David Berlinski on the Immaterial, Alan Turing, and the Mystery of Life Itself

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Life Sciences, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Astronomy

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's episode of ID The Future again spotlights the book Science After Babel. Author, philosopher, and mathematician David Berlinski and host Andrew McDiarmid conclude a three-part conversation teasing out various elements of the work. The pair discuss the puzzling relationship between purely immaterial mathematical concepts and the material world; World War II codebreaker and computing pioneer Alan Turing, depicted in the 2014 film The Imitation Game; and the sense that the field of physics, once seemingly on the cusp of a theory of everything, finds itself at an impasse. Then there is the mystery of life itself. If scientists thought that its origin and nature would soon yield to scientific reductionism, they have been disappointed. This is Part 3 of a three-part conversation.

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0:00.0	ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:12.0	Welcome to ID the Future.
0:14.0	I'm your host, Andrew McDermott.
0:15.8	Today I'm very pleased to bring back on the show Dr. David Berlinski to finish discussing his book
0:21.1	Science After Babble in the final episode of a three-part interview. Dr. Berlinski is a senior
0:26.8	fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He received his PhD in philosophy
0:32.3	from Princeton University and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia
0:39.0	University. Dr. Berlinski has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at such universities
0:44.8	as Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, and the University of Paris. He is
0:50.7	author of numerous books, including a tour of the calculus, the advent of the algorithm,
0:55.6	Newton's gift, and the devil's delusion. His latest, Science After Babel, is a collection of essays
1:01.6	challenging the prevailing beliefs and pronouncements of contemporary science, with his unique
1:07.0	blend of deep learning, close reasoning, and sharp wit. In it, he reflects on everything
1:12.3	from Newton, Einstein, and Goudel to catastrophe theory, information theory, and the state of
1:18.2	modern Darwinism. Mathematician, philosopher, and author of the design inference, William Dembski,
1:24.9	says science after Babel masterfully exposes the hubris of scientific pretensions
1:29.9	with a wit that dances deftly between the lines, unveiling profound insights with a refreshing
1:36.3	candor. David, welcome back to I Do the Future. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Well, I've thoroughly
1:42.5	enjoyed our first two conversations together,
1:44.9	where you covered your appraisal of modern Darwinism, as well as the enduring problem of the
1:49.5	origin of life and the physicist's quest to explain everything. Listeners are encouraged to go back
1:55.6	and listen to parts one and two. In this episode, I wanted to touch on the last two sections of your book. The first of
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