The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Shermer and Azarian discuss: laws of thermodynamics and directionality • how complexity formed after the Big Bang • laws of nature: discovered or created or both? • Stephen Jay Gould and contingency vs. necessitating laws of nature • convergent evolution and directionality in evolution • the left wall of simplicity • leading theories for the origin of life • complexity theory and emergence • consciousness, the self, and other minds • free will, determinism, compatibilism, panpsychism • Is there purpose…

In this book review Joe Cuchiara considers the validity of the new theories of emergence and complexity and how complex systems arise naturally from the bottom up through the natural forces of nature as emergent properties, instead of the traditional top down explanation of divine design. Herald Morowitz’s book The Theory of Everything is an all encompassing theory to explain the cosmos.

In this week’s eSkeptic, James N. Gardner reviews Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell.