Biography:David Berlinski

Short description: American educator and author

David Berlinski
Born	New York City , US
Occupation	Author, academic
Children	Claire Berlinski Misha Berlinski
Website	www.davidberlinski.org

David Berlinski (born 1942) is an American author, having written books about mathematics and the history of science as well as fiction. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

Early life

David Berlinski was born in the United States in 1942 to German-born Jewish refugees who had immigrated to New York City after escaping from France while the Vichy government was collaborating with the Germans. His father was Herman Berlinski, a composer, organist, pianist, musicologist and choir conductor, and his mother was Sina Berlinski (née Goldfein), a pianist, piano teacher and voice coach. Both were born and raised in Leipzig where they studied at the Conservatory, before fleeing to Paris where they were married and undertook further studies. German was David Berlinski's first spoken language. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Princeton University.

Academic career

After his PhD, Berlinski was a research assistant in the Department of Biology at Columbia University for less than one year. He has taught philosophy, mathematics and English at Stanford University, Rutgers, the City University of New York and the Université de Paris. He was a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) in France .

Author

Mathematics and biology

Berlinski has written works on systems analysis, the history of differential topology, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics. Berlinski has authored books for the general public on mathematics and the history of mathematics. These include A Tour of the Calculus (1995) on calculus, The Advent of the Algorithm (2000) on algorithms, Newton's Gift (2000) on Isaac Newton, and Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics (2005). Another book, The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky (2003), compares astrological and evolutionary accounts of human behavior. In Black Mischief (1988), Berlinski wrote "Our paper became a monograph. When we had completed the details, we rewrote everything so that no one could tell how we came upon our ideas or why. This is the standard in mathematics."

Berlinski's books have received mixed reviews; Newton's Gift and The Advent of the Algorithm were criticized by MathSciNet for containing historical and mathematical inaccuracies while the Mathematical Association of America review of A Tour of the Calculus by Fernando Q. Gouvêa recommended that professors have students read the book to appreciate the overarching historical and philosophical picture of calculus.

Collaborations

Berlinski, along with fellow Discovery Institute associates Michael Behe and William A. Dembski, tutored Ann Coulter on science and evolution for her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (2006).

Berlinski was a longtime friend of Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (1920–1996), with whom he collaborated on an unfinished and unpublished mathematically based manuscript that he described as being "devoted to the Darwinian theory of evolution". Berlinski dedicated The Advent of the Algorithm to Schützenberger.

Fiction

He is the author of several detective novels starring private investigator Aaron Asherfeld: A Clean Sweep (1993), Less Than Meets the Eye (1994) and The Body Shop (1996), and a number of shorter works of fiction and non-fiction.

Evolution

A critic of the theory of evolution, Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think tank that is a hub of the intelligent design movement. Berlinski shares the movement's disbelief in the evidence for evolution, but does not openly avow intelligent design and describes his relationship with the idea as: "warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public toward my ex-wives." Berlinski is a forthright critic of evolution, yet, "Unlike his colleagues at the Discovery Institute,...[he] refuses to theorize about the origin of life."

Berlinski appeared in the 2008 film Expelled, in which he told interviewer Ben Stein that "Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenon like Nazism but I think it's certainly a necessary one." He also says:

It'd be nice to see the scientific establishment lose some of its prestige and power...Above all, it'd be nice to have a real spirit of self-criticism penetrating the sciences.

In his 1996 article, The Deniable Darwin, published in Commentary, Berlinski says he is skeptical of evolution for a number of reasons, claiming an appearance "at once" of an astonishing number of novel biological structures in the Cambrian explosion, a lack of major transitional fossils, a lack of recent significant evolution in sharks, the evolution of the eye, and a failure of evolutionary biology to explain various phenomena ranging from the sexual cannibalism of redback spiders to why women are not born with a tail.

Views on religion

Berlinski describes himself as a secular Jew. Berlinski's views towards criticism of religious belief can be found in his book The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (2008). In summary, he asserts that some skeptical arguments against religious belief based on scientific evidence misrepresent what the science is actually saying, that an objective morality requires a religious foundation, that mathematical theories attempting to bring together quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity amount to pseudoscience because of their lack of empirical verifiability, and he expresses doubt towards Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Personal life

Berlinski's daughter Claire Berlinski is a journalist and his son Mischa Berlinski is a writer.

Bibliography

Non-fiction books

• Berlinski, David (1968). The Well-tempered Wittgenstein (Thesis (PhD)). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. OCLC 54749918. 
•    (1976). On Systems Analysis: An Essay Concerning the Limitations of Some Mathematical Methods in the Social, Political, and Biological Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02120-3. OCLC 2213153. https://archive.org/details/onsystemsanalysi00davi. 
•    (1976). Philosophy: The Cutting Edge. Port Washington, NY: Alfred Publishing Co.. ISBN 978-0-882-84029-1. OCLC 2089782. 
•    (1978). "Adverse Notes on Systems Theory". in Klir, George J. Applied General Systems Research: Recent Developments and Trends. NATO Conference Series. 5. New York: Plenum Press. pp. 949–960. doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-0555-3_72. ISBN 978-0-306-32845-9. OCLC 470761024. "Proceedings of the NATO international conference held in Binghamton, New York, August 15–19, 1977, sponsored by the NATO Special Program Panel on Systems Science." 
•    (1986). Black Mischief: The Mechanics of Modern Science (1st ed.). New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0-688-04404-6. OCLC 12721232. 
  •    (1988). Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck (2nd ed.). Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-156-13063-9. OCLC 16680895. 
•    (1986). "The Language of Life". in Casti, John L.; Karlqvist, Anders. Complexity, Language, and Life: Mathematical Approaches. Biomathematics. 16. Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag. pp. 231–267. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-70953-1_9. ISBN 978-3-642-70955-5. OCLC 13010820. 
• Berlinski, David, ed (1989). A Guide to the Compositions of Herman Berlinski. New York: Herman Berlinski Collection (Jewish Theological Seminary of America). OCLC 417235152. http://www.jtsa.edu/The_Library/Collections/Archives/Music_Archives/Berlinski.xml. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (1990). The Rise of Differential Topology. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-3-764-33073-6. OCLC 123046016. 
•    (1995). A Tour of the Calculus (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-679-42645-5. OCLC 31970193. https://archive.org/details/tourofcalculus00berl. 
•    (1997). "Prague Interlude". in O'Reilly, Sean; O'Reilly, James; O'Reilly, Tim. Travelers' Tales: The Road Within: True Stories of Transformation (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Travelers' Tales, Inc.. ISBN 978-1-8852-11-19-4. OCLC 38049772. https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781885211194. 
•    (1998). "Gödel's Question". in Dembski, William A. Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design. Foreword by Henry F. Schaefer, III. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-1515-9. OCLC 38959771. 
•    (1999). "Joseph Maier: A Personal Reminiscence". in Marcus, Judith T. Surviving the Twentieth Century: Social Philosophy from the Frankfurt School to the Columbia Faculty Seminars. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56000-352-6. OCLC 41445653. 
•    (2000). The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World. New York: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-100338-9. OCLC 40459999. https://archive.org/details/adventofalgorith00berl. 
  •    (2001) [Originally published 2000 with different subtitle]. The Advent of the Algorithm: The 300-Year Journey from an Idea to the Computer (1st Harvest ed.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-601391-8. OCLC 46890682. https://archive.org/details/adventofalgorith0000berl. 
•    (2000). Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-84392-6. OCLC 44046921. https://archive.org/details/newtonsgift00davi. 
• Berlinski, David (2003). "The Mathematics of Matter and the Mathematics of Mind". in Maler, Oded; Pnueli, Amir. Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control: 6th International Workshop, HSCC 2003, Prague, Czech Republic, April 2003: Proceedings. Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control. Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 1. ISBN 3-540-0-0913-2. OCLC 51855533. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1768102. 
•    (2003). The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction (1st U.S. ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-100527-7. OCLC 52214462. https://archive.org/details/secretsofvaulted00berl. 
•    (2005). Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics. Modern Library Chronicles (1st ed.). New York: Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-679-64234-3. OCLC 57573840. https://archive.org/details/infiniteascentsh00berl. 
•    (2006). "Two Fables by Jorge Luis Borges". in Dembski, William A. Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement. Foreword by Rick Santorum. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic. ISBN 978-0-8308-2836-4. OCLC 62330745. https://archive.org/details/darwinsnemes_xxxx_2006_000_10458437. 
•    (2008). The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (1st ed.). New York: Crown Forum. ISBN 978-0-307-39626-6. OCLC 183162134. 
  •    (2009). The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01937-3. OCLC 401147024. 
•    (2009). Klinghoffer, David. ed. The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-979-01412-3. OCLC 624322270. 
•    (2011). One, Two, Three: Absolutely Elementary Mathematics (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-375-42333-8. OCLC 657595353. 
•    (2013). The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01481-1. OCLC 828850721. https://archive.org/details/kingofinfinitesp00davi. 

Fiction books

• Berlinski, David (1993). A Clean Sweep (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-08744-9. OCLC 26764139. https://archive.org/details/cleansweep00berl. 
•    (1994). Less Than Meets the Eye: An Aaron Asherfeld Mystery (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-11298-1. OCLC 29470294. https://archive.org/details/lessthanmeetseye00berl. 
•    (1996). The Body Shop: An Aaron Asherfeld Mystery (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-13935-3. OCLC 33439024. https://archive.org/details/bodyshopaaronash00berl. 

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

• Berlinski, David; Gallin, Daniel (May 1969). "Quine's Definition of Logical Truth". Noûs 3 (2): 111–128. 
•    (September 1970). "Systems Analysis". Urban Affairs Review 6 (1): 104–126. doi:10.1177/107808747000600111. ISSN 1078-0874. 
•    (June 15, 1972). "Philosophical Aspects of Molecular Biology". The Journal of Philosophy 69 (12): 319–335. ISSN 0022-362X. OCLC 244821401. 
•    (December 1974). "The Philosophy of Biology by Michael Ruse". Philosophy of Science 41 (4): 418–422. doi:10.1086/288605. ISSN 0031-8248. OCLC 716512499. 
•    (December 1976). "Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage by A. J. Ayer". American Political Science Review 70 (4): 1257. doi:10.2307/1959389. ISSN 1537-5943. 
•    (March 1977). "The Cybernetic Theory of Decision by John D. Steinbruner; The Sciences of the Artificial by H. A. Simon". American Political Science Review 71 (1): 424–428. ISSN 1537-5943. OCLC 805068983. 
•    (1990). "Knowing, Knowledge, Known". Logique et Analyse 33 (129–130): 3–20. ISSN 0024-5836. OCLC 1756092. 

Articles in journals and newspapers

• Berlinski, David (August 1975). "Mathematical models of the world". Synthese. Part 1 31 (2): 211–227. doi:10.1007/BF00485978. ISSN 0039-7857. OCLC 4895060169.  Part 2 and part 3 published in Synthese, 36 (3) (November 1977), and 37 (2) (February 1978), respectively (OCLC 226993726).
•    (1978). "Catastrophe theory and its applications: A critical review". Systems Research and Behavioral Science 23 (4): 402–416. doi:10.1002/bs.3830230411. 
•    (October–December 1980). "Kurt Gödel (1906-1978)". Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 85 (4): 509–518. ISSN 0035-1571. OCLC 763653542. 
•    (Winter 1989). "Vienna". New England Review & Bread Loaf Quarterly 12 (2): 157–168. ISSN 1053-1297. 
•    (January 1996). "The Soul of Man Under Physics" (PDF). Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.discovery.org/f/385. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (June 1996). "The Deniable Darwin". Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.discovery.org/a/130. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
• Berlinski, David (November 2, 1996). "Keeping an Eye on Evolution: Richard Dawkins, a relentless Darwinian spear carrier, trips over Mount Improbable". The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario: The Globe and Mail Inc.). http://www.discovery.org/a/132. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (December 2, 1996). "The End of Materialistic Science". Forbes ASAP: 146–160. ISSN 1078-9901. http://www.discovery.org/a/131. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (July–August 1997). "Ground Zero: A Review of The Pleasures of Counting, by TW Koerner". The Sciences 37 (4): 37–41. ISSN 0036-861X. 
•    (February 1998). "Was There a Big Bang?" (PDF). Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.discovery.org/f/386. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (April 2001). "What Brings a World into Being?". Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.discovery.org/a/616. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (November 26, 2001). "Where Physics and Politics Meet". The Weekly Standard 7 (11). ISSN 1083-3013. OCLC 32775365. https://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/543dgggq.asp. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (February 18, 2002). "God, Man, and Physics". The Weekly Standard 7 (22). ISSN 1083-3013. OCLC 32775365. Archived from the original on January 18, 2014. https://archive.is/20140118020147/http://www.weeklynostandards.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/897jsvgo.asp. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (March 2002). "Einstein and Gödel". Discover 23 (3): 38. ISSN 0274-7529. http://discovermagazine.com/2002/mar/featgodel#.UtO4UPs6wn0. 
•    (March 18, 2002). "Lucky Jim". The Weekly Standard 7 (26). ISSN 1083-3013. OCLC 32775365. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/000/991odrfs.asp. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (Fall 2002). "Inventing Numbers: How Mathematicians Filled the Inky Void". American Educator 26 (3): 36–41. ISSN 0148-432X. http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2002/Berlinski.pdf. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (December 2002). "Has Darwin Met His Match?". Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/has-darwin-met-his-match/. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (April 2003). "A Scientific Scandal". Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/a-scientific-scandal/. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (November 2004). "On the Origins of the Mind" (PDF). Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.discovery.org/f/388. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (March 9, 2005). "There are valid criticisms of evolution". The Wichita Eagle. Archived from the original on 2005-03-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20050321163935/http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/editorial/11083843.htm. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (April 1, 2005). "Academic Extinction". The Daily Californian. OCLC 60637422. http://archive.dailycal.org/article.php?id=18178. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (February 2006). "On the Origins of Life". Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.discovery.org/a/3209. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
• Berlinski, David (August 29, 2007). "Inside the Mathematical Mind". The New York Sun (TWO SL LLC). http://www.nysun.com/arts/inside-the-mathematical-mind/61508/. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (May 5, 2008). "The Dang Thing". National Review Online. OCLC 45278115. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/224385/dang-thing/david-berlinski. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (April 18, 2008). "Connecting Hitler and Darwin". Human Events. http://www.humanevents.com/2008/04/18/connecting-hitler-and-darwin/. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (April 28, 2008). "The Scientific Embrace of Atheism". PJ Media. http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-scientific-embrace-of-atheism/. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 
•    (April 2008). "The God of the Gaps". Commentary. ISSN 0010-2601. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-god-of-the-gaps/. Retrieved 2014-01-17. 

References

• Coulter, Ann H. (2007) [Originally published 2006; New York: Crown Forum]. Godless: The Church of Liberalism (1st pbk. ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-1-4000-5421-3. OCLC 148652646. 
• Numbers, Ronald L. (1998). Darwinism Comes to America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-19312-3. OCLC 38747194. https://archive.org/details/darwinismcomesto0000numb. 
• Phy-Olsen, Allene (2010). Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design. Historical Guides to Controversial Issues in America. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-37841-6. OCLC 656503130. 

External links

• David Berlinski, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture
  • Berlinski's articles listed at Discovery Institute
• David Berlinski on IMDb
• "Dr. David Berlinski: Introduction (Part 1)" on YouTube – Part 1 of 22 parts of Icons of Evolution (2002), produced by ColdWater Media
• "A Tale of Two Citations" by James Downard at Talk Reason
• Appearances on C-SPAN