{"id":43239,"date":"2025-08-29T19:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/?p=43239"},"modified":"2025-08-29T19:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:19:10","slug":"2102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/2102\/","title":{"rendered":"David Berlinski on the Immaterial, Alan Turing, and the Mystery of Life Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On today&#8217;s episode out of the vault, we&#8217;re again spotlighting the book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/b\/science-after-babel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Science After Babel<\/a><\/em>. 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 <em>The Imitation Game<\/em>; 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. Life\u2019s \u201cfantastic and controlled complexity, its brilliant inventiveness and diversity, its sheer <em>difference <\/em>from anything else in this or any other world\u201d remains before us, suggesting, as Berlinski puts it, \u201ca kind of intelligence evident nowhere else.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dig Deeper<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Get your copy of the Berlinski&#8217;s latest book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/b\/science-after-babel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Listen to more with Dr. Berlinski:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-id-the-future wp-block-embed-id-the-future\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-frame\"><blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"R4pIoW4abX\"><a href=\"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/1979\/\">The Deniable Darwin: Stephen Meyer Interviews David Berlinski<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;The Deniable Darwin: Stephen Meyer Interviews David Berlinski&#8221; &#8212; ID the Future\" src=\"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/1979\/embed\/#?secret=HqpIVhobmL#?secret=R4pIoW4abX\" data-secret=\"R4pIoW4abX\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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.","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":43268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"[]","sync_status":"synced","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"https:\/\/episodes.castos.com\/id\/2127674\/c1e-jdgkh57dd0s0om5q-7z9o8kzvb9po-ukbmze.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"1969657","podmotor_episode_id":"2127674","castos_file_data":"{\"path\":\"https:\\\/\\\/episodes.castos.com\\\/id\\\/2127674\\\/c1e-jdgkh57dd0s0om5q-7z9o8kzvb9po-ukbmze.mp3\",\"name\":\"IDTF 2102 David Berlinski on Science After Babel Part 3.mp3\"}","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"00:24:30","filesize":"33.6 mb","filesize_raw":"35273791","date_recorded":"2025-08-29 19:19:06","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"2102","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"full","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2368,64,1869,5302,6780,6778,269,6729,6777,6774,410,4217,6782,562,3317,6767,6770,2102,5293,967,1006,1068,6775,6719,1191,6769,6768,4219,6779,6776,6771,6717,2177,2285,1446,1467,6781,6732,6773,1578,6772,1636],"series":[7227],"speaker":[],"class_list":["post-43239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-__repeat","tag-alan-turing","tag-albert-einstein","tag-alonzo-church","tag-biological-life","tag-bohr-model","tag-charles-darwin","tag-chatgpt","tag-computable","tag-computing-age","tag-darwinism","tag-david-berlinski","tag-dirac-equation","tag-evolution","tag-general-relativity","tag-giuseppe-peano","tag-incompleteness-theorems","tag-kurt-godel","tag-mathematical-logic","tag-mathematics","tag-michael-ruse","tag-natural-selection","tag-non-computable","tag-philosophy-of-biology","tag-physics","tag-platonic-objects","tag-princeton-university","tag-principia-mathematica","tag-quantum-field-theory","tag-quantum-mechanics","tag-recursive-functions","tag-science-after-babel","tag-scientific-reductionism","tag-special-relativity","tag-survival-of-the-fittest","tag-teleology","tag-theory-of-everything","tag-tower-of-babel","tag-turing-machine","tag-turing-test","tag-von-neumann-machine","tag-william-dembski","series-intelligent-design-the-future"],"acf":[],"author_names":["David Berlinski"],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/08\/london-uk-2-january-2024-macro-image-of-50-pound-sterling-ba-711052624-stockpack-adobestock-scaled.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2021\/08\/idthefuture-cover.jpg","download_link":"https:\/\/op3.dev\/e\/idthefuture.com\/podcast-download\/43239\/2102.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/op3.dev\/e\/idthefuture.com\/podcast-player\/43239\/2102.mp3","audio_player":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-43239-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/op3.dev\/e\/idthefuture.com\/podcast-player\/43239\/2102.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/op3.dev\/e\/idthefuture.com\/podcast-player\/43239\/2102.mp3\">https:\/\/op3.dev\/e\/idthefuture.com\/podcast-player\/43239\/2102.mp3<\/a><\/audio>","episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":[],"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/feed\/podcast\/intelligent-design-the-future","embedCode":"<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"GXxzFAfnZE\"><a href=\"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/2102\/\">David Berlinski on the Immaterial, Alan Turing, and the Mystery of Life Itself<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" src=\"https:\/\/idthefuture.com\/2102\/embed\/#?secret=GXxzFAfnZE\" width=\"500\" height=\"350\" title=\"&#8220;David Berlinski on the Immaterial, Alan Turing, and the Mystery of Life Itself&#8221; &#8212; ID the Future\" data-secret=\"GXxzFAfnZE\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\"><\/iframe><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\/* <![CDATA[ *\/\n\/*! 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