My new book, HOW WE BELIEVE: The Search for God in an Age of Science (W. H. Freeman) is going into a second printing four weeks after its initial release on October 11. The first print run was 30,000 copies, so I am very pleased with the numbers considering the book has not had a single review thus far. (I have heard of many due to be published but none have appeared in print yet. Sunday mornings are high anxiety time for me as I eagerly await the New York Times and L.A. Times book review sections. Hopefully tomorrow will bring some reviews. We'll see.)

Several people have been kind enough to notify me of a handful of minor typos and even a few grammatical mistakes that appeared in the text. A few have even talked me into making a few substantial changes based on refinement of my thinking on certain issues surrounding the God question.

So I thought I would put out a notice to this group for any of you who might have found typos, spelling errors, grammatical goofs, or other items that could be corrected for the next printing. If you haven't had a chance to read HOW WE BELIEVE yet, you can get a good summary at http://www.howwebelieve.com/ where there is also an ongoing forum discussion group about God, religion, science, etc. And, of course, the book is available at all bookstores and at http://www.amazon.com/

Oklahoma has joined the list of states questioning the teaching of evolution by requiring a disclaimer in school science textbooks that evolution is a "controversial theory," education officials in Oklahoma City said. The state education board confirmed that a textbook committee imposed the requirement last week because members thought teaching evolution is too one-sided. The disclaimer reads in part: "This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory which some scientists present as scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on Earth. Theref ore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact." Committee member John Dickmann told the Tulsa World newspaper it was added because biology texts do not give enough attention to alternate explanations of the development of life.

Yeah, well, no one was present when the dinosaurs lived, so I guess their presence in the fossil record is "only a theory." No one was present when the Grand Canyon was formed either, or the creation of the solar system, or, or, or. Of course evolution is "only a theory." What else would it be as a scientific concept. It is certainly "more than a hypothesis," as even Pope John Paul II admitted--unless, of course, in that awkward translation he really meant "more than ONE hypothesis"--a question I have yet to get answered, even by the Pope's biographer, George Weigel, whom I just met the other day (although he doesn't even think the Pope was endorsing evolutiona at all). At some point, however, a theory becomes a "fact" in science when it is confirmed to such an extent that it would be perverse to withhold our provisional assent (in S.J. Gould's apt wording). In that sense, evolution is as factual a theory as any in the historical sciences.

The deeper problem here is in the misunderstanding of the difference between the experimental sciences and the histoical sciences. Historical questions is why we have something called the "historical sciences," different in research methodology and hypothesis testing than the "experimental sciences," but no less valid as a science. The stereotypical "physics experiment" as the model for how science is properly done has done considerable damage to the public understanding of how most science actually works most of the time. Even in so-called "high culture" and the academy, where Thomas Kuhn's theories of "normal science" and "revolutionary science," were almost entirely based on the physical sciences and have almost no application whatsoever to the biological sciences and especially to the social sciences. I just interviewed Ernst Mayr for Skeptic magazine and he has much to say, mostly critical, about Kuhn and the damage he has done to everyone's (pop and high culture alike) understanding (misunderstanding actually) of science. That interview will be out in the spring.