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Bob Park has a new book

JJM said:
Physicist Bob Park has a new book http://www.amazon.com/Superstition-...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227560622&sr=1-1

I have just ordered it based on the excellence of his "Voodoo Science" (Oxford, 2000).
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According to one reviewer, Park claims:

"At the beginning of the twentieth century, the existence of a 'vital life force' or 'divine spark' still seemed necessary to some scientists [...] this is the ancient concept of vitalism, which long ago lost any meaning in science. The chemistry and physics that animates matter has ceased to be a mystery. Certainly since Watson and Crick resolved the mystery of DNA, there is no longer a need for a 'divine spark' [p.081...and] Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in particular gave rise to naturalism [...which] left no room for vitalism or other spiritual explanations. The germ theory of disease, emerging from the work of Pasteur and Koch after the death of Darwin, would prove to be the death of such superstitious nonsense as vitalism."

And yet, according to Wikipedia: "Louis Pasteur, shortly after his famous rebuttal of spontaneous generation, made several experiments that he felt supported the vital concepts of life. According to Bechtel, Pasteur 'fitted fermentation into a more general programme describing special reactions that only occur in living organisms. These are irreducibly vital phenomena.' In 1858, Pasteur showed that fermentation only occurs when living cells are present and, that fermentation only occurs in the absence of oxygen; he was thus led to describe fermentation as ‘life without air’. Rejecting the claims of Berzelius, Liebig, Traube and others that fermentation resulted from chemical agents or catalysts within cells, he concluded that fermentation was a 'vital action'." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
 
It is an interesting book, but could have used a better editor (he called Kevin Trudeau "Gary Trudeau").

Bob Park was almost killed by a tree falling him while he was jogging. Two the the three people who helped him and called emergency services were a pair of retired priests. After he recovers he returned to the trail and meets them as they were looking at the remains of the tree. As they were telling him that the tree fell on someone, he introduces himself as the man it fell on.

In the book he explores many of the subjects of science and religion from the Templeton Award, prayer for medical care efficacy, and other things... while bouncing the ideas and opinions off the retired priests in conversations.

A good read, but needed better editing.
 
Rodney said:
According to one reviewer, Park claims:

"At the beginning of the twentieth century, the existence of a 'vital life force' or 'divine spark' still seemed necessary to some scientists [...] this is the ancient concept of vitalism, which long ago lost any meaning in science. The chemistry and physics that animates matter has ceased to be a mystery. Certainly since Watson and Crick resolved the mystery of DNA, there is no longer a need for a 'divine spark' [p.081...and] Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in particular gave rise to naturalism [...which] left no room for vitalism or other spiritual explanations. The germ theory of disease, emerging from the work of Pasteur and Koch after the death of Darwin, would prove to be the death of such superstitious nonsense as vitalism."

And yet, according to Wikipedia: "Louis Pasteur, shortly after his famous rebuttal of spontaneous generation, made several experiments that he felt supported the vital concepts of life. According to Bechtel, Pasteur 'fitted fermentation into a more general programme describing special reactions that only occur in living organisms. These are irreducibly vital phenomena.' In 1858, Pasteur showed that fermentation only occurs when living cells are present and, that fermentation only occurs in the absence of oxygen; he was thus led to describe fermentation as ‘life without air’. Rejecting the claims of Berzelius, Liebig, Traube and others that fermentation resulted from chemical agents or catalysts within cells, he concluded that fermentation was a 'vital action'." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
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The second paragraph doesn't contradict the first. Pasteur's work contributed to the abandonment of vitalism. That doesn't mean Pasteur rejected it himself.
 
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