How Modern Materialistic Science Resembles a Tower of Babel

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

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

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

On today’s ID the Future out of the vault, host Andrew McDiarmid rings up author and philosopher David Berlinski in Paris to discuss his book Science After Babel. Berlinski is at his cultivated best as the two discuss everything from the biblical Tower of Babel as a metaphor for modern materialistic science, to his friendship with the brilliant and colorful French intellectual Marcel Schützenberger, a world-class mathematician who was self-taught and, as we learn here, came within a hair’s breadth of being swept up in the Chinese Revolution. Berlinski also reflects on the seminal 1966 WISTAR symposium, which laid out some mathematical challenges to Darwinism, challenges that Berlinski says remain unanswered to this day. At the same time, Berlinski gives Read More ›

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0:00.0	ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:11.6	Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott.
0:15.9	Today I'm excited to welcome to the show Dr. David Berlinski to discuss his book, Science After Babel, available
0:22.8	from Discovery Institute Press. Dr. Berlinski is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute's
0:28.3	Center for Science and Culture. He received his PhD in philosophy from Princeton University
0:33.7	and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University.
0:40.3	Dr. Berlinski has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at such universities as Stanford,
0:46.3	Rutgers, the City University of New York, and the University of Paris.
0:51.3	And of course, he's author of numerous books, many of which you'll have heard of,
0:56.0	including a tour of the calculus, the advent of the algorithm, Newton's gift, and the devil's
1:01.0	delusion. His latest is called Signs After Babel. It's a collection of essays challenging the
1:07.2	prevailing beliefs and pronouncements of contemporary science, with his unique
1:11.6	blend of deep learning, close reasoning, and sharp wit. In it, he reflects on everything from
1:17.8	Newton, Einstein, and Gödel to catastrophe theory, information theory, and the state of modern
1:24.1	Darwinism. David Galerenter, professor of computer science at Yale University,
1:29.7	calls Science After Babel a striking and beautiful and absolutely necessary book, David
1:35.7	Berlinski, at his spectacular best. David, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, and thank
1:42.1	you for that magnificent introduction. Oh, absolutely. Well, this book
1:47.1	signs after Babel. It's an anthology of your essays related to science, some of them recent,
1:53.3	and some of them stretching back a while. If you had to single out one or two of the most
1:58.2	prominent recurring themes in the book, what would you say they are?
2:02.4	Well, you know, every writer likes very much to think that there's a deep inner continuity in his books.
	...

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