godsend’
Filippo Inzaghi has recalled what it was like to share a pitch with Zinedine Zidane, and has little doubt about why the Frenchman has been just as successful in the dugout.Speaking to La Gazzetta dell...
A CEO-led group has agreed to buy TNL Mediagene’s Japan business.
$5.5 million is subject to adjustment; at least $4.5 million must be paid or satisfied at or before closing, expected by Oct. 30 and subject to conditions.
What does Man City guilty verdict mean for their squad?
BBC Sport looks at how Manchester City's guilty verdict will affect their existing players' futures and the club's dealings in the transfer market.
Egypt’s first fintech unicorn plans to sell 20% of local business in Cairo stock market debut
Egyptian fintech MNT-Halan plans to offer 320 million shares, or 20% of its local business, in a proposed October listing on the Egyptian Exchange
Self-Care in the Chaos: Men’s Mental Health Meet-Up
The topic this month was “Self-care in the chaos,” and it couldn’t have been more appropriate given the days leading up to the meeting. Successful events downtown, a multi-school reunion…all bringing out the best in people. But overnight, violence had erupted for a group of teenagers, leaving the community wondering what happened. It’s the fourth […]
Watch Live: Connie Chan, Scott Wiener Debate for SF Congressional Seat
San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and state Sen. Scott Wiener meet live onstage Thursday night at KQED for a critical debate ahead of the November election.
Brewer nets first goal as Cyclone in draw
Junior midfielder Breezie Brewer, a transfer from Alabama, scored her first goal as a Cyclone in a 1-1 draw with Utah Thursday night at the Cyclones Sports Complex. Both Iowa State and Utah now have a 4-5-3 record. In Big 12 play, the Cyclones are 0-3-1 and the Utes are 1-2-1. Shannon Davidson got an […]
Business park rises from remnants of former Lowe's store in Sparks
A former Lowe's hardware store took one more step in its transformation into an art and innovation campus in Reno-Sparks as it celebrated the opening of its business park.
East Alabama Health to hold 2 free mammogram days for uninsured women
East Alabama Health is offering two “Free Mammogram Days” this month for the medically uninsured in east Alabama.
Manny quits D8 race after sex assault charge
The latest story in news followed a June allegation.
SpyGlass Pharma Acquires Advanced Vision Science, Securing Commercial IOL Supply, Accelerating Lens Portfolio Expansion
IRVINE, Calif.—SpyGlass Pharma, Inc. (Nasdaq: SGP), a late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on transforming treatment paradigms for patients with chronic eye conditions, has announced the acquisition of all the outstanding shares of common stock of Advanced Vision Science, Inc. (AVS), an ophthalmic medical device company and manufacturer of intraocular lenses (IOLs) and lens materials, for approximately $13 million in cash. This acquisition secures scalable commercial IOL supply and accelerates lens portfolio expansion capability for SpyGlass Pharma, the announcement noted.
Rural Health Transformation Fund: RX or Placebo?
NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis Director Alana Knudson and Virginia's Director of Rural Health Transformation Heidi Hertz briefed NPF fellows about the obstacles and opportunities in federal rural health policy.
Manny Yekutiel drops out of SF supervisor race after new allegations of sexual assault
Manny Yekutiel is dropping out of the District 8 supervisor race in San Francisco following new sexual assault claims.
Their house burned down. Now this Williamsport couple might lose their horse farm business due to pipeline construction.
The owners of Innisfree Farm in Williamsport say they’re at risk of losing their business due to construction of a water pipeline on their property.
Denver Broncos Look To Continue Historically Successful October Streak
Since Sean Payton became head coach in 2023, the Denver Broncos have posted a 10-3 October record, one they hope to continue to build upon as they travel to meet the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
Carolina Hurricanes games come to Palmetto Sports & Entertainment Network!
National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has partnered with Gray Media to simulcast 10 Hurricanes Hockey Network game broadcasts over the air in markets throughout the Carolinas.
Nearly $55 million awarded to boost healthcare access across rural Alabama
Gov. Kay Ivey announced that 34 grants totaling nearly $55 million are being awarded to healthcare providers and institutions throughout Alabama as part of the second round of the Alabama Rural Health Transformation Program (ARHTP) funding for 2026.
Wilson Sonsini Advises SpyGlass Pharma on Acquisition of Advanced Vision Science
On October 1, 2026, SpyGlass Pharma, a late-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to transforming the treatment paradigm for patients living with chronic eye conditions, announced the acquisition…
Ten bucks says you’ll love this community science project
Today marks the first day of Rut Watch 2026 With another season of Deer Spy in the books thanks to community scientists like you, biologists are now on a mission to pinpoint the peak of the white-tailed deer breeding season in Maine. Every observation of deer breeding behavior and sign helps define the timing of the rut, and this project uses the power of community science to collect deer data all fall long. Hunters, hikers, and wildlife watchers - Rut Watch pairs well with any outdoor adventure you have planned this season. It’s a perfect excuse to slow down and connect with nature as you look for clues. So get outside, rack up that deer data and submit rut reports from now through December 1. The online form is science made simple: Location Date and time Breeding behavior observed Submit a Rut Report What to watch for Active Breeding The most obvious breeding behavior to observe is a buck mounting a doe, but that is a rare sight as it only lasts a moment. You are more likely to witness a buck “tending” a doe, following closely, chasing, nuzzling, or pawing at her rump until she is receptive. Sparring After bucks shed their velvet, sparring helps sort out who is who in the dominance hierarchy. Early season matches are often less intense than later season matches between similar sized bucks. Most sparring is complete by the time breeding begins. Rubs Don’t just look for deer, pay attention to the trees. Rubs are marks made by bucks when they rub their antlers on trees, removing bark and leaving their scent calling card in the process. Scrapes Look to the forest floor for this sign of breeding season behavior. Scrapes consist of two parts - a licking branch, and a patch of cleared earth. Bucks break a low branch around head height, then paw at the leaves below to expose the dirt. Covered in scent, a scrape tells does and other bucks, “I’m here!” Learn More More information What’s next for deer community science: Northern Maine Wintering Deer Survey Other active community science projects: Fish Tag Reporting Maine Golden Eagle Study Maine Amphibian & Reptile Atlas Project Maine Deer Management: Maine’s Big Game Management Plan Game Species Conservation & Management Report The Benefits of Hunting: Supporting Wildlife, Conservation, and Community Subscribe Share Leave a comment
City of Alamo Announces Appointment of New City Manager
The City of Alamo proudly announces the appointment of Michael Leo as the City’s new City Manager, bringing nearly two decades of local government leadership and a proven track record of financial transformation, operational excellence, and community-focused growth.
How the data boom is transforming the social sciences
In a video, scholars from across Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences explain how the recent explosion of data in our world presents both challenges and opportunities in their quest to better understand human behavior.
Could Congress Reshape the Next Round of Conference Realignment?
The Protect College Sports Act could limit the growth of the wealthiest conferences while making successful Mountain West programs more attractive for future expansion. By Roger A. Holien | Mountain West Connection College football realignment has largely been driven by television contracts, conference revenue, and schools seeking greater national exposure. Now, Congress could influence what […]
Governor Ivey Announces Additional Alabama Rural Health Transformation Program Grants Totaling Nearly $55 Million -
MONTGOMERY – Governor Kay Ivey on Thursday announced the awarding of 34 grants totaling nearly $55 million to healthcare providers and institutions throughout the state as part of the second round of Alabama Rural Health Transformation Program (ARHTP) funding for 2026. … Continued
Florida State University doctoral student transforms ‘forever chemicals' research into commercial possibilities through NSF's I-Corps program
A Florida State University doctoral student has developed a new approach to destroying “forever chemicals” and is now taking the technology beyond the
Shuhai Xiao awarded Clifton C. Garvin, Jr. Endowed Professorship
A paleontologist and an internationally recognized expert in the evolution of early life on Earth, Xiao has received numerous awards and honors, including induction into the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.
Silver Lining From Giants' 2026 Season
The San Francisco Giants had a tough year, but that does not mean it was all bad.
How Washington Funded the Politicization of Science
Over the last half-decade, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on projects designed to influence academic policies, both in the sciences and other disciplines. The aim was to foster a progressive conception of social justice in these fields. In pursuit of this end, the foundation earmarked nearly a million dollars for a project titled “Creating Inclusive Scientific Societies through Policies and Practices,” over a million for a project on “Faculty Online Learning Communities for Gender Equity,” and over $2 million to foster “racial equity focused departmental change.” Through a public records request, I’ve obtained the proposals and progress reports for dozens of NSF grants designed to promote social justice. Although funding for these grants was eventually halted by the Trump administration, the projects illustrate an important facet of recent higher-education policy. Many of the university policies that promised “social transformation” didn’t arise in a vacuum. They were actively encouraged by outside funders—often by the federal government itself. Subscribe Accreditation—the peer-review process which enables universities to receive federal grants and student loans—has recently become a policy battleground, with accreditors wielding significant power over both universities and academic disciplines. In 2020, when Oregon Health and Science University’s medical school issued an extensive diversity action plan—which promised “consequences” for employees who failed to support “DEI, anti-racism and social justice”—it specifically pointed to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the medical-school accrediting body, to justify the overhaul. The NSF actively promoted DEI-focused accreditation policies. The proposal for a $1.2 million program on promoting “community engagement” in STEM, which I obtained through a records request, notes that the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology was exploring changes to its criteria “that would incorporate JEDI [justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion].” The proposal promised to “support broader JEDI efforts in the general criteria for engineering.” Another grant funded a conference designed to “identify and share best practices and strategies to integrate IDEA principles in accreditation criteria”—referring to an acronym that stands for “inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.” Scholarly societies have become another flashpoint in debates over higher education. Critics argue that many of these societies, which have the power to shape entire disciplines, have become increasingly politicized. Again, through its giving, the NSF played a role in promoting this politicization. In one million-dollar grant that received funding in 2024, a group of psychologists proposed a series of social-justice reforms to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. The proposal, which I obtained via a records request, asserts that “[r]edistributing resources (such as moving different people into leadership roles) is not enough” and that the society’s “governance structures do not yet reflect its stated values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Its solution: review and rework the society’s criteria for leadership development, academic awards, conferences, and publications. Adjusting review criteria informed by “intersectionality” designed to fight “epistemic exclusion” is an easy way to introduce de facto ideological litmus tests into the peer-review process. For many of the grants I obtained, such litmus tests seem to be the point. “Academic departments are racialized social systems that produce and sustain the byproducts of systemic racism,” a proposal for a $2.7 million project funded in 2024 asserts, promising to develop “departmentally-focused change efforts that cultivate values, assumptions, and behaviors that advance racial equity.” The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign’s million-dollar “I-ADVANCE” project, which effectively created a small DEI bureaucracy on campus, promised to Embed 28 ADVANCE faculty fellows in STEM departments” to amplify its equity goals. Another $1.2 million project promised to create “faculty online learning communities,” made up of scientists at universities around the country, that would eventually build department-level diversity action plans. “Ultimately,” the proposal asserts, perhaps more perceptively than its authors realized, “both organizational change and intersectionality frameworks deal with power.” Indeed, such grants confer a great deal of power to administrators and scholar-activists, who can even use the mere availability of funding as a tool to advance their causes. That history is worth remembering amid today’s debate over federal involvement in higher education: Washington has been shaping university priorities for years, including by financing efforts to instill progressive ideas about race, gender, and equity into academic institutions—and many of the policies those grants encouraged remain embedded within universities long after the federal money has stopped flowing. John D. Sailer is the director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute. Share
A Decade of Bernie Sanders’s Transformation of America
It’s been ten years since Bernie Sanders’s first presidential run — a run that transformed the Left and our sense of the possible in this country. It should be remembered as one of the most consequent...
FSU neuroscientist earns NSF CAREER Award for researching how brains process smell
A Florida State University neuroscientist has received one of the most prestigious awards available to early career faculty for his exploration into how
90% of Life Sciences Manufacturers Say Digital Transformation Is Now Business-Critical, According to New Rockwell Automation Report
/PRNewswire/ -- Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation, today released "The New Operating...
90% of Life Sciences Manufacturers Say Digital Transformation Is Now Business-Critical, According to New Rockwell Automation Report
/PRNewswire/ -- Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation, today released "The New Operating...
Protect College Sports Act Clears Senate, Faces House Next
In the era of NIL and a seemingly unlimited transfer portal, many are concerned about the future of college sports. On Monday, the Senate took a step in the direction to create stricter guidelines for the NCAA. The Protect College Sports Act was passed by the Senate with a 77-22 vote in the nation’s capital. […]
How the Yankees helped rewrite Baseball economics
Explore how the New York Yankees leveraged free agency to transform baseball and the lessons this offers for global markets.
For every two seconds of frustration, there are 10 seconds of euphoria: the Gears of War E-Day campaign is a satisfying, meaty return to form for The Coalition
Less a complete reset for the series, and more of an 'active reload', E-Day proves there's still life in these old Cogs yet.
‘Gears of War: E-Day’ review: Prequel leans into horror, successfully
It’s as if the “Gears” characters were dropped into a “Resident Evil” game — and it works far more often than it doesn’t, writes our reviewer.
TGL looking for another successful season opener competing with NFL
TGL will open its third season Sunday, Dec. 27, and go head-to-head with the NFL for the second consecutive season. Teams and time will be announced at a later date.
Grealish leads chances created chart
After a successful spell at Hill Dickinson Stadium last season, Jack Grealish was a welcomed back with open arms by Everton fans. Although the 31-year-old sustained a season-ending foot injury in January 2025, Grealish's eight-goal involvements proved to be valuable to David Moyes' side. As a dark cloud hung over the Toffees for their lack of action in the summer transfer window, Grealish was a shining light as he returned once again.
Good science requires much more than evidence
Empiricists believe that scientific theories are true only if they make correct empirical predictions: if we can't verify these predictions, then there is no reason to expect that they tell us anything about reality. However, Professor of Philosophy at King's College David Kyle Johnson argues that this is mistaken. In response to Bas van Fraassen, who has written on this subject for the IAI, he argues that we have many reasons for believing a theory to be true, such as it being parsimonious and having large scope — qualities which have been used throughout the history of science as criteria for judging theories. In 2024, Princeton philosopher Bas van Fraassen wrote a short article for IAI News entitled “Science Does not Describe Reality: The Limits and Benefits of Explanation.” At the time, I was working on two projects (a science book and a Great Course) that, when completed, would (among other things) defend science’s ability to describe reality. I wanted to write a response to van Fraassen, but the projects demanded too much of my attention. But now that those projects are complete, I am in a position to explain the objections to van Fraassen’s thesis. Summarizing van Fraassen’s argumentIn a nutshell, his argument is this: What scientists do is make predictions based on theories and then invite others to test to see whether those predictions are borne out. “If theory T is right, result R should happen in experimental condition C.” Many think that running an experiment that shows that R happens in condition C is proof that theory T is true (and should be believed). But, van Fraassen argues, that R happened in condition C is only a reason to think that R happens in condition C. That’s the only observable, or empirical, result we can actually see, so that is all that we are really justified in believing. (The underlying theory that made that prediction still may or may not be true.) That is why he calls those who accept his position “empiricists.”Before I explain what is wrong with this position, let me explain what it gets right. What van Fraassen Gets RightFirst, a theory correctly predicting the results of an experiment is not, strictly speaking, “proof” that the theory is correct. The basic line of reasoning is this:If the theory T is true, result R should happen. Result R did happen. Thus, theory T is true.In other words:“If T then R. R. Thus, T.”This is a deductively invalid, fallacious mode of reasoning, called “affirming the consequent.” Those premises do not guarantee that the conclusion follows. “If I am in Pennsylvania, then I am in the USA. I am in the USA. Thus, I am in Pennsylvania.” Clearly that argument doesn’t guarantee its conclusion; neither does the above argument.However, science is not a deductive method of reasoning; it is an inductive one. And inductive arguments merely try to raise the probability of their conclusion, not “prove” them for certain. Thus, the fact that an experimental result doesn’t prove a theory is true is irrelevant; it’s not supposed to. That is not what scientific reasoning is about.___If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational.___Second, it’s also true that a single experimental result doesn’t provide enough justification to believe that a theory is true. Scientists do not come to a consensus about whether a theory is true by looking at a single experiment; they look at all the evidence to determine where the preponderance of evidence points. The mere fact that I am in the USA raises the probability that I am in Pennsylvania, but not nearly enough to conclude that I am in Pennsylvania. However, if I am also regularly encountering people wearing Eagles and Phillies hats and seeing advertisements for Founding Father tours, I probably am. In the same way, a theory successfully predicting the outcome of one experiment is not enough to conclude that it is true; but if a theory makes a wide variety of predictions that are all vindicated by multiple experiments, performed by many different groups and people, all actively trying to prove the theory false (which is what good scientific experiments are designed to do)—that is a good reason to conclude that the theory is true. In other words, if you repeatedly try to prove something false but can’t, that is a very good indication that it isn’t. The problem of underdeterminationIn reply, those whom van Fraassen calls “empiricists” often point to the “problem of underdetermination.” For any given theory that makes successful predictions about what happens in experimental conditions, there are countless other possible theories that make exactly the same predictions—and since they do, the experimental evidence in question is just as much reason to accept any of those theories as it is to accept our original one. Thus, the argument goes, we have no way of knowing whether our original theory is true, or one of the other “predictively equivalent” theories is true. SUGGESTED VIEWING How Occam's Razor changed the world With Johnjoe McFadden As an example of underdetermination, philosophers often offer this example. The evidence of fossils seems to provide reason to conclude that the universe is quite old; ancient fossils are what the “ancient universe” hypothesis predicts. But it’s also possible that God created an ancient-looking universe 200 years ago, complete with a “fake” fossil record for us to find, to make it look old. The existence of fossils is what that theory predicts too. So, the argument goes, the fossil record can’t be used as evidence that the universe is ancient; the fossil record supports the “200-year-old ancient-looking universe” theory just as much. The problem of underdetermination points out that, for any theory with supporting evidence, we could invent another completely different theory that predicts exactly the same evidence, and thus undermine that evidence’s ability to support the original theory.But this “argument from underdetermination” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientific reasoning is and how it works. To explain, let me use another rather strange (but very real and commonly discussed) philosophical thought experiment called “The Grue Problem.” The “Grue” ProblemSuppose I want to know what color emeralds are, so I observe a few, see that they all appear green, and form the theory that “all emeralds are green.” I thus predict that the next 100 emeralds I find will also appear to be green. And let’s say that happens, and so I thus conclude that my theory that all emeralds are green is true. Now, one might rightly point out that I don’t know for sure that all emeralds are green—I have not seen them all. Maybe some I haven’t found yet are blue. Fair enough. After all, we used to think that all swans were white, until we found some black ones. But let’s say that I go on a quest and collect every emerald in the universe—and, for the sake of the argument, let’s say I can do this, and can even know that I have every one of them. So, I collect them all, look at them all, and verify that they all appear green. Can’t I now rightly conclude that all emeralds are green?Inspired by the problem of underdetermination, a friend might argue that I cannot.Sure, they all appear green now—but there could be another kind of color called “grue.” Something is grue if it is green up to a certain point in time, but then spontaneously turns blue. And there could be an infinite number of “shades” of grue. Something that is one shade of grue will turn blue at noon today, but something that is another shade of grue will turn blue at noon tomorrow, etc. So yes, the emeralds appear green now; and since they haven’t turned blue yet, they are not some “past” shade of grue. But they might be some “future” shade of grue (e.g., they may turn blue at noon tomorrow). And since all future shades of grue are consistent with “being green up to this point in time,” the evidence you have is completely consistent with the notion that all emeralds are some future shade of grue, rather than green. Indeed, that they would appear green until now is what the “some future shade of grue” hypothesis predicts. So, we have just as much reason to conclude that all emeralds are some shade of grue as we do to conclude that they are green.You’re probably thinking “It’s not equally possible that the emeralds are grue; they are obviously green.” You are right! But explaining why your instinctive reaction to my friend’s argument is correct will help inform why van Fraassen’s “empiricist” is wrong and science actually does describe reality.The main mistake my friend makes is in thinking that the “empirical evidence” (of all the emeralds appearing green) is (or even should be) all I am using to draw the conclusion that all emeralds are green. It is not. I am also considering known facts about how colors typically work; things don’t usually change color, and when they do, they don’t do so suddenly, without cause, and all at once. So, even though the simple evidence of the emeralds all appearing green up to this point is consistent with them being some future shade of grue—that is even what the grue hypothesis “predicts”—it is still exceedingly unlikely that they are. The hypothesis that they are green is much more likely. Understanding science refutes the problem of underdetermination The misunderstanding about science that the “empiricist” pointing to “the problem of underdetermination” makes is similar to the one that my friend made. Science is not just about considering experimental evidence; in fact, it’s not even just about considering empirical evidence. As Ernan McMullin and many other philosophers of science have pointed out, the inference that makes science is “inference to the best explanation” (sometimes called “abduction” or “retroduction” by McMullin). While, depending on the circumstances, scientists use many different kinds of reasoning, science as a whole is, simply put, the process of considering multiple competing explanations and comparing them to certain criteria—explanatory criteria (the kinds of things explanations must be and do, by definition, to be a good explanation)—to see which explanation is the best.And these criteria do not deal only with empirical results. Yes, successful predictions raise the probability of a hypothesis, but it’s also the case that the more new assumptions a theory makes, the less likely it is to be true; every new assumption presents an opportunity for the theory to be false. (The fewer assumptions a theory makes, the simpler or “more parsimonious” it is said to be.) Likewise, the more existing evidence a theory contradicts, the less likely it is, because in order for a theory to be true, every piece of evidence it contradicts has to be somehow faulty. (The fewer established theories a new theory contradicts, the more “conservative” it is said to be.) And, obviously, the more something explains, the better explanation it is. (This is called having “scope.”) If a theory raises unanswerable questions, it’s not expanding our understanding, and thus is not wide-scoping. Scientists consider all these things when deciding which theory to accept, because the theory that adheres best to these explanatory criteria is most likely to be true.___the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth.___The reason the grue hypothesis is no good is because it invents an entirely new kind of color—not just a new shade, but an entirely different category of color (a different way colors work)—and thus is not parsimonious. It raises unanswerable questions about how and why emeralds would just spontaneously change from green to blue (and thus does not have wide scope). And it contradicts what is already well established about how color works (and thus is unconservative).The theories that the problem of underdetermination points to do the same thing. Yes, the theory that God created an “ancient-looking universe” (complete with an ancient-looking fossil record) two hundred years ago is also consistent with the empirical evidence (of a fossil record) that presently exists; but that theory is monumentally unparsimonious (it requires many extra assumptions about infinite entities) and not wide-scoping (it raises unanswerable questions about why God would do such a thing). So, I can rationally conclude that it is false.Indeed, the history of science includes many examples of theories that were rejected because they lacked parsimony and/or scope, even before their falsity (and the truth of their competing theory) was confirmed by observation. As I point out in my book, geocentrism was rejected by the scientific community because it lacked parsimony, almost 200 years before the observation of parallax confirmed that the Earth moves around the sun. And the continuum theory of matter was completely rejected by 1860, because it couldn’t explain chemical reactions or organize matter into a periodic table, even though the experiments that eventually confirmed atomic theory weren’t even proposed until the 1870s. Solving the best of a bad lot problemIn response, the “empiricists” are likely to object, this time pointing to the “best of a bad lot” problem. “We have no reason to conclude that an explanation that has been shown to be better than others is true because we have no guarantee that the true theory was among those that we were considering.” If you have a “lot” (a collection) of poor explanations, even the best one is not true.The responses to this problem, however, are numerous. Peter Lipton argues that the set of hypotheses that scientists consider are not just randomly selected and thus unlikely to contain a theory that is true; they use existing knowledge to home in on what is most likely to be true. A doctor trying to explain abdominal pain is not going to bother wondering whether demons are causing it; they are going to stick with things like appendicitis and kidney stones, because they are most likely. Further, despite its name, inference to the best explanation is not just the process of comparing hypotheses and accepting the best one; we also want one that is a good explanation in its own right. If it’s not, we are going to keep looking until we find an explanation that is. And while that process does not guarantee that we will come across the exact truth, it’s very likely that the theory that emerges as the best will be at least approximately true, and thus we will be justified in believing it. And lastly, as I point out in my book, although many theories not based in scientific evidence (like geocentrism and continuum theory) have been completely overturned, science almost always progresses by the refinement of scientifically established theories—not their replacement. (Although our sun is not the center of the universe, heliocentrism was our first step in understanding the Earth’s true place in the universe.) So even if a theory we accept today may not be completely right, accepting it is a step on the journey toward the complete truth. The example of atomic theoryNow, it’s worth pointing out that most empiricists are not skeptical of all scientific theories; they are only skeptical of the ones that hypothesize the existence of “unobservables.” It’s not like they think that round Earth, heliocentrism, and germ theory are just useful (but untrue) “instruments” for making predictions about how to most efficiently navigate the seas, predict planetary motion, and treat diseases. They admit that the Earth actually is round, that the planets revolve around the sun, and that germs exist and cause disease. These facts and entities can be observed; the theories that suggest they exist are true. It’s only when theories start hypothesizing the existence of unobservables—like electrons, or quantum fields—that can’t be observed directly, that we should start doubting the theories’ truth. And to be fair to van Fraassen, in this published work, he doesn’t really say that we should doubt the truth of such theories. Only that scientific reasoning does not rationally force us to accept them as true. Skepticism, or agnosticism, he argues, is warranted. SUGGESTED READING Science is based in metaphor By Andrew Reynolds But the history of atomic theory throws a monkey wrench into that argument. Atoms used to be unobservable; again, scientists first accepted the theory that they exist because it had such grandiose explanatory power. But then atoms were seen with electron microscopes. They thus moved into the category of the observable. But this didn’t substantially change anything about what scientists were justified in believing; it certainly didn’t change any “atomic skeptics’” minds. It just confirmed what everyone already knew! If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational. The fact that the thing itself is not technically observable does not make doubting its existence rational.What’s more, the atoms were seen with an electron microscope. But electrons are themselves unobservable. How can an electron microscope reveal an atom if electrons are not real? This leads us to what is famously known as Hilary Putnam’s “miracle argument.” It’s (not) a miraclePhilosopher Hilary Putnam’s miracle argument is somewhat famous. Basically, he argued that a scientific theory being able to repeatedly make successful predictions—even about unobservables—without being at least approximately true would require a “miracle.” In other words, it would be such an improbable occurrence that it could not rationally be believed—the better explanation for why scientific theories about unobservables make the right predictions is because the unobservable entities and structures they hypothesize exist.Van Fraassen has addressed this argument. Indeed, in his original article, where he references Alison Gopnik’s point about orgasms not being “necessary for procreation” even though the desire for orgasm “drives the creation of progeny,” he is pointing to his own argument about how organisms are not naturally selected by evolution to get true beliefs; to the extent that belief-forming processes are selected for, the ones that are selected are the ones that are useful for survival—not the ones that produce true beliefs. In the same way, van Fraassen argues, scientific theories are accepted, not because they are true, but because they aren’t falsified; they make successful predictions; that’s what makes them “stick around.” So, the fact that they make successful predictions (and thus became accepted) is not a reason to think they are true.This argument is similar to C. S. Lewis’s “argument from reason,” which he used to argue against evolution: “The truth of evolution undercuts our ability to know that it is true.” Lewis’ argument famously failed; Elizabeth Anscombe, by Lewis’s own admission, demolished Lewis in a debate on the topic, and I have explained elsewhere why modified versions of the argument fail as well. In short, it’s because it fails to recognize that a belief-forming process can make an organism more likely to survive because it reliably produces true beliefs. It is therefore not the case that beliefs generated by naturally selected belief-forming processes are automatically false or unjustified.In the same way, the reason a theory “sticks around” could be because it’s not falsified, because it “makes correct predictions.” But the reason it makes correct predictions is most likely because it is true. (In pointing this out, I am echoing the arguments of Musgrave, Lipton, Psillos, and Kitcher, who refuted van Fraassen’s argument and analogy long before his 2024 article.) It would be a huge coincidence that it could do so without being true. And that is the point of Putnam’s miracle argument. Thus, contrary to van Fraassen’s suggestion, the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth. ConclusionLet me close by saying something about the fact that empiricists don’t doubt the truth of all scientific theories, just the ones that hypothesize unobservables. In today’s society, this theory is dangerous to espouse publicly. The nuance between being skeptical about all of science, and just the highly technical theories about unobservables, is guaranteed to be lost to the average reader. And there is so much unjustified skepticism and doubt about the findings of science and experts that a headline like “Science Does Not Describe Reality” could easily fuel the anti-science movement, worsen climate change denial and cause the next pandemic.This is why I believe it was important to still respond to van Fraassen’s article, a full two years after he wrote it. Not only, as I have argued, does it represent a philosophically inaccurate view of how scientific reasoning works and what scientific reasoning can do, but it is a dangerous view to boot. It should thus be rejected.
Pasadena Life Science Incubator Reports “Transformational” Gift: Lab Building
Daily Newsmagazine and City Guide to Pasadena, California featuring local news, breaking news, events, weather, sports news, schools news, shopping, restaurants and more from Pasadena Now
Early survey findings: Larger Iowa businesses 'all in' on AI adoption
Iowa companies are moving ahead past the initial phase of adoption of AI into “multiple use cases,” if not AI transformation across an organization, according to early findings from the Iowa AI Business Survey presented by Chris Porter, director of the artificial intelligence program at Drake University. Porter and another Drake professor, Chris Snider, are…
Azerbaijan Airlines and Stellar Entertainment expand partnership to transform inflight entertainment
Azerbaijan Airlines is set to deliver a more dynamic inflight entertainment experience through an expanded partnership with Stellar.
Tenet Adds First U.S. Exclusive Commercial Lender to Business Hub and Welcomes New West Coast Business Development Manager
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - October 1, 2026) - Tenet Fintech Group Inc. (CSE: PKK) (OTCID: PKKFF) (FSE: P0T) ("Tenet" or the "Company"), an innovative analytics service provider, owner and operator of the Cubeler Business Hub, today announced that New York based commercial lender Premium Merchant Funding ("PMF") has signed on to be the first commercial lender on the Business Hub exclusively dedicated to lending and extending credit to U.S. based small and medium-sized enterprises.While..