I actually agree with this! I'm sure Deacon has interesting things to say. And yes, I can only find out about it by reading him, not by reading Wikipedia's summary -- or you.

Michael Behe didn't have the right kind of credentials: he was speaking outside his area of expertise, as was noted repeatedly during that debacle. He co-opted the mantle of capital-letter Science and misused it to maliciously confuse his audience.

> I think at the basic level of philosophy of science or physics or whatever, the idea that we can break up disciplines into clear chunks is just silly.

Of course all distinctions are man-made and therefore arbitrary. Yet you have a doctorate in Physics, and not in Neuroanthropology. At a fundamental level, you understood if Physics interested you, there was a path for you which was this path and not that other path. The border might be fuzzy, but at some level you understand not all regions are equivalent.

> At some point a serious intellectual just has to do the work for themselves to digest the ideas. I'd be worse off if I had skipped Deacon's book (which, incidentally and again, I don't think really lands) if I had skipped it because he didn't have a PhD that matched mine.

I fully agree and I'm not arguing anyone should skip Deacon (or anyone else) because they are not physicists. I just wouldn't pay the same attention to a Physics lecture by someone whose expertise doesn't lie in Physics (or to an anthropology lecture by a physicist who's not also an anthropologist). Doesn't mean I would necessarily skip it though!

I also understand you're not saying Deacon is right. Sufficiently interesting ideas are worth considering regardless of whether they are right. I don't think Julian Jaynes is right either, yet I consider "The Origin of Consciousness" an extremely interesting book!

I'm not sure how many times I have to explain I consider philosophy, epistemology and -- I'll say it -- the humanities essential? I'm not arguing about skipping anything!